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[ghouliehoneys]

heather & annabelle || gracefulhatred​

@nadiris-ex​

There’s something wrong with Annabelle – which would be a great name for either a movie or her own personal memoir if she manages to live to the weekend. Annabelle Mallard, older sister, friend, beloved daughter, survivor, is almost certain that she’s dying. When people contract rabies, they develop a fear of water. Despite the human body needing water to live, drinking causes them to be sick. Annabelle has never witnessed rabies before, but she has heard about it, and there’s a worry in her mind that she has somehow acquired a mutated version of the virus, one that’s made her fear food rather than water. 

She’s tried eating. Crackers. Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches. Her favorite ice cream. It all ends up at the bottom of her toilet bowl. When she walks through the Grub Hub district, sauces and spices that typically remind her of home only make her stomach churn. Unable to keep anything down, she’s certain she’s dying.

What she believes to be her final footsteps take her from the Grub Hub foodies to the Uptown Graveyard. She doesn’t make it far enough to see her father ( and, truthfully, she doesn’t think she wants to see his name etched in stone ). Rather, Annabelle plants herself down at the first grave she sees, regardless of whoever might be morning or strolling by. The whole place smells like death. Her stomach grumbles. She peeks through her own curly bangs. “Sorry. Do you know them?” She can’t make out the epigraph on the stone she’s laying in front of, but she does roll herself onto her side. “Didn’t mean to disturb. I’ll get out of your way –”

— “Oh, it’s just my dad’s grave,” she shrugs. “No biggie.” Heather offers a hapless shrug. She drives the tip of her left combat boot into a patch of weeds, twisting her ankle and grinding the withering plants into the ground until they’re nothing. That’s as far as she’ll go in upkeeping the gravestone of Gilbert Gladstone. After her biological parents perished in a construction accident when she was hardly in kindergarten, he’d raised her alongside her godmother.

Neither were particularly healthy role models.

“He’s not even in there,” she adds. Heather thought that would make the situation better. Having said it aloud, however, she realized how it might give off the wrong impression. She’d never been talented with words; essays and presentations had always been a struggle for her, as she much preferred science where the finished projects spoke for themselves. “Not in the sad way,” she says, quickly. “Faked his death.” Heather removes her hands from the pockets of her leather bomber jacket and awkwardly itches her cheekbone with a short, stubby fingernail. “It’s just a fucked up placeholder now.”

[ghouliehoneys]

heather & mav || favillax​

⸻ 𝐦𝐚𝐯 & @nadiris-ex​ // open to anyone ;; }

𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐈𝐊𝐔 𝐂𝐀𝐅𝐄–

but the headache he is currently nursing disagrees with the levels of brightness bouncing off the walls. crawling out of bed for a cup of black coffee sounded like the ideal activity, though starting his day had never felt so painstakingly slow. the smell of coffee beans attempts to soothe as the machine in front of him whirls into life. an old retired, and last of its kind, macbook screeches for death as it boots up slowly. it was far too old and definitely in need of an upgrade, but Maverick was too untrusting of the gadgets on the market. even more so did he distrust the cloud, and uploading his own music to a network for which he could access from any other gadgets. it seemed entirely sus.

the music, specifically the baselines, of which he’d reworked for the band were of the tiny possessions he protected. sometimes, he’d hold out on sharing his ideas even with the Hexes themselves. even the earpieces he wore to listen quietly in that cafe corner had wires at the end to connect to the mechanical work book. 

a glance is tossed back to another as he feels the presence in his space –

“Maybe sit at a table while you wait for your coffee–” he shifts to block the equipment, and waits a moment before pressing his fingertip to the touchpad to unlock the computer. “You’re standing too close, and it’s making me anxious.” 

— “Well, the sound that toaster of yours just made is making me anxious,” she retorts. Heather unceremoniously jerks her thumb towards the outdated technology. She wasn’t confident in her ability to find replacement parts for a laptop that old, even if she were to scrounge through her favorite out-of-the-way and hidden scrapyards.

If big money were involved, however, she supposed she could always ask a guy. That guy will have heard of another guy. And that third guy will have been owed a favor by a fourth guy. So forth the chain of guys would go until finally, at last, she got her hands on the part she wanted.

“That can’t be practical,” she adds. Heather’s stance is too confident to suggest she’d even consider budging from her spot. She’s got spunk -- for a human, at least. It was one of those traits her girlfriend found charming, especially when it was juxtaposed by how fragile humans were. (Heather, of course, suspected that her girlfriend was nothing but human.)  “Are you sure your CPU isn’t melted cheese by now?” she asks.

[ghouliehoneys]

heather & sen || ofsens​

@nadiris-ex​​

There had been a time where stalking through the night had been fun for Sen — not that it was entirely without merit now — and afterwards they’d go home and indulge in a few cupcakes; a reward for a job well-done. Now the eating came during the hunting and the cupcakes tasted like ash in their mouth (perhaps not literally but they missed them oh so very much.)

Sen would love nothing more than to hunt outside town, but things were a bit difficult in that regard now, and even as they finished their — ahem — meal, running a thumb across the corner of their mouth to clean themselves and right everything, they knew that they had very little time before things got tense.

It was no more than five minutes later that their backpack was slung across their back and the gas mask tucked inside, their hair a bit mussed but they looked no worse for the wear. The jacket across their shoulders was tugged tight, and today they felt a bit lost in their own skin but wandered down the dimly lit street with a satisfied stomach and satiated need for violence. A moment’s pause as they heard a noise behind them, turning their attention over their shoulder with the hood of their jacket pulled deep across their brow.

“It’s not nice to stalk people.”

Sen’s one to talk… and they might not even being stalked right now.

— There wasn’t much time before she had her ass handed to her. “Shit, my eyes must be bugging out,” she muttered. One set of fingers tightened around a steel pipe in a death-grip while the other gingerly grazed her temples. The thermal image of her pursuer was distorted: there seemed to be a large mass protruding from their body. There was no denying the tail-like -- or, was it more tentacle like? -- structures emitting enough heat for her cybernetically enhanced eyes to pick up a heat signature. If not a glitch, then what was that thing? 

Heather braced herself and backed up. She lost her footing over a trashcan lid, its aluminum scratching against asphalt with an ugly scrape. “I’m the one being stalked,” she snapped. Slick with sweat, a few, scraggly strands of brown hair stuck to her forehead. “Or maybe murdered,” she said. “He’s got some kind of weapon -- see, cut me on my cheek.” She quelled a shaking exhale, her gaze hardening as she prepared for the worst. “If I croak now, the only one who’s going to care is Megan,” she thought. “Shit, that would destroy her.”

Megan was her girlfriend. Megan was also a ghoul. Heather hadn’t yet learned of their existence, her girlfriend having fiercely protected her from the shadows and threatened to cannibalize anyone who so much as sniffed in their direction. Unfortunately, there were ghouls that saw that as a challenge. It made the victory sweeter, didn’t it? When you could steal something precious right out from under another ghoul’s nose? 

Heather shook the pipe with renewed vindication. “I’m the only one with a weapon,” she told the stranger. “You better get behind me!”

[ghouliehoneys]

dottie & nikhil || du-kh​:

ah, damn — his holographic keyboard band was left on his workbench.  he had been tinkering with it earlier that day, trying to fix the delay between his typing and the words showing up above him, and in a rush to get to the store, he had left it behind.

so, when the person turned around and opened their mouth and said something, nikhil stared back blankly, deciding if he wanted to ignore them and run off or if he should somehow tell them he couldn’t understand a single word they were saying.  maybe they should enunciate better. 

ah, shit, he had waited too long — now they said something else.  with his hands full of the grocery bags, he opted for a hesitant shrug.  maybe that would be sufficient …

( open starter ) @nadiris-ex​

— Dottie seemed to deflate when the man didn’t share her enthusiasm. It was like watching a time-lapse of a helium balloon lose its buoyancy weeks after a birthday party, only viewed whilst fast-forwarding. She felt quite stupid for bringing up her advert at all.

In the window display, rows of flat screen televisions flickered to a new advertisement. The one she’d appeared in had already ended -- oh, and what a shame that the man hadn’t even seen it! What a stunner she’d been in that electric blue eye shadow and strapless, patent leather bodycon dress! That advert had been filmed before everything had, as her elder sister liked to say, gone sour.

The embarrassed flush in her cheeks burned hot and unbearable. “Oh, nevermind!” she said. She couldn’t help but stamp her feet in quick succession, flighty little taps on the balls of her white go-go boots to let out her frustrations. “I was on the television, but you missed it!” she whined. “You really just missed it, buster!”