"Thanks for coming Uncle Boxy, it means a lot."
Box Ghost floated above a row of cardboard boxes, which Dani had designated to be, "the closest thing to a couch," within the alleyway they currently resided. They were waiting for the outcome of Dani's wish to arrive and Clockwork had promised an hour earlier that this was the location to watch: behind the Nasty Burger.
The anticipation was killing her; a grievous sensation, since she was already halfway dead.
Fortunately, Uncle Boxy had brought ice cream and a scoop of cherry-vanilla was the perfect distraction.
Danielle had wrapped her bleeding hands in frozen bandages - courtesy of the ice box her uncle had proudly presented.
Desiree attacking her, out of nowhere...for her blood? She didn't know what to think...and it was the last thing she wanted to think about.
Box Ghost was reluctantly licking an ice cream cone besides her; neither liking cherries nor the spherical shape of a scoop, but Dani needed this.
Needed to see it was a celebration.
Nothing so somber and sad.
But Dani's stern frown did not budge. A malaise settled over both ghosts.
"Hey Boxy, I know you're trying to cheer me up, but I don't really wanna talk."
Boxy was silent, his words muffled by the crunch of a cone.
"Well…that's okay. I'll talk enough for both of us." He eyed his scoop of ice cream, the surface too round and sour, but his wife Lady would have his hide if he wasted food – so he bit it down in one massive bite and his teeth clenched together into a frozen, forced smile.
Danielle hide a smile behind her own cone. Uncle Box always cheered her up in his small, strange ways.
"I meant to give you something a while ago, at the baby shower a while back, but I got kinda shy with Lady around – I wasn't sure she'd let you keep it."
Box Ghost raised a brow at that. His wife was infamous for getting furious at any little thing – why would that freak Dani out, suddenly? She never seemed bothered before.
"Oh, uh really? What is it?" Probably a bottlecap or a paper circle – Danielle liked to think she was funny like that.
Dani reached into her chest as if it were a purse, an all too common storage area for ghosts.
Boxy looked down at his lap, a Rubix's cube, shiny and new still in the packaging, greeted him.
"Whoa-hoa, now what's this beauty?"
"It's for the baby, when she gets bigger, I mean."
Boxy phased the cube out of its packaging, his eyes not moving, as if entranced by a spell. Experimentally, he twisted the corners and he shook in excitement, realizing it was a puzzle.
"Danielle, this is amazing, the baby will love it, I just know it!"
Dani was content to watch him fiddle with his prize and to let her mind wander; only when she felt ice cream begin to melt against her fingers did she snap back to reality.
The Rubik's cube was finished, all sides a single color.
Boxy closed his eyes as he twisted the sides again and again, never wanting the game to end.
"This shall be on me at all times," he said as he phased it into his chest. "It'll be the most amazing Box-heirloom!"
Dani smiled.
"Anyway, I've got to go now, I got to watch the baby while Lady goes shopping." He patted her on the head, "And if things go wrong somehow, know you always have a place with me and Lady, okay?"
"Okay, bye Boxy!"
Though as soon as Box Ghost left, she was filled with dread. No sooner as he faded from view, a monstrous clang rang out from the alleyway. A trash can was howling and a man was struggling to lift himself from the metal cylinder, filled to the brim with burning refuse. There was the explosive smell of burning rubber and flames spewed in every direction.
Danielle could only watch in sick fascination as a man stepped out of the fire, his face unmistakable.
Vlad.
Vlad Not-Masters smelled garbage and it would've been like any of his usual mornings sipping coffee besides the Nasty Burger dumpster, before his opening and closing shifts.
But his bodily orientation was upside down, and Vlad did not appreciate his scalp and face getting intimately acquainted with fryer grease.
Without a thought his entrapping surroundings were set on fire – Vlad spared a second to hope whatever was burning wasn't important. He sat upright – a high-pitched scream captured his attention, but the flames ravaged too high for him to see the source.
He'd set someone on fire! Or so he reasoned – people tended to scream when set on fire.
He scrambled to put out his violent, violet-orange flames, not wanting to deal with a death on his hands. He fell onto his backside with a clang, his feet stomped uselessly against concrete. Realizing he was in a trashcan, he super-heated his ribcage and breathed out, reducing stainless steel to slag. He rolled against the slick metal, breaking free by way of intangibility. Vlad bounced elegantly onto his heels, twirling midair to stick a landing, ready for action. Molten metal hovered and cooled, a deadly confetti Vlad snatched and guided from the air into the palm of his hand.
Expecting a charred husk of a person, he reached out to touch a silhouette from amongst the fire, but it screamed and pushed his grasping hand away.
To his shock and horror, a child's hand clawed out of the fire – still of flesh, and living skin! 'There's no bones, no bones!' He noted.
Vlad's mind raced for a solution, his breath hitched, tasting blood on his tongue; his teeth had cut into the meat of his cheeks. He hated being put on the spot, but he had to fix things – the fire had been his doing. For a few seconds, he froze in place like a scared, cornered animal – thinking.
He spread his arms wide like wings, focusing his power to channel his fire back into himself. Flames returned underneath his fingertips and disappeared underneath blackened nails. Then, with a sooty-huff of his dead-coal lungs, lingering trash-embers and burning papers were blown out, and the alleyway was reduced to a smoking, but manageable mess. Vlad tasted chemical fumes, burnt plastics and paint, and he gaged, but then realized he didn't smell a charred body.
Vlad looked left and right, up and down. He didn't spot a body – didn't smell blood nor spy a speck of singed hair or skin.
His eyes were wide, crackling whites – which slowly faded to human blue as his confusion and worry intermingled.
Where was the dead, the poor unfortunate soul? Anyone alive touching his fire typically wouldn't've have lasted not even a single second. His shoulders rolled stiffly, heavy with adrenaline and quiet bewilderment.
Vlad got his answer when a young girl cautiously stumbled into view, remarkably unburned – and alive. She kept her head ducked behind a familiar Nasty Burger dumpster. He said not a word, overcome with shock, and words, the concept of speech, altogether seemed impossible as he swallowed his own tongue, wresting with the foreign feeling of a flesh burdened throat. He didn't like being alive – it was unnatural – wrong and confining.
Vlad was dead, most of the time, and so having flesh in any compacity was borderline blasphemy – it was almost like a betrayal in a way. His sweaty hands clasped awkwardly into fists, held limply against his sides like fins on a gutted fish.
The girl locked eyes with him, her glare a familiar accessing blue.
'Why does she have Danny's eyes?' He thought.
He was compelled to say a few words to be polite, to make sure she was alright, but he was too busy licking his bleeding teeth, his tongue made swollen and raw from the flames he'd spewed and unwantedly chewed when he crawled from the trashcan.
He held his head high, not smiling to hide the blood that would no doubt drip down his chin. He looked at the girl with a dramatic, exaggerated expression of confusion, and wiggled his eyebrows, hoping to communicate his obvious question. He pointed at the girl with a tight-lipped smile – with dry, black and ashy hands.
She hadn't been burned despite him clearly seeing her entire body and hands engulfed in fire. Her tennis shoes had no scorch marks, her face was completely unsinged.
'Who are you?!' 'Why am I here?!' 'Tell me, tell me!'
Remarkably, she nodded as if she understood his questions and she didn't show any signs of fear, though her eyes were wide as she took in every detail around her. Vlad's mind pieced his situation together, feeling his fire bubble against his skin wrongly as he came to an uncomfortable conclusion, the little girl had expected him, and he began to panic.
Something was seriously wrong with her, nobody, not even him, was so calm when he started playing with fire, and perhaps he'd been whisked away into danger – it wouldn't've been far from the first time some viperous foes plotted his capture. Vlad gritted his teeth and shifted his feet, into a stance more suited for fighting as he scanned his surroundings. Paranoia itched against his skin.
Vlad had existed far too long to be careless, and he did not lack for enemies. Perhaps he'd been summoned? It wasn't an unheard of practice.
By a little girl? Behind a Nasty Burger? It was too absurd.
"Hello, I'm Danielle, but you can call me Dani for short, though I'm sure you already knew that." She held out a hand in greeting, which Vlad did not take.
Vlad shook his head, unable to firmly communicate "No," that "he'd never seen her before," and that her hand was "boney, brittle, and burnable," but he wasn't to be speaking anytime soon.
Danielle frowned, looking him over, and pulled her hand back.
"Ok rude." she paused, "But I guess you're tired, and grumpy," she snidely added. "I can understand, sleeping in a trashcan and all, it's so grimy and cold."
Vlad noticed the little girl had tucked her hands into a filthy, ratty blue hoodie, hopefully stained green from playing in grass-clippings, and not mold like his nose suspected. Fortunately, she had a red wool-cap on – there was a chill on the wind.
"Come on, I'll take you to my hideout, we can rest there." The girl was confident he would follow her, as she didn't look back to see if he was. It was daylight out, but the sun was setting – Vlad looked to the Nasty Burger he worked part-time at – his closing night-shift would be starting in a few hours or so, he wasn't sure if he should follow a strange little girl, especially since he himself was a weird, mildly creepy man. Vlad was keenly aware of how he appeared to other people, dressed in a red "Nasty" polo shirt and cheap black slacks, did not inspire confidence in most people; yet of course, Vlad's own confidence never suffered for it, even when he was occasionally knee-deep in garbage and grease – someone had to flip burgers, right? It was simple, refreshing, and honest work.
But having a little girl lead him into a trap was a strange plot indeed; he couldn't help his intuition flaring with worry and confusion. Vlad often found himself a target of weird characters, most notably, a GIW intelligence-dissection table. He humored such GIW characters before, enduring their pathetic traps and plots with the patience of a saint. A little girl was new, but nothing he couldn't handle. He rolled his shoulders, having made his decision, he moved to follow.
He'd time to burn before his burger-shift, anyhow.
Best spring the trap while it was fresh and get it over with, so he wasn't interrupted grilling patties later. He'd nearly gotten fired the last time for burning an entire batch when he'd been last attacked. It had been embarrassing trying to come up with a believable excuse.
He watched carefully the little girl, "Dani," not liking how she had the same name as "Danny." Just another detail layered on top of the trap to lure him in, no doubt. How stupid did his enemies think he was? Did they think he listened to just anyone named, "Danny?" He smiled, as it was an amusing thought – he rarely listened to Danny.
They walked some, Vlad making sure to keep just the right distance to have enough time to run if need be, while not being so far behind, it looked like he was stalking her.
"Here we are, Maple Street. This one is our spot." Vlad observed a dilapidated house on the verge of collapse, eaten through by generations of termites. He wiggled his fingers uncomfortably, just one stray ember would send the entire thing into an inferno.
'And would kill the little girl,' he darkly noted. But it was obvious to him now that he was being lead into a trap, for what else could a collapsing house be? As he observed the girl fiddle with the front-door lock, needling the old thing with a bobby pin, he could only muse about the girl's situation.
'How'd she get this job, luring a big bad ghost? Was she tricked? Is her family held hostage? She must be being paid a lot of money, surely? Of course, not if it's human trafficking…'
Vlad's thoughts ran with many, but empty ideas. He couldn't exactly plan to fight a little girl. He didn't want to kill her, even if she was just a pawn in whatever plot currently killing his free time.
Vlad internally sighed, taking note of the moon rising. He had work soon, and after his shift Danny would likely find him, to insist on "hanging out," demanding they watch a movie, or to play a video game called "Doomed", or to have a picnic on the Moon, or to go play fetch with Cujo in Amity cemetery, or whatever damnable inane thing Danny found amusing.
"Yes!" The little girl whooped, smiling as she flicked away the spent bobby pin, waving him inside. Vlad braced himself, scanning the room for any "ghost unfriendly" paraphernalia. By all accounts, it was a normal, "utterly destroyed" living room with dusty couches and empty shelves, which made Vlad's paranoia grow two-fold.
Nothing stayed normal around him for long, in his experience.
Vlad watched as the girl turned corner into what he assumed to be the kitchen, watching as she tracked muddy footprints across stained tile. He did not follow her, and turned to walk out of the molding, dusty house, but his leg bumped against an ottoman and Vlad felt himself wither from exhaustion as he looked over one of the couches. It was disgusting, half-rotted, but inviting to his old backside when he gave in and settled against it. His scanned the room for any unseen traps or suspicious architecture, but he saw none – perhaps it really was just a sad, neglected house.
"Hey, I got drinks." Suddenly the girl manifested right in front of him! Vlad bit back a startled scream, only by merit of his sore throat. A shiny tray with a variety of glass drinks was placed onto a coffee table in front of him.
"Take your pick." The girl picked up an orange juice for herself, and sat on the opposite couch, facing Vlad with a nervous smile, but her posture spoke of confidence. He didn't like how at ease she seemed, as if she hadn't just picked up a random stranger from an alley – as if she was the one in control – as if she knew him.
But Vlad had never seen this little girl before in his life. And he couldn't imagine his file with intelligence-agencies secured any of his closely guarded secrets – enough to make him knowable.
But this little girl, knew him somehow and he was keen to find out, why and how.
"Sorry, I know you'd probably prefer tea like "Other Vlad," but this is what I have for now."
'Other. Vlad,' his mind reeled. Just two words, and he was on high alert for any other clues.
It took a rare situation to catch him off guard. So, she did know who he was, by name anyway.
Vlad hid his surprise, by reaching for the closest and least suspect drink – water? He hoped. It was crystal clear.
He gave himself time to school his expression, hiding a grimace behind the glass, pretending to sip gingerly.
'Other Vlad?' His mind began spinning with possibilities. Was it another phase of the trap? To get him jealous of some unseen, unknown rival he needed to find? Weird, what a weird plot – it was stupid, made no sense – assumed ghosts were but territorial, mindless fools; but it followed the formula of a classic GIW plan.
The girl watched him closely, draining her glass of OJ. Vlad wanted to demand answers, to ask what she meant by "Other Vlad," but something about her expression told him she was already planning too. Perhaps it was just the lack of lighting in the room, but her eyes were heavy and dark, as if she hadn't slept in days. A silence stretched between them. Vlad placed his drink back, having succeeded in not taking a single sip, but at one point he'd closed his eyes, exhaustion creeping over him.
"So, I can give you a tour if you'd like, but that can wait for the morning if you're falling asleep already."
Vlad looked at the girl from the corners of his eyes, unable to hold back a sneer as he imagined waking up to find himself strapped to a dissection table.
"No thank you," his voice was hoarse from dehydration, and for a moment he considered the drink tray before remembering it wasn't to be trusted.
Suddenly, an empty glass shattered. Vlad sat bugged-eyed, the girl had dropped her glass and looked as startled as he was.
"You CAN talk!" The girl stood up, pointing at him with accusatory vigor.
Vlad frowned, gobsmacked. "Why of course I can, silly girl." He clasped his hands in his lap, looking side to side, anticipating an attack. "What did you expect?" But the girl sat right back down, glaring at the pile of glass now at her feet.
"I-I guess I expected you to not ignore me!" An intense expression gripped the girl, before tucking her head underneath her arms and couch pillows. "I guess all Vlad's are the same." Vlad sat quietly, watching as the girl silently started crying, her figure shaking in the dimming light. He could do nothing else but stare.
He did not know this girl. He did not want to be in this house. And talk of "other Vlads," put him naturally on edge – trick or no trick.
Eventually, the girl collected herself, hiding behind an embarrassed raised arm and hoodie, but her face was a clear, peach-red.
"I'm going to bed," her tone was angry, hiding a strange, uncalled-for pain. Then the girl was gone, vanishing from her spot.