Monster Month: Halloween MCYT Oneshots

Day 1- Glowing Eyes

Hello! Happy spooky month!! This first one takes place in a modern au, and is connected to 3, 6, 11, 14, 17, and 31. The word count is 464. Enjoy!

Walking home in the dark is nobody's favorite activity, and Gem was no exception. Unfortunately, she couldn't get a ride home from her martial arts class that night, and she had to walk.

Her anxiety steadily rose throughout the walk, and she held her metal water bottle tightly, on alert. She looked around warily, and could have sworn she saw a firefly in the park. Wasn't April a bit too early for fireflies?

Gem looked again at the spot, and sure enough, there seemed to be fireflies. Two, actually. The lights stayed static, though. Not blinking, or moving. And weren't fireflies a little more greenish than this golden yellow? Both fireflies went out, then lit up again, simultaneously.

A tight feeling formed in her stomach, as Gem's brain caught up to her sight, and she registered that those weren't fireflies... that was a pair of eyes.

Trying to control her breathing, Gem continued on her route. It was probably just a raccoon, or a stray dog, or... or... she didn't know. No animal she could think of seemed quite right for how those saffron eyes had bored into her soul. Gem walked faster.

She made the mistake of glancing into the next dark alley she went past. The eyes again. Were they following her? Were there multiple of... whatever they were?

Gem kept her eyes focused straight ahead, but couldn't help but notice the glowing eyes in her peripheral vision a few more times. It took all her self-control not to break out into a sprint once she got within a couple blocks of her house.

Most of the tension left her as she stepped into her home and turned the lights on, locking the door behind her. Gem went into her kitchen, pointedly looking away from the window by the sink, and turned on the tea kettle so she could drink some chamomile tea before going to sleep. By the time she went to bed, the warm tea and safe, bright, lights had helped her anxieties melt away.

Gem woke up in the middle of the night, hearing a bump against her nightstand. She saw the eyes again, bright as ever, right above her, as though whatever owned them was leaning over her as she had slept. She couldn't move. Logically, she knew that these were classic symptoms of sleep paralysis. She pushed her panic to the back of her head, focusing on falling back asleep.

As she awoke to birds chirping and sunlight streaming through her curtains, Gem knew that the thought of something being in her room that night was just silly. That is, until her eyes were drawn to the items that had fallen off her nightstand, and how the lotion tube was squashed, like it had been stepped on.