Bonfire - Spooky Ghost Stories ((open))

by **Kay Haddock** » Fri May 01, 2015 12:47 pm

Kay is wandering around the area around the bonfire, looking for people to gather around one of the smaller fires to tell ghost stories, because that's what you do.

((way open, hop in for 2spooky, hook-handed, phonecall-from-inside-the-house fun times))

by **Blaine Slinger** » Fri May 01, 2015 1:08 pm

Blaine had been sitting by himself for a while, but headed just outside where the circle would be around the bonfire.

by **Haley Crusek** » Sat May 02, 2015 8:57 am

Haley narrowly avoided tripping over Blaine, her face buried in her phone.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry!" she yelped.

by **Blaine Slinger** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:01 am

Blaine blushed, looking at the ground. "Ts'OK."

by **Graham Jaeger** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:18 am

Graham suppressed a snicker at Blaine's discomfort as he took a seat.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sat May 02, 2015 12:45 pm

"Hey, come over here!" Kay waves at Blaine with a big smile. "We're gonna tell ghost stories!"

by **Haley Crusek** » Sat May 02, 2015 1:33 pm

"Oh hell yes!" Haley grinned at Kay, before offering Blaine a hand up. "C'mon over with me, cutie."

by **Emily Inque** » Sat May 02, 2015 8:58 pm

"What is a 'ghost story'?" Emily asks. It was hard to tell with her monotone voice, but she seemed to be slightly more curious then sarcastic for once.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sat May 02, 2015 9:09 pm

"It's any story that is spooky or scary. Doesn't have to have ghosts, but it should be scary." Kay explains cheerfully. After being Miranda's pop-culture guide she doesn't seem too surprised that someone might not know something that obvious.

by **Emily Inque** » Sat May 02, 2015 9:15 pm

"Do they have to be fictional?" Emily asks.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sat May 02, 2015 9:37 pm

"Of course not! They're all totally true." she says, winking at Emily.

by **Emily Inque** » Sat May 02, 2015 9:39 pm

"Well, I do not know anything particularly scary," Emily says, "But I would still like to join you, if that is alright."

by **Blaine Slinger** » Sat May 02, 2015 10:06 pm

Haley Crusek wrote:"Oh hell yes!" Haley grinned at Kay, before offering Blaine a hand up. "C'mon over with me, cutie."

"Who, me?" Blaine said, pointing at himself.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sat May 02, 2015 10:18 pm

"Yeah. Everyone. You don't have to have a story, you can just listen if you wanna."

by **Haley Crusek** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:12 pm

Blaine Slinger wrote:
Haley Crusek wrote:"Oh hell yes!" Haley grinned at Kay, before offering Blaine a hand up. "C'mon over with me, cutie."

"Who, me?" Blaine said, pointing at himself.

"Yeah, you!" she said, tugging him him forward.

by **Emily Inque** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:15 pm

"Who is going to start?" Emily asks, feeling the need to establish some structure. "I can retrieve a conch shell if it will help."

by **Kay Haddock** » Sat May 02, 2015 11:36 pm

"Nah. I can go first." she says and leans forward so the fire can cast her face in flickering shadows. "There's this story of a girl who everybody only called the Yellow Ribbon Girl because of the yellow band she always wore around her neck with a nice tie in the front. She met a boy one day and he asked her to take it off, but she said no. He ends up asking her to the school dance and again he asks her to take it off but she says no. A couple years later he proposes to her and they get married. On the wedding night he asks her again and she says no. They have kids together and grow old and when the girl is lieing on her death bed she tells her husband that he can take the ribbon off now. So he does and as he unties the ribbon the girls head slowly rolls off her shoulders and to the floor!" she finishes, putting on her best spooky voice for the last sentence.

by **Emily Inque** » Sun May 03, 2015 12:05 am

Emily nods, "Long term relationships and the idea of having a family is rather terrifying, ma'am. An excellent story."

by **Kay Haddock** » Sun May 03, 2015 12:12 am

"What? No, she was dead the whole time! With, like, her head being all tied to her neck stump."

by **Emily Inque** » Sun May 03, 2015 1:14 pm

"You believe that dead people are frightening, ma'am?" Emily asks. "Many of my best friends are dead."

by **Kay Haddock** » Sun May 03, 2015 1:28 pm

"Well yeah. Go ahead, that sounds like a great spooky story." she says, assuming Emily is setting up a story.

by **Haley Crusek** » Sun May 03, 2015 2:35 pm

"I loved that story, Kay! My dad used to tell me that one!"

by **Graham Jaeger** » Sun May 03, 2015 3:14 pm

"Wait... how exactly does a zombie girl have kids?" Graham asked.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sun May 03, 2015 3:18 pm

"That's part of the spooky part! They might be creepy ghost children." she wriggles her fingers, encouraged by Haley's praise. "Tieing heads to corpses because they miss their moooom. Dang, that'd be a much better story, actually." she laughs.

by **Blaine Slinger** » Sun May 03, 2015 4:56 pm

Blaine just looked down at the dirt. He never knew how to handle these sorts of things.

by **Emily Inque** » Sun May 03, 2015 5:34 pm

"I will gladly tell a story, ma'am," Emily says. "Although, I must apologize. None of the stories I know are fictional and they are not particularly frightening."

"In the nation of Madripoor, my home country, there is no law. People live and die according to the whims of the rich and powerful. Lives are bought and sold in the shadows of back alleys," Emily says. "I know those shadows intimately. I was raised in the shadows of Madripoor and I know their stories."

"This is the butcher's story," Emily says. "Many people call him a monster. They did not know him. His name was Hadi and he owned a small butcher shop in Low Town. Life was hard and he had difficulties paying the money the Jade Hand demanded for protection, but he was happy. He had a beautiful wife and daughter. He was kind to his neighbors and they were kind to him. Some nights there was no dinner, but they were rare and his family was never starving. He was happy."

"Then his wife got sick. The medicine was expensive and Hadi could not afford it. He stopped eating. Money for medicine, money for his family to eat, protection from the Jade Hand. What else could he do? He lost fat. Muscle. Soon he was nothing but a skeleton wrapped in a tight thin layer of skin. His eyes and cheeks were hollow and his fingers looked more like claws. His daughter cried and begged him to let her go hungry, but what kind of father does that? His wife begged him to let her die, but what kind of lover does that?"

"Then one night, the Banner Men killed all of the Jade Hand in their beds. The streets ran thick with the blood of one gang replacing another. Hadi didn't even notice at first. They were just a different mask on the same monster," Emily says, "The next day, the Banner Men came for a visit. They demanded twice the money Hadi usually paid for protection. He didn't have enough. And so they destroyed the butcher's shop."

"He had nothing," Emily says. "No food. No money. He went home and cried next to his wife. She asked him what was wrong. He did not tell her at first, but she was stubborn and he could not lie to her."

"She told Hadi, 'The gods, they will provide'. She dried his tears and kissed his forehead. Then she told him to go and find their daughter so they could face this as a family."

"He carried his daughter home in his arms. She held on tightly. Cradled in his skeleton arms it looked like Death himself was carrying the girl home," Emily says. "He set her down at the table and went to see his wife. He found her dead on the bed. She had cut her throat with one of his knives. The bed was covered in blood."

"His daughter did not go hungry that night. Or the next," Emily says. "There was plenty of meat for her. For a little while at least. The girl mourned her mother for a little while, but it is Madripoor. There are only two types of people: the survivors and the dead."

"The Banner Men are gone now. They disappeared from Low Town, one at a time, and now even the most dangerous gangs do not dare come anywhere near Hadi's butcher shop," Emily says. "But he's still there. The skeleton man with a sharp cleaver is still feeding his daughter and when she gets old enough she will inherit the shop from him."

"It is a family business, after all."

by **Kay Haddock** » Sun May 03, 2015 5:55 pm

Kay is too focused on not bursting into spikes to suppress an undignified squeak at the story.

by **Haley Crusek** » Sun May 03, 2015 6:00 pm

Haley had actually put down her phone early on in the story and stared open-mouthed at Emily.

by **Emily Inque** » Sun May 03, 2015 6:29 pm

Emily sighs, "Now I simply feel homesick."

She finishes roasting a marshmallow and eats it right off the stick. The bits of marshmallow fluff that stick to her face are plainly visible against her ink-black skin.

by **Graham Jaeger** » Sun May 03, 2015 6:56 pm

Graham stared as well.

Holy shit that's fucked up.

by **Kay Haddock** » Sun May 03, 2015 7:14 pm

"That was a good one, Emily!" Kay squeaks out maybe a bit too enthusiastically, trying to cover up the fact that she's kinda spooked by the story. "Sure beat mine." she says and fumbles for the marshmallows, taking a couple tries to properly spear them on her stick.

by **Blaine Slinger** » Mon May 04, 2015 12:56 am

Blaine had turned a little pale during Emily's story, and looked out away from the fire, back towards the main buildings.

by **Haley Crusek** » Mon May 04, 2015 9:55 am

Haley scooted closer to Blaine, and then whispered to him telepathically, "She is so strange...but I've like...heard stories about that place...do you think that shit was really real

by **Blaine Slinger** » Mon May 04, 2015 4:10 pm

Blaine shot up, looking around for the source of the sound inside his head. He apparently had not quite grasped the idea of telepathy yet.

by **Emily Inque** » Mon May 04, 2015 5:23 pm

"Thank you, everyone," Emily says. "Your approval means the world to me."

by **Haley Crusek** » Mon May 04, 2015 8:43 pm

Haley smirked and nudged Blaine, tapping her forehead. "It's just me. I don't bite, cutie."

by **Kay Haddock** » Mon May 04, 2015 9:51 pm

"Alright, anybody else wanna tell one? Emily's gonna be tough to beat, so maybe something a bit less intense?" she puts on a brave smile. She's unaware of the mental discussion but notices that Blaine does not look too happy and she figures it's because of Emily's story. Partially because she's pretty spooked herself and would prefer a more goofy-scary story herself.

by **Blaine Slinger** » Mon May 04, 2015 10:36 pm

Haley Crusek wrote:Haley smirked and nudged Blaine, tapping her forehead. "It's just me. I don't bite, cutie."

Blaine's eyes widened, understanding.

Embarrassed, he looked away again, though whether that was because of the telepathy or because a girl was talking to him was hard to tell.

by **Haley Crusek** » Mon May 04, 2015 10:43 pm

Blaine got somehow the distinct mental impression of a wink and a grin from Haley though he wasn't even looking at her. She turned her attention to the crowd, using her TK to subtly cut off a bit of air to the fire and dim it ever so slightly.

"I think I know one," Haley offered, trying her best to sound spooky and enigmatic. "Because it happened to me..."

by **Emily Inque** » Tue May 05, 2015 12:59 am

Emily stares at Haley, giving her complete unblinking attention to the storyteller.

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