"...and as the cold wind howled around her, she slowly turned around to see the most petrifying sight in her entire life. And with a single, high-pitched scream, she was never heard from again."
There was some scattered clapping from the group as Karkat finished his story, some eye-rolling from more mature audience members, slightly shaky laughter from Tavros and Nepeta, and a look of simple indifference from Gamzee. About ten of them were all clustered around a fire for the troll equivalent to Halloween, which fell in the heat of summer while still managing perfectly well to be unsettling. A cool wind was blowing across the plains, cutting into the cloying warmth of the day as the sun set in the west. A ridiculously campy crescent moon was ascending on the other horizon, and most people were enjoying the holiday. The troll version didn't call for dressing, which was reserved for the human version (there had been much humorous confusion last October, as the trolls found their neighbors banging on the door in weird costumes demanding candy for some reason), but scary stories were integral.
Egbert's stories had been hysterical, even if that wasn't quite the mood he had in mind, and Kanaya had managed to be genuinely scary a couple of times. Karkat's was okay, and Terezi had spent weeks finding a good story to freak everyone out. And she had: The story itself was moderately scary, but the grinning, cackling, bloodthirsty delivery was excellent, and would haunt their dreams for weeks to come in the best way possible.
"Alright, Rose's turn," John said, moving quickly to make sure Gamzee didn't start one, which was pretty much the first priority of the evening.
Rose looked up from the book she was reading with a look of irritation. "Do I have to? Scary stories are stupid."
"C'mon, Rose: I bet you're a great storyteller."
She sighed, book marked her book, and shut it. "Fine. This is a story about a young couple who lived in the American northwest some time ago. It was a dark and stormy night, so they stayed home and watched TV eating potato chips. The next morning, which was bright and sunny and actually a good idea to go outside, they decided to drive into the middle of the woods and make out for some reason. I don't know why the woods are a particularly good place to make out, and they could just have easily gone to a malt shop or something cliched like that and have something to eat, but they decided the woods was the way to go. The guy, who had some stupid name like 'Chad', pulled into an abandoned campsite, where he proceeded to make out with his equally poorly-named girlfriend who was probably something 1950s-ish like 'Betty'. Little did they know, a psychopath had just broken out of one of those mental institutions for the clinically insane they put in the middle of forests in Oregon. Cultural note to the troll audience, a 'psychopath' is someone who goes around killing people, except on earth it's illegal and a sign of mental illness. Anyways, they interrupted local broadcasts to warn all three people who live in the Oregon backwoods next to institutions for clinical psychopaths that someone had escaped, but the couple had their radio on a national music station that didn't interrupt their programming for stupid escapees in sasquatch country, so they were utterly helpless to the horror that would be sneaking up on them in a clean white hospital gown out of a brown and green forest. Seriously, how long would you have to be making out to not notice that? Assuming he shows up at exactly the right time to actually find you-The population density of that kind of Upper Northwest forest is so low they could probably just wait for him to get hungry and bored and come back on his own without killing anyone."
"Love the atmosphere you're setting here." Dave said, cracking open a Tab. "I'm surprised you don't do this more often."
"Thank you, Dave. Anyhow, as they were continuing their passionate and unrealistically lengthy kissing, they heard a snap from behind the car. Instead of checking the rearview mirror like a sensible person, Chad got out of the car and was immediately murdered by the serial killer, who had somehow acquired an axe from somewhere. The girl, not comprehending the squishing noises from behind the car were the sounds of someone being butchered, got out of the car to see what was keeping her precious Chad. She saw the killer knee-deep in blood, and had the presence of mind to jump in the driver seat, screaming, and floor the ignition, which sent the car shooting forward straight into the trees that completely surrounded the campsite. She got twenty feet, then crashed into a tree, and would have been fine if the explosive airbag didn't deploy and immediately break her neck. A second later, the overheating, broken engine block exploded, mercifully removing her idiocy from the gene pool. The murderer wandered around for a week, didn't find anyone, and went back to the facility. He was later completely cured, had two well-adjusted children, and got a job as a regional Arby's manager. And no one ever saw him again."
There was a shrill scream of horror from Gamzee which made everyone jump. "Aw man, don't motherfuckin' do that!" He said, holding his head, eyes darting around anxiously, "That's too motherfucking intense!"
There was a beat of silence, in which Dave raised a hand.
"My turn," He said, clicking on a flashlight below his face that might have made him look a little bit scarier if he hadn't been wearing sunglasses. "My story begins on a dark night, on a desolate stretch of coastal highway. A young couple was driving home after a nice dinner out, completely oblivious to what was coming. When they got home, they shared a pleasant evening together, going to sleep unaware their fates had been sealed..."
"...and that," Dave said brightly, clicking off the flashlight, "Is how human babies are born!"
Around the circle, the trolls were staring at him in open-mouthed horror. Terezi had her arms wrapped protectively over her stomach, Aradia had scooted a good two feet away from Sollux, and Nepeta had been so horrified she was clinging desperately to Gamzee, needing comfort so bad she was willing to accept it from someone who had murdered her. Gamzee himself was just staring with wide-eyed, unblinking shock at the humans, while Sollux was slowly pulling a magnificent face of disgust. Karkat was the only one who could form a sentence, which was "Inside her... It was growing inside her... It's like some sick science-fiction crap...Eugh..."
John and Jade were fighting down barely-repressed laughter, while Rose was herself trying not to grin at their reactions to Dave's ten-minute explanation of the joys of pregnancy and the miracle of childbirth.
"So, that's about it." Dave said, "Thought I'd just give you a heads-up on what to expect when Egbert here gets a little brother."
"I think I'm going to vomit, then thank the laws of biology that interspecies reproduction is unfeasible." Vriska said, massaging her temples and trying not to think about small humans growing in people's stomach. "Someone else go."
"How about me?" Aradia asked, folding her arms, "I'd like to tell you all a ghost story, only this is about an actual ghost girl, a sad and lonely ghost girl haunting an abandoned ruin, and her jackass of a friend who wouldn't return her game grub even though it had been months."
"Goddammit Aradia, I thaid I wath thorry!" Sollux said, throwing up his hands in frustration, "I lotht it, what did you expect me to do?"
"I don't know, maybe treat other people's property with respect?" Aradia said, glaring at him, "Maybe if you'd took the time to clean that room of yours you'd have been able to find my game before the world ended."
"I think we've kind of lost track of what we're doing here." John said, "Can we actually get back to scary stories now?"
"Well, it's hard to tell stories about the haunting mystery of the Other Side when we've all been there and found it pretty boring." Kanaya said. "Given what we've been through, there's not much left that can scare us except weird exo-biology. That, or bringing up traumatic, mentally-scarring events which resulted in our deaths, but even then we know everything turned out just fine, so there's no real threat. I mean, we're all God Tier, we don't have any people to be protecting so we can die a Heroic death, nobody's done anything to warrant a Just death, we can't die. This holiday is rather pointless."
"Well, I don't motherfuckin' know about not dying." Gamzee said, "I mean, I could at least motherfuckin' try."
There was a sharp collective inhalation from every troll present, and they all began sliding slowly away from Gamzee, who continued to grin with his unhinged benevolence. "See guys, that's what this day's all about!" Gamzee said, "Gettin' together around a fire, swapping motherfuckin' scary stories that nobody's really scared of, and then, once in a while, getting just a little bit reminded of your mothefuckin' mortality. Yeah."
There was some more silence. "Let's never do this again." Karkat said. Everyone else just nodded.
So, yeah, took a break for Christmas, and Halloween seemed the next logical step. Please review!
