November 6th, 3:52 AM,
Location: Somewhere off of Cedar Road.

"Where are you?" The text message read. If someone had asked you where you were two hours ago, you would have been able to tell them immediately, even if it was in broken, drunken verbiage. You were at a bachelor's party for your friend Nick, who was getting married in the morning. You had left the party two hours ago to go home and rest before the wedding. That, and you forgot to pick up your tux, so it seemed like a viable excuse to go get it without raising any eyebrows.
But by this point you had wandered far from the parking lot in the trendy "entertainment" district you and your bros were raising hell in, a half baked plan concocted when you remembered that driving drunk was a bad idea but before you realized the train doesn't run by your house. So now you wander, hopelessly texting your well to do and gorgeous girlfriend for guidance, as your haze slowly wears away from a buzz to a hangover.
Your phone buzzes again, another text from your girlfriend: "are you alright? If you don't want to come home that's fine. Stay with your friends." You're about to send a response - possibly the first coherent response of the night-turned-morning - when bright headlights whirl in your direction. You stumble and trip out of the way, a newspaper flying by and nearly missing your head. You think of a string of profanities for the ill-bred newspaper boy, but your attention is held by a luminescent purple glow coming from across the street.
Upon further examination, you realize that it is coming from the doorway and ground level windows of an eerie looking house. This house looks out of place compared to the track housing style of the rest of this otherwise suburbanite street - its got character, beautifully restored so that it looks like a fixture in time itself, and it has so much land compared to the other houses, even if the yard is lumpy and a little unkempt. It appears to be three stories with a basement - you can see a faint glow coming from beneath the ground level, probably where an escape window lies. In the doorframe, despite the purple glow, you see an object, about five feet tall flickering wildly as if on fire.

Do you approach it?

No.

I second the motion. It sounds dangerous, as if on fire.

We have a purple, glowy thing house that appears to have a short person in front on fire. If I'm drunk, I'm checking that son of a bitch out. I love purple, and I love fire. Hell, it sounds attractive even sober.

But srsly, approach.

I think it'd be best if you don't stop at a part that is curcial to the progress of the story.

I mean, if we all vote No in the beginning, what the Hell are you gonna do then?

My No vote still stands; I want to see if you had anything planned for this scenario.

I don't see how not approaching it stops the story... Perhaps you will come back later after exploring the surroundings and gearing up. That would be cool, a Diablo 2 style underground dungeon.

You fight with yourself, trying to decide whether or not to approach the flaming object in the door frame. Something draws your eyes to it and refuses to let you break free of staring. It is indeed shaped like a crouched human, leaning precariously against the door. You hear voices, several hundred in a quite and deep timbre, raising in volume. The object twitches uncomfortably in the door frame, and you could swear it throwing its arm out in your direction. Your flight instinct kicks in, and you book it in the other direction, not knowing exactly where you're going, just knowing that you need to get the hell out of there as fast as you possibly can, the sudden adrenaline rush providing clarity in your alcoholic haze and you hear the noise of modern civilization ahead - the occasional semi or early bird driver rushing to wherever they could possibly need to be on a Sunday morning. You trip repeatedly in your haste, drawing blood from your lip, but stopping for nothing.

You find yourself on a usually busy road, now littered with only the occasional automobile, traffic lights blinking red or yellow. You look to your left and see the strip club you had left your buds at, stumbling off drunk. Your car was still there, unmolested and alone. Feeling fit to drive home now that your buzz had worn off, you get behind the wheel and start the ignition. On the deserted streets you try to reason with yourself on what you saw.


It had just been halloween; and you were drunk. Is it possible that the form you saw was an ill conceived holiday decoration, an effigy someone decided to light on fire? That would explain the purple glow too - holiday LED lights, left on a timer. For all you knew, it might be that no one lived at that house, and it had a token benefactor - perhaps a Realtor, trying to make the house look lived in to keep hooligans out and to maintain the structure of what was surely a historically significant house.

You pull into your designated parking spot of your apartment complex, the adrenaline from the night's adventure finally wearing thin, leaving you exhausted and feeling as if every apendage was ten times heavier than it should have been. You step out of your car, drenched in sweat. Climbing the five sets of stairs and unlocking the door quietly, you walk in to find the lights in the living room on, your girlfriend sleeping on the couch underneath the cashmere blanket you bought her last Christmas. You kiss her gently, trying not to wake her, but it doesn't work. She smiles, not opening her eyes, "where have you been?" she asks quietly.

You should probably tell her something. You didn't get covered in sweat and cut your lip based on a leisurely drive home.

Ask her what she's doing in your house.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 6 2011, 4:30 am by Sacrieur.

Tell her you were out cheating on her.

Tell her you were just at the annual halloween orgy held at the local gothic castle, a la Eyes Wide Shut. That explains the sweat and the cut lip (someone got a little too frisky).

Your girlfriend's question obviously agitates you further, and you begin to spout off any story popping into your head. After getting it all out of your system - babbling about diamonds, asking what she's doing in your house, trying to convince her you were cheating on her at an orgy - she is fully awake, staring at your cut and the sweat stains on your once nice shirt. "Okay," she says slowly, "my name is on the lease too, I highly doubt you were cheating on me or that you have the guts to attend an orgy, and what's any of this got to do with diamonds?" Noticing that you are still agitated, she reaches up and massages your tense arm, "I'm just kidding, but you don't seem well at all. Perhaps we should just go to bed? You only have a few hours until you're supposed to show up for the wedding, but I don't know if you should even do that at this rate," she states, raising her hand to your lip. You jerk away from her, and she pulls back, "alright, let's go to bed."
Nodding, you follow her into the bedroom at a sluggish pace, trying to maintain a decent conversation while the two of you undressed for bed. She talked about uninteresting details of her day - drama between coworkers, a possible new manager - and tried to get you involved with conversation. But when the lights shut off, the most you get do was mumble out a yes or a no to her questions. Giving up she sets the alarm and snuggles up next to you and drifts off to sleep.
You, on the other hand, have a great amount of difficulty sleeping. Although you drift off quickly you find yourself wrapped in nightmares concerning the house and the figure in it. Every time you jolt awake, the sun rising little by little, laugh at how foolish of a thing it was to scare you, and drift back off into another related nightmare.
When the alarm finally jolts you awake, you realize your girlfriend is already out of bed and in the shower. You look at the alarm. 9:15AM, meaning not only did you only sleep a couple of hours last night at the most, but also that you had already hit 'snooze' three times. You cursed and jump out of bed, catching the smell of your arm pits that makes you grimace in horror, run to the other bathroom to use the second shower. You're out in five minutes, fumbling to find your tux in the closet of things, hurriedly putting it on. Your girlfriend walks by, not saying a word, and makes breakfast for herself and pours some coffee. She sits at the table in silence as you dress in a panic in the living area.
Your phone buzzes on the counter, where you had apparently left it the night before. You open it to find your phone battery low and a message from the groom: "limo's out front." You kiss your girlfriend's forehead and rush out the door and down the stairs to the limo, getting in beside the groom and best man. They had already opened a bottle of champagne and had one waiting for you.
"How was your trip home last night?" the best man joked.
"Yea man you don't look so hot," the groom said as you gulped the drink they had handed you, "have some more champagne."
"Oh you know," you say with a shrug, not willing to give your friends any more ammo to use against you, "I didn't sleep that well."
"Uh huh," the best man said, watching you slowly, "you do know you called me at about seven in the morning, spouting jibberish?"
"uh...no?" You say confused, "what was I saying?"
"I don't know, your girlfriend hung up before I could get a lot out of you." They both watched you expectantly.
"That's weird," is all you manage, unable to look them in the eye for the rest of the ride to the church.

Despite your now built up paranoia, both from your dreams and from your friends heckling, but also from an uncanny feeling like you were being watched the whole time, the wedding went off without a hitch. It wasn't until the reception that you were free enough to think about the events of the last twenty four hours. You're hanging back behind the tables when an elderly man catches your eye. He appears to be watching you.

Leave the wedding and go back to the orgy.

Leave the wedding while feigning to be intoxicated. See if the man follows you. If he does, get in a cab and tell the driver to take the scenic route to a busy spot in town, somewhere like a shopping center. Record his license plate number, if he follows in a taxi, do not bother. If the car is unmarked, call the police.

Quote from Sacrieur

Leave the wedding while feigning to be intoxicated. See if the man follows you. If he does, get in a cab and tell the driver to take the scenic route to a busy spot in town, somewhere like a shopping center. Record his license plate number, if he follows in a taxi, do not bother. If the car is unmarked, call the police.

[this]Steady as she goes, cap'n.[/this]

EDIT: If he does not follow you, pontificate.

Edit: Oh, nvm.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 6 2011, 8:25 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

I lol'd...

Walk up to the guy and just be straight forward. Introduce yourself. Give him a handshake. Suddenly change expression and look him in the eye, unjoking, "What do you want".

Make it as creepy as possible. Avoid blinking.

Inadvisable and extremely unorthodox. There is no telling how he may respond, or if he wants to kill you or else, and revealing that you know about him only complicates matters.

I know :)

But if he tries to kill me, everyone will see.