Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aethelind wandered off when Subo was dropping off her caustic gourd, drawn to the quiet roar of talking and the brightness of the large fire. Sitting down on one of the logs, he listened in on the tail ends of a few conversations.

"Heey, have any good stories?" a young man next to him asked. Thinking for a moment, he nodded, and waited for the crowd to become (mostly) silent.

"Once there was a butterfly. The butterfly wasn't very nice. It went around eating everyone's popsicles and scaring people when they went by a port-o-potty...But one day, the butterfly was caught by a fairy when she was taking a bath. 'You saw me naked!' she screamed."

He paused to take a breath (and to supposidly heighten the suspense) while a few people chuckled. "The fairy turned it into a salad fork. 'Turn me back!' it said while it wiggled around on the ground, since salad forks can't walk. 'Not negotiable!' said the fairy and she stomped off. The salad fork was sad. It's back was itchy."

Lind stood up and bowed to the uproar of laughter and applause and hurried back to the pumpkin carving tent, hoping to see the pumpkin explode.

"It would be cliche to say that it was a 'dark and stormy night' to begin a ghost story... Though this one begins at an old fair ground, just after the fair had packed up and was about to move on. Everyone who had come that day, whether enjoying popsicles, candied apples, or some other fair ground treat, was amazed at the show that was there. A carnival ment to be held before All Hallow's Eve; a carnival... of freaks!
The main attraction, much to everyone's dismay, was taken down... In a covered tent that had a large butterfly with ominous 'eyes' on the wings glared down at those who wished to enter. Just past the port-o-potties, beside a ditch that marked the edge of the fair grounds, two young boys were out late that night after an evening of Trick-or-treating... They'd heard about some monsterous creature kept in a cage at the fair. For if the attraction was closed, there had to be some reason for it, right?
"Probably mechanical glitch." One boy said to the other, dressed up like a little demon and holding a bucket shaped like a pumpkin, laiden with sweets.
"Maybe, but what if it's real? Maybe it was some wolf man and bit someone or something..." Murmured the other in awe, who was actually dressed as a were wolf himself. Giving his rear a scratch, since the burlap sack textured fabric was rather itchy.
Creeping in at night time, they didn't have need for the non-refundable, non-negociable tickets that sold for a high price. And started toward the dark tent looming nearer and nearer by the light of the full Harvest moon...
They found themselves just on the edge of the tent, and listened for the sound of anyone coming. Nothing, not even crickets chirping, was heard that night... An eerie silence that filled the boys with dread. They stood there, their consciences telling them to return home, though with a small game of 'rock-paper-scissors' the demon dressed child opened the flap into the tent.

It was darker than pitch and smelled like an old kennel. Something was obviously not right about the place from the moment you looked at it, and an evil presence seemed to loom in the air around and inside it. It was then they heard a crunching sound- like a dog chewing on a bone. Turning to look to their left, the boys gave a scream as their flashlight came down upon a sight so horrifying that it made their blood run cold- A beast half man, half some horrifying monsterousity, naked and lean, sat haunched over something that looked tattered and bloody. If they had noticed, the creature held in it's hand a salad fork for whatever the reason, and seemed to have rather thick sausage twisted around it. However, this was no sausage- but the intestine of the carnival master who lay in pieces about the tent's innards. Their scream and light startled the monster, and it gave such a wail as it bolted toward them the boys knew not what was happening as it occured. The boys turned tail and fled for the life of them as the monster ran for them, but it was no for them it came but past. Running toward the woods as it howled, almost laughing at it's former tormentors, at it's escape.

Now, we know this happened in a small town, but which no one can say. Though when those boys grew up they were sure to tell people to stay far far away from the old fair ground. For fear the monsterousity would return!"

When Ran was done telling the story, she sat back with a look of satisfaction on her face. Glad she had finally told a story that might actually inspire some amount of fear in another human being!