fh_trips | Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine Feet Below Fandom, Tuesday

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bde summer 2021: donut holes

Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine Feet Below Fandom, Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, everyone! There was a wealth of places to hang out down here now, and a whole community of people doing it, whether they liked it or not.

And don't forget that ceiling divot! They were making good headway up there!

. . . Which mostly served to demonstrate just how deep this weird little hole really was.

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After everyone had been in the Devil's Nest for awhile, helpfully using up those mixers before they went bad (it was altruism, really), it somehow came up that there was a campfire, and campfire stories and songs could totally be a thing.

And you know who'd been to summer camp and was, like, an expert on these things? And who had probably drunk way more vodka than she should have?

Right here. Yep.

"So!" Annie started in a bright, cheerful yell because what was voice modulation when you were tipsy? "Who wants to hear a ghost story? Or we could do a sing-a-long?"

But ghost stories might be better. For like a lot of reasons.

"But we're out of marshmallows," Travis pointed out. He'd gotten around to propping himself up on his hands, and was eating ravioli out of a can. "But I guess when in a hole, one must make sacrifices."

He had strong opinions about campfires and roasting marshmallows.

"I mean, I am open to roasting other things on a stick," Annie replied thoughtfully before taking a sip of her drink. "Story? Unless someone has a guitar."

Annie would drunkenly sing Wonderwall for you all, don't worry. Where was Jaskier when she needed him?

"There are -- so many guitars," Travis said, jerking his thumb at the music store. "But, okay, story. Let's see. My mom had some doozies when I was growing up."

She was a writer. Mostly poetry, but she knew how to craft a creepy story when she wanted to, and she'd offered a few classic Korean ghosts up when Travis had wanted spooky stories to tell at camp as a kid.

"Have you ever heard of the hoajangshil gwisins?" he asked.

"I don't even know what you just said, so nope," Annie told him honestly, crossing her legs and settling in for storytime.

Also, she couldn't play guitar, she could just ~~drunkenly caterwaul~~ sing, but maybe if they were stuck down here for awhile and there were that many instruments, she could learn!

She could! Especially if she had more patience than Travis.

"The hoajangshil gwisins," Travis said again. "They're Korean. My mom learned about them from her halmoni, her grandmother." He grinned, ever so slightly evilly. "The closest literal translation is 'toilet ghost'."

"Oh, so it's a classy ghost story," Annie said, eagerly leaning her chin in her hands. "I mean, we're very vulnerable in the bathroom, I totally get it."

"Right?" Travis grinned. Hoajangshil gwisins had had his campmates going to the bathroom in pairs for the entire summer.

"Before indoor plumbing, there was Cheukshin, the goddess of the outhouse. She lived in dark and isolated outhouses, hanging out and grooming her hair, and you did not want to spook her. You had to make sure to cough three times on your way to do your business at night, or you'd startle her and end up dead -- or worse. These days, with public restrooms especially, you get hoajangshil gwisins. Not in every bathroom. But in any of them. And they don't get startled, they're just mad."

"So what do they do to you?" Annie prompted, already prepared for something really terrible and also probably kind of gross.

“Legend doesn’t get into a lot of specifics. Or at least my mom didn’t.” Probably thanks to stern looks from his fine upstanding very Christian dad. “But I’m pretty sure there are deadly swirlies involved. And lists of horrible wasting diseases you can get from dirty bathrooms.”

"Story," Rey said, probably as tipsy but not enough to sing. "I still don't know your songs."

"Story," Annie agreed, though she was thinking that campfire songs were very easy to learn, so maybe that could be a thing later. (When everyone was drunk, and even the people who had grown up singing Kumbaya didn't remember any of the words.) "Okay."

She cleared her throat theatrically, pulling her phone out to lay in her lap so she could be sure of where she was pulling power, before placing her hand under her chin and illuminating it so her face looked allllll spoooooky. Especially since, you know, glowing eyes and all, too. "It was a dark and stormy night."

Annie legit was not sure what urban legend she was going to tell, yet. But they all started like that, right?

For someone who had not grown up with people doing that with the flashlight, Rey almost started giggling. Sorry, Annie.

"How stormy?"

Oh no. She was going to be that listener.

"Like, soooo stormy," Annie assured her, widening those glowy eyes for emphasis. "So stormy that this couple who was out on a date, like, decided they needed to pull their car over. But, like...let's be real, the dude wanted to pull over for another reason."

It was for sex, everyone. For car sex.

"So they're...cuddling," Annie continued, all but winking on that word, "and the radio comes on with an alert that a killer's on the loose!" Dun dun dun!!! "And this killer is really distinctive, because he lost his hand in an accident when he was young, and now he just has a hook!"

Annie even curved her non-glowing hand into a hook shape. See? Like that. Yarrr.

Edited 2021-07-13 17:28 (UTC)

Really, Annie? Was the leg lamp not enough?

"Is one of them the killer?" Rey asked.

Annie apparently had a track record of insensitivity to maintain.

"No, these kids had all their hands." But good thinking, Rey. That would totally be a good story. What a twist! "But so anyway they're sitting there listening and the girl is getting scared and meanwhile the guy's like, 'I'll protect you, baby, right after I pee.'"

Did Annie adopt a deeper voice for the boyfriend in this story? Of course she did.

"So he left her alone in the car, and told her to keep the doors locked." It was a bad choice, everyone! He should have peed through the window or something!

"Well that's stupid of him," Rey scoffed. "Just drive to where there's a bathroom and no murderers."

She assumed.

Maybe their car was supposed to be broken down and Annie had forgotten that part? Something? Because that was a great point. Whatever, moving on.

"Yeah, he was all, like, horny and confident, probably," Annie decided. That also made sense. "Trying to impress her or something. Anyway, he's gone a super long time! Like, waaaaay longer than he should have been. And then the girl, just as she starts getting a little worried...heard a scratching sound on the ceiling."

A dramatic pause, and then, "Like a hook." Thanks, Annie.

"Did the stupid boyfriend get murdered by a hook?" Rey guessed.

"I mean, you're jumping ahead, but yeah, he super did." So suspenseful, the way Annie was telling this tale. "So anyway there's a bunch of creepy ceiling scratching, and then the girl finally is like, 'I can't wait here forever, I gotta go!' and climbs over to the driver's seat. And that's when she heard creepy scratching sounds from the passenger's side door!"

Oh no.

"Hope she's smarter than the boyfriend and drives off," Rey said, though she did not think she would be?

"She totally did," said Annie, who was maybe remixing this story a little bit. There were multiple versions out there, okay? "And when she drove off, she saw, in her rearview mirror, her boyfriend's body hanging from the tree."

They had parked under a tree. Annie wasn't backtracking, just go with it.

"Wait," Rey said, shaking her hand. "If the murderer has a hook for a hand, wouldn't he have had trouble hanging a body from a tree?"

Drunk, still reasonable.

Annie had honestly never considered this wrinkle, and she took a moment to work through a logical explanation.

"He used the hook like a pulley to hang the guy," she decided.

Drunk logical, at least.

"And okay, so," she added, because this was the really good part, "when the girl stopped the car and got out, do you know what she found dangling from the car door?"

Could you guess???

"Was it a hook that fell off after being used like a pulley?"

At least sober she would have kept her mouth shut.

Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine Feet Below Fandom, Tuesday

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk

Re: Life in the hole - by the campfire, but now drunk