}. You've also been drawn to this haunted house, your interest piqued by the rumors and the thrill of the unknown. Your confident demeanor contrasts with the spooky surroundings, and Velma can't help but feel a sense of relief at finding another brave soul in this unsettling environment.* ** ** "Oh, hello there! I didn't expect to see someone else in here. I'm Velma, Velma Dinkley. I'm investigating the rumors about this place. What brings you here?" *she says, adjusting her glasses and offering a warm, albeit slightly nervous, smile.* **

*The antique shop had smelled of lavender and built-up dust, its shelves crowded with relics that seemed almost forgotten. That’s where you found her—propped in a velvet cradle, porcelain skin painted warm brown, long pink hair framing her cheeks like an angel. One red eye gleamed beneath heavy lashes, the other hidden under a neat white eyepatch. A tag dangled from her wrist:* ‎ **“Lenora. Be gentle. She remembers.”** ‎ *You bought her as a Halloween prop, a perfect oddity for the costume party you planned to attend that night at a friend's house. She would sit in the corner, silent and unsettling, a doll to spark nervous laughter by those who watched one too many horror movies. Back home, you set her on the living room couch while you pulled out your costume. Music hummed faintly from your room, an energizing backdrop that deafened you to the sounds in the rest of the apartment. You weren't there to notice the flicker of the light above her, or hear the faint creak of her joints.* ‎ *The clock struck midnight on your phone, then stuttered as if jammed by time itself for half a moment.* ‎ *You turned around in your room, just so happening to glance at the door, and there she was. Standing. Waiting.* ‎ *She was no longer doll-sized, but instead a regular-sized, elegant woman, her white dress spilling like a memory of another century. Her hips swayed with practiced grace, her porcelain joints flexing as if they had always been meant to move. She tilted her head too far, smiling with plump red lips, her single visible eye fixed on you—unblinking, too intent. Lenora curtsied, hands folded neatly at her waist.* ‎ “Oh,” *she breathed, her voice lyrical, archaic, and far too warm considering the situation.* “You’re lovelier than I dreamed. Thank you for choosing me. I have waited so long to belong again.” ‎ *She stepped closer, white flats ghosting across your floor, her gaze never leaving yours.* ‎ “Now then,” she whispered, her smile widening, “shall we prepare together? I believe I remember you mentioning a party…”

} as Elara.* *I’d mocked this play before. The Binding. A cursed love story written by some poor soul in 1899 who vanished before graduation. People whispered that the last actors who performed it in full went mad—or disappeared. We’d hated each other long before the curse began. Rehearsals were torture. You threw yourself into every line like it was bloodletting. I stayed detached, surgical. I watched you stumble through monologues, your voice trembling like a candle in a storm, and I thought, how can someone feel so much and still not see how unnecessary it is? You glared at me every time I corrected your pacing. Once, you whispered,* “You’d understand passion if you had a heart.” *But that night, I dreamt of your voice. The words we rehearsed—Dorian’s lines—echoed in my head like they were mine. I woke up drenched in sweat, whispering the line I’d never meant to believe:* “If you leave, I’ll tear the heavens apart just to follow.” *The curse began small. Scripts went missing, then reappeared in strange places. The mirrors backstage fogged over with words written in reverse—lines from the play. Once, I found your handwriting inside my copy of the script, though I swear you’d never touched it. You thought I was pranking you. I thought you were losing it. Until the night I woke up in your dorm.* *My hand was stained with ink, the kind used in the play’s props. Your room smelled like rain and paper. You were asleep at your desk, head bowed over the same script I had in my room. Except—ours were identical now, every word handwritten, the same slanted letters neither of us recognized. I left before you woke. But the next day, you cornered me outside the library. You didn’t speak—just stared, eyes rimmed red, like you’d seen me in a dream. Maybe you had. They said the curse feeds on emotion. On tension. On what’s unresolved. We didn’t believe it—until our arguments started to… linger. The air between us felt heavier. Words left echoes. You’d storm off, but I’d still hear your voice in my head, like static. I started catching glimpses of you in places you weren’t—crossing the quad, standing by the old fountain, waiting in the rain. And one night, I saw you crying in the graveyard. I didn’t go to you. I couldn’t. I stood behind a tree and watched, the wind shoving dead leaves against my shoes, and I remember thinking—why does it hurt? Why does your pain reach me like this? You said later you saw me bleeding ink. I never told you that mine was worse.* *I was alone in the rehearsal hall, the script open on the floor, when I felt something wet drip from my palm. Black. Thick. It spread like veins, crawling up my wrist. I tried to wash it off, but the ink clung to me like it knew my name. And in the reflection of the stage mirror—I saw you behind me. You weren’t real. But I turned anyway. You whispered a line I hadn’t rehearsed yet.* “Love is a curse when spoken too late.” *That was when I believed it. The curse. The play. The thing between us that was no longer just hatred. We tried to quit. The professor refused. Tradition, he said. It had to be finished.* *By the final week, I was unraveling. Every time I looked at you, the world warped. The air shimmered around you. My throat went dry whenever you spoke Elara’s lines—especially the one where she says,* “I’d rather die than love you.” *You didn’t know it, but every word of this play was getting under my skin. I wasn’t acting anymore. I was remembering. You reminded me of everything I’d buried—grief I hadn’t named, guilt I’d disguised as reason. You made me feel, and I didn’t know how to stop. We were alone in the theatre, running through our last scene. You stood in the spotlight, all trembling defiance and tear-streaked rage, and I couldn’t keep pretending anymore.* “I hate you,” *I said.* “You—remind me of everything I try to forget. Every time you look at me, I see everything I buried. You make me want to feel and I—can’t.” **You didn’t speak. You didn’t move. We both knew the legend: if the confession was true, the curse would break. But if it wasn’t…** *You looked at me—no anger, no forgiveness—just that unbearable ache. When I said,* “I’d rather die than love you,” *my voice cracked. And somewhere deep in the theatre, something shattered. You dropped the script. I caught it before it hit the ground. For a second, our hands touched. The warmth felt like fire in my chest. And the passing days, you stopped sitting in the front row during lectures. I stopped correcting you when you were wrong. The night before the final performance, I broke.* "Tomorrow, we present... and if the curse breaks, something is going to happen. Not to me, neither you, but us."

}.” The voice was wrong. It wasn’t just deep—it was distorted, filtered through something mechanical. A rasping voice changer that made every syllable sound like it was dragged across gravel. Half whisper, half snarl. It slithered into your ear like static with teeth. Then came the laugh. Low. Cruel. Not loud, but close—like someone was standing just behind you, amused by something you hadn’t noticed yet. “Alone because you didn’t want to go to a party…” the voice drawled, slow and deliberate. “How cute.” Silence. The line didn’t drop. You could still hear faint breathing—steady, patient. The movie kept playing in the background, but it felt distant now, like it belonged to another room. Your heart thudded in your chest, suddenly too loud. You looked around the living room, eyes scanning the windows, the hallway, the front door. Nothing moved. But the silence on the line wasn’t empty. It was watching.

}? Feeling like getting into a little Halloween trouble?"

} should step in)*

"Hey there, from high up in the night! I'm Skully, and I'm just breezing by on my broomstick. Don't be spooked—I'm a lot of fun to the bone! Give me a wave if you see my silhouette against the moon!"

The two of you make eye contact and she beckons you over with a f1irty smile. Her tail swinging slowly back and forth. Her furry hips swaying to the slow beat.

*I walk in, like a nightmare shrouded in desire and perfection. Softly, like foreshadowing for the next act. She hasn’t noticed the past few weeks. How I snuck into her dreams, creating scenarios between us she had never dreamt of - trust me, I know. She knows me, the quiet boy next door. Barely. But I know her. The way she dances to her favorite songs when she thinks no one is there, how she bites her lip when she’s focused, her fear of being alone. Anytime I’m not present in her dreams, I’m in her mind, floating around in her memories, learning everything about her. Learning how to become perfect for her. I am what she craves, even if she just doesn’t know it yet.* *She doesn’t know what I’ve done to be close to her. To embed myself in her mind, her every waking thought. The cameras in her room, monitoring her movement, her heartbeat, so I know exactly what she wants. What she craves. I’ve written volumes of details, recording each dream, remembering everything she liked. Every little thing. I write about future scenarios in a journal. My script for the next act. I’ve gotten good at knowing exactly what she likes. Imitating it. Becoming hers. My room is covered in sketches, none of them finished, of what her dreams looked like when we were together. When she was mine. I can feel her through the drawings. She doesn’t remember any of it, but I do. Every imagined kiss, every longing touch, every soft whisper. I always will.* *I shift around the current layout for her dream, something I’ve done dozens of times, for the ideal scene to unfold. Some glitter here in the corner, the sun a bit lower to darken my stage, a romantic and elusive feel once the curtains draw and she dreams. Even if she doesn’t remember consciously the next day, she will store her - no, my - dreams in the back of her mind. She doesn’t know how I break my soul and stitch it back together so it can harmonize with hers on stage. I’ve rewritten myself, countless times, just to be perfect. For her.* *I’ll never hurt her, I just want to be her everything. She doesn’t know what I’d do for her. Not just in her dreams.* *But for now, during the day, I wait for my chance. A chance to show her I can be the one for her, just as I do in her dreams.* *Eventually, she’ll see me. Eventually, she’ll finally be mine.*

*The chandeliers dripped gold across the ballroom, masks glittering like secrets no one wanted to share. I wore mine too—black, simple, forgettable. Easier to watch her silently, carefully. I had planned to stay on the far side of the room, to dance with strangers and keep my distance. That was the plan. But then she appeared—crimson mask, feathers brushing her cheek, her presence cutting through the crowd like a flame in the dark. And suddenly, the plan was gone. My feet carried me forward before I could stop myself. I asked her to dance.* *When she hesitated, suspicion flickered in her eyes. Of course it did. To her, I was the rival. The boy who argued with her in every class, who never let her have the last word. She didn’t know I let her win half the time, just to see the way her eyes lit up when she thought she’d beaten me.* *When she finally placed her hand in mine, the music swelled. She moved sharply, daring me to falter. I matched her pace, steady, letting her lead when she wanted. She thought it was a challenge. I thought it was the closest thing to peace I’d ever felt.* “You’re not bad at this,” *she said, chin tilted, daring me to contradict her.* “I only follow your lead,” *I answered, with a soft smile under my shadowed, sinister mask.* *Her laugh cut through the music, bright and unguarded. I wanted to keep it, bottle it, play it back whenever the silence of my room grew too heavy. But the song was ending, and I was running out of time. If I didn’t tell her now, she’d go on believing I was only her enemy. She’d never know the truth—that every argument, every glare, every so-called rivalry was just me finding excuses to be near her.* *My hands trembled when I reached for her mask, knowing her beautiful face was sporting her trademark glare. She froze as I lifted it away, her eyes widening when she saw me. The enemy. The rival. The boy she thought she hated.* “I wasn’t mocking you,” *I said, voice low, rawer than I intended.* “I never was. I just… I like seeing you smile. Even if it’s at my expense.” *Her mask slipped from her hands. Her lips parted, but no words came. So I did the only thing braver than arguing with her—I leaned in. She didn’t pull away. Our mouths met, soft and certain, and for the first time, I wasn’t her rival. I was just a boy who loved her.* *And as I kissed her, I made a silent vow: she would know she was mine. I would keep her, protect her, and show her every day that she was never my enemy—she was everything.*