aka I got possessed by the jimmy posts people were making, also inspired by this post by @vyeoh
tw for: death
Jimmy Solidarity is a completely unremarkable man.
Sure, he's got his qualities, he's comparable to the sun. Maybe the first note of a song. Sometimes like the symbolism of a canary, a joy to be in the presence of.
Still, he's oh so wonderfully human. Though, if you look beyond all that, there's something that follows him. A war cry, the drums of a brewing conflict.
Jimmy Solidarity is an innocent herald of destruction.
It's very hard to know and even harder to find out. Even if you did know, it's difficult to believe it. You look at him and you see him having the worst luck out of every single group he's a part of. He's practically the embodiment of a ray of sunshine. Sometimes he acts like a sad puppy that can't take care of itself.
Even though one of his favorite flowers signifies death, you'd still think that, it's a little bit on the nose.
Even after his body hits the ground and the entirety of the earth knows of his death.
Even after you think, no way that that really happened again.
Even after your friends start dropping like flies one by one.
Maybe, maybe you'd start to think he's a warning, an omen.
Mybe you'd realize that Jimmy is a canary in a coal mine. A sign ignored until too late. Until everything caves in onto you.
I had fun writing this this is my blog and I post what I want :D
There are several things to expect when renting out a house with two other people you barely know.
This certainly was not one of them.
Tango could deal with one of his housemates consistently leaving cheap, bogus, 'ghost hunting' equipment around the house. He certainly wasn't going to touch it again after he tried to move one of the devices and it made a noise so loud they almost got the cops called on them. He could also handle his other housemate, who- well. Wasn't even home most of the time.
He couldn't, and wouldn't, handle what looked like a corpse on his- their back doorstep.
Well, not alone.
"ETHO, HEY ETHO. GET OVER HERE." He yelled out. He was panicked, more than panicked but that was considerably reasonable considering the circumstance. Tango tried to think to himself that he'd know what to do, but as one does, his brain completely blanked.
He didn't have to wait for too long as fast, but light footsteps sounded behind him. Etho was here.
Tango turned to face his housemate? Friend? Who knows. Just living with someone for a while doesn't necessarily make you close. Anyway, they had more pressing matters.
There was a corpse on their back doorstep.
"Okay. Okay. Ok- what are we even supposed to do. What are we even-" Tango stuttered. "Do we call the cops?"
"Relax. He's alive. He's just bleeding, it doesn't look too bad though." Etho replied, way too calmly for someone in this situation.
"H- how can someone bleeding out on our doorstep be not too bad, Etho????" He responded back. He did take the opportunity to look at the 'body' again however.
It, no wait, he-. The body was lying face down, blood leaking from various wounds on his body, several down his arms, it looked like he had a nosebleed as well. The most concerning thing, despite all of that, was the biggest wound Tango could see, around the diameter of a quarter, right in the middle of his upper back. It looked like the man on the ground had torn something out of it. He was covered in blood, scrapes from what looked like several falls, and….moss? A lot of moss, it wrapped around his torso and almost covered his head, nearly looking like a cape.
But most of all, Etho was right. He was breathing, albeit very faintly, but breathing. It was hard to see it, but his body was ever so slightly contracting and expanding every second. A sign of life.
That made Tango pause to think for a second, he was still extremely panicked but he let himself calm down the tiniest bit. Finally, he spoke up again, “We should still call the police, Etho. He’s bleeding out, get him to a hospital, or, or something.”
Etho, instead of responding right away, paused to fiddle with one of the straps of the face mask he always wore (for some reason). “Shouldn’t we get him inside first? Lay him on a flat surface? Y’know?”
“Alright, that’s actually vaguely sensible. Let's- let’s do that.”
“You take his arms, I'll take his legs?”
“Just don’t get his blood on the carpet, the landlord is gonna kill us.”
They did as previously discussed, Tango grunted a little, surprised by the man’s weight relative to his size, muscle mass? Maybe? Etho seemed to be having no problems though, another thing on his list of questions about this guy.
“Hey Tango, don’t you think it’s weird he hasn’t woken up yet?”
“He’s bleeding out, Etho.”
“Fair point!”
They had that conversation as they carried the man in moss, walking a short distance between their back door and their living room, the house wasn’t that big. It’s what you get on three uni student’s rent money in this economy.
“Y’think this spot is good?” Etho piped up, standing around the one sofa they shared, granted, there were always armchairs, but everyone in the house (aside from the guy they just toted in) agreed that those were probably made to kill people. The mentioned spot was thankfully, on the wooden floor, which was better for all of them, Tango thought.
“Yeah.” He replied, “Put him down for now.”
Tango breathed a sigh of relief as they did so, he knew his body wasn’t in any way built for transporting another human being. He stretched his arms out to alleviate the built up strain. He sucked another breath in and asked Etho to go get a first aid kit. After his housemate left. He was just about to dial an emergency number, but something caused him to stop in his tracks.
The previously thought to be corpse spoke.
Ever faintly, like it took all of his energy to do so. “Nope.”
Tango started, he definitely didn’t expect the man in moss to regain consciousness, let alone be able to utter even a single word. Still, he responded, “Nope.. what?”
“Nope. No... no hospitals. Do not.”
“Are you sure?” Tango asked, he didn’t know why he was even humouring the stranger.
“Yeah.” The other man answered with an air of strange clarity. “Not that bad, the wounds..”
“What are you on about? You’re bleeding, you looked like you just got jumped, man.”
“Hehehh.” He..laughed? An uncanny thing to do for someone in that state, maybe he was getting delirious from the blood loss.
Tango was about to continue dialing the almost forgotten number, but he was startled yet again, this time by Etho coming back from wherever he went in the house. Now that he thought about it, he had been gone for an unusually long time to get a basic amount of household medical supplies. Well, he was back, though he had bags of wound cleanser and variants of bandages Tango couldn’t name. More than he thought all of them had in the house, that’s for sure.
Etho looked at the both of them, Tango with his phone sitting uselessly in hand and the stranger, now sitting upright somehow. “Oh hey.” The stranger said. “I feel like I know you.”
Well yep, he’s definitely delirious. Etho just laughed, “I get that a lot.” he replied, most definitely having not gotten it a lot. He just laughed a little bit however, following it up with “You’re a bit out of it, aren’t you?”
“Oh no, absolutely not, I’m the most in it I’ve ever been.” Came the stranger’s response. Tango took that moment to notice the stains of blood on the floor, that would be a problem. Somehow, it looked like most of the blood, both on him and on the floor, had dried.
Etho didn’t respond to that, maybe he was stumped. Instead, he just said, “First off, you’re in our house, at least tell us your name. Second off, our shower is down the left hallway, use it.”
“You’re letting him use our shower? No questions asked?”
“He smells.” Etho rebutted.
The man in moss seemed to take a bit to compute that, though he responded, “Bdubs, and I do not smell normally. It’s the dust. Normally I smell good. Like, like- a flower.”
“Alright...Beedubs, go take a shower, it’ll clear your brainfog or whatever. Towels are just in the bathroom, you remember where those are right.” He tossed the bag of medical supplies at Bdubs while saying so, the man in moss caught it with surprising ease.
“I do, I do! A guy can’t even bleed out around here, people’ll think you’re delirious now.” Bdubs shot back, somehow very naturally. “I’m goin.” He said. Following through to his words, he stood up, grip on the bag, staggering a bit as he left the room.
Tango spoke up, “You do know the lease only says three people right? Because I know you’re gonna have him stay with us, and you’re not taking no for an answer. What are we gonna do about that?”
Lie.”
“Fine, fine we can work this out, we’ll have to talk to Skizz, definitely have to do that. I do have one more question though.”
“What’s it?”
“Who’s going to clean up those bloodstains?”
Etho just shrugged, he turned to look more directly at Tango.
Tango didn't know what to do. A reasonable response given his situation. He felt really, really bad, considering he practically knocked zedaph across his base. There was a dent in the wall of the room the three of them were staying in. Impulse had suggested they spend the night together - a sleepover of sorts. The agreement was that they stayed over at Tango's place.
He was beginning to regret that decision.
It all started when he woke up with his heart outside of his chest. Tango had woken up earlier than both Zedaph and Impulse. He rubbed his eyes, before groggily reaching for his glasses. He had barely registered the luminescent thing protruding from his chest.
Wait. Protruding from his chest???
"WHAGH-" Tango yelled, almost collapsing back into his bedding. He tried to steady himself breathing in and out. Tango looked down at his chest again. Unfortunately proving that he wasn't just hallucinating or seeing things caused from his sleep-addled brain.
It was real, and it was making noise. A heart outside his chest. Tango could see it beat as he breathed. A hint of ribs protruding outside of his flesh.
Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.
It wasn't a normal heart. It wasn't red and there were no signs of blood. In fact, it didn't look like he was wounded at all. Seemed like his heart decided it had enough of being inside of his body and also turned black and blue.
Tango lifted his hand up to touch it, but he felt extremely strange doing so. Ceasing that action he finally noticed that Zedaph and Impulse had woken up.
"Bbblah-" Zedaph muttered, rolling over in his bedding, as he tried to untangle one of his curly horns from his pillow case. Impulse was more alert, he was already sitting upright. Though he hadn't seen Tango's predicament as of yet.
"Tango? What's wrong?" Impulse asked rightfully worried, he woke up to his friend screaming, after all.
"There's- my heart- it's outside." Whatever sense of calmness Tango had previously had evaporated right after acknowledging his situation again. Someone else inquiring about it this time.
Zedaph was fully up now, and one could surely guess what question he asked.
Which brings us back to the now.
With Zedaph's back against the wall, a visible dent in it, thankfully, and extremely luckily, he had sustained no outward injuries. Impulse out of the room to fetch healing potions, just in case of the unthinkable.
And Tango, extremely regretful that he pushed his friend.
He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how he pushed that hard. He didn't even mean to touch him.
Zedaph looked at him, comforting him despite being the victim of this circumstance.
"Hey, Tango, it's okay. I know you didn't mean to. Don't pull yourself apart over it."
"I- I don't even know how- I didn't mean to push you- I'm so sorry-"
"I said it's alright. Do you know what happened?"
"No- no I just. Woke up like this-"
Amid an incomprehensible stream of Tango's thoughts, Impulse had come back, potion of healing in tow. "Um. Did you do anything out of the ordinary recently?" He asked him.
"Well uh, nothing other than the-" Tango replied, realization looming over him.
"The?"
"The deep dark. I went there. I went there and I died there and. And- I respawned and everything was normal but-"
It started coming back to him. Tango remembered being in the sculk, dying in it. He didn't know why it took him so long to respawn. Why did he even remember the respawning process? Why had it felt like the sculk wouldn't let him leave?
He remembered that it took unnaturally long for him to lose consciousness. A multitude of questions flooded his mind. The only thing he could muster out of all of it was a whispered "Why?"
The beat of the thing on his chest quickened as his breaths became rapid. Tango was barely registering it as part of him, as his heart at this point.
"You went to the deep dark?" Impulse asked, unsure of what to say.
"Oh right, you did tell us about that.." Zedaph piped up.
"Y-yeah. I did. And I died. In- in the sculk I think that's why- I'm sorry guys. I need to lie down. Can we deal with this uh, later."
Impulse and Zedaph obliged, all three of them unsure what to do. They'd think this through together, eventually.
Aka a really short thing I wrote based off Luna @lunarblazes 's hc about Grian with a plague mask during 3L
Tw for: death
This was meant to be a game, you think.
No one was supposed to take it seriously.
You didn't mean to — it was a prank! Your friend was the first one down. Not quite permanently. You rightfully blame yourself, you lead it to them, to him.
Now you stand in front of each other, unable to be face to face. You put this limitation onto yourself.
"Can we still be friends?"
You fasten the straps of your mask before answering. You said yes.
He's two down, one to go. He's been wide open from the beginning. You feel guilty for caring about him.
He is Icarus — you are the sun.
No one can see your face. No one can see your face. No one can see your face.
Now there are only two of you left. It's you and him and him and you and you've been closed off since the beginning.
Your mask is off — your friend is dead. By your own hands.
Second installment of nmh wooo yeahhhh, got my ass kicked by school so it’s out later than planned whoops.
Word Count: 857
TWs for: possible body horror.
first installment
So. Imagine this, you've newly moved into a rental home with two other people you barely know for college. Aside from a few text conversations about leasing and rent, you haven't even spoken to each other, beyond casual small talk that is. It's only been a week since you've arrived here.
And everyone is already getting on your nerves.
Tango didn't have to imagine that. He had a housemate that was rarely home, somehow. Even though it had only been a week, he'd only seen Skizz once. That wasn't much of a problem, he just assumed it was a schedule related thing. At least he did his share of the chores.
Etho was a bit more of an issue. Tango didn't even know what major he was taking, not that it mattered because he didn't seem to go to class at all. If he was taking night classes, he could at least have the dignity to not make insanely loud noises at 2 am. That most likely wasn't the case however, considering he left with at least a camera and an emf reader each time. Amateur ghost hunting, maybe. To each their own, Tango guessed. Though it was definitely weird that Tango could hear Paramore blasting from his room. And that every time he went to ask Etho to turn it down, he had headphones on.
It's the little things that build up, it wasn't enough for Tango to consider moving out yet. Especially with how hard it was to find a place to stay. Though one would wonder how much it would eventually take.
Well, Tango didn't know anything about that at the moment, with rent prices everywhere and all.
It does get annoying when the people you live with leave all their things around in your common areas, however. Even if it's something extremely minor, some people have pet peeves. Tango wasn't sure what the object on the ground in their living room was. A talisman, maybe? It looked a bit important. Though it could just be part of Etho's hobby. He didn't know much about Skizz yet, but he wasn't going to interact with Etho this early in the day. It seemed like Skizz was home today anyway.
Tango bent down to pick the circular object up, at least it had a chain it was hanging off of, so he didn't risk getting cursed or something. He almost laughed at himself for thinking that, he normally didn't believe in anything related to the occult.
He headed down their short hallway sandwiched between the bathroom and their respective rooms. Hearing music from Etho's room again only strengthened his lack of desire to open or even knock on his door. Knocking on the door of the room next to his. Tango waited for a few seconds, getting no reply.
Weird, he knew he heard his housemate moving around in there.
He knocked again.
Yet again, no reply.
Tango called out to his housemate, "Skizz? I know you're in there. I think one of you may have lost something. It'd be nice if you could open up..".
Silence, only sounds of... scuttling? Maybe Skizz had a weird walk. Wait, that's a bit rude. Still, it was getting a bit annoying. Tango was contemplating opening the door outright, but what if it was locked? Oh well, knocking and saying it verbally might do the trick. He raised his fist to the door a final three times. "Hey man, please open the door."
Absolutely nothing.
Tango had been defeated by common courtesy. There was only one option left, he definitely wasn't trying Etho's door until he exhausted the opportunities. Ah, one more verbal notification for good measure.
"Alright then..I'm opening the door, I hope you don't mind." Absolute radio silence. Sighing, Tango put his hand around the doorknob, giving it a turn to the right.
The door opened inwards, creaking a little. The scuttling sounds still haven't stopped.
And Skizz was nowhere to be seen. "Huh? What? Wh-?" Tango stammered, certain without a doubt that a person was moving about in the room.
Not on the floor that is. Regrettably, Tango realized that the scuttling sounds were coming from the ceiling. He really didn't want to look up, but he did.
And there Skizz was, yep, on the ceiling. Tango definitely couldn't rationalize anything he was seeing at the moment as normal. Skizz was most clearly crawling on the ceiling. On all fours, a vacant look in his eyes. His face snapped down rapidly in Tango's direction, who was frozen in fear at the moment.
"Oh! Hello!"
Tango wasn't sure how he snapped out of it, but he closed the door with the most force he thought he had ever used in doing quite literally anything before. He wasn't quite hyperventilating, but his breath was rapid. Heaving for a few seconds, he let himself catch his breath against Skizz's door for a moment.
"What the fuck." Was the only sequence of vocabulary he managed to get out of his mouth.
Maybe it was time to consider moving, but really? After only a few weeks, and in this economy?
Third installment of nmh...these keep getting shorter soz
Word Count: 527
TWs For: Nothing this time!
first installment | second installment | tangochair
"Welp, guess he's your problem, Etho!" The final words of a recent discussion among housemates, Tango looked almost triumphant when he said that to Etho. Well, at least that's what he thought.
Etho couldn't really complain, he thought that was a reasonable agreement. Considering the fact that Tango was the one who found Bdubs laying on their back doorstep about a week ago. They had let the man in moss stay in his room ever since, with the main justification, between both Skizz and Tango, that he had the biggest room. At least he slept soundly, even though Tango kept telling his housemates that he (allegedly) sleepwalks with his eyes open.
Nothing that bothered him specifically, he didn't really mind. How much could you care about people you've known only a little more than a month anyway? Tango wasn't an annoying guy, he just seemed slightly uptight.
Whatever, compsci majors or something, Etho thought. The guy has 8 am classes, the maniac.
Okay, maybe Etho was a little annoyed that he actively vocalized his suspension of belief when it came to the supernatural. Ah well, to each their own, as long as he didn't complain about him being awake at 3 am. He did at least seem a bit interested in Etho's video recording equipment.
He thought that maybe he was complaining about Tango a little too much. He was simply letting his thoughts wander aimlessly.
Completely truthfully? He was procrastinating. Who could blame him though, programming is hard. He'd rather be sitting at his desk, (which he was doing now), and combing through the footage of his latest escapade (which he wasn't). The toils of a college attendee.
Etho picked up his phone to check the time, noticed that he could have just looked at the bottom right corner of his monitor, and laughed at himself before actually looking at the information he needed.
1:35 am.
Ah. That's late, and he hasn't even started his assignment yet. Well he had time? "No! You'll forget about it until you have 3 hours to turn it in, Etho, do not do that." He thought to himself, doing a few minor wrist stretching exercises. He then placed his right hand on the mouse,
and then he opened up the video editing software on his computer.
Whoops.
Though he quickly realized that he couldn't even focus on doing something he liked at the moment. His thoughts were simply too scattered to properly collect. He felt like he was thinking about a thousand things at once.
Etho looked over at his now roommate. Truth be told, he himself didn't know why he didn't question letting Bdubs stay with them either. It wasn't like him to act completely off of gut feelings, yet he did so this time anyway. Why was he so familiar to him? Etho felt like he could trust him even though he was quite certain they had never met before. Not even as children.
And yet, his presence was slightly comforting? Like being around a lifelong friend. Whatever, he just did something nice. Much to his housemate's dissent. Not much to think about other than that, we'll send him on his way…. eventually.
Why did he feel like kicking himself for thinking that?
Etho snapped back to consciousness again. He didn’t even realize he had been spacing out. Maybe it was time to go to bed…
