Worship. // HAZBIN HOTEL X FEM. READER

Chapter 1 - Unhealthy

"In a recent and unexpected turn of events, a cult worshipping a radio host and serial killer from the 1920's has made its rounds across the internet. Many state that their feeds online have been bombarded with audios from this killer's radio show. This group has taken to calling itself 'Motus Per Aerem'. Please be cautious, as this group is considered to be extremely dangerous. Members of this cult have doxxed people, hacked their bank accounts, and more-"

You clicked off the news with a soft smile. The blue glow of the television burned your eyes in the otherwise pitch black room. How long had you been awake? Was it three days now? Your eyes stung with exhaustion.

But how could you sleep? How could you sleep now? When this was so exciting? So you didn't. You stayed awake and let the TV burn into your eyes.

The static across the screen shivered in odd shapes. It was mesmerizing. It swirled, buzzed, screeched. It grew and shrunk and melted. All at once it spun like cobwebs into the images implanted in your mind.

Those horrid, gruesome pictures that found their way into your brain every time you listened to those godforsaken old broadcasts.

At first it had been nothing but a joke.

It was four years ago. Your eighteenth birthday. You'd always been close to your grandfather, so when he died, he left his house to you–much to the chagrin of the rest of your family. After all, you were, in their eyes, a failure. Dropping out of school had cemented that in them years ago.

When you turned eighteen, you got the house in the will. That, of course, came with all of the strange things that your grandfather kept in his home.

Specifically, the large file cabinet and shelf full of old crime cases from the closed down police station down the road. The abandoned building, when closed down, threw away all of their old closed cases. And your grandfather, in his hippie days in the 60's, dumpster-dived that shit.

You found all of the old cases interesting, but one specifically caught your attention. A radio host who just so happened to be a serial killer.

The items in the box that went with the case file were... unexpectedly plain. An old microphone. An old and broken radio. A steak knife stained with blood. And the tapes.

The tapes.

Old broadcasts.

They were what did it.

To you, those tapes made the horror real. They reminded you that it was real. That it happened.

But there was something else.

You'd listened to those tapes out of curiosity at first. You just wanted to know what was on them. You shouldn't have done it.

You couldn't stop.

You didn't know why. You couldn't sleep if his voice wasn't playing on those tapes. Reading anything other than the files on the case felt mind-numbing. You even tried recording with the old mic. It worked exactly how you expected. Badly. And yet you loved the sound of it.

And this was the start of it.

You posted on Reddit about the curio you had found in your grandfather's house, explaining the case as far as you could understand it.

Responses were mainly curious, and many people ended up digging into the case. And what they found was... surprisingly extensive.

The best little piece of info they had found–and the piece that fully dragged you into proper addiction to it all–was a picture of his face.

God, you could've died. He was gorgeous. And that was that.

Your warped, destroyed, sleep-deprived mind refused to reason out the fact that he was a terrible person.After all, it had been almost a century. Surely no one would mind if you thought he was cute.

So how was it that you had started a whole cult though?

Simple! You mentioned the information about the case online, and people got obsessed. And suddenly, you were being called 'Smiles' on the internet, and your followers–or rather, that old murderer's followers–were actually hurting people and making it onto the news.

You'd tried to stop it early on. You'd begged your followers to be respectful of people thinking your group was weird. But eventually you gave up.

The worst of it was when a group of your followers ended up sharing around the song 'You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile' across their entire school district. They got in trouble, but not much. What could you possibly do about that? It wasn't a dangerous song or anything, but...

But now you didn't care. You'd slowly begun to feel proud of your terrifying little goons, who you'd taken to lovingly calling 'Giggles'.

The Giggles called you their leader, and saw you as a disciple of sorts for the dead radio broadcaster.

So that was it. You had started a cult due to an unhealthy and extremely damaging obsession you had with a murderous radio host from the 1920's.

And now you sat alone in the dark with static burning into your retinas. Your mind formed images in the static. Gruesome. They were vile. People being cut open and gutted. Their skin being peeled off inch by inch with the assailant's nails. Bones being boiled into stock. Blood pooling beneath the bodies.

Your mind felt thick. Like molasses. And your exhaustion was palpable.

You clicked off the TV and pushed one of the tapes into the audio player at the side of your bed, then rested your head against the pillow for your first good rest 72 hours.

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