Hello everyone!

I promised that Tricked Out wouldn't be the end, so here's the first chapter of the Anthology!

For new readers: this is a loose, episodic collection of in-universe prompts for my main story, Tricked Out. Some chapters will contain spoilers to the main story, but I don't think it'll be completely unreadable. Main spoilers will be marked! The basic of plot of Tricked Out is about a human girl, Ivy Kunze, who manages to find a Gateway to Halloween in her hometown of Stuttgart, Germany and the consequences thereof, both in Halloween and back in her world. She's 16 at the end of the main story; her relationship with Jack is very father-daughter.

I'm so excited to delve into some more fun works with these characters. Let's go going!

Halloween Town

Mid-January, 1993

Just after sunrise

Ivy blinked awake, confusing creeping across her features at the dimmed daylight outside. She listened for a moment, wondering if the Tailypo had decided to have another fight with the Monster Under the Bed, but only silence met her ears. She groaned and flopped onto her stomach, pulling the lumpy pillow over her head in the futile attempt to fall back asleep, but the slow insistence that something something something was wrong refused to stop tapping away in the back of her mind, growing steadily stronger the longer she stayed awake. After a few more fitful, denial-filled moments, she grit her teeth and rolled out of bed, shoving her shoes on and scrubbing her face. Yawning she let the strange tug in her stomach pull her from bed, cracking open the door into the stillness of the Manor.

It wasn't completely strange to have the Manor be still - contrary to what Citizens may think, Jack did have his quiet spells, hours (days, really) where he directed his energy towards a project, eventually emerging with a sheepish apology and an offer of attention or food - which did make her feel more like a pet, but oh well.

The point, however, was that even in his focused bursts, it was never fully silent: clinking, mumbling, endless pacing and sometimes small, "harmless, really!" explosions.

But tonight (today?) there was none of that. The clock she couldn't read didn't tick, so Ivy's footfalls felt louder than ever. The wood creaked beneath her feet and she fought the urge to hold her breath, watching the beams of early morning sun filter through the dusty windows. She tilted her head, trying to listen the way Jack and the other monsters did, but eventually gave up, rolling her eyes as she headed towards the place he was most likely hiding - that musty study of his.

She shouldered the large door open, peering into the pitch darkness. The air was stale and silent as the tomb, and Ivy hated how her heartbeat picked up.

Jack was there, sitting at his desk, a single candle illuminating the soft bone of his face, even as it sucked out every other light source in the room. His stitched lips were moving, but Ivy couldn't hear the words, no matter how she strained. His brow was crinkled and his hands were clenched, but most worryingly of all he didn't move at all when she entered, no twitch of his body betraying that he knew she was there.

All the while, his sockets were fixed on the great black book that was splayed out before him - nearly half his height and wide as the surface of the desk itself, hundreds of fresh and fading names scrawled within. Ivy had only seen the Book of Records once before, and it sent a familiar chill up her spine.

"Jack?" She asked softly, feeling that dark tug in her stomach grow when the skeleton still didn't move. "Jack?"

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Jack's bones and skull ached. He'd started the morning off so well, too - a game of fetch with Zero outside, fixing a door upstairs that hadn't been creaking enough, and even a start on some paperwork for the Mayor, all with the soothing sound of Ivy's heartbeat in at the edge of his awareness. But he'd just had to go to the Book, to flip through the yellowed pages, to see Sally's name freshly inked in her graceful script, declaring her to be a full Citizen of the Town. He'd let one finger trace the edges of her name, imagining her cloth-soft fingers brushing over the same spot and stubbornly refusing to admit why he wanted to imagine it. But it had all crashed down when he'd noticed a name of the opposite page - one that had been clear, if old, just a few weeks prior and now all but fully faded away. He'd stared, frozen, at the nearly-faded name, almost illegible to the naked eye. How had he not noticed a Citizen was fading to their Second Grave? When had this happened?

How many others?

Then had begun the spiral that he knew all too well - reading over the names of the past, from years before his own arrival in Halloween, desperately trying to keep the names of those that had passed on remembered somehow.

"You've forgotten us, Jack," came a raspy whisper and Jack shuddered, twisting his skull as though to shake it loose.

"No. N - no, I haven't, I swear -"

He whispered the dead names frantically, the sense of weight and responsibility causing his shoulders to quake. How was he supposed to fulfill his duties when monsters through the ages were dying off? When he was the only one who knew the names of whatever parts of them still existed? When -

Something pulsed at the edge of his awareness, some insistent sound, tiny and hesitant like a mosquito. Jack brushed it aside, dimly noticing that his aura had gotten larger than usual, but he didn't allow it to break him from his recital. Sockets tracking across the page, lips moving silently, as he tried to ignore the fact that if he were living his breath would be coming quick and short.

The mosquito grew louder, more insistent, and bashed at the edge of his aura. Mind in the past, Jack pulled in his awareness (when had it gotten so large?) and turned his skull towards the intruder, skull creaking and black aura flaring behind him in warning. He knew that the black of his eyes matched the darkness of the room around him, but the familiar sight of human skin and wide eyes stopped him from flinging the intruder across the room.

"Jack?" The human asked, high-pitched and hesitant. Her own miniscule colors had shrunk down unconsciously, aware of the threat Jack gave off. The cobwebs began to recede from his brain, some of the whispers of the past dying down, and the memories of the now trickling in. The name of the human before him fell into place, and he forced himself to unhinge his jaw and answer.

"Ivy." He knew his voice was raspy and low, and even to him it sounded as though he were speaking from a great distance. "Are… are you alright?"

Ivy stifled a snort of disbelief, and the familiarity of the gesture did more to ground Jack than the feeling of his desk bending beneath his fingers. "I think I should be asking you that," she retorted, slowly edging her way fully into the room, though keeping her back to the wall in a way she clearly thought was subtle. "What are you doing?"

He glanced at the Book and shuddered, slamming it shut as though to muffle the voices of the dead within, wincing a bit at how Ivy flinched at the noise. He'd worked so hard to not give her a reason to fear him, and now … a wave of exhaustion hit him and he leaned into his hands, kneading the joints of his metacarpals into his sockets. "It's … it's nothing, Ivy."

"Sure doesn't look like -"

"Go back to bed." He knew it was curt, but his jaw was growing tense again and he thought he may need a wrench to loosen his bones enough to move. He heard Ivy cross her arms rather than leave and sighed, knowing he didn't have the energy to fight with her.

"I'm not gonna let you sulk here in the dark - "

"I am not sulking!" Jack's head swung up, sockets blazing, and both flinched at the volume of his shout. The spark of her fear he tasted in the air was enough to smother his next wave of anger, but he knew it wouldn't be the same with Ivy. Jack saw the fire kindle in her eyes, the way her fists clenched, and felt his bones tense in preparation for the storm.

But then Ivy paused, her eyes flickering down to the Book, and Jack heard her take a deep breath. He allowed himself to close his sockets once more, knowing he should apologize but unable to bring himself to speak.

He heard her move closer, her footsteps humanly loud and quiet breath disturbing the stillness of life. It was strange, he passingly mused, to have such a strong presence of life in a room so filled with death.

He thought back to the names, the monsters who'd left to their Second Graves, and wished he had the ability to cry.

"Jack, what's wrong?" It was the softest voice he'd ever heard her use, but he couldn't bring himself to answer. His shoulders hiked, his hands clenched even tighter, and he shook his head, cutting off her next words of, "Jack, it's ok, you can tell …"

No, he couldn't. Because what would he do if her name was added to the Book one day, only to fade away as she herself did?

There was a long moment, in the stillness of his study, and if Jack bothered to try, he thought he might have heard the sounds of gears turning in Ivy's head. As it was, he allowed the darkness in his ribs to seep upwards, drag his body and mind down until nothing seemed to matter but the pain in his joints, or the tug where his heart once was.

It was a surprise, then, to feel a warm human hand slipping under his arm. It was only centuries of self-control (and, yes, perhaps exhaustion) that prevented him from tossing the 16 year old across the room as she applied pressure under his arm, lifting him out of his seat.

"Knew you'd be light, Bone Boy," she muttered, and Jack heard the words as though they might apply to another. He fancied viewing himself from outside his body, escaping the confines of his overly-large form. He thought it might be a funny sight - a skeleton, over 8 feet tall, folded against a deceptively strong human girl in Halloween clothing, her hair still sticking up from sleep. He saw, rather than felt, his feet drag across the floor as Ivy pulled them out of the study. She was saying something, he knew, but no matter how he tried he couldn't focus on the words. She seemed to notice, switching to her mother tongue, and Jack almost felt the flicker of a grin at the teasing affection behind her words.

They came to a familiar ebony wood door and Jack could feel some hesitancy in his companion before she lifted once foot and turned the handle, gently kicking the door open. He heard her laugh at something, then felt himself being tipped sideways and onto the soft surface of his bed. He half-heartedly tried to sit up, only for Ivy to strike him in the center of the chest, sending him backwards with an "oof!"

"Don't even think about it," she said, in English once more. "I'll tell Null to howl if you try to get up before sundown."

Zero? Sure enough, the ghost dog was floating over Ivy's shoulder, casting the side of her face in a white glow. In intense focus, she scratched under his chin, which resulted in the dog flopping over dramatically and drifting down to rest his head on Jack's ankle, trapping him in place.

"Seriously, when was the last time you slept?"

Words … those were still difficult, getting his jaw and mind to corporate. "L… La - last week."

"Ok, not awful," Ivy conceded, head dipping to the side. She blew a tuft of hair from her face and yanked a blanket over his form, despite the fact that his suit and shoes were still on. "But not great either."

His jaw creaked as he went to respond, but Ivy was quicker. "That's ok, though. You'll get through this." She paused, giving him a rare serious look. "You're the best, you know that?"

"How -"

"You get this look when you're su - brooding," she amended quickly. Jack didn't think it was much better, but he was too tired to protest. "You don't have to tell me, just … you've always been here for me. So, I just - I want you to, y'know, know it's the same if you, uh, need somebody to talk to. I'm," she cleared her throat, eyes flickering to the ceiling. "I'm here for you too, ok?"

She went to leave, and Jack forced himself to reach out and grasp her hand. She paused, pulse back to a normal speed beneath his fingertips and she glanced over her shoulder at him. She waited, dark hair aglow in the moonlight, as he struggled to speak. He tried to tell her the pressures on his mind, the uncertainty of the future, the darkness that crept around them from all sides. But there was too much youth in her gaze, a humanity he hadn't seen in years, and he was loath to be the first to disrupt it. So he settled back, instead allowing a much softer, "go to bed" escape his lips.

Her own quirked up, expression almost soft. "Don't worry, Dad, I will." It always sent a particular warmth through him when she said that, and it allowed him to loosen his grasp, allowing her fingers to slip through his. "Get some sleep yourself, ok?"

She pointed her finger at him in faux sternness, and Jack allowed himself to smile. "I will. Thank you, love."

Ivy nodded, making a self-satisfied noise. After a final scratch to Zero, she walked from the room, closing the door with a final, "horrid dreams, Jack!"

The skeleton waited until her heartbeat had faded to kick off his shoes. Zero growled warningly but Jack shushed him, laying back down to placate the dog, who rolled his eyes and tucked himself tighter against Jack. Soon the ghost was fast asleep, almost transparent in the sunlight coming through a crack in his blackout curtains. Jack leaned back against his pillow, feeling a different kind of exhaustion begin to tug him down. A few whispers persisted at the edge of his consciousness, but he was able to ignore them, the internal promise of doing better tomorrow allowing him to fall asleep until sundown.

A reminder that all these chapters will be posted on Tricked Out's Tumblr, (tricked-out), where you can also request prompts, or join the Discord server run by Corona Pax (who writes the INCREDIBLE Skeleton Anne) & I!

Next time: An alternate take on Chapter 37!

-Aria