Call me animal.

[phantastus]

WHO: Heather Mason and Maurice Hutch (OC)
WHERE: Dogtrot, Texas
WHEN: Just easing into spring.
WHAT: What probably would have been a night spent loitering around the drug store and breaking bottles in the alley like generic malcontent youths takes several unexpected turns when a vampire hunter interrupts Maurice while waiting for his friend from up north.
RATING: Probably PG. CW for violence, mild body horror and transformation.




awsum
ill be outside where the rentareel used to be

Maurice had put out the call and now he was in his place, hands in his coat pockets. He hadn't seen his friend for a while now. One thing or another would come up (said things including worrying mothers, various injuries, and plain bad weather) and now that at least the weather had calmed its bad self down, the world was ready to be trampled again.

And what a night for it! It was clear with chilly breezes sneaking around buildings and down alleyways. An orange moon hung low on the horizon and kept the clouds far on the edges of the horizon. It wouldn't rain for two more days. Spring was coming. The tiny green shoots had just barely started poking out of the ground where there was enough actual soil instead of the red clay of Dogtrot. Crispy dead leaves still hung in the corners where the buildings met the sidewalk. Easter candy all but overflowed on super market shelves.

The vampire thought of all the things they would do once Heather got there. They could graffiti the old building marked to be torn down the following week since it was technically not illegal anymore. They could eat pizza at Tod's until they were sick. And DRANKS. And Sega. If Meranda hadn't taken over the sofa for the night. An outlet in her room had blown (or so she said) so she spent a lot of time on the sofa during her WoW raids.

Something interrupted his thoughts. He had lived in Dogtrot for years now and not a lot surprised him. He knew the local vampires, he even knew a local spook or two. He knew the drug addicts and the few homeless and what they sounded like. What he heard on that empty chilly street was none of those things.

"Quack quack!" It was mechanical. Grainy.

Maurice lifted a brow and tugged his phone out wondering if Meranda had passive-aggressively changed the ring on it again.

"Quack quack!"

"The hell...?" It wasn't his phone. Maurice pocketed it and looked all around. The quack came from an alley across the street between a now defunct QUICK CASH and what was going to be a shiny new laundromat. Maurice looked both ways and ventured forward into the gloom.

The garbage can at the end of the alley quacked. Maurice screwed up his face in thought. Broken toy that suddenly came back to life? Stranded cyborge duck?

Up above on the rooftop, a long and lean and very crafty hunter was watching his prey fall for his trap hook, line, and sinker. His father had been a hunter--a normal hunter. Deer, ducks, rams. He had watched him make odd noises to get the attention of the deer. A whistle or a click to make them stop in just the right place. Sometimes to even lure them in.

Humans were the most curious animals that he knew of and though the thing in the alleyway wasn't human (not in the slightest) he had to watch it in fascination and amusement before he made his move.

Maurice peered into the trash. There was an old Talkboy straight from the eighties in the trash quacking away.

"Oh, man, sweet!" It was all his! He reached for it. Something dressed in full army camo descended upon him and drove a thin knife into his shoulder. Maurice screamed like a wildcat and the fight began.

Comments

[foolishwren]

Underneath him, down on the floor, Heather put her hands on her hips and dubiously stared up at his large rear end blotting out the view of the little attic door.

"... You want me to go up instead? I mean, I'd rather not, after what happened last time, but if the alternative is the ladder breaking and you falling on me..."

[toothaches]

Maurice bit his lip. Well...he hated to send his friend up into a creepy cramped space. But he also hated to be the uncle with the shitty gifts at Christmas. Maurice backed down off the ladder and made a showy gesture, allowing her entry.

"You're a hero."

[foolishwren]

"If I die up there, I'll come haunt you."

With that, she started to make her way up the rickety ladder, which still wobbled even though she was like half Maurice's size.

[toothaches]

Maurice leaned on the ladder and kept his eye on her.

"Can ghosts even leave the houses they died in?" He was a vampire. Ghosts were't his area of expertise. "Have fun haunting Mom's cats."

The attic looked as it had last time. It was cramped, a little musty, and stuffed with boxes of clothes and old dishes and blankets and bags of children's things. The eaves overhead groaned as the air pressure changed. Thin cascades of dust trickled downward here and thre.

[foolishwren]

"Ghosts can latch onto people, bro. Haven't you ever seen Ghost Adventures?"

She coughed into her fist as she made it into the dusty space above and squinted around.

"... I don't see any presents up here, man. Just old junk."

[toothaches]

"No?" Maurice had heard of Ghost Hunters in passing, but he wasn't into the whole genre. He didn't watch a lot of television these days, surprisingly. He had all the makings of a couch potato.

"Are you sure? Try pushin' stuff around! Tab got up here once, Mom and Dad can't play around anymore!"

[foolishwren]

"All right, all right, hang on."

The floorboards creaked as she got down on her hands and knees, pushing a few boxes aside in search of any conspicuously-new-looking shopping bags that might be tucked away behind them.

[toothaches]

No bags revealed themselves. However, the beams overhead decided to let out a loud groan in the cool weather and deposit another small waterfall of dust on the littlest god's head. Magic fucking attic dust. Enjoy that, Heather.

[foolishwren]

The thing about dust in large quantities is that it's still light enough that it could be anything.

Maybe it's just grit falling from the ceiling, or maybe it's a giant trickle of spiders.

Heather was okay with bugs, but that didn't mean she wanted them on her.

A thin shriek and several crashes sounded from above.

[toothaches]

This tiny capillary of the Boxlands had been pinched off temporarily. It didn't pulse or tunnel back to the attic beyond. The dust and old magic that rested here crackled in the little god's presence.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, Maurice stared warily up at the opening his friend had disappeared through.

"...Does that mean you see 'em?"

[foolishwren]

He received no reply but silence.

And then some scrabbling sounds, and the creak of floorboards.

And the telltale warble of something round rolling across the floor after being dislodged.

[toothaches]

The vampire frowned. Alright, it was time to investigate. He hoped nothing had been hiding up there. He'd heard from someone that sometimes snakes hid in attics since heat rose and made them warmer than the undersides of houses. He wasn't sure how much truth that carried but Heather wasn't talking to him.

He set his jaw and took one careful step up the ladder. Maurice cringed when the step whined loudly under his boot.

"Heather?" Another step. Another loud creak. "Don't you get snakebit up there!"

[foolishwren]

There was another creak.

And then, with no warning, a pair of near-perfectly-circular glowing eyes popped into view in the dark doorway to the attic space.

"Dude, your mom's attic SUCKS."

It was Heather! She wasn't snakebit!

... Her voice did sound a hell of a lot more high-pitched than normal, though.

[toothaches]

Maurice paused on the ladder with wide eyes. He'd seen glowing eyes plenty of time in his life. He himself had them. For an instant he wondered if Heather's strange monsterness simply peeked through sometimes.

But those were not glowy human eyes.

"Uh?" Maurice instinctively backed down the ladder again and kept backing up once his shoes hit carpet.

[foolishwren]

"I feel like the roof's gonna cave in any second, holy shit. Lemme down."

What happened next would not reassure him at all.

Because instead of human hands, or even a pair of giant black claws sticking out of a paw the size of a Christmas ham, what clamps down on the edge of the trapdoor is a set of tiny obsidian goblin claws.

[toothaches]

"Woah!" Maurice threw his hands up and stood his ground. "Woah, Heather, you're doin' the bird thing! Please don't catch my house on fire!"

Though those claws didn't look quite like they could deadlift him straight off the ground like they usually could...

[foolishwren]

"What? No I'm n--"

Here's the hard part about trying to climb down a ladder when A) your pant-legs are now twice as long as your ACTUAL legs, and B) you don't realize that your pant-legs are twice as long as your actual legs: you fall.

With a high-pitched holler, something roughly the size of an eight-year-old comes tumbling down the rungs and hits the floor wit a THUD.

[toothaches]

Maurice's protective streak kicked into overdrive as the small sooty goblin creature hit the floor. He rushed forward and instantly reached out for her, not caring that he'd been worried about being burned just seconds before.

"Oh my God! Are you okay? Why are you--" Really shrimpy.

[foolishwren]

Now that she wasn't actively falling, it was time to FLAIL MADLY AGAINST THE NET OF CLOTH ENSNARING HER.

"OW! What the heck!"

Incidentally, 'what the heck' sounds really silly when it's yelled in a high, squeaky voice.

[toothaches]

Maurice reached and withdrew, reached, and withdrew. He didn't want to get scratched!

"Just--hold still dedgummit!" He found her shirt collar and managed to pop it down over her-- her-- or not. "Your big dumb beak is in the way!"

[foolishwren]

"OW!"

Against all odds, Maurice managed to yank the collar down and out popped... a comically tiny black head with two oversized eartufts and a scruff of blond hair.

[toothaches]

Maurice blinked slowly at Heather. His nerves were already pulled squeaking tight, but there was just...something. The whole monster business. The less-than-pleasant adventures they'd shared in the attic before. The fact that they were MILES AND MILES away from home...the sheer absurdity of it all. And now this. And his mother's house.

He started to snicker.

And then he started to laugh.

He held his stomach and leaned forward, losing his shit over this...this SOOT GOBLIN THING that his friend had become--the friend who could pick him up by his ankles and hide shit from him on top of the fridge.

[foolishwren]

The little blackbird imp thing gaped at Maurice for a moment, beak open in outrage.

"... WHAT! What's so funny? Stop laughing! ... Why are you HUGE?"

[toothaches]

"I'm-- I'm sorry!" He said in between bouts of laughter, but didn't sound very sorry. "I think--I think you went into the wrong attic!"

He sank to his knees and reached out for her claws so he could hold one up and show her.

[foolishwren]

"What do you MEAN, I went into the wrong--"

And then the words died in her throat as her COMICALLY SMALL CLAWS were held in front of her eyes, which went very circular at the sight.

She was silent a moment.

"... What the."