This one is a complete experiment in writing style. It's very...different from anything else I've written. However, I will note there is some blood, gore, and gratuitous angst, if you're not into that kind of thing. Anyway, please enjoy! Reviewers are absolutely loved!
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It's only natural to fear death.
When all our primal instincts are hardwired for survival, the innate terror in the face of death is one of the most powerful feelings we have. Even more so, it's hardwired that we fear the dead, the rotting remains of some damned soul that have grasped onto their consciousness, wraiths that feed off the life energy of any unknowing victim.
Still, a small community of people exists in a nearly nameless town, people who refused to succumb to this fear, even when presented with the shadows of the dead each and every day. An unwavering sense of security blanketed them from the horror of the dead. The months spent under the watchful eye of their protector, in truth just a young boy seemingly as dead as the ghosts who haunted the town, had bred an immunity to that fear. The people didn't know terror, didn't know horror, living simply under the protection of the phantom figure they so openly celebrated. He was their hero, their icon.
And the people deeply believed that heroes can't be broken.
The community, the people that walked and breathed as a whole, felt the first ripples of fear late one December evening. A boy, no older than six, was found dead in the street, face down in a pool of his own blood, the rubber kickball he had held punctured at his side. Jordy Harris's death was quickly hushed, the case deemed cold, and the photo of his body never released. Still now, a ripple of discomfort floats through the station's dense air whenever the photo is mentioned, the seasoned police officers shuddering at the memory of what they saw. A view into death was integral with their job, and the murdered boy in the photo wasn't what unnerved them. No, it was the two, distant, phantasmal pupils that shined in the back of the picture. Nearly twenty feet behind the body, almost hidden in the shadows, stood the town's icon, his mouth slightly gaping, his fluorescent pupils tortured and contorted with seemingly inhuman agony at the sight of the murdered boy. The world is an evil place at times, and little boys are easily broken, but not heroes. Heroes are different. Heroes are solid. Heroes can never look so broken.
More than that, their hero couldn't look so broken. He wassolid. He wasinfallible. He couldn't break.
The picture was wrong. There wasn't any other explanation.
And the first ghost fatality was deemed a simple homicide.
The second victim came three days later. Amy Collins was gutted alive, her glistening entrails pulled from her body with a sickening squelch. The figure bearing over her cackled madly in delight, its putrid claws wrapped tightly around her mutilated body. Yes, Amy Collins was gutted alive, with a crowd of horrified people looking on, their feet frozen to the mall's marble flooring. Some witnesses remember their hero flying into the fray; fewer remember exactly how the fight went, exactly when the nameless spirit was disposed of by their unfailing hero. Yet somehow, nearly every witness present remembers the trembling horror in their hero's eyes, the scream that was dead in his throat, as he knelt down by the sliced victim. Everyone remembers the way their hero dissolved into a small boy, strangled sobs tearing past his throat at the sight of his citizen—dead. No one could deny it. No one looking on could see their flawless hero, and for the first time as a whole, they were terrified.
Their icon was breaking.
Experts failed to explain it; terrified citizens had no idea why, but the ghosts were turning. They were feral. They were mindless. And they had an unquenchable desire to spill blood. The deaths piled up, each more gruesome that the last, until the media found no joy in reporting them. The killings were open, gruesome, and so sudden, that their hero came each time, met with the mangled figure of his citizen—breathless, and already dead. The citizens just watched in quiet horror, aware of the growing insanity in their hero's tortured gaze. Every appearance he made was marred by the guilt-ridden horror in his face, by the distant panic in his eyes, like he was reliving each and every gruesome scene in his head. Silently, a terrified people watched their savoir crumble to pieces.
The kids didn't play Phantom anymore. A taboo fell over the pastime, once just for the innocent joy of banishing the pretend evils of their unkempt playrooms, now, even the youngest seemed slowly to understand that their beloved game wasn't fun anymore; The game meant death, and the boys locked their worship away, terrified of their lost faith.
Weeks passed, then months, the attacks growing more feral, and more violent, and more inevitable. Until finally, on the three months' anniversary of Jordy Harris's death, their idol vanished.
Their hero was gone, no trace of the savoir left behind in the paranoid town.
Some citizens accepted it with a quiet, mournful understanding. The boy they worshipped had proven how fragile he was deep down—how really, he was always just a boy. They saw the way his spirit crumbled at each death, how his hair lost its shine, his eyes lost their spark, and his pupils stayed forever focused on a gruesome scene that wasn't there. Everyone saw it in his public appearances, when he tried to establish protocol that could hopefully keep everyone safe. But now, nothing meant safety anymore, and the truth of it seemed to shine in the eyes of the two teens who flanked him at every meeting. He was gone now, and the citizens didn't have it in their hearts to blame him. A few felt an uncomfortable uncertainty creep into their hearts at the sheer suddenness of his disappearance. It felt off, that now, of all times, he surrender his role. They'd watched him fight on time and time again, pushing through each death that tore him up inside. They'd seen him cling to his role as hero, even after the raven haired girl was dropped from 40 feet up, her body broken on impact with the hard concrete below, the world silent except for the mindless cackling of her killer that had rippled through the air. Phantom had just knelt by her body, silent, distant, stroking the girl's soft hair, sticky now with blood, until police led the listless boy away from his dead friend. Three weeks had passed since then, twelve more deaths had occurred, and only now did he vanish. And once they saw he truly wasn't coming back, the whole town couldn't keep from wondering why he vanished now, how this last death was any different from the others, why he fought for so long to just vanish without warning,—
—and why, of all the horrible deaths he'd witnessed, of all the dying screams he heard, of all the innocent victims whose blood stained the streets, it was this last death, the death of the ghost hunters' son, that drove him away for good.