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 Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:52 pm
Christa never thought she'd see her childhood friend Presley again. It had been years since they drifted apart and lost track of one another. She couldn't remember if the white haired girl moved away to another state for a while or what happened. It was a hazy time, but Presley was the last person she expected to see when traveling to get her latest horror fix at the local Video Mart.
Hands brushed against each other accidentally. Brown eyes met gray. Recognition and realization set it and before anyone knew what happened, they had reunited in front of the New Releases section, eagerly planning how to catch up and make up for lost years. That was how Horrorfest 2012 came to be. Happenstance and perhaps destiny.
The stars had aligned perfectly that Friday night. Zach heard a pretty girl was coming over and was excited, but then heard what they were watching and decided he'd rather be able to sleep the next three days than try and bother the girls. Besides, Presley was five or six years his senior as told by the father of the house. Popcorn was popped and ready, pajamas and blankets were freshly laundered and warm and a stack of the goriest, horror-iest movies were waiting by the televsion. Presley was given directions to Chez Calloway and Christa was simply awaiting her arrival. What better way to spend Friday night?
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:26 pm
Turns out Video Mart was good for more things than her late-night horror fix. Presley's smile was still fixed in place from having met Christa so suddenly again, and not just that, but found out that her childhood friend now loved horror movies too. And it was with incredible excitement that Presley had accepted Christa's invitation for Horrorfest 2012. Best Friday night in a long time.
Presley shrugged deeper into the ruff of fur over the top of her hoodie, pressing her hands together and blowing into them. She was just walking the rest of the way to Christa's house, and then it would be showtime; quite literally. Although Presley could be kind of unfriendly sometimes, or hard to talk to, that was not the case when she was this excited. Only a very small number of things made shivers run down her spine, and horror movies counted in that category: shivers in a good way.
Although she did hope that her friend hadn't picked I Spit On Your Grave, because that movie weirded her out beyond belief, she equally hoped there was at least one good zombie flick in the stack which awaited her. Standing under the streetlight and trying to figure out where she was, Presley opened her jacket and watched as the light shone onto her shirt: it was long-sleeved and black, with skeleton bones, just like those halloween costumes kids wore. By the time she showed up on Christa's doorstep, ringing the bell, it was possible that the bones would still retain a little of their glow.
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:59 pm
"Christaaaa! Hottie's here!"
"...say that again and you'll wake up with nails in your bed, Zach."
"DAD SHE'S THREATENING ME AGAIN!"
The gray haired teen huffed and blew some renegade strings of hair from her forehead, opening the door for the one she knew stood outside. A wide smile greeted Presley, especially after Christa realized what she was wearing - perfect Horrorfest attire, as to be expected. Christa herself wore a zombie apocalypse shirt and bat-themed pajama bottoms. She jerked a thumb behind her as she stepped aside to let Presley in. "Don't mind my tumor of a sibling. Once he starts hearing the music, he'll be crying like a baby."
The boy in question, Zachary Calloway, frowned at his sister's comments. He had hair and eyes just like her, but was shorter and scrawny. "Pfft, I'm not scared of your dumb movies!" Zach made a face at his sister. "Besides, who's gonna protect Presley from the monsters, huh?"
"She doesn't need some skinny kid clinging to her and crying when the ghost comes to drag your eternal soul down into the well, Zach." Christa hunched over and started to make the characteristic strangled gasp of the onryo in Ju-On and Zachary yelped, skittering away into the depths of the house. "YEAH WELL YOU'RE DUMB, CHRISTA!" he shouted through the walls. Christa rolled her eyes and motioned for Presley to follow.
Upon entering her room, Christa motioned for her companion to sit and make herself comfortable on the fort made of pillows and blankets. Next to the TV were classic favorites like Nosferatu and Waxworks all the way up to recent editions like Marianne and Let Me In. The 28 Days/Weeks later films were also in the stack, along with other apocalyptic movies. "Don't mind Zach. I don't know if you remember him, but he's fifteen now and a horndog. Sorry if he offended you. Did you bring anything with? I wasn't sure what you were in the mood for, so I just... brought everything out."
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 9:26 pm
Presley could hear the boy's voice through the door, muffled, and the corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile. Perhaps she had misheard?.. It was fairly difficult to make out the words, after all. She did hear him yelling about something, protesting some kind of perceived injustice as far as it sounded.
As soon as the door was open, Presley's smile spread across her face like wildfire. She looked Christa up and down to admire the bat pajamas, with an approving thumbs-up. Presley stepped in and slipped the hood down away from her face. "Nice," she replied, to Christa's reassurance. She chewed at one of her spiderbites, the name of the piercings grouped close together on the right side of her lip, and flicked it with her tongue in thought. "He doesn't like people being pursued, haunted, sawed in half...? No dismemberment?..." she asked, her eyes glittering mischieviously.
However, when he interjected with his own comment, she couldn't help but laugh. "Who said I'm not the monster?" She mumbled in addition to Christa's rebuttal. When Christa immitated the demon of Ju-On, Presley burst into harder laughter, and sighed in amusement. Well, that was fun.
Presley followed, and happily settled into the blanket-pillow fort. Altogether, so far, Presley was loving this. Turned out Christa was a great friend when she was little, and seemed a promising friend now, too; it wasn't always the case, Presley knew. People tended to change radically with time. But in this case, seemed like she'd be completely happy to settle into friendship again. She eyed all the movies, with an approving scrutiny, and particularly enjoyed the inclusion of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. "Can't say I remember him, no-- he must have been pretty young, wouldn't recognize him." Presley shrugged and got cozy inside one of the blankets. "All your choices look great," she started, smiling contentedly, "although I'll pass on Nosferatu if it's alright with you, the music and german expressionism starts to get to me."
As Christa prompted her, Presley remembered the stack of DVDs she'd tucked into her jacket in jewel cases. She pulled them out, and looked at them, before handing them over. "I brought a few, we can add them to the selection-- I also didn't know what you'd feel like seeing," Presley said, with a grin. Alone (the Thai movie about a siamese twin being haunted by her dead twin), Noroi (a documentary-style suspenseful movie which involved a demon ritual and a journalist, to name some features) and then the third needed extra explanation. "Okay, so... Stay isn't really a horror movie, it's just kind of creepy and I think it's pretty interesting. So, if we decide to move into a sort of strange thriller as a break, I brought it, too."
Presley offered the DVDs, a couple others underneath those first three. She wriggled herself free of the blanket and lay on her stomach to look at the stack of movies next to the TV. "What about you? What do you feel like watching first?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:45 am
The gray haired teen nodded in approval at what Presley brought with her. It seemed like the years they spent apart weren't so long after all. "Zach was too young to play outside with us, so that's probably why you don't remember him. That's a good thing, I think. He's too much of a pain right now anyway." While their rooms didn't share a wall, Zach was cranking his awful Teen Boy Music, as Christa called it, and the bass could be heard through Christa's bedroom wall. She growled and made to get up when the music suddenly stopped. Her father must've intervened.
Christa snatched Jacob's Ladder out of her stack and waved it at her friend. "I certainly don't mind thrillers. We could always just pick one at random and go from there. Here, let's pop one of yours in. I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to really sit down and watch half of these. You get them for birthdays and Christmas and then school starts up again..." She shook her head and opened the DVD player, placing Alone in the slot. "It seems like they know how badly you'd like a life outside of school so they pile things onto you... How are you doing in that respect, Presley? You were what... two years older than me? You're probably in college by now."
The thought of having to mix post-secondary education with being a senshi made Christa's mind start reeling. The previews on the DVD were starting, so conversation was perfectly alright. The gray haired teen took up the fresh bowl of popcorn and set it between them. A small cooler sat next to the television stand and it was full of sodas and other drinks for the girls. Christa considered majoring in literature, perhaps anthropology, but she really had no idea. If only one could major in Saving the World.
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Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2012 3:06 pm
Admittedly, Presley hadn't brought all her favourites. It was just that she liked these couple films... and, okay, admittedly Stay wasn't really linked to the others. It had a kind of subtle creepiness, though, so sometimes she liked to use it to calm down after a bunch of really exciting movies, or even if she was having a non-gore day. She did wince as the bass thudded through the wall. She assumed that it was Christa's brother, given the look Christa had on her face.
Presley toyed with her spiderbites, waiting for the music to stop. "It's like a dance club," she suggested with a wry smile. She hoped, with a bit of anxiety, that Christa would like Alone. Her nerves in that respect were distracted and redirected towards the suggestion about school. "Funny story," she began, with a wry smile, "I decided not to go."
After she had stopped talking to her parents, she couldn't afford to go even if she wanted to. It wasn't so bad; Presley wasn't much of a reader, anyway. She started into her job, which would never need a degree as far as she knew, and being a sailor was taking up the rest of her precious not-sleeping time.
Sometimes Presley forgot, even when they were little, that Christa was younger than her. It waws easy to forget when Presley hardly had the maturity level of a 20-year-old, obsessed as she was with things adults typically considered "teenage rebellion." In Presley's case, monster movies, special effects makeup and piercing were not going anywhere.
"You're going to go to college, I assume?" Presley rolled onto her stomach again, staring at the screen as if it held the secrets of the universe. She liked the idle chatter of the DVD previews. They also hyped her up. Presley was going to reach out and grab a soda, but she thought twice about it.
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