the first sign something is wrong isn’t the silence.
it’s the laughter.
the joker is still laughing—but it’s different now. thinner. strained. like something is pulling the sound out of him instead of the other way around.
gotham knows.
gotham feels it.
after the last attack—the one that turned entire city blocks into graves—something inside the city finally breaks. not crumbles. not bends.
breaks.
and what remains leaves.
lady gotham crosses into the infinite realms bleeding something that isn’t quite blood and finds the king of the dead sitting on a throne he never wanted.
danny listens.
he listens to every name.
bruce wayne.
dick grayson.
barbara gordon.
jason todd.
tim drake.
cassandra cain.
stephanie brown.
duke thomas.
damian wayne.
he listens to the others too—harper row, luke fox, kate kane—and then to the ones with no names left to remember them.
the dead.
the forgotten.
the ones who never mattered to anyone except the city itself.
“fix it,” gotham says. “or i will.”
danny doesn’t ask what that means.
he says yes anyway.
—
the joker starts noticing things.
his reflections lag behind him.
his shadow moves when he doesn’t.
punchlines land a second too late—like the world itself isn’t keeping up anymore.
he escalates.
bigger threats. louder chaos. more desperate setups.
no one comes.
not batman. not the batfamily. not the justice league.
because for the first time in years—
nothing is happening.
no bombs go off. no traps trigger. no civilians die.
everything fails.
—
ellie thinks it’s hilarious.
dante thinks it’s art.
they don’t touch him. not at first.
that would be too easy.
instead, they dismantle him piece by piece.
every safehouse? compromised.
every plan? already known.
every contingency? quietly erased.
they whisper just loud enough to be heard.
they let him see them in reflections. in broken glass. in the corners of rooms that shouldn’t have corners.
they let him realize—
this isn’t a game anymore.
this is a hunt.
—
by the time batman realizes something is wrong, the joker is begging.
not taunting.
begging.
and that’s what finally makes bruce uneasy.
because the joker doesn’t ask for help.
ever.
—
when it ends, it doesn’t make a sound.
there’s no body.
no evidence.
no final joke.
just an absence.
like something loud has been removed from the world so completely that the silence feels wrong.
gotham breathes.
for the first time in a very long time—
she rests.
—
somewhere far beyond the living world, two young hunters laugh as something broken and screaming is dragged apart into pieces too small to ever matter again.
danny never asks for details.
he doesn’t need to.
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credit / redirect
concept inspired by tumblr fandom
credit: @ecto-archive → https://keample.com
SAW would be a good entry to the list. It has the same energy as the squid game in a way. Oh ll-nam playing John kramer role and In-ho being one of his apprentices that help track down people to play their torture games on.
Gi-hun gets kidnapped by them and finds himself waking up in a broken-down restroom and sees his childhood friend, Sang-woo, chained next to him.
The tv in the room comes alive. The tape starts to play with creepy doll, turning its head to them. It airs out their dirty secrets, debts that they have, and the people they let down. In order to prove themselves worthy of second chances, they must try to escape the room with the sacrifices that they have to make before the time runs. If they can't complete the task on time, then they'll die in this room together.
summary: despite taking the correct security measures to protect yourself, one of the monsters still found a way to get to you—however, there was something a little too different about this one.
tags/warnings: monsters, horror, body horror, biting, blood, crossover, one shot, reader insert, dead dove, suggestive themes/but no smut, blood feeding, violence, backstory to introduce plot
a/n: i binge watched the horror show, ‘from’, so i had to write a crossover. season 1 only though.
w.c: 2.6k • mdni • masterlist • ao3
Just two years ago, you and your husband took a road trip to celebrate a full year’s anniversary of marriage.
You remembered it like it was yesterday, in fact.
It was something that you both planned for weeks and you were driving through one of the most beautiful states in the country, together in his cherry red sedan.
The weather was perfect for such an occasion too, with bright blue skies devoid of a single cloud accompanied by the warm glow of the sun just above. However, it wasn’t long before the trip was soon cut short by a dead end in the middle of the road.
Towards the telltale sign that signified everyone’s doom who ended up in this forsaken place.
That goddamned tree.
Just like everyone else, you were confused by the sudden deviation to the trip. The weather all over the state had indicated no destructive weather of the sort and yet the tree appeared to have been freshly fallen and the skies providing a sudden overcast, immediately dimming the bright day.
The two of you tried to combine your efforts and move the trunk over, but the tree simply wouldn’t budge. Eventually, you were both forced back into the car and had to take a different route to get to the destination in mind, realising a little too late that you were stuck in a loop.
Over and over, you would pass through a small town before coming to the reluctant conclusion that there was no escape and that something must have been seriously wrong.
This led to the first time that you both had ever argued with one another. Your husband’s stoic demeanour proved infuriatingly stubborn as he kept trying to leave the town again and again, but eventually he did hear the sheriff out. You, on the other hand, felt too tired from the strange turn of events and wanted both rest and an explanation.
No matter how absurd it was, no matter how surreal this whole situation might have seemed.
Soon enough, your husband yielded at long last after the first night. The gruesome aftermath of those unlucky to make it back home in time was sobering enough to snap him out of his disbelief.
Just like everyone else who had found themselves here, he succumbed to their ways, because just like everyone else… he wanted to live.
The two of you ended up settling in one of the vacant houses from before as a result and though it took a while to get used to, you slowly learned to adapt.
To live simply but safely tucked away in the declining suburbia.
Every night, you would fasten one of the provided runes right by the door and you would hold each other tight, blocking out the relentless knocking and screeching from just outside.
Until one day, the monsters took a personal approach.
Your husband, believing that since these creatures—these monsters—were capable of intelligent speech, that they could be perhaps reasoned with.
And upon letting one of those things inside, you couldn’t quite stop him from meeting his untimely end. Guts spilled from a sudden incision, blood pooling from his throat as he tried to warn you, the stains that will never wash out from the hardwood floor.
You had just barely escaped, too.
Your neighbours let you in and just in the nick of time, lest you would have quickly met your husband in the afterlife.
Returning alone to your home later alone, was a surreal experience. To never see him again. To never be held by him again. To never feel his lips on yours and to be forced to spend the remainder of your years without him felt so damn cruel.
Maybe by some sort of twisted miracle, this was all in fact a nightmare—a strangely realistic dream—something you could soon wake up from.
(But you weren’t willing to brave that experiment for yourself, because death was permanent. It was finalising. If you were wrong, then it would have been for nothing and that was too scary of a risk to face.)
And so despite it all, you persevered.
You would live on.
Without him and alone.
Every night you would secure the stone and close the curtains too. You would lock the windows, choosing later down the line to nail them shut because even though you were a grown woman, you didn’t trust yourself to fully be able to resist his potentially puppeteered body trying to will you outside.
You’d close the door to the bedroom and your dim the lights in the hope that it would deter the monsters that roamed outside, maybe they’d be less interested if you were presumably fast asleep?
For the most part, it did work anyway. You were alive and so was everyone else who stuck to these confining rules. You were safe during the day and as long as you went back by the time set, you’d be fine. It was as though you were all livestock for the hungry top of the food chain—refusing to accept the slaughter that surely soon awaited.
Until one night, a resident of the town claimed ti have an encounter with one of the creatures. Some listened, but nobody believed the guy. It wasn’t that uncommon to lose your mind in this town after a while, so the general consensus was just to ignore the craziness and entrust the sheriff to step in if it’s becoming a problem.
It was a danger to get involved.
You already knew that from a personal consequence.
Just days later however, the person in question died. Just dropped dead in the middle of the diner. The autopsy conducted over at the makeshift hospital seemed to imply that there was nothing wrong with him on the surface but something else was going on with the inside. It didn’t take too long for the word to escape that that the man’s innards were somehow rearranged from the inside, twisted and turned in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.
This revelation was a problem, however.
Because, if this man was telling the truth, then that implied a much bigger problem than before. If this man survived an audience with one of these creatures that were until then just manipulative man eating monsters, then that must have meant not all of them were simply looking to feed.
The implication that it even some of them were looking to purely just toy with people without jumping at their bones to eat them, then that was a concerning prospect indeed.
You didn’t leave your house after that tidbit of information was confirmed, choosing to hide away in your bedroom with the doors fully locked, with the talisman hopefully warding whatever played with one of the townspeople far, far away.
Just about ready to fall asleep, ready to end the night with much anticipated sleep—feeling worn out and tired from your own troubled mind—you jolted awake at the sound of the front door downstairs slowly clicking open and then closing. You could have sworn that you locked the door. You checked it yourself. You did lock it. You did.
And yet, you kept hearing the presence of someone who didn’t quite belong. Heavy-set footsteps that walked slowly upstairs at a calculated pace, the sound of scratching, whining wood as the rails whittled against the grain. The lights were off, the talisman was up in place and yet, whoever—whatever—it was inside your home didn’t sound the least bit human at all.
Your breath caught in your throat as what you prayed to be an auditory hallucination became reality instead. Your eyes trained on the doorknob to your bedroom, watching it rattle and twist and turn… and yet you remained screwed still into your mattress, too terrified to make a single move.
You watched with anticipated unease as what appeared to be man with long silvery locks of hair and dark ragged cloth sauntered into your bedroom, with eyes as extinguished as coals, burning his sights right into your very own.
Finally, you were able to thaw and move, pushing yourself into an upright seated position as your hand extended, scrambling to reach for the switch of the bedside lamp. The light proved dim, just barely illuminating the man before you but enough for you to understand that it was one of those wretched things. Those terrifying, creepy, vile things and this one in particular seemed extra mocking; its smile almost grotesque.
Immediately, you tried to back away as though it was possible to create an unseen barrier between you and the creature but deep down you knew it to be futile.
You stammered on and off, barely choking out your words in frenzied anticipation, “W-wait, how d-did you get in here, I-I have the talisman and—“
“—oh? Those silly things?” the creature cut in, his stretching smile loosening one of the stitches he had on his face, “that won’t work on me.”
“W-what?” you gasped.
“Those runes might work on the others, but I’m a bit special if you couldn’t already tell,” he purred, taking a step closer, forcing you to back up on your feet as he climbed over the bed to get to you.
In a blurt of panic, you choked out an attempted warning, “S-stay back…!”
But he ignored you, of course, choosing to close in on you regardless. His frame was taller than yours and he managed to cage you in back up against the wall, feeling the rough surface of peeling paper chip against your flesh. His own skin felt cold against yours as his pointed fingernails traced against your body, leaving you in a state of pure discomfort.
“Poor thing,” he cooed as he cornered you, “so alone, cooped up in here looking so afraid~”
There was something sinsister with how this creature spoke; his words so carefully thought out yet his vocal patterns were somehow not human at all. Even the other monsters that roamed around outside after dark still somehow sounded more… put together… than whatever this thing was.
Your eyes blurred as they attempted to focus on the creature before you, trying to pick up anything about it that would make sense to you, but nothing did. His pale skin had almost seemed translucent as it stretched over his body, warping at its limit and barely contained through shoddily woven stitches to conceal whatever it was that could have been lurking underneath.
The way that he moved so slowly was almost sickeningly taunting; his skin finally connecting yours after a hot moment of his protruding claws teasing you. It was then sudden, but you felt him dip something sharp into your skin, pulling apart the very tissue that held you together. Slowly, he tore into your flesh, pulling an aching wound open down your arm. You whimpered as the blood pooled and dropped down the limb, feeling the cold air sting against your exposed cut.
Your breathing turned ragged, just barely coming out as shuddering gasps, babbling out pleading gasps that signalled desperation. Quietly, you prayed for the luxury of a quick death, yet the monster before you continued.
His body lowered as he leaned towards you, his lips dipping against your maimed arm as he poked his tongue out to lap against the rolling beads of escaping blood. Such a sensation felt nauseating the longer that he forced you to endure it, sliding his tongue between the wound, almost as though hungry for more.
Bringing himself back up again, he sucked against his bottom lip to savour any remnants of your blood, practically moaning as he tasted it, “So delicious~”
In another attempt to hurry it up, you begged him again, “P-please, no more…”
And of course, he didn’t stop. You were still alive, feeling dizzied from the sensation that he forced you to experience.
“Want to know the difference between me and the others… similar to me?” he asked you instead, his smile unwavering.
You could only shake your head in response.
He continued to explain to you regardless, whether or not you knew the answer already, “The others only need a sample to satisfy their hunger, whereas I need the full course.”
You swallowed a sharp lump in your throat at his words, having an inkling of an idea of what he was talking about which terrified you.
“I’d love to devour you whole,” he continued onwards, dipping his index finger against your still running blood, licking it on and off, his voice sounding almost affectionate as he spoke, “there’s nothing quite as delicious as the meat of a frightened soul.”
“M-make it quick,” you resigned, hoping that he would listen to your protest and shorten your life to spare you from the upcoming torture.
“Ah, ah, ah~,” the stitched up man shook his head, wagging his finger in a mocking gesture, “I don’t quite enjoy the taste of corpses, so I’d rather you be alive for our little sessions.”
(Sessions. Plural…?)
“Y-you’re not going to kill me then?” you asked, confused.
He rolled his head back and smiled an obnoxious grin before winding himself forward again, “Oh, you’d think so, but no, not yet,” he soothed, “I think I’ll have my fun with completely draining you first, picking you apart bit by bit…” his teeth nestling into your bare shoulder as he continued to speak, “until there’s nothing left of you.”
More tears spilled from your welling eyes, feeling absolutely hopeless and utterly broken from hearing his plans. The idea that he intended to whittle away at your body as his living source of fuel was more horrific than any other possibility you could ever imagine.
Rejecting that idea, you shook your head, your words coming in desperate, “A-anything but that, p-please, please—“
“—now, now,” he playfully hushed, his breath hot as he spoke into the slope of your shoulder, sinking his teeth into your flesh; piercing deep enough to tap into bone. The sensation was gnawing yet somehow sharp, causing you to violently thrash as he continued to feed on you, his calloused hands holding you in place, “it isn’t so bad, I promise you, my delicious one.”
“Not like this…” you whined as you wept.
“I’ll protect you from the others, my beautiful delicacy,” he continued to slur, “my food and mine alone~”
Yet all you could do was repeat the same thing over and over again, “…Why?”
“Because I’m bored, silly,” he tauntingly mocked, continuing to take a larger bite from your shoulder as you choked out a scream that was soon muffled by his hand plugging your lips.
Feeling quickly dizzy as a result from such drained blood loss, your legs lost stability as they stood. It was as though your joints became soft, the bones turning into jelly. Allowing you to slump down, the creature held you upright with your back angled up against the wall, continuing to feast upon your exposed flesh until seemingly full.
Soon your vision blurred as you just barely recovered, watching him drunk on your innards with an intoxicated look on his face. His complexion seemed richer too and the wiry threads that stitched his skin together now seemed to be stronger.
“You’ll recover for me, won’t you?” it asked, lapping a final taste off of your mangled shoulder with the flick of his tongue; “heal so that I can visit you again and again and again~”
Unable to respond, he didn’t seem to mind, picking you up and lifting you into bed. His actions felt almost teasing with how close he brought you to the brink of death, only to tuck you in and leave you to recover.
“Until next time,” you heard him sing, your eyelids forcing themselves shut, unable to even imagine what horrors could possibly lie ahead.
