Disclaimer: No I don't own Yugioh or the World of Darkness.
-------------------------------
07/02/2025
Werewolves actually exist, as do evil spirits that take over the bodies of men and turn them into monsters. That alone is pretty scary. What else is out there that is not legend but reality? I kind of wonder whether I should ask Fong or Conn whether Santa Claus exists, because if they told me that he did I wouldn't have any reason to doubt them at this point.
As we start to pack up from our break and head towards the town Jill mentioned, I think she called it Juniper or something, I wonder what else there is out there that's supernatural.
-----------------------------------
The leaves and twigs crunched under their boots, sending bits of bark and wood flying everywhere as the six of them trooped through the pitch darkness of the woods.
"I can't feel my legs…" Cheveyo nearly fell over, stopped only because Nikolai grabbed the back of his shirt's collar and forced him to stay standing. "Just let me fall…"
"I can't believe that you're a Werewolf and yet you're standing here whining about something as simple as walking." Even in the pitch darkness the Russian's silver hair shimmered brightly, seeming to project a light of its own.
"Take it easy on the kid," Conn strolled by and dodged a tree branch that swung back the opposite way it had been pushed, hitting Cheveyo in the face roughly.
"If he is weak he will die, that is all." Fire Claw padded by, her body language easily readable to everyone but the subject of the conversation.
"You're not particularly compassionate, are you dear?" Fong walked past the stumbling Cheveyo with his arms folded behind his back in a clearly passive martial artist stance. "However you are right, if the boy is too weak to even walk on his own two feet then he will die."
"You are all quite chatty this evening." Jill walked by, her appearance hard to believe considering where they were. Even now her hair was perfectly styled, and her clothing was completely devoid of dirt.
"How are you so clean anyway?" Cheveyo stepped past a tree and tripped on one of its jutting roots, flying face-first into the mud just beyond it.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Jill casually used the boy's body as a stepping stone to clear the puddle of wet dirt without incident. "It's because I am a professional."
---------------------------
The only things he could hear were the beating of his heart and the stifled sucking noise of him breathing through his hand in an attempt to lower the amount of noise he made. ("Have to get away…have to wait for an opportunity…")
Cold steel, warmed by his body, was his only companion in this. A shotgun, cradled in one's lap, would normally make anyone feel rather secure and safe. In this situation though, it was only a painful reminder that the things which were out there were not human.
They had laughed. He had shot one of them and it had laughed like he had just delivered one of the greatest punch-lines in the world through the buckshot that had peppered its body. It hadn't even seemed to have been touched by the blast either.
What made it all the worse though was the fact that they were waiting outside for him. There wasn't anyone left alive. Everyone else was already dead, murdered…
-----------------------------
Cheveyo let out a loud cough for air as he emerged from the line of trees to find himself standing on a road. "Can it be…" He turned his head to look down the stretch of dirt, and sure enough, in the distance, there was sanctuary. "It's Juniper. Thank goodness, we finally got here!"
"Stop being so happy about it, before you draw attention to yourself." Conn walked past him and grinned. "I can't wait to get myself a pint or two."
"We are almost out of tea, which is unacceptable." Fong patted the boy on the back. "Come along, Cheveyo, let's go food shopping."
"There had better be a phone or there will be hell to pay." Jill, sounding angry now that she realized how long she had been disconnected from the modern world, stomped past with no regard for her cleanliness now that the objective was in sight.
Nikolai stopped as his eyes fell upon the town, a series of buildings that barely constituted as anything more than a couple of random streets. ("There aren't any lights on in most of the buildings.") Normally that would make sense, considering how late in the evening it was…but something felt very, very off about this situation. Regardless though, he followed the other four without delay.
"You're all wasting your time." Fire Claw followed behind them, but she didn't seem very happy. "There are more than enough things to live off of in the wild."
---------------------------
"I…feel so beautiful…" A pair of dry, dusty hands reached out, stroking down the face of the mirror in front of it. The room was completely dark though, void of any light except for a few scant rays coming in from the single window. Carrying the small hand mirror with it, the owner of the hands approached the window to better see themselves with the use of the light of the crescent moon.
---------------------------
"This sucks," Cheveyo dropped into a cross-legged sitting position on the grassy area surrounding a statue of some unknown mayor or town hero. "This is supposed to be Main Street, right?"
"Yup, supposed to be." Conn frowned and rubbed the back of his head. According to the fact that every single building looked like it was closed due to need of repairs though told him otherwise. "Maybe they abandoned ship for some reason?"
"What reason would make people evacuate an entire town though?" Cheveyo glanced up at the second stories of the buildings and stopped the movement of his head when he saw someone projected faintly against a window. "Hey look, there's somebody." Placing his finger and thumb to his mouth, he whistled as loud as he could to try and grab the attention of the person through the thickness of the window. "Excuse me!"
Conn glanced back the way they had come and frowned at the fact that the rest of the pack weren't to be seen. ("I'm getting my 'missing something important' vibe.")
The barely visible form placed a palm against the window…and then turned away, walking out of sight.
"Huh, she must not have heard me…" Cheveyo sighed in disappointment and stood up, brushing blades of grass from his pant legs. "Conn…" He turned to look at one of the only members of the pack he actually cared to trust, and was surprised to see that Conn was gone too. "Well that's just…" A chill ran down his spine and he figured it out, the ultimate truth of this situation that would normally fly right over the head of someone less versed in its nature.
--------------------------------
Fong walked along the aisles of the convenience store, running his fingers along the different boxes of tea that were all lined up as if offering themselves to him. "What do I feel like having? If only they had some Earl Grey, then it would be a real party."
The fact that he had more or less broken into the store didn't mean much to him. His tea was more important than the fact that a place of convenience didn't want to live up to its name. Even though he was wandering about in nearly pure darkness as he did this, it didn't seem to bother his vision.
"Y'all…" A thud noise came from behind and under the counter, barely audible.
Fong turned his head to look at the counter momentarily, before shrugging and returning to his tea-browsing. Whatever some weirdo behind a counter wanted to do meant little to him as long as it didn't interfere with what he was after.
------------------------------------
Nikolai rapped his knuckle on the door of the motel lobby. ("It isn't locked, the lights are off, and there isn't a closed sign up.") Leaning to the side a little, he peeked in through the glass part of the door. "Ah, there's someone. Excuse me, sir?"
The shadowed form that had just wandered into the lobby, and Nikolai had seen, walked towards the door slowly, barely visible because of the lack of light.
------------------------------------
"Oh man, its sanctuary!" Conn waltzed into the shadow-filled bar with a crash as he kicked the unlocked door open. "Barkeep, get your best scotch ready! Daddy needs him a drink!"
Landing on a nearby stool with a loud crash, he kicked his feet up onto the top of the bar and glanced around at the fact that the whole place was empty. "Well ain't this just a disappointment? Oh well, I'll help myself then!"
While he leapt behind the bar and started raiding the many bottles there he didn't notice the shadowed forms stirring from the tables just out of sight as they began to approach his back.
-----------------------------------------
Jill pushed down on the plunger for the pay phone once more, and once more nothing happened. There was no ring-tone. "This is extremely frustrating! How can a town not have a functioning pay-phone!? Do they just light smoke signals when they need to talk to each other!?" Kicking the base of the phone's stand, she angrily glanced around to see if there was a resident she could yell at. All there was though was an unmoving parked pick-up facing her from across the street. "Just great…"
From the driver's side of the car, a pair of hands slowly reached for the ignition…
--------------------------------------------
Fire Claw huffed and continued her silent vigil from the brush just outside of town. ("Humans and their need to build. Such annoying creatures…") She flicked her tail back and forth indignantly and hoped that the rest of the pack would return soon. Even the immature Cheveyo would at least be someone to talk to rather than this boring waiting game she was playing.
----------------------------------------------
"It seems we have visitors…" It glided across the floor without a sound, an impossibly tall hooded thing. It was like a man, but there was something distinctly wrong with it. "That man may warn them away, and that just won't do…" It passed by a road-sign marked "Juniper-5 miles." "It's time to signal the Damned."
From underneath its impossibly long robes emerged wisps of grey smoke that rose up and formed into a series of faces. Those faces circled around their creator for a moment before dissipating in the air.
-----------------------------------------
Cheveyo spun in another circle, leaving drag-marks in the dirt as he nearly panicked again. ("A group of people enter an abandoned town, split up, and then get killed off one by one! Damn it, why didn't I see this coming!") He vowed never to call any protagonist in a horror movie stupid for not seeing something coming ever again.
Now he just had to decide who to go to first. Screaming at the top of his lungs to get the others' attention crossed his mind, but he quickly decided against that. Nothing would be dumber than to let the serial killer or monster know you had figured out what was wrong. ("Just play dumb, casually walk over to the convenience store and get Fong. He'll know what to do…he has to…") Turning towards where he remembered the store to be, the boy started to casually walk in that direction.
Just as he walked a few steps towards his goal though, his blood ran cold as a sudden sound filled the air. It was clear, unmistakable in any way, shape, or form. And he slowly turned to look for the source, but there wasn't any place it could have been.
Juniper didn't have a bell tower after all, so where was that loud chiming coming from?
-----------------------------
Arms loaded with plenty of boxes of tea, Fong strolled towards the door of the store. Just as he passed by the counter he stopped upon hearing a most peculiar sound. "A bell? How very haunting…" Shrugging it off, he continued on his way out, not noticing the shotgun being leveled at his back from behind the shadow-covered cash register.
-----------------------------
Conn continued to sing, badly, as he gulped down the contents of another bottle. This being his sixth, he wasn't even sure what kind of liquor this one was. "Maybe…a fine whiskey, I'm thinkin'." Hiccuping, he broke out into a pointless burst of laughter and grabbed a new bottle, popping the cork off and swigging down his seventh drink despite the fact that he wasn't done with his sixth yet.
Meanwhile the trio of shadowed forms stood across the bar from him, and one slowly reached forward towards his back.
-------------------------------
"ARGH!" Jill proceeded to tear the receiver off the useless lump of plastic and metal, followed by which she started beating the pay-phone with a part of itself in some kind of symbolic act of mutilation.
Her pointless violence ended prematurely as the pick-up across the street sputtered to life, its headlights releasing a momentary blinding flash that illuminated her. Between her momentary disorientation and her reaction to the sudden flash, she didn't even realize that the truck was moving forward until it was mere inches from turning her into a paste against the wall of the building behind her.
-------------------------------
Nikolai caught a glimpse of the man's shirt through the window, seeing a name-tag. "Good, an employee. Hurry and open up, I need to speak with you about procuring a vehicle."
The man stopped a foot from the window, remaining just within the shadows and out of the reach of the pale moonlight coming in. "Be right with you…"
----------------------------------
Cheveyo twirled around wildly, trying to look in every direction at once now. Even though he was in the middle of a town square that was lit by the light of the moon, he knew that didn't instantly make him immune to the possibility of being ambushed. ("Scary sourceless bell plus spooky town equals signal! All isn't lost though. As long as no random guy shows up trying to warn me off then maybe it's just my imagination!")
The sound of ragged and terrified breath, along with heavy footfalls coming from a nearby area in between a pair of buildings, suddenly reached his ears. A man wearing a cowboy hat and dressed in a dirty jacket and jeans ran into the town square at full speed, the shotgun in his hands seemingly forgotten by the way it was just dangling in his grasp. "You need to get out of here now! They're coming!"
"La-la-la-la!" Cheveyo had his hands over his ears, having done so the moment he had caught sight of the man. "I'm not listening, this isn't happening! We aren't going to die bloody deaths; you're just the town nut! La-la-la-la!"
A loud crash reached his hearing even through his attempts to block out all sound. It was the noise of a vehicle crashing into the side of a building.
-------------------------------
"Hmmm?" Fong tilted his head in the direction of the echoing crash, and then was hurtling forward as a load of buckshot was emptied into his back at near point-blank range, sending his horded boxes of tea flying everywhere as he hit face-first to the ground. The smoke coming from the holes in his back mixed well with the dust kicked up by his landing, creating a semi-smoke screen that stole his body from sight.
---------------------------------
Conn was suddenly yanked over the bar and brought slamming to the ground on his back, the bottles in his hand emptying their contents across his face and chest in the momentary tussle. Before he could figure out what was going on through his drunken stupor, all breath left his throat as a sledgehammer blow crushed his ribcage inwards.
----------------------------------
Nikolai glanced in the direction of the crashing noise that had come from nearby. "What was that?" Suddenly his body jerked slightly and, wide-eyed, he turned his attention back to the door that led to the lobby. "What…the…" His head lolled slightly, giving him a view of the machete blade sticking right through the wooden frame of the door and piercing his stomach.
------------------------------------
"You need to…" The man's warning, yelled for a fifth time, ended suddenly.
Eyes squeezed shut, Cheveyo didn't want to look. ("He's going to be dead…he's going to be dead.") Whether it was morbid curiosity or just common sense, he lifted his head up and opened his eyes.
The man was staring across the street, seeming to look past and through Cheveyo. Lying at his feet was the shotgun, forgotten in both the shock and terror on his face. "Lila..."
"Lila?" The boy turned around, and a lump developed in his throat at what he saw.
"So…beautiful…" She stumbled out of the front door of her house slowly, the hand mirror she was holding seeming to be her focus of attention. Her pink house dress was torn, holes in it where she had fallen or perhaps caused by hungry moths. What once might have been long and flowing blond hair was now a wiry gray mess, barely holding to the head that seemed to have its skin pulled far too tightly, lacking heavily in the department of muscle or flesh. Atrophied arms slowly lowered to their owner's sides, and the slightly shrunken feet barely staying in their worn heels trudged another step towards the two.
Bile rose in Cheveyo's throat, and he silently was thankful that all he had eaten was trail mix these last few hours. Because had he been full or even sated in his hunger, he would have wound up losing it right there. This was different than before, when he had felt the oil on water feeling of the perversions. No, this kind of terror was something beyond just mere instinctual warning. It was the basest human terror when faced with something a mind cannot fully understand.
"I have to be…beautiful…for Jon…" She stumbled forward again, head swinging slightly before bringing a pair of eyes that were far too fresh for the near skeleton-like head they sat inside up to bear on the boy and man. "I have…to…" Already the distance between them was just a mere fifteen feet now, and it was rapidly getting shorter.
Cheveyo felt like he was developing a case of vertigo now, as if the world was stretching infinitely in the space around them, making the approach of this thing all the more quicker. His breathing grew faster, but he couldn't move. That terror still froze him to his core. So many questions ran through his head, not the least of all being a near insane plea for her to stop.
And suddenly reality returned, the blam of a shotgun from directly behind bringing him back to rational thought just as the mummy-human, the skeleton with skin, was hit by a metaphorical wall of buckshot, seemingly unaffected. "They ain't human, kid. Not anymore…they're monsters…" When he didn't respond a strangely strong hand clamped onto his shoulder and shook him roughly. "Kid, you listening to me!? Get the hell out of here!"
"Beautiful…" A sickly popping noise came from the thing's mouth, and suddenly its lower jaw stretched a distance impossible for an ordinary human as an insane, highly amused cackling erupted from a throat that shouldn't have been able to sustain sound.
Another shotgun blast went off to Cheveyo's side, but he didn't react. His entire body was trembling uncontrollably now. There were no thoughts, merely fear of the cackling monster in a cheap human disguise that was steadily getting closer and closer to him.
"Run already! Don't just stand there!" Cracking the breech of his firearm, the man removed the used shells and slid in two fresh ones before clicking it closed. "Man, you're really…" The man heard another series of cackling fill the air, coming from nearby. "Here they come…we gotta run now!" His hand shot out and grabbed Cheveyo's, starting to pull the boy along…
---------------------------
07/02/2025
My life has become a horror movie. Monsters are suddenly appearing everywhere, as if beforehand they had been just out of my field of vision. This is the secret underworld of humanity? Ghosts, ghouls, werewolves, perversions against nature…
Yet there is one single silver lining that makes it survivable, that sets me apart from the ordinary victim you'd see in any other horror movie.
----------------------
"Monsters?" Cheveyo whispered coldly, his fear suddenly boiling away as he felt it. His control was slipping, and that familiar red tinge was tinting his vision. "I'll show you monsters."
"What are you talking about?" The man blinked and rubbed his eyes a couple of times. He must have been imagining things, but it seemed like the kid was taller than he had been a moment ago.
Muscles bulging underneath the sleeves of his borrowed shirt, Cheveyo tensed as the thing drew nearer. The only thought in his head was a fervent plea not to harm the living thing behind him. Other than that the beast within him was allowed to do as it pleased.
----------------------------
From inside the pick-up the two things driving turned to each other, their pallid and dry faces contorted into expressions of extreme laughter, that bone-chilling cackling emitting from their stretched mouths horribly loud.
Then their laughter ended as an angered roar came from the hole in the building in front of them. A pair of large furred arms erupted into the range of their bent headlights, grabbed the front of the pick-up, and hefted the whole thing up and through the rest of the building. The explosion that followed moments later lit up the night sky around Juniper.
-----------------------------
"Ya'll…shoulda paid…" The creature jerkily pushed up the lip of its cap with the barrel of its shotgun, its grizzled features twisted by the lack of muscle in its face. Whatever semblance of humanity it had shown suddenly disappeared as its jaw stretched wide and it began that unholy cackling.
"I don't pay for tea, it's against the basic principles I hold." Fong casually stood up and brushed himself off, the holes in his back completely gone. The only indication they had ever been there were the tears in his clothing. Without even turning to look at the thing he knew it was getting ready to fire at him. "Don't bother, you're already dead." His right hand clenched into a fist.
-------------------------------
The three dirtily-dressed 'men' standing over the unmoving Conn let out a trio of cackles, starting to stumble back to their poker table.
"That wasn't very nice." The man, his chest completely healed already, sat up slowly and grabbed the leg of a nearby barstool. "When ya start a fookin bar fight proper etiquette is that you save the sledgehammers until at least ten minutes into it."
One of the three cracked his jaw wide to start cackling, but all that did was actually make it seem possible for the bar-stool that hit in the face to shove a wooden leg down its throat.
"Shaddup a second, would ya?" Standing up, the man picked up one of the two bottles he had spilled and swirled the remaining contents around at the bottom of it before swigging it down and breaking the glass container over the bar-top, giving him an edged weapon. "Now let's get scrappin'."
---------------------------------
The motel clerk slowly lifted up the bloodied machete in front of his lively eyes and let out a cackle of delight before he started licking it clean. "We always…try our hardest…to serve our customers."
"That hurt momentarily." Nikolai's fist shot through the glass window, grabbing the thing by the shirt and brought its head outside in the most violent way possible, leaving a hole in the foot-thick wood and stone wall next to the door.
"However hurt and dead are two entirely different things." Glancing dryly at the crushed and dusty skull sticking out of the wall like some kind of strange ornament, he huffed and stomped off while the red and orange of an explosion lit up the sky.
------------------------------------
I am one of those monsters.
Cheveyo Qua
Lost but found