Fucking analog timepieces.
An aimless gaze directed outside the window revealed the scenery hadn't changed in the slightest over the course of the last minute. The date was October 30th, the time was -- something, and the location was the Hotel Real just off of the Plaça Revolucionària. His phone buzzed; it was an email. "Halloween Spooktacular Festivities begin at midnight!" the title read.
Fucking party organizers.
Carles glanced back at the clock on the wall, and then back at the window. It was still the exact same view of the plaça. The boy watched with disinterest as the man running the pumpkin cart in the plaça began adding decorations of witches and mummies to his vendor.
With a knock on the door Carles burst into life. With a purposeful stride the young man grabbed the water bottle on the bedside table and the coat strewn at the foot of his bed before moving to open the door.
"Hey man, are you ready to get--"
Carles froze. He had opened the door, but it wasn't his dopey friend on the other side of the doorway. Instead, a pale, gaunt man in his twenties wearing a hotel uniform stared back at him.
A heavy silence hung over the two before the uniformed man began to speak.
"I think I may have the wrong room," he said slowly.
Carles responded in an equally methodical tone: "I think you do have the wrong room."
It occurred to Carles at that moment that it wasn't the fact that he hadn't expected service that made the encounter so uncomfortable. There was something distinctly wrong about the man that was still staring at Carles without moving to leave or explain his mistake--there was something distinctly inhuman that Carles just couldn't put his finger quite on.
Carles stepped back and gave a curt wave to the intruder. "Well, have a good night--"
The man's hand had jammed itself in the door before it could close. The man muttered something from the other side but the meaning was lost in the inch of wood separating him from Carles.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" Carles responded.
The door swung open, smashing into Carles and knocking him to the floor. "Help me," the intruder repeated, shuffling into the hotel room. From his position on the ground Carles could now see that the man's right leg was bleeding heavily through the pants. As the man advanced upon Carles the boy began to realize what he had noticed before: his teeth were too pointy, his pupils too dilated, his skin too pale. As the man reached a quivering pale hand towards Carles leg there was nothing but reaction: he threw the water bottle at the man's face.
The plastic bottle burst upon contact, splashing water over the room. As soon as the water landed on the uniformed thing's skin, however, the skin began to smoke. With only a wordless groan the man froze and then collapsed, lying only feet from Carles. The room--nay, the world--suddenly felt very quiet to Carles.
He collected his thoughts for a moment before again bursting into action. Panting from terror and the invigorating rush of epinephrine, Carles grabbed his phone and a second water bottle from the counter. As he leapt over the still-smoking body, through the broken doorframe and into the hallway he made a very conscious decision not to look at the man's face for fear of remembering it.
[ Hey guys, what's cracking? I pop back in here every once in a while, but I usually leave threads half-finished when something comes up. I figured, in the Halloween spirit, that I would procrastinate for my midterm paper by instead writing an OP for what I can only describe as a very short-term thread -- I'm aiming to have this bad boy finished by the end of the weekend. In any case, let me quickly describe what this thread is: silly. The general plot is that one of your strangely under-aged military cadets has decided to attend a conference for similarly under-aged military cadets in Heirosoloa, where the ~spooky~ Halloween spirit has begun to cause havoc as people are granted magical powers, and the cadets are forced to band together to survive plot while international political shenanigans frustrate rescue plans.
I'm looking for cheesy catchphrases, bad romance, in-jokes, zombies, etc. My two requests are that you keep to the same level of technical quality that you would expect from a higher level thread, and that your posts remain internally consistent in that the tone takes itself seriously, even if the content is clearly ridiculous. That is to say, I'm looking for more dry humor than "lol XD so random"
PM me before you post please. I'll probably give precedence to people that I recognize, but if you're interested send me a PM and I'll try and get back to you as soon as possible. As I do want this to be a relatively short-term thread, activity is going to be key (although I will warn you that Halloween evening is going to be me drinking and not posting), so keep that in mind. ]
I'm looking for cheesy catchphrases, bad romance, in-jokes, zombies, etc. My two requests are that you keep to the same level of technical quality that you would expect from a higher level thread, and that your posts remain internally consistent in that the tone takes itself seriously, even if the content is clearly ridiculous. That is to say, I'm looking for more dry humor than "lol XD so random"
PM me before you post please. I'll probably give precedence to people that I recognize, but if you're interested send me a PM and I'll try and get back to you as soon as possible. As I do want this to be a relatively short-term thread, activity is going to be key (although I will warn you that Halloween evening is going to be me drinking and not posting), so keep that in mind. ]
