II: DANSE MACABRE
(Dedicated to Theo333 for being the most fun-loving- I mean- best mother in the world!)
(But, not officially dedicated, because it's somehow not a function on the app.)
The power is out!
Soon a second scream, doused in feminine hysteria, followed in its wake. Urgency filled Dark Link's voice as the shadow elf calmly asked for something to light.
Some fireplace tools fell over with a tremendous clatter.
One of the twins swore.
Someone thrust a bulbous jack-o-lantern into his face. Dark Link muttered a thank you, tucked it under his arm, and took a strike-anywhere match from his boot.
Fzzt! Struck against the side of his leg, the match burst alight. A glowing halo appeared in the lounge, flitting and wavering with the flame. He dropped it into the lantern, igniting the candle inside. Shadows pooled at the base of its porcelain holder.
The jack-o-lantern's mouth was stretched into an impish grin, leaking shafts of light from its slanted candescent eyes. Illuminated dust motes swirled in the air.
Satisfied by the luminosity it provided, the shade cradled the hefty pumpkin in his arms to shield it from the drought. Then, he turned his attention towards locating his companions in the dim cloak of orange-tinted highlights and shadows, a cloak which billowed as far as the naked eye could discern.
"Smirky?" his eyes scanned the lounge, picking out vague details in the sea of black. "Smiley?"
"Here." Then, murmured under breath, "Are ears supposed to ring...?"
"The poker fractured my foot. I'm sure of it," whimpered a second voice.
"Can you still walk on it?" one irritably asked the other.
"Kind of..."
"Then shut up and start walking."
Their eyes appeared first, luminous twin pairs of floating red orbs, like a terrible four-eyed monster prowling towards him. Then, their silhouettes emerged from the shadows in the same manner as stalking wolves, their identical faces flush against the dark once they were in the thick of the pumpkin's fierce glow.
It lasted for all of four seconds.
Smiley walked with a significant limp, while Smirky shoved his back to encourage him along faster. Dark Link sighed warily at their antics, and, remembering the good old days of creepypastas were long since past its prime, turned around in a start towards the stairs. All together, they ventured out of the living room, unanimously searching for the source of the scream.
Someone flipped a light switch in passing. It did nothing. The backup generator was down, too. The inhuman sound waves emitting from overhead were somehow to blame.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Three sets of echoing footsteps, one slogging behind.
"Stop clomping around so noisily. It's annoying."
"Fractures are far more unpleasant to heal than bruises, I'll have you know."
"Bruises?"
"Yes. Like the one on the back of your neck, for example. You were nursing it earlier. I've been meaning to ask if you'd like me to dab a little ointment on it to take the edge off, actually."
Smirky's footsteps screeched to a halt. His fingers flew to the nape of his neck, and skirted over the raised outline of a tender swelling.
(hallucinatory hands don't give you bruises)
"That won't be necessary." He cricked his neck, turning back to the stairs ahead. "It'll heal. Or are you undermining my healing abilities?"
Smiley made a move to place a hand on the illusionist's shoulder. But he hesitated, as if afraid of getting bitten, and jerked his arm back before Smirky could notice.
"No. Not at all."
As they climbed higher, each avoiding a notoriously creaky step along the way, a distant murmur became a ruckus.
Dark Link shushed them, setting down the pumpkin once they reached the corridor. It faced the opposite wall, projecting a tremendously large face over the peeling wallpaper.
Muffled behind a door, two people were locked in the midst of a heated argument. Something serious? The shade noticed a smiley face carved onto the door's wood.
"It's coming from Jeff's room," he whispered.
Crouching behind a sharp bend, they put their ears to use and listened. The voices were indistinct, words shouted too shrill to catch head or tail of...
Of course, this changed when the door burst open and Jeff and BEN stormed out, the latter covering his naughty bits with an empty Doritos packet while screaming blue murder at the other male.
"I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING IMPORTANT! YOUR STUPID SCREAMING BROKE MY CONCENTRATION!"
"YOU WERE SITTING IN MY CLOSET, NAKED, HOLDING A POT OF GLUE WHILE READING THIS!" Jeff waved around a book that looked like it had gotten partway stuck in a waffle maker. The only surviving (therefore legible) part of the cover said, in cute colourful letters: How To Stick ANYTHING Up There!
"TOBY TOLD ME IT HAD LOADS OF GREAT ADVICE THAT WOULD SUIT MY NEEDS!"
Smiley and Smirky positively cringed.
"WHAT 'EFFIN NEEDS!?"
"I'M GOING TO BE THE CROWN PRINCE OF DORITOS FOR HALLOWEEN; I NEED AUTHENTICITY! SO, I GOTTA GLUE A LOAD OF 'EM TO MY ROYAL GARB!"
"I DON'T SEE ANY DORITOS!"
"I GET PECKISH WHEN I READ, OKAY? AND THE GLUE POT LID GOT STUCK! IT WAS A STRESSFUL EXPERIENCE AND I NEEDED COMFORT FOOD!"
Dark Link, who had simply sunk even lower against the wall, made a growling noise and poked his head around the corner.
"FOR THE LOVE OF THE TRIFORCE, BEN – SHUT UP AND PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!"
The little elf jumped around, saw the scarlet of Dark Link's eyes, then the projected face of jack-o-lantern behind him, and screamed.
A window cracked. Smirky fell over in a daze; the thump of his limp body hitting ground shook the floorboards. To top the cake with a cherry, he fell across Smiley's injured foot.
The not-so-good doctor hollered in pain. It sounded like the howl of a savage werewolf.
As the window illustriously displayed in distorted picture - it was an unusual moon, but not a full one. Despite being able to see this clear as day, Jeff also started screaming.
Dark Link sprang from the corner and tried reasoning with him, trying to explain that it was just Smiley and Smirky making fools of themselves.
Thin hairline cracks spread across the window's glass, until it finally gave way and tumbled outwards in pieces. The shattering sound didn't help their case.
"THE WEREWOLF'S BROKEN IN! HE'S GOING TO SUCK OUR BLOOD! WE'RE GONERS!" sobbed Jeff, sinking to his knees, hugging Dark Link's legs tightly.
The shade crossed his arms and glowered at him judgementally.
"No, werewolves just kill and gobble up idiots like you for dinner."
"EVERY PASTA FOR THEMSELVES!" BEN shrieked, heroically running back into Jeff's room and slamming the door in their faces.
Smirky rolled off Smiley's leg without apology. The illusionist dusted himself down and moved along as though nothing had ever happened, though he did appear to have gone slightly deaf.
"Can you help me up?" Smiley squeaked meekly.
"I can't hear you~!" Smirky said in a singsong voice, strolling from the crime scene with a spring in his step.
In the end, it boiled down to fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes for Smiley's foot to fix itself, for Jeff to realize there weren't any werewolves trying to eat him, and for Dark Link to coax BEN into coming back outside.
Actually, the last one was a white lie. He was still trying, and even Jeff joined in.
"There is no werewolf. We're all perfectly safe."
"NO! For all I know, you ate Dark Link and absorbed his voice!"
"That doesn't even make any sense," Jeff pointed out.
"I don't care!" huffed the voice behind the door.
The shade's eyes rolled back as his forehead connected with the wall. But the minor head trauma invigorated his thinking, allowing him to concoct an ingenious solution.
"You hear that, Jeff? It sounds like the doorbell's ringing," he said slyly.
Jeff caught on at once.
"Did someone order pizza?" the crazy killer asked loudly, cupping his mouth to make sure BEN overheard him.
(p-pizza?)
"I did!" Smiley chimed in, smirking. "I ordered them with extra ham, triple cheese; the works. Shall I answer the doorbell?"
(t-them? extra ha-ham? triple cheese?)
"NOOOO! IT'S MIIIIIIIIINE!"
Bellowing a little cry, BEN threw the door open (Jeff sidestepped, missing a full-on face collision by the breadth of a hair) and tried to do a runner in his birthday suit. Dark Link swooped at once to grab him under the armpits.
"Gotcha!"
The little elf flailed this way and that like a child on a sugar rush, doing everything but foam at the mouth. "I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go-!"
"The pizza was a lie," Dark Link said evilly. "Now we're going to clothe you."
"Monster!"
"Smiley, if you would come with me please..."
"I certainly won't enjoy this, but okay."
"HOW COULD YOU!? HOW COULD YOOOOU!?" BEN banged his fists on Dark Link's arms, and even took a swing at Smiley's nose. All in vain, however.
As the shade and the not-so-good doctor spirited him away back to his bedroom to set about finding some proper clothes for the nude midget, Smirky called out after them:
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Go and fetch L.J! Use Jeff as a human shield if he wakes up grouchy!" Smiley's far-off voice instructed over the not-so far-off racket of BEN's squawking protests.
_________
The handle was a proud brass guardian, reigning with an iron-willed fist. Undefeated. And, when the impatient illusionist's knee smashed into its ancient wooden armour, unyielding.
"It's locked," Smirky finally admitted, taking a step back. "Any intelligent ideas?"
"Dunno. Brute force it?"
"There are a million tactful ways to get past this locked door, Jeff, and the first thing you come up with is breaking it down?"
"Er... well, I..."
"I love the way you think. Stand back. Or don't."
"No, wait! L.J'll skin me alive and sell my hide to pay for a new one!" Jeff pleaded, throwing himself aside. "We can talk about this!"
Smirky wore a dastardly smirk.
"You should've thought of that before you suggested it."
"I wasn't thinking straight! Let's go the window route, yeah? No danger of pissing off a grumpy killer clown by destroying his door that way. Besides, L.J doesn't deserve-"
"Oh no, Jack deserves this. For putting me through a kind of second hell. For getting on my nerves. For having the audacity to act like an idiot. And especially- especially... for ignoring me when I told him to OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!"
A rain of blows hit the hinges. Wham! Wham! Wham! All you could see was blunt metal denting, crumpling like paper.
When it weakened, the air suffered a dynamic shift as a sharp impact bashed them in. Hinges folding and snapping, the door gave out and crashed backwards.
Small shockwaves flew under their feet.
Smirky stepped on the door's corpse. That handle never stood a chance. Still smirking, he raised his head, expecting to come face-to-face with Laughing Jack's unamused scowl
The smile plummeted from his lips.
"This... This is... oh."
Jeff's costume: Alice Mare Cheshire Cat.
Artist: The wonderful LyricRoyal !