Narcissistic Cannibal

Loud. Dark. Colors. Him.

Voices. Faces. Sweat. Him.

Alcohol. Drugs. Dizzy. Him.

“Sophie,” her name was dragged out, spoken low under the heavy air in the house and the loud music. It's a wonder that it was heard by the girl at all. She turned, her cup hitting someone's arm before falling to the ground, whatever remained spilling onto the old hard wood floor. The other person paid no mind to the clumsy and uncoordinated accident and neither did Sophia.

“Sophie,” hands grasped her shoulders as she turned fully around to face whoever was calling to her. “You're drunk Sophie,” the familiar face of Caitlin, Sophia's best friend spoke, laughing. “Go home.”

Sophia laughed at the joke, falling forward slightly, though her friend was easily keeping her standing. “I can't,” Sophia continued to laugh.

“I'll get you home. I gotta find Di and Mayer though, this party is getting out of hand. Someone's gonna die,” Caitlin spoke, pulling Sophia along through the party goers.

While being pulled through the crowd, Sophia and another woman, possibly a college student, collided. “Bitch,” she snarled at Sophia as she passed. Her eyes were lined heavily, while her dark blonde hair flowed freely past her shoulders. Not much else was noticeable between Sophia's temporarily impaired mind and the darkness in the house. Caitlin pulled Sophia along faster, not responding to the woman.

“See what I mean?” Caitlin said in front of Sophia, “There's weirdos here now. Too many weirdos. All that organization was for shit.” While Sophia slowly digested her friends words, she noticed, as if standing still against a whirlwind of drunk high school kids and cheap party lights, was a taller guy with shaggy dark blonde hair and empty black eyes.

Him.

Just as time seemed to slow while Sophia and the stranger stared a each other, it quickly sped back up once he was out of sight, almost like he had disappeared. Sophia raised her eyebrow, still sober enough to realize something was odd about him, before she tripped over her own feet and fell into her friend.

“Shit,” Caitlin tripped forward as well, before catching herself in a doorway. Sophia, however, fell to the side and landed on her back on the hardwood floor. “Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing Sophia's hands and trying to pull her up.

“Yes,” Sophia groaned, feeling her back go numb, feeling no pain from the hard fall.

“Stay here,” Caitlin gave up, only able to bring Sophia to a sitting position. She helped move her against the wall for support before continuing her sentence, “I'm gonna go find Di and Mayer, if you see them keep them here. I'll be quick.”

Sophia nodded, leaning fully against the wall for support.

“And Sophie,” Caitlin added before she left, “stay here.” Sophia nodded once more, watching her friend leave into the shadows of the house. She could hear the blaring music pouring in from the other room, before looking around and noticing she was in the entrance to the house.

It was October 30th. The night before Halloween to some, Devil's night to others. For most students at Westfield High, October 30th was the ultimate party night. And this year, though sadly, Devil's night fell on a Wednesday. Many students were faced with being suspended for two weeks if they didn't show up to school the next day, a regulation put into place by Westfield High before Sophia had even entered high school. This year, somebody had the best idea in the history of Devil's night parties. Crash the old mansion with the horrible reputation for killing it's occupants. Not many knew of all the legends of the house, though everybody knew it was haunted in one way or the other.

Sophia, Caitlin, Di, and Mayer, were a few of the students who didn't believe that the house was actually haunted, despite how awesomely creepy it looked. But having a party in an abandoned house meant no clean up, unlike the years prior when some poor soul's house would get trashed. Sophia could easily see this turning into a tradition as long as nothing went wrong.

But sadly, something was going wrong. This was no longer a party for some highschoolers. It wasn't even the possibility of rival schools participating in the Devil's night party, it was the older, complete strangers that were here.

This party, however small it started out, had gotten huge.

Ahead of Sophia, she was staring at some stained glass in one of the walls, being oddly colored from the Halloween lights and the various other lights brought by some party goers. The glass itself seemed to be bending, rattling in place from the bass pounding throughout the house. Sophia pushed her back against the wall, holding her breath and felt the same rattling inside of herself.

When she opened her eyes again, a lazy smile forming across her lips, she saw a woman, her hands clutching at the old dress over her chest, while mumbling to herself. “They're in my house, what are they doing in my house?” she wailed, looking around as if she was lost. Sophia stayed on the floor, watching the odd woman, noticing an unusual dark spot in the back of the woman's head as she continued walking out of the room.

“They're teenagers, Patrick!” she heard another man shouting, watching a pair enter the room only to quickly scale up the stairs. “Are you that fucking desperate?”

“Shut up Chad,” the other spoke, as if speaking through a locked jaw.

“You're sick!” the other spoke, as they continued on to the second floor, out of Sophia's view.

“Shut up Chad!”

Sophia faced forward once again, feeling dizzy from the fast movements of her head. As her eyes struggled to focus once more, she saw the teen again.

“Him,” she spoke, the short word being punctuated with a hiccup. She stared at him, while he staked from one room to the next, his black eyes locked with hers before disappearing. With a strange compulsion from inside of her somewhere, Sophia struggled to her feet.

“Wait,” she spoke, stumbling as she stood, and catching herself on the railing of the staircase. “Wait,” she said again, though by the time she was up and moving in a pattern that resembled walking, the guy was far to gone to hear.

She followed his path, however, moving back into the heart of the party, with deafening music and huge crowds. In her state, she couldn't tell the difference from the casual yelling and laughter of the party when it changed to panicked screaming. She didn't even understand why everybody was suddenly moving against her, forcing her to struggle to hold her ground as an endless fountain of people rushed past her. Behind them, from where the kitchen would be, she saw a bright orange glow.

As Sophia focused on the odd light, she found herself tossed about the crowd before she was pinned against a wall until most of the people had vacated the house, leaving quickly. While she was slow to realize that she was suddenly alone, she stumbled forward again before falling, her legs giving out and causing her to smack her head on a nearby coffee table that had been pushed up against the wall to make room for the party.

She ended up laying on the floor facing the ceiling, holding her head, though it didn't hurt, it was just numb now. She knew enough still, that she could have caused serious damage hitting the table that hard. She tried to open her eyes, only see her vision violently pulsing. Sophia quickly closed them again, not thinking to check and see of her head was bleeding.

While laying motionless on the floor she felt a heat begin to grow in the house, accompanied by an odd smell. The music was still blaring, seemingly causing her head to pulse with the music, keeping her disabled on the floor.

When Sophia heard the music cut off, melting away with strange sounds, she was left with a low rumble and small cracks. She attempted to open her eyes again, her vision not pulsing as heavily as before, though she now couldn't focus, as if there were a layer of smoke in the room. When she coughed, blinking to try and clear them, she only gained heavy tears from her stinging eyes. Sophia coughed again, rolling onto her side, squinting as she still believed that the smoke was only her drunk vision and trauma from the table.

What she saw before her, however, all but brought her back to a sober reality. The house was on fire. Sophia began coughing again, covering her mouth as she gasped for clean air. Still sputtering, she attempted to get back up, knowing that her exit was only a room away, but she collapsed under her own weight, her joints much to wobbly to stand.

“Help,” she coughed, looking around and finding the house deserted. She heard sirens in the far off distance and felt a small well of relief form in the pit of her stomach, feeling cold against the sweltering heat and burning smoke. If she could just hold on for a few more minutes she'd be safe, not to mention grounded for life.



“There was more?” Ben's voice asked, sounding both out of breath and upset.

“One more,” his wife spoke, her hand pressed against the glass window panes as she stared out into the front yard from the second floor, a fire still raging beneath her feet.

“Damn it,” Ben's voice was harsh, as he spun around, looking away from his wife with his hand over his eyes.

When the kids had first shown up, it was a shock to the eternal residents of the house. As the night continued, however, the vandals that had broken in had grown, to a number that the ghosts couldn't scare away if they tried. And some didn't even try. He knew for a fact that Hayden, Patrick, Chad, and Travis were amongst the party goers, trying to have a bit of fun even if they were mostly among high school students. He had even seen Nora Montgomery wondering around, acting as her usual self. Violet was curious as well but stayed out of the actual party, looking on from the second floor. Ben had even caught small glimpses of Tate at the party, though he didn't seem to be having a good time at all. Ben even thought he noticed Tate stalking one of the partygoers.

Of course, as Ben Harmon feared, things got out of control and someone ended up setting the kitchen on fire. It was then he decided to act, from merely monitoring the party in hopes that his watchful eye would keep the house from claiming more victims. Through his frantic yelling, he had managed to alert the teenagers to the blaze spreading downstairs. He could care less about the house, he only cared about the kids. When he had thought everyone had left, he came back upstairs to make sure that his wife and infant were still alright.

“Ben, she's so young,” Vivien's voice was filled with sorrow, watching as a firefighter dragged the girl onto the front lawn while others worked to control the fire downstairs. “She's about Violet's age.”

“Have you seen Violet recently?” Ben asked, turning back around, unable to fully push from his mind the one life he had failed to save.

“She went back to her room after the fire,” Moira stated, sitting in a rocking chair, holding the infant she was Godmother to.

“Good,” Ben spoke, knowing that he didn't want Violet to see this. He walked up to the window, settling a hand on his wife's back, peering out the window as well. He watched though the window with his wife as the firefighter who had dragged the girl out of the house immediately threw his coat and helmet off, before beginning to perform CPR. The couple watched on intently as the firefighter performed CPR for what seemed like hours, in reality only a couple minutes had passed, before the paramedics arrived.

It was hard for Ben to watch them tear the girl's shirt open and use their defibrillators on the young girl, making her constrict wildly, though no life came back to her. If he had searched longer, if he had looked harder, Ben felt that he could have saved her.

“Don't give up... Don't give up on her...” Vivien was mumbling next to him, her face nearly pressed into the glass. Sadly, only moments later, the paramedics had given up. They used the firefighter's jacket to cover the poor girl's exposed torso and lifeless face.

“Fuck,” Ben hissed, letting go of his wife to punch the wall next to him, aiming for one of the solid wooden fixtures near him for that extra pain he know would fade in less than a minute while his bones snapped back into place.

“Ben it's not your fault,” Vivien turned away from the window, her eyes brimmed with tears. Before her short sentence had finished, Ben had already left the room.

“It may sound morbid, Mrs. Harmon,” Moira spoke up, standing from the rocking chair and moving next to Vivien, handing over the infant, “But you must look on the bright side.”

“What bright side is there to a teenage girl dying?” Vivien asked, feeling slightly better looking into her baby son's face.

“Your daughter will have someone her age around the house now. Someone who isn't Tate.” Moira spoke the truth, Vivien had feared that her daughter's loneliness would drive her back into the arms of her ex boyfriend. And now, though morbid indeed, she would have someone else her age to talk with.

She looked back out the window, Moira watching as well, down at the girl left on the lawn. “She may just be a blessing then,” Vivien spoke, though her words nearly disgusted her. That simple fact didn't change that a young girl had lost her soul to the house that night.