Hello everyone, I know I haven't updated in such a long time. I had some things that came up (troubles at home, school, friend problems, depression, and the list goes on...) and that really made me deterred from writing anything for a while. It took a while to write this chapter as well, working on it bit by bit with whatever time I could find for myself. I do hope you guys enjoy it and I just want to thank all those who've reviewed for this story (30 reviews!From same people or not, holy crap, that's enough for me! HAHAHA) and favorite it and followed it and me and etc.! It's just great to see such support for this story.
Disclaimer: I do not own Happy Tree Friends, nor the characters.
Splendid went to work like usual the next day; however, he felt odd about not seeing Sniffles at work. He shrugged the absence of his co-worker and continued his day at work, nonetheless. He did his job at his little work area and pressed the miniature pads on the keyboard and watched as letters appeared on his computer screen, then his boss came in and told Splendid to give a moment of silence to the death of one of their workers that died yesterday night.
Before Splendid asked who was the deceased, his brain already processed who had had died. "Sniffles..."
It was quiet and there was the piercing silence between Splendid and his boss as they averted eye contact and prayed for their co-worker. More deaths are happening and the town was becoming more and more empty as time runs down the cascading waterfall of sand in its hourglass. The deaths weren't connected in any way and they just happened randomly to the most innocent person and even those to whom were close to Splendid. He didn't want to play detective in his predicament, but he feels as if deaths of everyone is forcing him to go allow with the role.
Trying to find the relevance of each death juxtaposed to one another was pointless and only gave fatigue to the blue hair male. There was something that stood out to him however, it was the haunting fact that each death was getting closer and closer to him. The killings seem to made its way through the farthest part of the town and made its way down to where he was, and from there it scared Splendid to think that the next death would be him. Or even worst, the death of his beloved Flippy.
Flippy found himself in a convenience store, strolling down different aisles with the thought of what he could munch on at home while he awaits his boyfriend to arrive. It caught the awe of the forest green hair to think he would ever say the word 'boyfriend'. The manager of the store was smiling happily at Flippy and then went to the back of the store to check on something. It was only then, when the manager never came back through that door or anyone else who worked at the store. Flippy suddenly felt completely alone and watched. It was a strange feeling, indeed...
Even in broad day-light, Flippy had feeling he was alone yet he wasn't. He felt as if someone was behind the darkness of the door labeled private. He knocked aside the feeling and tried to glide through all the aisles of its snacks and goodies. He looked at the freezers and he opened the door, he picked up one of the bottles of iced-coffee and before he closed the see-through door, he saw with his own green eyes... Someone behind the back of the freezers... Behind all the beverages... A pair of cold, green, and blood-thirsty eyes staring back at him.
Immediately Flippy dropped the ice-coffee and backed away from the freezer. But even though he got a respectable distance between him and the freezer, he could still see the eyes staring back at him. Green as his own, it didn't stop following Flippy and remained where it was. Right behind the freezer and watching Flippy. Even though the shadows covered all of mysterious person's body except for the eyes, he could tell that person was smiling at him. Smiling like a baby seeing its own parents. Only disparity that distinguished that and what Flippy was seeing, was the creepy and horrifying thought that those eyes were real and they were staring at him and they were making his stomach turn to the thought of what was really hiding behind all those beverages and frosty-temperature air.
Flippy attempted to escape the store, but not before he turned back to look at the pair of eyes one more time...
IT WAS STILL THERE...
But this time, a single hand emerged from the darkness and spelled out a message on the see-through door with blood- of what Flippy assume was the manager and all the other people who worked there. It was clearly written out in a hue of beautiful, dark-red...
"Don't Run Away From Your Past..."
Ironically, Flippy ran, as fast as his muscles in his legs could take him, away from the store and through the streets and a couple turns until he was finally home. With the feeling of his sanity half gone, he felt all the absence of tranquility return to him. The army fellow sighed deeply and made his way to the kitchen to cook something up to just take his mind away from the event that had took place earlier. Then there was the doorbell, ringing furiously and loud for Flippy to hear. He froze upon the sound of the bell and everything in his body stopped moving or flowing. He just froze up and his eyes became too shocked to move away from the door.
The door kept ringing... And ringing... And ringing. It almost became a song to Flippy. Repeatedly playing and creeping the shit out of him. Flippy slowly moved towards the door and felt all the smart decisions in his mind go pop. He's seen a fair, good share of horror movies and knew that it was an idiotic move to answer the door if it's ringing more than five through ten times. But it was still day time and those things usually happened at night... But that was what Flippy wanted to believe. That nothing would happen to him at pure, sun-exposing, day time.
He opened the door and swift arms went around and his neck and Flippy screamed his lungs out. "YO! Flip, what's wrong? you scared me there." His boyfriend tried to hush him down. Flippy's mind went into a state of confusion and checked his vision that it was truly Splendid that he was seeing. Although it was just mere shock, Flippy was still scared like never before.
"It's okay, Flippy. I'm here, I'm here." The blue hair tried to console the green hair one.
"You scared me, you idiot!" Flippy cried into Splendid's chest and released some of the stress on himself onto his boyfriend's shirt.
"Aye, sorry about that! I didn't know I would scare you like that," Splendid said as he rubbed his boyfriend's back. He didn't know any other consoling method besides that. Oh, there was patting the army fellow's hair... Then again, probably not a good idea to do since Flippy hated having his green army beret off by anyone unless it's himself.
After going inside Splendid's house, the two decided to have a little meal. Flippy got curious why Splendid came home earlier today, so he asked the blue hair lad, "Why are you home so early today?"
"I got worried about you." Splendid retorted as he sat upon his chair and ate his food in tranquility.
"Worried? Why?" Flippy pried at Splendid. Meanwhile, he was poking his food around and clearly showing he wasn't hungry at all. The scene he saw at the convenience store was so gruesome and horrifying that his stomach would not be able to feel hunger and just starve itself. Although, he felt little to no pain about skipping out on one meal.
"Because," Splendid looked at Flippy with a gloomy expression which was enough to make the green hair feel remorse coming over him. "Sniffles died not too long ago, and the population around here isn't exactly sustaining any more. In a few more months if the killings do not die down to nothing, we're going to be living in a ghost town soon."
Without any more words exchanging between them, they continued to eat their meal together and contemplate on future actions.
Two weeks had passed since the incident that Flippy encountered at the store. He was also slowly becoming more happy being at Splendid's side than away. When he was left alone to think or do something in the house, he would often get bored and lonely and just depress himself. When he went outside, he immediately noticed the small numbers of people walking around or working in shops anywhere. Actually, some stores and other business places began to close down due to insignificant amount of workers.
The town Flippy lived in became more and more like a ghost town... Just like the way Splendid predicted.
There wasn't much for Flippy to actually do anymore once this irrational change occurred. But the killings went on, regardless of how many few people were still living there. Flippy would get the details on how somebody died by Splendid and it left vivid and grotesque images in his head to run over and over through his imagination.
The kind and blind man, nicknamed the Mole, was found in his chair gutted out completely from his heart to stomach intestines. The police found tears in his blind eye that left them feeling angry, frustrated and restless to find who the killer was. They couldn't have imagined someone soo cold-blooded would be able to kill a blind man and just not see the suffering he goes through with his eyes already useless. They just wanted an end to their madness.
Then there was the terrible murder of Pop and Cub. The way Flippy remembered it... There wasn't any type of excuse to explain such destruction on a child and its father. The murderer killed the dad while he was asleep and when the child went to see his dad, he screamed and was stabbed right in the chest afterwards. However it didn't end there, the killer was precise about their aim and didn't jab the knife too deep and left the poor child to crawl out of his dad's room bleeding. He dragged and dragged his bloody chest and kept going until eventually, he just died half-way across the hallway.
It was death's like those that made Flippy really flip out about security or the lost faith in humanity. And recently, they found Lumpy hung by the chains of the swing-set at the playground. Even robbers who still believe that they are able to do what they want and get it, still died by the hands of the killer. Lifty and Shifty were those two robbers who believed that they were able to do such an act, and got caught by the killer and appeared dead and dismantled like a robot in an abandoned aisle.
That really limited the amount of people around. But Flippy was stuck in the same town with his boyfriend until they both decide to move somewhere else. And he knows that ain't happening any time soon. So when everything goes black and the town that was once so bright goes dark, Splendid and him will still roam the streets like it was a casual day. Almost like part of the world where it consisted of two people, Splendid and him.
That didn't make Flippy feel too optimistic and deterred him from doing any activities that he planned. So at the moment, he stayed home until Splendid arrived home. The thought of being isolated from the entire world and having nobody to accompany him but Splendid wasn't such a terrible idea, but it was indeed too ridiculous for him to imagine.
Someone knocked on the door instead of ringing the doorbell, snapping Flippy out of his train of thought. Suspicious about the way the knocking had a beat to Flippy, he didn't open the wooden object until he had a slightest idea of who it was. But Flippy focused his attention on the knocking. It had a beat that seemed familiar to him. The knocking kept going regardless if he was going to open it or not, and what Flippy realized petrified him in his steps.
The knocking wasn't just any ordinary sound echoing through the hollow wood, it was something much more awful to Flippy because he understood what the knocking was. It was morse code. The mother-fucking knocking was goddamn morse code! Paying an excessive amount of attention on the knocking, Flippy was able to depict the familiar language.
Flippy mouthed the letters that each knock created,
"I-A-M-C-L-O-S-E-R-T-O-Y-O-U"
And it repeated spelling that out and scared the shit out of Flippy. But suddenly, there was silence and for the moment that God gave Flippy to think, he wasted it thinking about Splendid.
Then the knocking came back and spelled out a whole new sentence for Flippy to process.
"I-N-T-R-O-D-U-C-E-M-E-T-O-H-I-M"
"Introduce me to him?" Flippy quietly restated the letters together. And then the knocking stopped and Flippy quickly opened the door with his heart beating as fast as sound. When he flung the door wide open, the mysterious visitor already disappeared into the shadows and left fear within Flippy.
I hope that wasn't confusing! I really do hope I got things right and all that as well. If you got a question about this chapter, please do ask! Anyways, wasn't that a fun chapter!? It had some very cut-... Moving on, so I hope this chapter went good enough for you guys, I haven't written anything in a while so my skills to bring emotions and all that is sorta rusty. Please review your love/hate, likes/dislikes, questions or comments! I always respond to feedback and immediately ignore anything that doesn't qualify as 'helpful' and 'uplifting' feedback. So please do have a nice day, my readers! I'll fix whatever mistakes I made later if someone pointed them out or if I find it myself... I'm going to sleep!
Also, I still want to thank EVERYONE who has reviewed, favorite, followed and all that good stuff for this story and myself as an author on this site! I really appreciate you guys' support and I don't know how to thank you enough to do all that. You guys deserve like hugs and cookies and all that shit (not literal 'shit'). This was meant for all the readers for this story as well! Good night!