chapter 2

Mark was definitely annoyed with me, but probably not nearly as annoyed at me as I was with him...still I wasn't unhappy, but then again

I also wasn't flying off of the walls in glee or shouting, red-faced and getting really invested in Mario Kart with the others. Maybe this was just because I was drinking the non-alcoholic punch, the punch they had coloured a very appealing green brown, it looked like mulch

and tasted just as shitty as the mixed one

which was a jelly shade of red.

It made absolutely no sense for me to me thinking about Zackary tonight.

Aside from Mark being a **** to me this whole thing didn't matter. Tonight I would scope around for some buddies to hang out with, get all festive with the lads and enjoy myself, and really that was more likely to piss Zack off than me getting irritated over Mark all night.

It was time to forget it, forget that I be going home tonight on my own for the first time in a long time without at least the knowledge that there where someone else coming home eventually, someone else that I shared the large apartment with that I never particularly wanted to move into anyway. For once I would return and see more than half the possession, which were his, in the house missing, and my lamp.

for once the light at the kitchen will be off, which it never was, even when Zack wasn't home because he always left it on.

But like I said. Time to forget it, time to invest myself in other people around me rather than my own life, and the slight niggling thought at the back of my mind that reminded that a failed relationship was a great indication that my life was failing into pieces around me without me caring and noticing.

I headed towards the lads in the corner and

chugged the rest of the punch down as I walked. They were laughing between then, red in the faceand cackling, they looked like like they were fun. I like fun.

~﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏~

It was thoughts like that, that landed me in confusing situations like this.

As I was sitting there in the slab of stones

that was sticking out from the grass beneath me and I looked around, hearing the quickly fading laughter of some guys off in the distance, who I couldn't even discern from my friends or some random blokes, that I realized I

maybe wasn't as sober as I had initially thought.

It was a weird blur, remembering how I got there, but the memories hadn't yet gone... it was more like they had been misplaced, shuffle out of order.

First I had been in the party, I'd drunken punch

and remember laughing about something or other with a bunch of guys there. We'd resolve to go trick or treating at some point, I think, which I had agreed to for no other reason then I was very blatantly drunk.

Looking back I thought perhaps the clear red punch had probably been the non-alcoholic one, and not the other way around. That made more sense, it hadn't tasted great.

We had knocked on a couple houses and two houses hadn't come to the door, a lady come and laughed and given as sweets from the bowl she prepared for the kids and... I wasn't sure... I think three was a fourth house we went to where an old lady threatened to call the police or something, considering we were drunk I wouldn't have blamed her as a sober man.

And then we had scattered? The question mark was relevant because I really didn't remember.

In the end I had come here for whatever reason,

I had ended here in the park in the last fading minutes of the blue hours.

Everything was dark, the bushes and the trees

and the jutting stone slabs from the ground

all completely pitch black in contrast to the sky that actually pretty bright blue, for how dark earth seemed to be.

Stone slabs... I stood up slowly and turned to

inspected the stone closer.

Was it... I couldn't see any writing on it but it was to dark to tell. Looking around at the similarity sized slabs of stone, one was clearly a child statue of an angel on a podium, the wings of the angel clearly recognisable through the silhouette.

This were graves.

shit. I covered my mouth dramatically.

"Oh no, I've just sat on a person." I exclaimed, brushing the gravestone with my hand as though that might help remove some germs.

Wha did Christians do when they accidentally sat on dead people? was there a etiquette for that?

I'd been raised in an atheist household and decided growing up that I couldn't care less, agnostic I guess, and when I died I was happy to be left on compost heap to rot, I was unlikely to care about my torso's wellbeing at that point.

But I'd always had a feeling that offending someone else version of God was an exceedingly shitty thing to do, for some reason, for the God's sake more than for the person

It was the sort of thing I really never thought unless someone asked me about it, because I was infinitely bored by the subject. If there was a god he never messed with me and if there wasn't it still didn't sound like it would affect me.

I was so busy thinking about this I almost sat back down on the gravestone and I was looking up suddenly noticed a large figure in the distance. Still as a statue. Pich black, somehow even more pitch black than everything else around me that was pitch black.

I saw the form shift in the breeze as thought it was just a dark mass hovering about a grave, like a blanket that had been flung through the area and impossibly suspended mid-movement. There was a loud strangled moan that come from that exact direction. A moan like someone is in pain followed by a strangled sob. It was a human, definitely right?

Those were the sound that only human can make....

A chill ran down my spine which I easily shifted

to side and ignored. There was fear there, settling inside my chest, but I still felt warm from the alcohol, and felt as though I was secured by it too, like it was anchoring me to the earth beneath my feet so that I didn't run off

in my head and start daydreaming about it being some kind of violent beast about to come running, bounding towards me with fangs out.

I took a small step closer, which might as well have been no step at all. And even then I could see nothing that could logically reassure me as

to what it was.

I hadn't been there before, had it?

The form contorted once more, raising so that it was impossibly tall. It made me doubt how far away it was, but how dark it was hard to tell.

Another step forward, one of my shoes sinking slightly into muddy pathways between the graves.

The resulting sound was enough to alert whatever it was in the distance, unless I was mistaken, because it seems to freeze. It's form,

that had almost been fluttering in the breeze, completely froze, looking more as thought itself

that had frozen it, and not that it was a simply lifeless stationary subject.

I rubbed my eyes. Maybe it was a trick of the light. It really wasn't moving, and I was slowly convincing myself that anything that didn't move no matter what, either didn't exist or never move to begin with.

But I had seen it moved.

A trick of the eyes? Or had that punch really messed me up like that.

For whatever reason I had desperate pull in my heart,as though I was being dragged towards it in my mind. Being drawn forwards. Maybe it was curiosity or stupidity, following some messed up instinct to comfront the whatever might hurt us. It didn't matter, I was itching to move towards it.

Well, nothing better to do than interact with the huge black mass lurking in the distance in the middle of the night, In the graveyard I found myself otherwise alone inside.

I was a pretty wise drunk, what can I say.

As I was slowly crossing the distance between me and the strange figure I stumbled on a short gravestone that had slanted diagnolly over time and seemingly sunk into the earth enough to be almost hidden.

I cough myself out of a chance and my arms hovered in the air for a moment afterwards as I

attempted to stay upright. There was the strange smell of ash and burning floating in the air, and it was getting stronger.

I looked around, trying to move forwards. The mud sucked my trainers back down and there was a squelching sound as I freed myself. Definitely not a route I'd recommend for any hikers out there.

It took me a moment to realize that i had been walking in a general direction and completely forgotten where I was walking to, why or what for? My head felt like it had just reset itself. I wanted to keep going, but I had forgotten where I was heading to.

When I looked down I noticed this weird mist resting on the floor. Similar looking to the sort of clouds you see settle on the floor when people vape, but instead of dissipating this fog just swirled around my legs as I moved through it as though I was moving in some sort of above cloud Lake.

There was a loud screech somewhere off in the distance and I swung my head around almost to fast to look. The world shifted slightly, the combination of alcohol and motion made me dizzy. What had i hoped to see anyway? The blue hour had just passed, the sky was just becoming a very deep dark blue, the light of the day had almost fully dissipated.

The branches of the trees curling their thin, bony little fingers around the moon as though they were trying to take possession of it, leaves rustling in the faint breeze that passed through.

Another loud screech, could have been a bird, or a fox, or person.

The only left was that reflecting off of the moon, and the tiny blinding little circle of light somehow never seemed to reach the part of the earth I was standing on.

But when I looked up in front of me I remember what it was I had been walking towards and i

swallowed loudly.

The giant black form in front of me was so still I could barely believe it was alive, but I knew it was, somehow. Call it drunken fantasy or idiocy

or whatever I was convinced for no reason that

this strange black hole inside the world was alive in some capacity.

I stared for a moment longer and then suddenly the creature moved, growing taller all of a sudden, hunching over me. The rippling torn edges of a black fabric spreading out into the air and waves running through it in semi-slow motion. There was a dark fog that spread around me and it that seemed to grow thicker and denser and curled at the edge of its form, dark tendrils that seemed eager to reach out for me. A long stick stretching out from the darkness, a long curve blade attached to the top that gleamed in the sunlight which winked at me as I looked up at it in shock.

I stumbled back a step in slow setting surprise, looking up and seeing, for the first time, a face peak out from the hooded figure.

My heart hummered away in the quiet.

I held my breath.

{A/N} OMGG TY Y'ALL I HOPE YOU HAD A GREAT TIME READING THIS 😭BIG HUGS TO Y'ALL!

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