(no subject)

[dreamkid]

WHO: Matthew and others, perhaps you!
WHERE: Various places in De Chima and possibly Heropa
WHEN: The month of November!
WHAT: Catch-all log
WARNINGS: Possible spookiness, Matthew's being haunted this month

Starters in the comments for now! Gonna try to update this later with an open prompt too

Comments

Closed to the ghost girl

[dreamkid]

[ It's been a weird week. After Halloween, Matthew was tired and sluggish and moody for days--Matthew, a boy who unlike his brothers has never been moody a day in his life. He slept through church on Sunday, which isn't entirely unusual for him except this time he didn't even make it to the pew first. And then, three days in a row, he completely forgot to go out to the barn and check on Henrietta. She came up to the house on the third evening, chirping at him through the window, making him feel terrible. He'd just forgotten about her.

Things began to disappear around the house, including a few of the snow globes from Noah's shelf. Matthew couldn't muster up the energy to be too bothered about it until he found one of them under his desk. Then another in his closet. Noah was there when he found the third one in his backpack, and Matthew could tell from the look on his boyfriend's face that it wasn't a prank.

It's been a weird--no, an unsettling week. He's just trying to put it all out of his mind and get ready for another day, just-- get through another day, when he hits his toe on something painfully sharp under his bed, and feels something cool soaking through his sock. ]

Ow, shit, [ he curses softly (also a bit unusual), checks his foot to make sure he isn't bleeding, and then drops to the floor to look under the bed and see what attacked him. His stomach sinks. ]

Oh, no...

[ This time the snow globe isn't so much a snow globe as a it is a jagged pile of glass, glitter, and glycerin, and the sight of it is like something cold slipping down the back of his shirt. He didn't do that, he knows he didn't do that-- ]

hello i am a ghost girl, ignore the spiky hair and mcdouchey face

[pillz]

[he hadn't. of course, matthew hadn't done anything. matthew wouldn't do anything like that.

but the sharded glass gleams at him, wickedly sharp spikes glistening. mostly just white in the sunshine filtering in through the window, apart from the glistening beads of red where it'd nipped into the meat of matthew's foot. it's a jarring sight for the barns, which is vast and quiet and peaceful, ordinarily, and the small deaths that happen in the classic farm-and-nature way aren't normally quite so visceral to look at. or so sad. it's been too quiet and too empty, of late, but this is something else.]

Ha.

[it's a shimmer of a sound, halfway between hearing and imagination. like thinking you heard your name in a crowded room, or extra movement in a windy forest. except there's no crowd here at all, and nothing shifting through the sweet confines of matthew's private quarters, apart from the draw of his own breath and the sunshine lifting dust off the floor.

and then a flicker of shadow in the edge of his eye.

maybe he just misses having gangsey around. maybe, maybe.]

clearly a ghost girl!

[dreamkid]

[ Matthew sucks in his breath.

He does miss everyone. He misses them as individuals, as friends and roommates, but he also misses their presence--the bustle and energy of a full house, the constant guarantee of another person's company. Just a few months ago, he could hardly walk from his room to the kitchen without meeting someone along the way, and that's exactly how he liked it. Lately, though, he's spent far more time alone than he cares to, than he's ever had to before.

Maybe that's what's making him crazy, making him hear things. ]

Max?

[ There's the faintest edge in Matthew's voice. It's not Max, of course; that dog is never content to be in the corner of someone's eye when he could be the direct center of attention instead. But it would be nice-- It'd be really nice if Matthew weren't actually going crazy. ]

Max, don't mess around.

[ He's making some small attempt to sound firm, and to ignore the raised hairs on the back of his neck as he starts carefully, carefully scooping broken snow globe pieces out from beneath the bed. ]

[pillz]

[then there comes the whimper.

it's a tiny, pitchy cute little throat sound, plaintive and sweet and sad, an animal sound. a dog sound, maybe. people who whimper don't whimper like that; they sob maybe, have words or at least vague syllables in the sounds that they make. but there's none of that in this. matthew can hear it under the bed at first, faint, failing utterly to align itself with anything under the bed. there's broken glass, is all, bits of glitter.

but then it gets louder, and its origin begins to resolve in the logic of his mind and his ears-- behind him. a tug of curiosity, maybe. but the instant he turns his head to look

she's there shadow-faced stringy hair lambent eyes chapped lips twisted up in a shirt skewed off a skinny shoulder something like dust clotted to her skin

no, no-- there's no one in the room. a single blink of his eyes tells him that.]

[dreamkid]

[ The noise could be Max. It really could be--even though Max doesn't whimper quite like that--Matthew's trying to convince himself that the source of the sound really is the dog he loves so much.

But then he turns and sees her. He hears himself yelp in surprise, and a shard of glass slips from his hands, cutting a neat little slice in his thumb along the way. Ow.

And she's gone. But she was definitely there, for a split second. Even Matthew knows he doesn't have the imagination to dream up a person out of nowhere.

He wastes no time in scrambling to his feet again, pinching his thumb with the other hand in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and repeating a little mantra under his breath that matches the rapid beating of his heart-- ]

Okay, okay, okay.

[ Not okay. ]

Noah!

[ Before the echo of his voice fades away he remembers that Noah already left, off to work an early shift this morning. Crap.

Wait.

Wait. Noah. That makes Matthew think, maybe he's not going crazy. Maybe something else is happening here. Maybe. He swallows, his gaze darting from one corner of his room to another. ]

Oh geez... [ The words come out in a nervous mutter, and then he raises his voice. ]

Hey, is there-- Are you a ghost?

[ For the record, he doesn't know what kind of answer he's hoping for, here. ]

[pillz]

[a sound that's more like a feeling shimmers through his ears. it's like the way that bass subwoofers push against your eardrums and shake your bones and invades the chamber of your guts, more tactile than auditory. except this sound isn't heavy like that. it's bright and silvery, like wind chimes singing at the edge of matthew's hearing.

laughter.

then the drip of blood from his finger moves. instead of the runny downward slide with gravity, a bead of blood levitates itself into the air, drifting toward the blank space of the nearest wall. and then it slices down, abruptly. forming narrow, vivid letters. ]

N O

[but then]

Y E

[but only half an s before it runs out of. ink.]

[dreamkid]

[ Right. Well that's a confusing answer, and a decidedly freaky one.

Matthew gulps. He is not a very sensible boy but right now he's going to do a rather sensible thing, which is to grab the phone from his nightstand and snap a picture of the half-finished answer. And then, uh, just-- pressing the button to record video in case something else happens, all right. ]

Okay.

[ The somewhat biblical sight of his own blood turning into writing on the wall should probably be a little more terrifying, but he's hit the dream person processing limit. Yeah, he's spooked, but he can't be more frightened than this while trying to figure out what a ghost/not-ghost is doing in his room at the same time. ]

Umm. Can you come back out? I mean, I think I saw you for a second.

[ Maybe if she could be, like. Not invisible, this would be easier. ]

[pillz]

[silence. the room does nothing.

his reaction is fucking weird, you know. he ought to be afraid. this thing with him now was conceived out of hatred and brittle, vengeful hope and fear and uncomfortable shock, the kind of cruelty that's two parts indifference and one part salt. she had played with his blood and his mind and frankly, also, his boyfriend's prized possessions. of everything, he ought to be afraid.

it's a little aggravating, that he isn't. but curious, also. newton's apple would be equally confused if it met the weightless, sparkly vicissitudes of outer-space.

and then she begins to peel herself out of the shadow of the bed, moving herky-jerky, separating unevenly from the strata of his subconscious. her head tilts too far on its axis, like a badly made puppet pretending to be a person. she doesn't show in the screen of his camera.]