Chapter Text
1: Intruder
It was a dark and stormy night.
Lightning split the clouded skies, brief flashes in the shroud of black. Shards of rain pelted the city, collectively cowering indoors away from the weather’s roiling wrath. Thunder boomed, echoing across the buildings.
Squiddo mumbled and rolled over in bed, fast asleep.
Ashswag stood at the window, half-phased through, staring out across the darkened city. He sighed. Humans were such strange creatures.
With a hum, he turned away, glancing at Squiddo’s sleeping form.
A crash shook the apartment.
Ashswag’s pale outline shattered into blades of smoke, darting, searching, scanning. It didn’t take long to find the culprit.
Standing silhouetted in the doorway was a black-clad figure, hooded and masked. The door swayed against its frame, metal hanging from the lock.
Now, he hadn’t been too up to date with modern customs, but he was fairly certain that constituted “breaking and entering”, with a side of “trespassing” and “vigilante justice available”.
This was going to be fun.
The man looked about the room. This apartment didn’t seem to have much of value. Pity. Still, he moved forward on careful steps, scanning for anything he could potentially loot. There - a camera resting on its tripod, not quite gleaming, but certainly worth taking.
A shadowed figure flickered in his peripheral vision, then vanished.
He spun, throwing a cautious glance. Was that a mere trick of the light?
Whispering laughter hummed in his ears.
He was frantic now, eyes darting about the room. Every shadow seemed to conceal a ghost, every moonbeam a gaze. Furniture seemed to warp into monstrous visages, bending into watchful eyes, looming figures. Were those dark shapes on the walls hung paintings, or dried bloodstains?
Was he still in the same place? The orange wallpaper seemed to crack into gilded black mists, fluorescent lights flicking to gleaming chandeliers lit with magenta flame.
A staticky, insidious violet miasma swirled around his feet, curling around his legs, pinning him in place. Smoky tendrils wound around his body, reaching, glitching -
He awoke numb, floating in a sea of blood.
He reached for his voice and found it broken.
ḽ̴̤̙͇͛e̷̛̪̖̰̠͔͔a̷͗̉͐̊͘ͅv̴̤̠͉̭̿̕͜͝e̴͙̦̟̦̎͛͒̉̄͝,̶̫͙̈́̊̾̿̉ ̶̡͎̩̘̤̋̽̍̌̀͆m̵̱̼̪̥̟͌̈̕ọ̵͆r̸̼̪̩͆t̷͍̙̹͛̌̕͝ͅa̴̺͉̼̳̲̓̒̄̊̈́͜ḷ̶̨̰̃̏̆̍̆.̷̡̺͕̦̼̥͒̃̾̈
Echoes in his mind of something greater, something inhuman, something eldritch.
He screamed, and woke from a dream into a nightmare.
Squiddo yawned and stretched, reaching for her glasses. She turned to find herself face to face with a hovering Ashswag, which was pretty normal. Her ghostly roommate, being a ghost, didn’t need to sleep, which meant he usually waited for her to wake up. Come to think of it, what did he do during the night?
“Hey Ash, what did you do last night?”
The spectre locked eyes with her. “Traumatised and possibly killed a thief.”
Squiddo blinked. “Oh…kay.”
“He collapsed on your doormat, so I took his body to the astral plane.”
She blinked again. “Oh…kay.”
“Anyways, don’t you have work?”
She blinked again. “Yeah - oh shoot.”
2: Retail
Squiddo sighed as she stood behind the counter of her workplace, an ordinary little cafe. Normally, work wasn’t too bad, but today she was swamped with annoying customers asking for “black coffee with milk” and refusing lattes. What. That just added to her coworker calling in sick and having to cover their shift to mix into a horrible day.
“Hey! I want a cupcake!”
Squiddo plastered on her best customer service smile and turned to face the demander, a young boy of not possibly more than five. Where were his parents, and more importantly, his manners?
Apparently two seconds was too long for him, because he immediately burst into very loud tears upon the opening of her mouth. His parents (presumably) rushed over, looking furious at her for not being a supercomputer with instant processing and mind reading skills.
Some days she hated her job. Actually no, most of them. When would her YouTube channel earn her enough money to quit?
The mother scooped up her screaming child, throwing dagger-like glares at anyone who cast the briefest of glances at her son. The father straightened his tie and stormed forward, no doubt some corporate bigwig who was ready to take his anger out on the bottom of the ladder which supported his company.
God damn working in retail.
Just as she was bracing for a slew of insults, screams, and demands to speak with the manager, a screeching fizz erupted through the air.
The cafe went silent.
A glitching, gleaming, ghostly figure slowly materialised in front of her, fuzzy with static. Its low hum buzzed through the store, barely perceptible.
“Ashswag?”
The spectre grinned at the man, too wide, unnatural.
“Hello, sir. I’m here to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty.”
“So… why are you here?”
Ash shrugged, inspecting the broken coffee machine sitting on the countertop. “Followed you. Wanted to see what your work was like.”
Squiddo sighed. “So you decided to terrorise customers.”
“Hey, it was just the one! And he was being a bitch anyway.”
She paused. “Yeah, fair enough.”
3: Blackout
“Why are you learning quantum physics?”
Squiddo shrugged. “It’s interesting! Like learning about how to break the universe. Which is always fun.”
Ashswag squinted at her. “Yep. And that’s not concerning at all.”
“Anyways - ”
The room went dark.
“ - huh? Ash, was that you?”
The ghost looked around, pale form glimmering in the dimness. “Nope. Electrical fault, probably.” He sighed. “I guess I have to poke in your wires again. You know, have you considered getting new, actually working ones?”
“Nah, unless I make a video about you. Then I’d get enough money.”
Silence as Ash presumably dealt with the lights.
“Well. This is boring.”
Squiddo pulled out her phone, intent on entertaining herself via doomscrolling, but found that the blackout seemed to have cut out her wifi as well. “God damn.”
She sighed and pocketed the device, looking about the darkened room. Why did it have to be night?
In the blackness, her eyes drew shadowy shapes and flickering figures. She groaned and covered her eyes, but the darkness still weighed heavy on her, an impenetrable shroud concealing irrational fear.
Fortunately, at that moment, the lights sputtered and came back on. Her ghostly roommate drifted out of the wall, violet magic sparking.
“Fixed it - uh, are you okay?”
Squiddo looked back up. “Uh, yep! Why do you ask?”
Ash squinted at her once more. “You look pale.”
She flopped back against her bed with a groan. “Fine. I may or may not have nyctophobia.”
“Hey Siri, translate Squiddospeak to English.”
“Hey!” She sat back up and elbowed his ghostly form, which promptly dissipated into magenta smoke. “It means fear of the dark. How do you not know that?”
Ash reappeared on her other side. “Well, I have better things to do with my time than learning things. For legal reasons, that’s a joke. Stay in school.”
A surprised laugh rose from her chest. The lights still flickered, room occasionally plunged into shadow, but what better glow was there than spectral violet to light her way?