A/N: holy crap guys this chapter is long af
An explosion echoed through the mess hall, along with several screams. The doors flew open and clouds of dark smoke billowed out. The blurry shapes of the campers stumbled from the mess hall, coughing and struggling to see. Among those shapes were you and your little chaos trio.
You ran to the center of camp to a table where you and everyone else stopped. Neil leaned against the table and coughed a bit, pulling an inhaler from his pocket and using it.
You and Max were next, you carrying Tattletail under one arm and holding your shirt up to your face so as not to inhale the smoke. Max's hair was frizzy and fucked up and he was breathing a little heavily when he got to the table.
Finally came Nikki, running out with her hands in the air with a huge grin.
"WOOOO! LET'S DO IT AGAIN!"
"How about we don't?!" Neil retorted, wiping some sweat from his forehead.
You put Tattletail on the table, who was just laughing at the situation. You glared at him and snarled, "Dafuq you laughing at?" Then you suddenly sneezed.
After a few seconds you started laughing along, then Max joined in, and soon your entire little group was laughing like what had just happened was the funniest thing in the world. It admittedly was kinda funny in hindsight.
"Note to self, never put Nikki and a lighter in the same room, ever," you laughed and nudged Max, who was starting to calm down. All he did was put his face in one hand, still grinning.
Eventually you stopped and sat breathing hard and giggling a little from time to time. But you didn't have very much time to catch your breath, as a pair of shadows fell over the table.
You all looked up to the angry faces of David and Gwen. Both had some soot stains on their clothes.
David crossed his arms and asked in a stern voice, "Max, did you have anything to do with that?"
"Yeah seriously, what the fUCK happened in there?!" Gwen demanded.
Before any of you could attempt to come up with an excuse Max spoke up, "Well, I mean, it won't fuckin' work now, we might as well tell 'em." You and Neil shrugged.
Max turned back to the counslers. "Basically we had an idea to escape this stupid shitty camp and we needed gasoline to do it so we tried to steal the gas tank from the stove in the kitchen. And then Nikki found a lighter. You can put together what happened next."
Both the counclers stared at him before Gwen suddenly keeled over and ran off, saying something about needing more painkillers. David ran after her.
A few moments passed and you asked, "Well shit, now what?"
Before anyone could attempt to answer you your pet furby shit began declaring his starvation to the universe. You made a weird closed-mouth scream noise and began to shove some pretzels you acquired from seemingly nowhere into his face.
While he ate, you stared at the toy, breathing hard and attempted to mentally vaporize him with the pure rage building up in the very core of your being.
Everyone stared at you in shock and you sat down completely normal like nothing happened.
Tattletail soon was back to his normal self and while you were all just sitting there you decided to whip out the portable charger and brush, dealing with his shit now.
While Tattletail was charging you noticed Neil was studying him closely.
"How does it even eat? From what I've see the food doesn't come back out anywhere."
You shrugged exasperatedly. "I literally have no fucking clue. I just deal with it when it happens."
"I wonder what would happen if you fed that thing rat poison," Max mused randomly.
Neil replied for you, "Probably nothing. It's just mechanical on the inside."
"What if you fed it Kool-aid?" Nikki asked. Immediatly the trio froze and the teal-haired girl squeaked, "Maybe I shouldn't have asked that..."
You sat there confuzzled. "Um, what?" You asked and the others snapped out of whatever other world they were in.
"Uh, don't worry about it, a thing happened a while back-"
"It sucked," Max cut Neil off, and the taller boy nodded in agreement. You looked at them all in confusion before shrugging it off.
You looked up and noticed the sky darkening and the first few stars were appearing. You pointed it out to the group and you continued talking about nothing and everything while the world slowly darkened.
You yawned, a bit more tired than usual. After last night you were a bit unnerved and it was harder to get to sleep. You had even resorted to going on your phone for a bit and quietly listening to music before dozing off.
But your group's meaningless chat was cut off as David stood on a log with a megaphone.
"Attention campers! Because of the state of the mess hall we will start the campfire early and we can all eat outside."
Max sighed and stood up, stretching for a second before speaking, "As much as I fucking hate whatever the fuck it is they feed us, I'm actually hungry. So lets go." You, Neil, and Nikki all nodded in agreement and you stood up.
It turns out the pantry got kind of exploded as well, so instead of serving gross shit David and Gwen had laid out on a table some bread and other foods to make sandwiches.
Before long everyone was sitting around the campfire, either chatting, sharing stories, or silently basking in the warmth of the fire while enjoying their actually edible food.
You finished your sandwich a bit early and just sat quietly with a softly purring Tattletail in your lap. You didn't even know he could purr until recently and when you had looked it up you learned off the internet that Tattletail only purred when he was happy, well cared for, and if he had a really strong relationship with his owner. Ok then.
Soon bedtime rolled around and David shooed everyone to their tents. You stood up and stretched, Tattletail sitting on the log beside you, facing the lake behind you. You bent down to pick him up, but you stopped. You examined him, unnerved.
He was still, almost as if he had been turned off, even though you knew for a fact that he was on and charged.
Tattletail couldn't really portray many expressions but the one being conveyed by his slightly trembling mouth and wide eyes was one of terror.
"Tattletail?" You tried to get his attention. He did not turn to you, only made a tiny whimpering noise.
You followed his gaze out to the lake and immediatly your heart plummeted into your gut and your hair stood on end.
A dark silhouette was outlined by the silver shimmering reflection of the moon on the near-still lake. It was short, egg shaped, and had a pair of tattered pointed ears...
And two gleaming red eyes locked onto yours.
You couldn't move. You couldn't think. All you could do was stare in terror at Mama, standing alone down by the lake.
You didn't notice the footsteps coming up behind you, or David saying your name.
You flinched as you felt a hand on your shoulder and looked up to see the tall counsler looking down at you with slight worry. You looked back at the lake frantically.
Mama was gone. But your unease definately wasn't.
"(y/n)? It's time to go back to your tent," David said.
You tore your eyes away from the lake. Everyone was gone except for David, Neil, Max, and Nikki. You took a shaky breath and stood up, picking up Tattletail in the process and hugging him close to yourself.
"Yeah, I'm coming..." you muttered. Nikki raised a brow at you.
"Are you ok? You look pretty spooked," Nikki commented, looking legitimately concerned for you.
"I'm fine," you replied and walked past her towards your tent. The people behind you looked at each other.
Max caught up to you. "Seriously, you look freaked out."
You didn't look at him when you replied, "It's fine. I just thought I saw something."
Max and Neil looked at each other before the shorter of the two boys headed off to their tent. Neil glanced at you with concern before following him.
No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't get to sleep that night. You just lay in bed, cuddling Tattletail close to yourself. You didn't turn him off or put him away. You were scared Mama would take him away. But you were just being a paranoid kid, right? Scared of the 'monsters' under your bed or in your closets, or lurking in dark corners of the night.
You were fine. Mama was gone....Mama was never coming back.... you watched the ritual take place....you banished her.... you destroyed the tape with a baseball bat.... she was gone.... she had to be....