i was working in the lab late one night...
when my eyes beheld an eerie sight...
welcome to the final post of horror aus for halloween 2020! i hope you all enjoyed the ride. i apologize for not having everything ready on halloween like i originally planned. remember that the inbox and dms are always open for questions, comments and concerns. if you missed them, here are parts one, two and three. all warnings still apply, so be forewarned.
i know things are scary right now. but to quote the infamous n. gaiman: fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
take it from me when i say that we outnumber the monsters of this world--and more importantly, take heart.
click below the cut if you, too, like doing the monster mash (no offense but it is kind of a graveyard smash...)
there’s bloodstains beneath the carpet - a ∆ au inspired by the super, co-starring technical officer drake and @agents-of-virtue's agent annabelle
it was a new start. for both drew and matthew. a new city, shining with opportunities and adventure. they had no shortage of hope--but maybe did have a little shortage of cash.
all the same, the knox-edwards boarding house wasn’t that bad. grimy and with a level of grunge akin to a garage band circa 1995, sure, but nothing unbearable.
but as drew was stuck in the hallway holding up their couch, matthew trying to figure out who needed to pivot and in what direction in order to not have furniture stuck in the doorway, he overheard it:
“what? another one? are you serious?”
two people were walking down the hallway, and they didn’t look to be much older than himself, or matthew. a man and woman, close together, as if they were conspiring.
“wait, drew, i think i got it, turn left a little bit--”
“as a heart attack. that makes it four people in three months. i’m telling you bekah, something fuckin’ weird in goin’ on here. people don’t just up and vanish from their own homes, and--oh!”
“drew! are you listening to me? turn it left!”
oh shit. oh shit. don’t act like you were obviously eavesdropping, maybe they didn’t notice...
“drew!”
“hi!”
welp. all right. be cool.
“uh--hello!” but he yelped when matthew unexpectedly let go of the couch, and it landed on the ground with a hard thud.
but drew was still processing what he heard. four people in three months? what did that mean?
mini soundtrack sampler includes: rockwell, ‘somebody’s watching me’ + absofacto, ‘dissolve’ + barns courtney, ‘99′
won’t you cut me down? - a second chances au inspired by seven in heaven
joan, normally, wasn’t so forward. at least, not a society-thrown event where multiple agencies were represented, and especially not when he knew lilith was around and not above reprimanding an agent in front of god and everyone else in the room.
but he’d had quite a bit to drink.
the evening was winding down.
and josie... josie was breathtaking.
he couldn’t help it.
“joan--joan!” she laughed as he turned her, taking her elbow and leading her down a hallway close to one of the larger coat closets. “what are you d--”
her voice cut off abruptly to the tune of joan’s mouth on hers, and the closing of a closet door.
joan didn’t stop to think about how this particular door wasn’t room he distinctly remembered. he was tipsy and enamored and his wife consumed his senses. he didn’t care.
but he did care a while later, after they’d made themselves presentable again and opened the door to a manor that was much, much quieter than he was expecting.
and josie felt it too.
it was an odd sensation, to feel that he’d stepped out of one place and into another entirely.
josie asked quietly, “where... where did everyone go?”
mini soundtrack sampler includes: jack white, ‘i’m shakin’‘ + konrad old money & sleep steady, ‘rage’ + k. flay, ‘blood in the cut’
my hands are growing colder - an inverse functions au inspired by eli
ginny knew erik wasn’t broken. she would rather have faced down a demon or some unholy thing sprung out of the gate than ever describe him like that.
but he was--unique.
beyond the understanding of most medical doctors, at least. even aly and caroline were struggling to treat his symptoms. it was like he’d become allergic to everything around him over the course of just a few days. his symptoms were sudden, severe, and left her nervous.
it wasn’t just allergies. she knew that. and if she had to seek help outside of the society, then so be it. all that mattered to her was seeing him brought back to health.
and late one night, during a despair-fueled search through some files in the archives that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years, she found a name: dr. isabella horn.
the fact that lacey, who’d been overseeing the roanoe medical wards for ages, hadn’t heard of her, should have been a warning.
but desperate times call for desperate measures.
the next day, they were on their way to a facility in the middle of the midwest--though ‘facility’ wasn’t quite the right word. it looked more like a mansion, with nothing but wheat fields all around as far as they eye could see. the horizon was only broken by the occasional oil derrick.
and they were surprised when they had to be buzzed through pressurized, completely sterile chambers to even get inside.
but there, right at the front of the welcoming committee, was a woman with dark eyes, and an easy smile.
“good afternoon! you must be ginny and erik, welcome. i’m dr. horn.”
but ginny didn’t trust her grin.
and that should have been the second warning.
mini soundtrack sampler includes: stevie wonder, ‘superstitious’ + the killers, ‘when you were young’ + the revivalists, ‘wish i knew you’
i saw your bones on the road - a pastel goth au inspired by the silence
meli would look back on it and realize with no small sense of irony how loud it was when it began.
the screaming, the terror. how she blasted her spotify on her furious drive to guiliana’s house in the blessedly quiet suburbs, eyes constantly searching the sky. she knew that the responsible thing to do would be to listen to the coverage on the radio, but honestly? she’d heard enough. she had more than half a brain, and she knew exactly what to do.
get her girlfriend and head--okay, maybe she didn’t know exactly what to do.
but giuliana was smart. they’d figure it out together.
the government didn’t know what they were, exactly. nobody did. meli only knew that they were calling them vesps.
it was a word that she mulled over frantically. linguistics was always a welcome distraction. she thought she’d heard it before, but all she could think of was the latin vespere. it roughly translated to ‘from the evening,’ or ‘from the night.’
from the dark.
perhaps that was an apt name.
the sunset had painted the sky in shades that were obnoxiously beautiful given the circumstances, and her jeep lurched in protest as she abruptly slammed the gear shift into park in the glow of guiliana’s porch lights.
in the distance, she could hear shrieking--but not that of human beings.
mini soundtrack sampler includes: mourning ritual, ‘bad moon rising’ + twenty one pilots, ‘ride’ + royal blood, ‘trouble’s coming’
waiting for the vultures - a time traveler’s husband au inspired by the houses october built
it had been dara’s idea.
“oh it’ll be fun! think about it, italy and the states celebrate halloween with way, way different aesthetics. think of this as getting a sampler of how america does it,” she said, sitting in silvano’s lap, charm volume as far up as it would go.
and he agreed. “all right--okay. a grand adventure across the country hitting as many haunted houses as we can.”
“geez, try not to sound too excited.”
he murmured into her shoulder, “i’m mostly excited to spend time with you. but if a road trip through october is what you want, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
he was rewarded with kisses peppered all over his face and a very excited dara dragging him excitedly to best buy to pick up a camcorder. “what? of course we need a camera! if we record everything then it’s like--i don’t know. like it’s ours. we can go back to it whenever want, and we can show all our friends the cool places we saw when we get home!”
dara hadn’t known then.
she didn’t know it would start with one lone figure in a clown costume standing in front of the rv like he was going to charge at it. she didn’t know that they would end up surrounded, followed. abducted.
it had been dara’s idea.
and she would never forgive herself.
mini soundtrack sampler includes: van halen, ‘runnin’ with the devil’ + the 1975, ‘if you’re too shy (let me know)’ + afi, ‘miss murder’