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“Agh, Halloween is so close!” Yugi gasped, spreading his arms and falling back onto the carpeted floor of his room.
“It is indeed…” Ryou was sitting up, putting another stitch into the costume he’d been preparing for the past several months. It was his take on one of his favorite characters from Monster World.
“He only gets this excited a few times a year, guys,” Tristan whispered to Joey and Téa, who sat beside him.
Yugi frowned, not ignoring the statement, but not bothering to respond to it either. His mind was already wandering elsewhere.
“I feel like there should be a game for Halloween. Ya know how we play Monopoly every Christmas?”
“Monopoly has nothing to do with Christmas,” Téa pointed out, and Yugi threw her a look.
“That’s not the point! We need a game for Halloween! What are some spooky ones?”
“Clue.”
“Catan!”
Everyone turned to look at Joey.
“What?” he asked incredulously. “Have you guys felt the atmosphere whenever we start that game? The tension!”
“He’s got a point,” Tristan agreed.
“Okay, that’s valid.”
Yugi went back to racking his mind for ideas. Clue was a good one, but it just… wasn’t it.
“Candyland!” a voice announced, as the door flew open with a crack.
Ryou was the only one who flinched, everyone else accustomed to Atem’s dramatic entrances.
Yugi almost snorted at the absurdity of Atem’s suggestion.
“What are we talking about?” the former pharaoh asked, now calmly taking a seat beside his twin, who was still sprawled over the floor.
“Yugi wants to play a game on Halloween, but he doesn’t know which one,” Téa explained.
“Ah! So Candyland is perfect!” Atem nodded.
Yugi gave him a confused look before it clicked. Candy. Pfft.
"No, thanks..."
“You know,” Bakura suddenly spoke up, barely glancing up from his sewing project. “There are some rather spooky Monster World campaigns.”
The others exchanged glances before Atem turned back to him.
“Aren’t you… not playing Monster World right now?”
He asked the question tentatively, not wanting to… hurt him, somehow. Yugi had told him, after they’d taken him in, that Ryou’s bad memories of their adventures had left him… scarred, in more ways than the physical. He didn’t really elaborate other than telling him that there were certain situations and events that the other boy would avoid.
Atem didn’t understand it personally, but he tried to be careful about it.
Ryou looked up, giving him a smile.
“I don’t think that it would bother me so much if you guys are there.”
“Alright then!” Joey grinned. “Set us up!”
Bakura then frowned.
“Actually… I left most of my equipment back at my apartment. You don’t happen to have any, Yugi?”
He shrugged in response, ghost of a grin on his face, partly because he was proud of his friend, and partly because this was perfect.
“I’m sure grandpa’s got something. We’ll make it work.”
“Okay!”
•
Candles lit the table on Halloween’s eve, and the atmosphere would’ve been spooky if the sound of candy wrappers crinkling in Joey and Tristan’s direction wasn’t quite so loud.
There were a couple bowls of the stuff around the house, and Joey and Tristan had decided to bring their own stock as well, so there were plenty of sweets to go around that night.
Bakura had informed them that the campaign would probably take about six hours. It was six o’clock right now, so Yugi hoped to be done by midnight, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up. Knowing this group, Ryou was about to get a lot more than he planned for…
Ryou was playing the “Dark Master,” or DM, for short, and had his computer out to calculate scores, as well as several dice and maps, all of which he hid behind a box, so no one could look ahead.
He knew most of the rules by heart, but he still had a stack of books beside him, just in case.
To his right sat Tristan, then Joey. Atem was at the opposite end of the table, then Téa between him and Yugi, who was directly on Bakura’s left.
It was a pretty large group, but Yugi was excited. He knew he’d probably get tired later on, but right now he was on the edge of his seat.
He knew that Ryou wrote his own versions of the campaigns—what was the story going to be? And what—
“Alright,” Bakura started, pulling out several figurines. “It’s time to choose your characters. For the sake of the campaign, you’re all going to be humans, but you can choose what class you’d like to play.”
There was a pause.
“Eh… what were the classes again?” Joey finally asked.
Ryou immediately started listing them off on his fingers.
“Warrior, Beast-tamer, Magician—“
“—I call magician!” Yugi and Atem shouted in unison. They turned to each other, eyes narrowed, before Yugi raised a clenched first in a silent invitation to rock-paper-scissors.
Atem won that one.
Yugi rolled his eyes, and Ryou took the moment of silence as his opportunity to continue.
“… Bard, Priest, Enchanter, Martial Artist, Illusionist, Thief, White Wizard...”
“I’m gonna be a Warrior,” Joey announced, grabbing his character piece and placing it dramatically in front of him.
“Didn’t see that one coming,” Tristan remarked sarcastically, taking his own piece. “I’ll be a martial artist.”
Bakura was taking notes on a pad of paper behind his box-wall, and once he finished, he looked up at Yugi and Téa.
“And what about you two?”
“There are so many different kinds of magic…” Téa commented. “I have a feeling this’ll be confusing…”
“It’s okay,” Yugi shrugged. “If you don’t like your role, you can try something else next time!”
“Very true,” Ryou agreed.
“I guess I’ll be the White Wizard,” Yugi decided.
“And I’ll be a Priest.”
“Perfect,” Ryou nodded, recording their stats in his journal, before setting it down and reaching for something else behind his box-wall.
He revealed it, spreading it over the center of the table where they could all see it: a map.
They all took a few seconds to study it, as Bakura began to set out a few other pieces to mark important locations.
“We won’t be needing this just yet,” he explained. “This is only the map of the dungeon you’ll be exploring, but you’ll start outside of the dungeon.”
“Wait—How are we gonna see it then?” Joey asked.
“I’ll describe it to you,” Ryou assured him.
His voice lowered slightly, and he grinned.
“All right. Now the fun can begin.”
•
Bakura couldn’t have known what he was getting into.
Well, really, he could have, but if he had he’d ignored it. Knowing this group, this game was going to be a lot more than he asked for.
About 3 hours later, they’d barely set foot in the dungeon and their DM was already losing it.
When Ryou’s head hit the table behind his box for the third time, Yugi decided he should probably interrupt.
“How about we take a break?” he suggested.
“That sounds like a great idea!” Téa responded, also having picked up on Ryou’s frustration.
Atem was way too into it, asking a plethora of questions and following the narrative a bit too closely.
Joey and Tristan’s behavior could only be described as obnoxious, really.
At every opportunity, they tried to attack or break whatever object they discovered, and so far all they had accomplished was destroying important maps, artifacts, and even the key that was supposed to help them move forward.
In the first two rooms.
Yugi could understand Ryou’s frustration.
“Okay, I’ll be back in a minute.” He claimed to need to grab some other supplies from his room, but Yugi knew that that meant he just needed a break from them.
“I don’t think he’ll be back for awhile…”
“Well, now what should we do?”
“We should watch a movie!” Joey announced.
“What movie?”
“A scary movie,” he elaborated, wiggling his eyebrows.
Yugi knew that probably wasn’t a good idea. Joey wasn’t very good at handling those kinds of movies… but he wouldn’t admit that, of course.
By the time that Ryou returned, it had been decided that the group would be watching a horror film from about 30 years ago.
Ryou nodded, a relieved look passing over his face as he added another couple figurines to his collection behind his box before continuing on to the living room.
“Which movie?” he asked.
Everyone was gathering in the living room, sprawled over various parts of the couch and the two matching beanbags Yugi had dragged from he and Atem’s rooms.
“Lonely Salamader!”
“Ooh, I love that one!” Ryou grinned, hugging a pillow to his chest as he settled in on the sofa.
“Really?” Téa asked, scrunching her nose.
Her vote on which movie to watch had not been considered.
Yugi finished setting it up, hitting play. The DVD player whirred as it started up, a sound that Yugi still found fascinating—though when the device had first been released he’d been so busy with his adventures he hadn’t gotten a chance to really use it. Even in the last couple years, the technology had been advancing quickly, and Yugi’s grandpa had been amassing a collection of DVDs that would one day rival their VCR collection.
The movie opened with a dissonant chord, as an old logo slowly faded onto the screen.
Yugi was pretty sure everyone had already seen this one, but it was a classic with decent rewatchability, and the campiness made it charming rather than dated, in Yugi’s opinion. And there were still a couple good jump-scares and tense moments.
Atem shifted in his spot on one of the beanbags, turning to face Yugi.
“Is there anything I should know about this one?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.
Oh yeah.
He was constantly forgetting that Atem hadn’t grown up with the same media as him; they’d been together for so long, now… and, now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen this movie in quite a few years—the last time being before he’d met the pharaoh.
“Ah… no,” Yugi shrugged. “It’s a bit old, so the effects from back then aren’t as good as they are now. And I don’t think you’ve watched a lot of horror movies, so the ideas might confuse you a little, but just try to have fun with it.”
“Horror?”
“Yeah. The movie is intentionally made to be scary. Some people like it, some don’t, but it’s a popular genre around this time of year.”
“Ah, I see…”
The logos finished, and the movie’s iconic opening began to roll.
“This is a pretty good place to start with horror, I think,” Bakura was telling Atem from his spot curled up on the couch.
“Why is that?” Atem asked.
“Shh! It’s starting!”
“You’ll see,” Ryou whispered, smiling in that sweet yet sinister way of his.
Not thirty minutes in, Ryou was already fast asleep.
They discovered this when Atem had a question about the lore, and there was no response from the boy, curled up into the corner of the couch and holding the pillow he’d had on his lap in his arms, eyes closed and breathing soft.
It was getting a bit late, and it wasn’t unlike Ryou to knock out at random times—whenever he was truly comfortable, really.
Joey, however, did not find the act so easy to understand.
“How is he asleep?” he whisper-gasped. “There’s nothing peaceful about this!”
At this point in the film, the characters were first figuring out that there was something wrong with the old town that they were visiting, and trying to find answers. It was mostly exposition.
Yugi just shook his head, smiling.
Ryou loved these movies—the creepy sounds would just help him feel more relaxed.
Téa grabbed an unused blanket and draped it over their sleeping friend’s shoulders, and Yugi took the lull in the movie’s plot as a chance to get up and have some water.
As he glanced out the window in the kitchen, he saw He was glad Halloween was over the weekend this year—it made handling homework and spending time with his friends much easier.
When he returned to the living room, the atmosphere was tense. Oh, yeah, he remembered this part being a bit nerve-wracking as a kid…
He settled back on the couch next to Téa.
Sure enough, when the jump-scare hit, Joey and Tristan flinched as though they’d been stabbed.
Atem jumped as well, though his expression quickly went from surprise to confusion, thoughts clearly whirling behind his eyes.
"Wait…”
Téa rolled her eyes.
Ryou let out a quiet snore.
Yugi loved his friends.
Eventually, Atem needed a break for an explanation, and Joey and Tristan just needed… a break. It was also about time for Téa to head home, so she bid the boys farewell and promised to meet them the next day. Yugi walked with her to make sure she made it to the bus stop safely, and when he returned Ryou stirred a little, yawning and stretching out his legs.
“Oh… I missed some…” he murmured, taking in the moment frozen on the screen.
“Want us to go back?”
“NO!” the boys shouted in unison.
Yugi shrugged and Ryou shook his head.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I’ve seen this one plenty of times before.”
Bakura shook himself awake, and aided Yugi in explaining to Atem the origins of the monster in the film, because he was still having a difficult time understanding what had actually happened.
Ryou had also read the novel that the film was based on, so he had even more knowledge than Yugi did on the subject.
By the time the explanation was over, several of the others had wandered out of the room.
Yugi wondered if it would be possible to convince them all to return to watching the film, or if their (namely Joey and Tristan’s) minds had wandered too far by now…
“You know what Atem has never tried?” Ryou asked suddenly.
“What’s that?” Yugi asked.
“Candy corn!”
“Huh… yeah…”
Atem gave them a confused look, but then the door opened, and Yugi’s grandfather stepped inside.
“Grandpa! What were you doing at the store at two in the morning?”
Solomon grunted, setting down a bag of groceries onto the kitchen counter.
“Oh, you know. Had to get some painkillers for my back. It’s been killing me recently…”
Yugi frowned. He had noticed that, but… there were a lot more bags than what was needed to carry a couple pills.
Solomon must have noticed his grandson’s gaze, because he smirked.
“I also needed to get some more candy for tomorrow, because what I had has been going missing… mysteriously…”
He eyed Joey and Tristan suspiciously, who were currently standing in the kitchen, which had previously been well-stocked for the coming night.
They both smiled innocently for a moment, before breaking down and lowering their gazes.
“We’re sorry, Mr. Muto…”
Solomon waved them off.
“No, boys, it’s quite alright. Now will you give an old man a hand with these groceries?”
They both quickly stepped in to help. Yugi figured they wouldn’t be returning to the movie in a while… He stood up to see if he could be of any help in the kitchen.
He took to one of the bags himself, and as he unloaded its contents he was surprised to find a bag of—wouldn’t you know it—candy corn resting at the bottom of the bag.
He took it out, and once he was finished putting the items away, brought the bag to where Atem and Ryou were still in the living room.
He cracked open the bag.
“Oh!” Ryou exclaimed after reading the label. “I didn’t know we had any!”
Yugi laughed.
“Grandpa just bought it! What a coincidence, right?”
Ryou frowned, once again thinking about the aliens he suspected could be writing out their story, which often seemed to work out ever so conveniently…
“Yeah…”
“So that’s it?” Atem asked, scooting away from the couch.
Ryou joined them on the floor.
He held out his hand and Atem followed suit, and Yugi shook a few pieces of the candy into their palms, before taking a couple for himself.
He popped one into his mouth, the familiar waxy, honey sweetness melting onto his tongue. Bakura and Atem copied him, Ryou smiling and Atem… processing the new flavor.
He was silent for a few seconds.
“It’s very… sweet,” he decided. “I’m not sure if I like it.”
“Not everyone does,” Yugi shrugged. “It’s a bit of a controversy, actually…”
Atem squinted, confused.
“A controversy? Seems like a silly thing to debate about.”
Yugi laughed.
“Hey Yugi! Where’d you get those?” Joey and Tristan plopped onto the floor beside the others. Apparently there wouldn’t be much controversy in this house.
The bag didn’t last very long.
。。。
They never finished the movie.
They did, however, help Yugi’s grandpa restock the candy and prepare for the coming evening.
At that point, everyone was pretty tired and ready to call it a night. Because there were so many of them, they opted to spend the night in the living room rather than one of the boy’s rooms.
While Joey and Tristan seemed content to just lay on the floor, Yugi and Ryou collected blankets and pillows.
When the infamous hot pink, fluffy pillow made it into the room, Yugi knew a war was on the horizon.
Perhaps a month ago, Atem and Yugi had gone with Solomon to buy some new curtains for the game shop from the home goods store.
While they were waiting for Yugi’s grandpa to pick out a pair, the boys had explored the bedroom section. They had already had just about everything that Atem had needed for his own room, so they rarely needed to buy anything extra for him, but little did they know— today they were going to find something that would change the room forever.
As they were strolling down an aisle of throw pillows, Atem froze, eyes falling onto a bin of pillows that looked like they belonged in a toddler girl’s room.
“What’s up, Atem?” Yugi approached him.
Atem didn't answer, instead reaching into the bin and pulling out the fluffiest, hottest-pink pillow Yugi had ever seen. It was shaped like a heart.
“Yugi… I LOVE IT.”
Solomon hadn’t had any problem bringing it home with them.
The next time Joey and Tristan had come over, initially they had made fun of Atem’s infatuation with the bright, soft, heart of fluff. Yugi knew that it was most likely because in ancient Egypt, there was no color of dye that was quite so bright. Atem was often drawn to a few specific colors, such as vivid orange and deep violet, which had led Yugi to do some research.
However, at some point it became more fun to join in the worship of the pillow, and so here they were. The boys would all fight over it whenever it was in the room, until it was settled in someone’s arms and they were declared the pillow’s “chosen.”
A similar battle ensued on this night.
The next morning…
There was a knock at the door.
“Téa!”
“Hey, Yugi!” Téa grinned as she entered the house, arms full.
“Woah! Do you need help?” Yugi quickly tried to take one of the bags from her, but he almost dropped it due to how heavy it was.
Once he’d recovered, he carried it to where she was placing the others on the kitchen counter.
“What—what is this?”
“Pumpkins!”
“Oh… that explains it…”
Téa pulled a set of tools from one of her own bags.
“I picked these up at the store, too. We can carve them if we’ve got time.”
“Sounds fun!”
“What’s… up?” Bakura joined them in the kitchen, still in pajamas and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The doorbell must have woke him up.
“Good morning, Bakura,” Téa teased. It was 2:00 in the afternoon.
When he realized that they had company, he quickly straightened up, blinking furiously.
“Don’t worry,” Yugi grinned from his spot at the bar. “It’s just Téa.”He knew she wouldn’t judge.
“Where’s everyone else?”
Yugi shrugged.
“Joey and Tristan were talking about some “plan” and Atem wanted to tag along. Who knows what they’re getting up to…”
Ryou raised his eyebrows.
“Oh dear…”
He took a seat at the bar beside Yugi.
“What have you got there?”
“Pumpkins.”
“Oh! I haven’t carved a pumpkin in years…”
(TBC I SWEAR)