Written for the prompt for October 26th – Horror Movies / Death. (Fic unedited.) Background music: Lindsey Stirling - "Crystallize Mashup (Remix by Wild Children)" (Youtube: watch?v=PHrfMQ9TF20)

telling stories in the dark

Movie Night was every three weeks, no exceptions, especially not now when every other part of their lives gets turned on its head every five seconds. Mostly they watch slasher-horror films like the Dead Teacher series, but it's not actually anyone's personal favorite.

Danny liked sci-fi and comedies. He'd rented the DVDs of Flubber and E.T. about a million times as a kid. Tucker likes action movies and superhero stuff, like all those superhero origin movies with commercials everyone. As far as he was concerned, scantily-clad girls plus gunfire and explosions was win. And if she did't have to bother keeping Danny and Tucker from walking out on movie night, Sam watched fancy incomprehensible art films that played tricks with pacing and lighting and took her away to worlds infinitely more depressing and confusing than her life should ever be.

And that was how they found a middle ground, because one day Sam had brought in a stack of old horror films. They'd spent the night in Tucker's living room, glued to the screen until dawn.

Thus, a tradition was born. Every few weeks they'd compete to see who could bring in the cheesiest or the creepiest or just the most flat-out splashing-goriest movie, and whoever brought the lamest movie had to pay for the snacks.

Sam watched a lot of classic horror. Like Nosferatu, which she spent the whole time criticizing for its blatant sexism and demonization of the other. Vertigo, which totally didn't give anyone nightmares at all. Soylent Green, which made everyone but Tucker lose their appetite and left him with all the snacks. And every Stephen King movie ever made, by production date.

Tucker screamed like a little girl.

Tucker brought in big-budget stuff. The Mummy remakes, which Sam declared tacky and pointless. Silent Hill, which Danny and Tucker spent peeking through their fingers for the entire second half. The Resident Evil movie, which again left him with all the snacks. And of course that hallmark of animation history, AKIRA.

The theory was put forth that anime was fucked up. Naturally, this had to be confirmed by watching Ghost in the Shell.

Two nights before it was Sam's turn, for which she planned to bring in the much-hyped Dead Teacher III, Danny walked into the portal and came out different.

Not in any really obvious ways. He was still small and nervous and the first one to smooth over an argument. He still just kind of went with whatever was going on because it was easier that way, even if he couldn't explain how.

Still, they'd seen the movies, and even though Sam and Tucker would never admit it to his face… Danny was kind of creepy sometimes. And not just kid-with-no-social-skills accidental-creepy like usual, but the kind of creepy you had to work at. Like how he didn't make noise when he walked unless he was wearing shoes a size too big so they flopped around everywhere. Or how when he was sitting in the shade, his eyes had this green overlay like a holographic picture. Or how he'd smiled when Dash dropped a heavy textbook right on his foot, lips stretched so wide they'd cracked and bled.

Probably the most obvious change was that he stopped bringing stuff in to movie night.

Of course, they had to know why.

He shrugged, eyes glued to the TV screen still playing the end credits of Curse of The Black Pearl. (It wasn't billed as a horror movie, but it had kinda-historical stuff for Sam, fight scenes for Tucker, romantic comedy stuff for Danny, and wicked creepy Lovecraftian undead so it counted.)

"I guess I like most of the movies you guys have brought in. I mean, Sam's movies are all creepy and Tucker, you always bring in stuff with explosions and-"

Danny glanced at Sam and self-censored. "And really cool special effects and stuff. But I just like movies in general, so I'm okay with anything."

"Yeah, man, but you never bring anything in when we watch horror movies." Tucker frowned. "Wait, are you just trying to get out of paying for snacks? Not cool."

Danny rolled his eyes. "It's not that! I just- I dunno if you'd like it."

Sam poked him in the arm. "Well, you have to at least bring it in! Otherwise, how would we ever know?"

Danny flinched. "Okay, but promise you won't scream. I don't want Tucker's parents to kick us out."

Tucker and Sam just laughed it off as more Danny-style worrying and asked him to do his worst.

On Danny's first turn, he brought in The Silence of the Lambs. After that, both versions of The Ring and its sequels.

"…dude. I thought you weren't a big horror fan outside the slasher evil-summer-school stuff?"

One day he showed up with an armful of snacks and a single DVD in a plain white sleeve. It didn't have a case, or labels, or even just marker-writing scribbled on one side.

Sam folded her arms and glared. "Oh, come on, Danny. You can't be serious."

Tucker clasped his hands and begged. "Yeah, just one little hint?"

Danny held up his hands and laughed. "Sorry, guys. I don't want to ruin the surprise."

Tucker pouted. "You suck."

"Eh."

Sam shook her head.

They settled around the entertainment center, in all its HD flatscreen and enormous-speakers glory. Sam claimed the big chair on the grounds that it was her basement, so she got first choice, and backed it up with a threatening fist in Tucker's direction. Still complaining, Tucker set out burgers, jerky and five kinds of nacho dip on the coffee table and sprawled out all over one couch.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Why is your laptop open when we're about to start the movie?"

"Well, what if I have to look something up?"

"Ugh."

"Settle down, guys," Danny said as he fiddled with the DVD player. He straightened up, made a big show of stretching out his back and gave them a thumbs-up. "Okay, I think we're good."

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Finally. I thought it was your dad who couldn't figure out how to use basic technology?"

"Ha ha. I'm laughing so hard, you can't even hear it."

"That makes no sense-"

"Boys!" Sam snapped. "Let's get to the movie so I can laugh at how tame Danny's idea of 'scary' is."

"True," Tucker agreed.

Danny's face went flat. "Thanks, guys. So helpful."

He crossed the room and flopped down on the side of the couch closest to Sam, picked up the remote and pressed play.

The blue screen was replaced by fizzing static, multiple dots resolving themselves into a DVD menu. There was no title, just two options: "PLAY" and "STOP".

Tucker nodded. "Nice atmosphere. I'm guessing 'STOP' is special features or something."

Danny shrugged. "Maybe? I'll be honest, I have no idea what movie this is."

"Hrm?" Tucker made a questioning noise, his mouth stuffed full of meat.

"I forgot it was my turn tonight and I didn't really have time to be picky, so when the store clerk recommended this I just kind of went 'okay, yes, it's fine, here's money for the rental' and got here as fast as I could."

Sam looked at the bag of popcorn in her lap, lips pursed. "Don't tell me you got the snacks from there, too."

"No, they were in the kitchen cupboard."

Tucker and Sam just stared at him.

"Don't worry, prepackaged foods like chips and popcorn are usually fine! Anything that doesn't need cooking. It's the appliances you have to worry about."

"Mm-hmm." Tucker sounded skeptical. "That's not reassuring at all, you know."

"You're still eating," Danny pointed out.

"I just bought these burgers; I know they're safe."

"Excuse me?" Sam cut in. "Do you have any idea how often contaminated meat makes it past inspection, especially when it's mass-produced?"

"Guys! Can we please just watch the movie?" Danny snapped. As if to prove his point, he hit 'PLAY'.

The screen blacked out.

So did every other light in the room.

Sam jumped out of her seat, scattering popcorn everywhere. "What the hell, a power outage?"

Danny's breath froze, and his eyes lit up like high-beams. "No."

Tucker shivered. Danny's voice got weird when he was angry, like he was speaking from the other side of an empty hallway, all echoes and weird harmonics. It was like a badly-tuned sound effect, except real and that made it actually kind of scary. Weird.

Sam scoffed and pulled a flashlight out from somewhere, flicking it on. They could see a patch of yellow-lit wall for about a second before the light fizzled out, leaving them in even deeper darkness.

Intellectually, Tucker was completely aware that it was just a matter of their eyes needing to adjust to the darkness. A sudden flash of bright light would have reversed that process, and now he'd have to wait for the afterimages to fade before he could trust anything his eyes told him. It wasn't like this was the first time.

Danny's eyes shifted, focusing like laser sights on the DVD player. It was still going. "Sam, are there any security cameras down here?"

"None I don't have access to. …and they're probably out, too. This isn't a normal power outage, is it?" Sam sounded more ticked-off than scared. Well, good for her.

Tucker gasped. Wait…

He turned to his laptop, frantically trying to turn it on from standby mode. No dice. He bit down on a frustrated scream, something he'd been doing a lot of lately, and pulled out his trusty PDA. Francine was dead, too.

Tucker heard a noise like a scared puppy. Aw crap, that was him, wasn't it? Even his phone was dead, he needed that, shit… "Guys? I think the DVD might have been haunted."

"No, really?" Sam snarked.

Tucker raised an accusing finger at her. Even if she couldn't see it, it was the thought that counted. "Excuse me for not being too chicken to say it."

"Say it, say what you-"

Tucker stumbled back from the hand suddenly in his face. He had a feeling that was why Sam stopped, too.

Tucker caught his balance. His heart was going way too fast. "What the heck, man?"

Danny winced. "Okay, I'm sorry about that, but I think I might know what this is."

Tucker put together the please-don't-hit-me flinch and sorry-but-I-bring-bad-news tone of Danny's voice and got four. "Okay, so on a scale from 'Night of the Living Hot Dog' to 'End of the World' how screwed are we?"

Danny bit his lip. "If I'm right – and I'm not saying I am, because I really hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right-"

Sam smacked him. "Just say it already!"

Danny rubbed his arm and muttered something under his breath.

Tucker could see Sam's unimpressed face in the light reflected from Danny's eyes. Funny, he'd never noticed how bright he was before. "Loud enough to actually hear, Danny."

Danny's next words were maybe two steps above a whisper. "…this sounds a lot like a psychovore."

"A what?"

"They eat… stuff…"

"Stuff."

"…like hope and joy and everything that makes life actually worth living."

Sam blinked. "You mean like Spectra?"

Danny shook his head hard, eyes shutting for what couldn't have been more than a couple of lightless seconds. It felt more like minutes. "Not even close. Spectra makes people depressed and miserable so she can make herself feel better. She's just an emotional parasite. She's – I guess she's like the flu. She can make her hosts feel like crap, but if she kills them what will she eat?"

Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all. "Uh, Danny? Do you mind going ghost? 'Cause I can't even see my hand in front of my face here."

"Oh!" The passing rings of his transformation were eye-searingly bright. "Better."

Tucker blinked, eyes watering. "Yeah, much better. Thanks, man."

Danny smiled weakly.

Sam made a frustrated noise. "Okay, so Spectra is the flu, which actually explains a few things. Then what are we dealing with?"

Danny looked shifty. "Well, if Spectra is the flu, these things are the Black Plague. Or something around that terrible," he mumbled.

The sound of the DVD player's reader was a high-pitched scream on the upper edge of Tucker's hearing.

"They get into your head, literally into your head, and then you relive every experience you've ever had over and over."

"Okay, so they're dementors?"

Danny's lips moved up, but it wasn't really a smile. "If only. See, it's every experience you've ever had. Negative emotions aren't exactly pleasant, but they're necessary. I know this example's been done to death, but in order to not get burned you've got to know that fire burns."

Sam looked worried. "So, they make you emotionless?"

Danny looked away, back at the DVD player. "Well, first they burn you out so you can't feel anything at all. Then they make you think."

"Think?" Tucker asked, unimpressed.

"In circles, constantly, until your mind just breaks. You can't sleep, you can't focus long enough to eat, you can't do anything but think and you can't stop thinking about different things all the time."

"That sounds like 'thirteen hours into a gaming marathon' to me."

"…no. Because then, if you wore yourself out enough, you'd just crash and pass out. Your body would make you sleep no matter what your mind said. Psychovores just keep their hosts awake until they die."

"Aren't ghosts already dead?" Sam asked.

Danny turned to her. "Really? Really. You should know, there's dead and there's dead."

Tucker laughed. "That's not actually funny, though. Come on, there's loads of ghosts that can mess with technology. Come to think of it, when was the last time you beat up Technus?"

Tucker tried to look around, but between Danny's light and the power indicator on the DVD player all he could see was shadows.

Danny gave him a flat stare. "…I have no idea what you're talking about. Also, if this was Technus, he'd be gloating loudly and every shiny gadget in the room would be on."

"So they're making us scared?" Tucker squeaked.

"Or you're just that much of a chicken," Sam scoffed. "Danny, are you sure that's what this is?"

"No," he admitted. "Weird emotional effects are actually pretty common in the Ghost Zone. And even psychovores are still technically a really nasty kind of shadow ghost, so even daylight should slow them d-oh…"

In unison, they all stopped. Stared at each other, and facepalmed hard.

"We're in my freaking basement. It's daytime. We can just go upstairs."

"Well, I'm clearly an idiot," Danny said.

"No arguments there," Tucker agreed.

"Hey!"

"Boys."

"Sorry!" they yelped.

Sam shook her head. "Come on, Danny. You can be our flashlight."

They climbed up the wide basement stairs, the sound of their steps echoing in the vast space. Sam went first, then Danny the handy-dandy walking lamp, and Tucker hung back at the end like always.

Sam opened the door.

Across the room, the DVD caught and stopped playing.

Movie night was every three weeks, no exceptions.