Devil's Night: The Hunt for Laughing Jack

II: DANSE MACABRE (Pt. 4)

The killer looked up. There was a definite competitive glint in his blank, soulless eyes.

"Got any fives, Smiley?"

Jaw tightening and eyebrow twitching, Smiley plucked three cards from his fanned-out hand. He slid them over BEN's tunic-covered back, and Jeff cheerfully yanked the offering from his white-knuckle grasp.

"Hooked and booked!" he flaunted his new cards, plus the one he had already had, smacking them facedown on rear side of the BEN table.

The table squeaked in surprise and wiggled. They ignored him, too deep in the game to see an inch past their opponent's cards.

Smirky, who had so far stood back and watched with a mixture of disbelief and disapproval, seemed to have the same idea as Dark Link and cut in with a blunt, impatient reminder about where they were supposed to be going.

They ignored him too.

"So, it's my turn again." The killer peeked over his remaining cards deviously.  Do you have-"

"Be careful what you say, Jeff. I can steal your pancreas in your sleep," Smiley said quietly.

(quick as lightning, his brother dropped to a knee as though he'd spotted a lucky penny.)

Under fire within the not-so-good doctor's dangerous glare, and oblivious to all else, Jeff kicked at the leaf-strewn ground and said meekly:

"Uuuuh... any sixes?"

"Go Fish."

The next thing anyone knew, their cards went flying. BEN shot to his feet and ran in circles, screaming incomprehensibly until his incomprehensible screams became comprehensible to their ringing ears.

It didn't make much of a difference in the unpleasantness of his intolerable, nails-on-chalkboard high-pitched tone of voice, honestly.

"AAAH! GET IT OFF ME! GET IT OFF! HELP! HEEELP! HEEEELLLLP!"

One of the swirly tree stumps, now vacated, split wide open dead center, revealing corroded wood; hundreds of thousands of slimy worms squirming inside like a mush of lamb brain.

Smirky knelt by the fallen cards, and the ones who saw him do so assumed he was picking them up to throw away, preferably into in the heart of some deep dark, dense thorny bushes. Being gentle as a feather, he scooped his hand over the moist soil and flimsy dirtied cards until a brown spider caught onto his palm and clung like morning dew.

All attention went to the ruckus-causing blonde elf, who performed the 'ol duck and roll, and kept on rolling.

"EW! EW! EW! CREEPY CRAWLY!"

In the echoing distance, a pine tree fell. Crows took to the twelve o'clock sky in a mad rush of cawing and flapping wings, alarmed by the disturbance of gnashing branches.

( caw! haw! haw! )

Haggard feathers, dipped in a witch's black brew, drifted and spiralled to the forest floor.

BEN's face met in a collision with one such feather.

"A-A... ACHOO!"

Smiley and Jeff simultaneously stuck out a leg each and caught his rolling form under their feet. The pebbles he'd disturbed along the way kept on going. The little elf grabbed Smiley's shoe and grovelled until he got his full, irritated attention.

"What seems to be the problem?" the not-so-good doctor asked nonchalantly, eyes glowing eerily in the shadow of his face when he looked down. Filled with distain for the pitiful creature he was.