You’re half convinced it’s a hallucination, the monster with too many eyes and blue fur standing over you. It doesn’t stop shaking your arm though, insisting you run, telling you to get up and get out. Warning you of danger.
You stumble out of bed, pyjamas crumpled and eyes still heavy with sleep before hacking coughs bring you to the ground. Your lungs burn as you try to gasp in air on your hands and knees, one hand tangling in the nearest thing keeping you stable. When your eyes fill with water and the coughing subsided, the monster is staring at you. Its claws are extended but at a distance, close enough to hold onto, far enough away to not frighten you. It’s scared.
The hand curled in its soft fur is dark with ash. The weight in your throat is smoke. Your nose tingles. Light flickers from behind the entrance of your bedroom door. Monster has noticed it too.
You get out safely that night. Your parents too, and your siblings. The firefighters told you how lucky you were, waking up in time to get everyone to safety. They said other things too, but you weren’t paying attention. You watched the house go up in flames, and a monster that can’t leave its home under the bed wave from what used to be your bedroom window.
Now in your mid teens, you forgot all about the monster under your bed. One night though, it wakes you up saying “You’re not safe. You need to get out of here”
“I don’t know gang…”
“C’mon, you can’t leave us hanging!”
“Yeah, you’ll love camping!”
“I love plumbing. And a mattress.”
“The cabin overlooking the clearing has showers and everything, and plus, if it gets really bad we can just hole up in there for a while. It’s got three floors!”
“Really? That’s quite a lot for a camping cabin.”
“Yeah! The basement, the main floor and the attic!”
“…Excuse me?”
“What?”
“You booked a cabin in the middle of the woods with a basement and an attic?”
“Technically we can’t go into the basement, it’s like super locked.”
“Which means?”
“In the pictures there are three locked chains on the door, see?”
“THERE’S ALSO A FUCKING HAND REACHING THROUGH THE GAP UNDERNEATH?!”
“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just a trick of the light. Or the decor. It’s really gothic.”
“Gothic?! Yeah no pass your phone, I want to- gargoyles. Hunting trophies. Why not. Did you even- IS THAT A CLOWN STATUE?”
“Relax, it does a side gig as a venue for haunted houses. That’s probably where the hand came from: Halloween decorations.”
“…And nothing about this is giving you a red flag?”
“Ok, seriously, relax, you are so dramatic, it’s probably wine not an actual bloodstain-“
“I didn’t see a bloodstain?!”
“Oh see it’s right there next to the fireplace with the axes above the mantle.”
“Just no.”
“Hey folks, I did check the weather and it will be heavy storms so we’ll just have to tough it- what’s up with Red?”
“They are weirded out by the log cabin.”
“CLOWN STATUE. BLOODSTAIN. LOCKED BASEMENT. What does the attic also have to be a meat locker for you to give this idea any thought?”
“It says the owners only kept the meat cleavers after they refurbished it.”
“Ooo, that’s why it’s so spacious, old farmhouse.”
“Right? It’s so rustic!”
“We’re going to die.”
“Look Red, we don’t want to go on this without you. It’s only last freedom before uni, right?”
“If you say we’re out, we’re out.”
“I’m sorry, but it really gives me a bad feeling.”
“No that’s perfectly ok. You’re not happy, none of us are happy.”
“Tell me the deposit wasn’t non-refundable.”
“It’s fine, we got it for dirt cheap, this flyer showed up through the door and the number we called practically gave it to us for free.”
“It’s going to be tricky finding somewhere that cheap again. And when we booked it in person, the lady was so nice, she even gave us this cool themed skull key for the door!”
“Oh! I got an ad for an old castle that needs house-sitting! They’ll even pay us to be there and it looks really nice, and it needs a minimum of five people and we fit perfectly.”
“Let’s see?”
“I love those paintings in the hall, so lifelike. Skilled artists, you guys.”
“None of you are allowed to make decisions anymore. I pick where we go next.”
getting horror movie vibes from the trip your friends were planning, you decided to simply stay home.
Reading Adventure Comics 2009 if for nothing else but Krypto being the bestest boy in the background
*camera starts recording. A shadow appears on screen, and in the abyss where a face would be stars twinkle on the other side of a black hole. They wave at you.*
Hi everyone, my name’s Andy (they/them). I am the ghost of-
*lights flicker, not because of anything paranormal but bc someone broke in off camera and started chucking salt everywhere and tripped over the lights* not that kind of ghost, god fucking damn it not aGAIN-
*camera glitches. The lighting is fixed. The only human thing about the Void is their frustration. The nebulas floating across their form manage to convey the utmost annoyance.*
Hi. I’m the Void, or the Abyss, and you can call me Andy. I’m the ghost of universes that once were. *squints at someone off camera, celestial orbits clearly raising a frying pan just off frame* if you mention the multiverse I swear to god-
*camera glitches*
So yeah, I’m travelling around, dipping into different stories and fixing them up, trying to give them a happier ending, y’know?
*if the Void had eyes, they would be sad. Instead, there is only the constant drift of broken planets and colliding stars.*
I’ve seen so many things end badly for the people, or characters, involved, I want to try and make it a little bit better, one story at a time. Like the Good Place, except in the found family sense and not in the making me bawl my fucking EYES out at the end-
*camera glitches*
-just a silly little nerdy cosmic mess trying to have fun. I hope if you are interested, check out my blog for talking about my stories, to the writing process, to just generally fun things to talk about. I hope if you do put some faith in this Not-Universe, you enjoy reading or chatting, and that it makes you smile. If you do, come talk to me! I’m always looking to meet new people whenever I drop in on another world.
Even if you don’t say anything, have fun, and remember: you are never alone, even if you can’t see all the stars surrounding you.
*The sweet moment is interrupted by the thumping footsteps of a large animal of some kind, and something knocks into the camera, sending it to the floor as the Void, meteors flying, tries to shoo the beast*
Sorry, Ghost gets a little over excited when he meets a new friend- Ghost, quit slobbering all over me you oversized bread basket-
*camera glitches to a close up of a very ruffled Void, dwarf planets askew and stardust swirling as they hurry to say farewell* Ok, enjoy! Bye!
*camera cuts*
Tim who is scarily good at the Hitman games.
Everyone is good with it mostly, excluding Cass who won’t play it, with everyone having completed the first few missions at least during a training exercise made by Jason who was hiding an injury and came up with the idea on the spot.
This is how they find out that not only does Tim already have all the games, he’s finished them all, got all the achievements and has over 2,000+ hours.
Turns out it’s what he plays when he feels his mind is running too rampant and needs reigning in. He knows all the secrets and has a spreadsheet made up of all the ways you can complete a mission per chapter. He has a strategy for each type of assassination from getting someone else to do it, killing everyone, making it look like an accident, ect. He’s even managed to kill every soldier in some chapters without getting caught and somehow managed to save Diana from being shot by 47?
It’s kind of scary watching him seamlessly navigate around any new map that comes out and complete all missions under a self imposed time limit.
(His record is 1 minute and 27 seconds)
Bruce is naturally worried and it isn’t helped when the response to these concerns is, “would you rather I do it in real life?”
Tim can do it in real life, came closest with Captain Boomerang, and he has at least thirty ideas of how to kill everyone in his life subconsciously. He doesn’t want to, nor will he ever act on it, but it’s sort of… fun.
It’s like puzzle solving but with higher stakes and Hitman is a good way to test his theories without actually killing anyone.
If playing Hitman made him test how sneakily he could drug people by putting sugar in peoples drinks at Galas when he was nine, that’s just childish curiosity. Plus, it made him put out a campaign when he was older to prevent drugging because he himself knows how easy it is, so win win.
At least he didn’t shave his head like he thought about, though that was only because a certain acrobat did it and made Tim realise how unstylish it was if it wasn’t natural.
At the end of the day playing Hitman made him a better Robin and helped him sneak around the League of Assassin’s base that was filled with people even 47 would struggle against.
And he won the training exercise.
The biggest confidence boost is knowing that even my shittiest fanfic will be 10,000% better than any AI generated bullshit
Jason: Hey Dick. Wanna see a butterfly?
Dick: Yes.
Barbara: No!
Jason: *throws a stick of butter across the table*
Tim: Fucking majestic!
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