Prompt
An old church you are familiar with and have seen many times has recently been closed due to fire damage. The area has been deemed too dangerous for anyone to enter, and yet you notice a strange gargoyle perched on the roof. It is large and imposing and you know it’s never been there before. If you try to climb up the building or if you leave the area and return, the gargoyle will have disappeared. You never see it move, but you know you saw it. Giant stone sculptures don’t just up and fly away…right? Whatever it is you saw, it’s gone now, but you might want to keep your eyes on the rooftops and pay attention when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
He'd been on the way home from the nearby gas station when Alrik Rey felt like something Was Wrong.
It wasn't an explainable feeling... one moment he was chill, just munching away on the bag of potato chips he'd bought along with a variety of other salty and sweet treats (Welllll... mostly salty, since his mom had scored a LOT of Halloween candy for trick or treaters, most of which, if he had his way, wouldn't make it into any buckets but instead into his own bottomless stomach) and the next moment the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling up.
Eyes looked up from his phone (and the awesome review on the new FPS releasing the following week) to glance around the sidewalk. There wasn't anyone on the pathway, neither in front or behind him. The streetlamp up above wasn't flickering, there weren't any strange noises coming from unknown places. By all means and purposes, everything seemed like it was in order. Everything was normal.
.... so why did he get the sinking feeling that something was out of place?
The crunching of his potato chips echoed in his own skull as he studied his surroundings. The apartment buildings to his left were all in order - there were a couple people loitering around near the entrance, but none of them looked like they were about to cause any trouble. A few teenagers kickin' it, an older lady flirting with what he guessed was a new date. A couple kids laughing and chasing each other out in the yard. It wasn't even that late per se....
Shaking his head, he turned to look over to his right. An older church - or at least the remains of one - sat looking sad and lonely behind the chain linked fence that was erected by the city in an attempt to keep curious kids and stupid adults from investigating further. There had been some fire - Alrik hadn't been paying attention to the news when it'd gone down a year or two before - but some hobos or hooligans had set fire to the dilapidated building and made it even more dangerous than before, thus the barring of anyone going near it.
Not that he'd wanted to... with the broken windows, peeling and splintered wood in various parts and the horrendous looking yard work, it fit the bill to be considered an appropriate haunted house for the season. It wouldn't surprise him if there were several groups of teenagers that dared each other to spend the night in such a place... eh. Their funerals.
He would be spending his Halloween playing to get his eighth gold weapon in Overwatch while munching on stuffed crust pizza and whatever other snack he could manage to get his greasy fingers on. That is, unless he got a phone call from a certain green eyed babe who purred for his attention... then Overwatch could wait. At least for a little while.
Eyes flickered up and honed in on something he hadn't noticed before. Granted, he never took the time to really study the old church but he was eighty-six percent sure that he'd never seen that horrifying looking gargoyle sitting perched up on the side of the roof. Its gnarled face and cloven hooves were... unfriendly, at best, especially considering this was supposed to be on the roof of a church, of all places.
Shuddering to no one but himself, he glanced back over towards the crowd at the apartment complex, as if the feeling perhaps came from one of the shadier looking teenagers. When he glanced back, he nearly swallowed his own tongue.
Where... where had the gargoyle gone?
Eyes widened as he blinked once, then twice. No...he knew what he saw. The thing had been worthy of like, freakin' horror movies or something... so where... how....
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
Shoving the remainder of his potato chips into his plastic bag, Alrik Rey decidedly got the heck out of the area - he wasn't going to deal with anything else for the weekend. Not giant spiders, not magic people eating mirrors and definitely not scary looking disappearing gargoyles.
As far as he was concerned, Halloween could go suck itself.
WC: 701
