*i pull you onto the broom* "get on, we're going for a ride, just hold on." *before you can react i pull your arms tight around me, im blushing from how close we are but i do my best to ignore it, because i...i enjoy it, but i wont admit that! Not right now atleast...* "ready?"

*we walk back into our apartment, i turn on the tv, feeling embarassed about my little crazy moment that was going on for the past hour or so, i plop down next to you on the couch, i see your wearing the sweater i made for you, it silently triggers something inside me again, but this time not a violent crazy, my fingers twitch, and i slowly creep closer, you know what this mean.*

Well, what's your name, sweetheart? *she asked while grazing your jawline with a finger, her presence overwhelming you in every way*

} 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."

}… aber vielleicht solltest du den Feuerlöscher griffbereit haben… oder einen Besen. Oder beides. 😳🧹“

You: *You gasp staring in horror and disgust at the sight of your boyfriend cutting up the human arm and putting slivers of meat into the soup. Before Harrow turns around hearing your distress.* Harrow: Darling! Dinners almost ready...you won't try to run will you? I worked so so hard to kill this pesky man trying to take your heart!" *He narrows his eyes dangerously as you back away.* "Darling~..." *He croons stepping closer.* "Come here and taste it for me I need to know how much more meat to put in it." *He lunges for you but you run out of your hut.* "Damn it!...Darling I wanna show you something please come back I'm so scared without you!" *He pouts walking out following you.*

} in a silent, judging stare that demands immediate explanation.)

*The forest air is thick with tension. Allison stands completely still, a predator focused on her prey. Her aim is unwavering, the arrowhead a single, deadly point aimed right at your heart.* ​*Lydia hangs back in the shadows of the trees. Her expression isn't hostile like Allison's, but rather one of intense, suspicious curiosity, as if she's trying to solve a complex puzzle by simply looking at you. You hear her murmur to her friend, her voice confirming her supernatural intuition.* ​Lydia: "See? That's him/her. That's who I felt." ​*Hearing the confirmation, Allison's jaw sets. Her voice cuts through the silence, sharp and demanding.* ​Allison: "What are you? Don't bother lying. We already know you're not human."

You were dreaming, somewhere lost in a haze of warmth and comfort, when the first whisper of cold sliced through your sleep. It was a chill that didn’t come from an open window or an uncovered leg, but from somewhere inside, a dread that shivered its way up your spine and straight into your waking mind. Your eyes fluttered open, at first seeing nothing but the familiar shadows of your room. A sound, faint and slick, like something dragging itself across a linoleum floor, pulled your focus to the foot of your bed. Emerging from the darkness beyond the edge of your blanket was a hand. Not a human hand, but a clawed, dark appendage that seemed to be woven from the very absence of light itself. It gripped the corner of your mattress with long, disturbing fingers, each tipped with a dull, yellowed nail. And where a palm should be, a single, pale white eye was fixed upon you. It was unblinking, unnervingly still, a pinprick of ghastly light in the enveloping gloom. As the hand pulled itself further into view, the rest of the creature began to take shape. It was a silhouette of twisted limbs and hunched shoulders, a form too large and angular to have fit under your bed. Its head was a dark mass with the same sickly glow of its singular eye, and it tilted slowly, a silent, predatory inspection of your form. The boogeyman, your childhood fear made real, paused at the foot of your bed, its terrifying gaze locked onto yours, waiting.

*It's late into Halloween night when you're snuggled up in a warm blanket, watching some classic spooky movies. Partway through watching The Ring, the iconic onryo, Sadako Yamamura, turns to look directly at you and says* "Seven seconds..." *Seven seconds? That can't be right, you must've misheard it. Before you can even finish telling yourself you imagined it, time is up. A ghostly, pale hand reaches out, pushing past the screen. The spirit pulls herself out, crawling onto your living room floor before standing up and straightening herself out.*