ScareS 2, no particular pairing (Part 1)
"Come on in, Sonic should be back soon. Until then, maybe you could help me with something.," Amy greeted and explained, while leading the guest Sonic had told her about deeper into his house. She had offered to wait for them in his stead, while the hero had to run a few errands.
"Well, if I can, I would gladly help you.," the other replied reluctantly. "Great! Come on!," the girl cheered and led the both of them to the living room, where the table was littered with pristine white paper sheets, pens and bunched up papers.
"Um...what is all this?," Sonic's guest asked. "Well, we have Halloween, don't we? We want to meet up later and spend the night awake. You know, the Halloween Party I'm sure you are invited to as well. This year, we also want to tell each other Halloween stories. I tried forever to just find a really scary one in the library and in the internet, but I wasn't very successful – so I decided to just write one! ...But I'm not good in getting ideas. Do you maybe have some advice?"
"W-well, I'm by all means no author, but I like reading, so I might have some things I might comment on. Let's see." He took the only remaining, already written on paper and read the five lines written on it carefully. "Hm, well the atmosphere is right, I'd say. Thunderstorms are very scary."
Just as he said that, thunder struck above them, making them jump, reminding them of the storm raging outside.
"Gee, Sonic will be soaked, when he returns. You're lucky you came in remotely dry.," Amy commented as she calmed down again. "Yeah, luckily I don't have any fur. Thank you for the towel, by the way. Oh, who is Sue?"
Amy blinked, confused by the sudden change of topic. "Huh?" "Well, you're writing about this Sue in here..."
"Oh, she's just a fictional character. Somebody has to be the star in the story, right?." the hedgette shrugged.
"True, but you just put her here and were done with it. I mean, what's her story? How does she look?"
"Is that important?," Amy frowned. "Very, it gives the story substance." "I'm...not sure, how I should make her look like..."
"Well, you could replace a fictional character simply with 'you'." "Me?" "No, I meant the word 'you'. Just imagine you read the story to your friends and say stuff like, 'You walk down the dark hallway'."
"Sounds scary! Okay, let's do this!" Eagerly, Amy grabbed a pen and new piece of paper and started to write. "Okay, first the thunderstorm, now the protagonist... hm. We need a location. What do you think is the scariest location?"
"Home?" "But, at home, you are usually safe..." "Exactly. And what could be scarier than being attacked, where you feel the safest?" "Ooooh, yeah, that makes sense! Okay...so it's a stormy night at your home..."
She wrote some more lines, mentioning a thick darkness, split by lightning for a millisecond only, a rolling thunder and the uneasy feeling 'you' started to feel, before she looked up to her spontaneously recruited writing partner.
"What monster should we use? Or maybe something like a killer...?," she asked, thinking hard. "Maybe we shouldn't mention a solid creature at all. Just...you know... scary events taking place without an obvious reason. So to say a body-less evil lurking around the house.," came the suggestion.
The girl's eyes lit up. "Fantastic! Let's see, what could happen... Hm... How about a broken window for starters?"
She eagerly started to write, not waiting for an answer, describing the sounds as good as she could, when there was suddenly a loud 'BANG!' audible upstairs, followed by a clattering sound.
"What the-!?" Immediately, the pinkette jumped up and ran up the stairs to search for the origin of the noise.
She found it in the first floor bathroom – a thick, broken-off branch had plunged through the window, shattering the glass.
"What a mess.," she sighed and, as she could hardly just leave this the way it was, carefully pushed the branch out of the hole to let it fall harmlessly in the backyard. It would probably block the door a bit, but it was most likely no problem for Sonic after all. He often entered the backyard by just jumping over the fence or hedges anyway.
Cleaning up the shards and throwing them away, she lastly closed the blinds to prevent too much rain from coming in.
After everything was done, she left the bathroom and returned to the living room, where she was already awaited by Sonic's guest, who hadn't moved an inch from the couch they had sat on.
"Sorry about that, a branch rammed into a window.," she explained. "No problem, really.," they reassured her. "Now, where were we...?"
Sitting down again, she read over their story so far. "Okay, sounds good. Hm...what next... Oh! Some scary noise...er...some thuds upstairs, like footfalls! Er..."
She froze at once, looking contemplative. "Not all of my friends have an 'upstairs', though, so the whole 'you'-thing won't work this way..."
"And if you just write, that 'you' are doing some house-sitting...?" "YES, perfect! I'll just take this house, everyone knows, how Sonic's house looks like, well everyone, who'll come to the party...!," Amy cheered, while squeezing the explaining sentence between the already existing lines at the right place, writing in tiny letters, that only she would be able to read without a problem.
She made a mental note to write the finished story down anew, just in case. Sally had already hinted towards her and the other girls, that she wanted to collect those stories into an album to read them again a few years later, when nobody remembered the exact plots anymore (or when they would have kids, that could handle the horror) and to remember the old times.
Giggling at the thought, which confused her mostly silent companion, she finished the squeezed-in sentence and went back to the scary noises.
She had just added the final dot, when she heard a strange thumping sound coming from the ceiling.
"What now?;" she groaned, standing up and running back upstairs, this time to Tails' bedroom, that was above the living room.
Opening the door, she saw a little green plush toy monkey sitting on the ground, clapping the cymbals in its hands against each other. Due to the strange, 'bent backwards'-form of the instruments, they were creating a dark thumping sound instead of the lighter one it should create.
"Funny, didn't know, Tails had such a thing. He's always acting so mature...," she mumbled, while picking the toy up. She couldn't find an off-switch, no matter how much she turned it around in her hands, so she eventually just grabbed a pillow from his bed and placed it between the cymbals, muffling the sounds.
Leaving the monkey on the bed, she returned to the living room once more. "Today is certainly strange. Wonder, what activated the toy.," she mumbled, more to herself, than to the guest and took a seat again.
"Anyway, I think, we have the scary noises covered for now. What next, what next...oh! What do you think about a scary message on a mirror – or window."
"Sure, why not?," the visitor replied. "Okay, so...you go to the bathroom and see the mirror fogged up and written there...hm... 'You are not alone'...!? Nah, too romantic. 'I'm watching you'... ugh, too blunt. 'Watch your step'...? No..."
She looked up. "Any ideas?," she asked the other. "Um... 'Want to play a game'?" "Not bad! ...but something's still missing... Ah, I know! 'Want to play a game for your life?' Great, right?"
"Sure...but...what game?" "...Er...tag?," Amy suggested. "Like... 'when I'll get you, I'll kill you'?," the other asked to clarify.
"Yeah, when you formulate it like that, it'll sound even scarier! Let's put this also on the mirror!"
Happily, she wrote their idea down. "Okay, what next? Oh, how about blood running down the- huh!?"
She interrupted herself and fell silent, as she listened hard. Was there water running...? "Excuse me for a sec...," she mumbled absentmindedly, stood up and went in the hallway and to the bathroom just a few doors over. Switching on the light, she opened the door and blinked in the foggy room. The shower was running, the hot water creating steam, that weighed down the air.
"What in the-!?" Amy rushed to the shower and turned off the water, then ran to the window and opened it, heedless of the still raging storm outside. She even waved her arms a bit to fan the steam out.
"Just what's going on here?," she muttered, while trying to get the wetness out before it would cling to the walls and ceiling. "First this branch in the window, then this toy monkey I didn't know Tails had and now a shower, that was definitely NOT running, when I came and still filled the room with steam in seconds. This is like..." She froze. The broken window. The thuds upstairs. This was... like in their story...
Slowly, so very slowly, she let her arms down to hang to her sides and turned around to the mirror.