high rise hearts ☆ lifesteal smp au

𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐒 ✧

𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲: normal oneshot (humor)
𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀: none (platonic squiddo + ash)
𝘁𝘄: n/a
𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆: n/a
𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁: squiddo and ash vs "haunted" house

─── ⋅☆⋅ ───

𝐏𝐎𝐕: none

"Squiddo, I'm surprised that you're still alive if this is your latest 'fun' idea." Ash rolls his eye as Squiddo, who doesn't appear to be listening, continues tugging him by the arm down the deserted driveway.
"Oh, Ash you're such a party pooper! C'mon, we'll live!" The smaller girl is practically skipping down the dark asphalt, in comparison to Ash's dragging, slow steps. "Maybe we'll even find something cool- like GHOSTS!" They add a gasp for dramatic effect.
"If we do find ghosts, I'm positive you'll be annoying enough to send them back to their graves." Ash scoffs. He doubtfully eyes the doorway of the dilapidated apartment building they're approaching.
Squiddo tugs on his arm a little harder. "Rude. I'm sure they'll love me, unlike you." Ash really doesn't look like he believes that.
"Yeah, suree." He shudders, having caught sight of a massive spiderweb in a corner of the doorway. Its maker is still in the web, clinging to the thin silk strands as a cool night breeze tosses it about. "If we aren't dead first. This place is shady as fuck."
"Oh Ash, watch your language! We're visitors here-" Squiddo, still grinning as bright as ever, starts fiddling with the dull gold doorknob. It makes clicking noises as they shake it up and down, but the door doesn't budge. "Dang it, locked."
"Well, of course it is. It's 3 AM and we're trespassing on private property because we weren't invited here in the first place." Ash's sarcastic tone remains even when he smiles. "Not like I'm complaining, because now we can go home-"
"Not if I, Squiddo, have anything to say about it!" With all the optimism of a golden retriever greeting someone at the door, Squiddo raises their fist and starts rapping hard on the door. The series of hyper knocks echoes and fades away, back to city silence, as quiet as that can be.
"There is absolutely no way anyone will open the door-" Ash stares at his friend as if they've gone mad. Maybe Squiddo is mad, because when they get no answer they just start knocking again. The extended noise of fist against wood drills metaphorical holes into Ash's brain, prompting glowing glitches to spark in his hair, illuminating the dim concrete doorstep in magenta and white.
"Squiddo, actually stop knocking, nobody's going to answer-" Ash raises his own hand, about to swat Squiddo's shoulder in an effort to make them stop, when the door swings open mid-knock. It creaks on weary hinges, exposing a foggy interior hall that greets them with an astounding lack of warmth.
"See? I told you so!" Before Ash can reply, Squiddo practically waltzes in like they own the place, footfalls muffled by musty carpet, unfazed by the darkness. He has no choice but to follow them, the smell of rot and neglect hitting him full in the face the second he steps in.
"Whatever. This place is still really weird." Ash hugs himself, more an effort to keep warm than an expression of nervousness- even through his hoodie, the place is unnervingly cold. If life were a horror movie, he could see this being a place infested with spirits or zombies or whatnot.
"Oh, don't be a scaredy-cat, Ash. We're not dead yet- here, let me find the lights..." He hears Squiddo fumbling around in the darkness, then he has to squint as a switch is flicked and the hallway instantly brightens with an eerie yellow glow. "There we go, much better!"
The foyer is mostly empty, save for some odd framed pictures hanging crookedly on the walls and a small, old-fashioned table at the far end of the hall. The table is empty except for an empty flower-patterned vase, a single crack running down its side. It's relatively normal, but either way it makes Ash feel uneasy.
"Ghosts? Hellooo? God, this place is empty..." Squiddo cups their hands around their mouth to call for any resident apparitions, but none answer them. They resort to glancing around the vacant hall, trying to determine which direction they should go.
"Are you done yet?" Ash asks with all the exasperation of an exhausted older sibling dealing with a hyper child. "I say we get out of here while we're still in one piece, you know- the landlord won't be too happy."
"Am I done?" Squiddo asks incredulously. "Hell no! There's still so much we haven't explored yet- come on!" They take off down the hall, veering sharply left and disappearing around the corner. Ash follows behind, slower and far less excited.
The lightbulb at the end of the hall is broken, and what light filters in from the other directions casts odd shadows on the both of them as they progress. The hall they're in is impossibly long, lined with doors numbered with false gold plaques. Ash passes one without a number- its corresponding plaque lies facedown on the floor. He can infer from the other doors it should be #7.
"Ooh, let's go down this one!" Squiddo calls to him from the end of the hall. He can see their figure, made small with distance, pointing a tiny finger at an apartment doorway. The door is ajar slightly, and from where he stands he can't see inside.
He's in no hurry to catch up, and when he finally does Squiddo has already disappeared inside the apartment. "Where were the lights again..."
He slides himself into the gap created by Squiddo's entry, trying his best not to touch the door- the cream-white paint is peeling off and exposing weird grimy stuff underneath. He feels his sweater sleeve brush the knob- it's cold, too cold. "The hell are you doing now-"
The flick of a switch sounds from somewhere beside him, but unlike the hallway, he is not greeted by the blinding flash of lightbulbs fizzing to life. The room stays as black as ever, the only light inside being the dim radiance shining in from the half-open doorway.
"Aw, the lights are broken- wait, I just got an idea-" Squiddo's voice pipes up from the blackness, and then suddenly Squiddo's disembodied face appears next to him, fuschia glasses shining in the light of their phone screen. He flinchses, startled, and immediately regrets it when Squiddo giggles. "Ha, I scared you, didn't I?"
"No, fuck you." He crosses his arms and frowns down at Squiddo. They smile bright as ever at him, obviously regretting nothing, and swipe on the menu of their phone. One click, and the flashlight is on, a bright beam of white light shining out in front of both of them.
Dust swirls in the phone's light as Squiddo aims it around the room, swiveling it slowly in order to capture the entirety of their surroundings. Ash catches an old couch, the dark outline of a window frame, an oriental-style rug. A typical old apartment, as far from glamour and style as any other.
"Ugh, still empty..." Squiddo groans as if disappointed, pivoting back and forth to get a second glimpse of the unremarkable furnishings.
"Whatever. At least we didn't find, like, blood stains or some summoning circle." He rolls his eye in the dark, knowing all too well that Squiddo would have been overjoyed to find any one of those things.
"That'd be cool-" Squiddo proves his point with their latest remark. Having found nothing of interest, they lower the phone's flashlight beam slightly, about to give up- when a flash of white sweeps past, touching only a corner of the light before it disappears again, swirling up dust in its wake.
Much to his chagrin, Ash starts again, taking a stumbling step backwards and feeling his back brush against the white-painted doorframe. Squiddo shrieks, and he can't really tell if they're ecstatic, terrified, or some combination of both.
"Did- did you see that?" Squiddo says as if trying to convince themselves it had happened. They push their pointing finger into the trembling light, indicating the place where they saw the thing. The phone flashlight swings around the room with renewed vigor, trying desperately to catch another glimpse of whatever it was, with no luck.
"I, yes-" It suddenly strikes him that he should be afraid- this could be another person, a serial killer about to murder them and steal their hearts, or worse, because there was always worse. "We should go. It was a horrible idea to even come here-"
"Nonsense! What if we catch a ghost on camera? We'll be FAMOUS, Ash, famous!" Squiddo says this with reverence, shaking Ash's shoulders phone still in hand, shining bright light into his straining eye, trying to convince him.
"Ugh, whatever. Yeah, let's go get ourselves killed." Ash says derisively, stalking out of the apartment and back into the much better lit hall again. The harsh light is hard to look at again after adjusting to the dark apartment.
"Hey, we saw that thing and we didn't die-" Squiddo protests, following him outside. "Maybe it's still here, let's check the other apartments-"
Squiddo squeeze past him in the doorway, their bright orange coat still very visible even in the near-dark, and practically runs towards the door directly across from them. They reach for the handle, and it takes a moment of violent shaking up and down but it eventually gives way. "This way!" They push the door open with another creak and step inside without hesitation.
Ash sighs, following Squiddo inside, subconsciously pushing the door farther open and feeling his fingernails scrape old, dry paint. The inside of this apartment is black too, and Squiddo tries again to turn on the lights, only for them to fail again.
"Ugh, no lights again. I'll just keep using the flashlight." Just like last time, the flashlight swivels back and forth, sweeping over the blackness, revealing a similarly barren interior. Same dusty couch, same window frame with matching peeling paint, same faded oriental rug. The only difference this apartment had was a simple wooden dining chair in the far corner, right by the window.
"Of course it's empty." Squiddo remarks. "C'mon, where's the ghost at? I need some action in here!" Ash can't imagine why they sound so annoyed about the lack of spirits in this dump.
"Yeah, it's empty. So unfortunate, but what can you really expect of an abandoned apartment?" Ash crosses his arms in the dark, half to appear more annoyed, half because the place is cold as hell. "Maybe we just imagined that white thing. Maybe there's nothing here- a shame, we'd just have to go home then..."
"Nuh uh, I totally saw something!" Squiddo remains as resolute as ever. "Ghosts can't hide, not from Squiddo!" And they're back to swinging the phone flashlight beam back and forth, looking from blank wall to blank wall for any sign of supernatural activity. Ash feels like he'll pass out on the floor if they spend one more boring moment doing this.
And then, by some miracle (if only because it woke Ash up again), Squiddo turned the flashlight to the little wooden chair, and there it was. A white lump draped over the wood, unmoving, glowing a ghostly lime-yellow in the light of the phone camera. The second they caught sight of it, both of them froze, mouths agape, silence filling the empty apartment.
And then it stood and started rapidly floating towards them, dragging the loose ends of its body behind it, and Squiddo screeched at the top of their lungs, and even Ash couldn't stop himself from yelping, and then they'd grabbed each other's hands and were running, down the yellow-hued hallway, the figure right behind-
And then another creature, cloaked just like the last, emerged from the doorway of the apartment just in front of them, and they skidded to a stop, no escape in sight, petrified. And then the thing shouted, in a voice all too familiar: "BOO!"
"Dude, Spoke, you ruined it. I could have chased them more!" Another familiar voice whines from behind them, and they spin to see Zam removing a white bedsheet from himself. They turn around again and Spoke is there, wrestling himself out of his own sheet. A classic prank, and now that Ash thinks about it, he isn't sure how they fell for it.
"Dude- it was YOU GUYS? This whole time?" Squiddo sounds genuinely surprised. "Did you tell me to check this place out just so you could prank me?" They lower their phone from where it had been directed at Zam's face- the flashlight's powered off and the screen is black, it's probably dead.
"Well, yeah-" Spoke shrugs. "It was funny though. Ash, I have never heard you scream like that-" He reruns the sound in his head and starts giggling, quietly at first and then louder when Ash's irritated frown deepens. Even Zam and Squiddo are laughing too.
"Yeah Ash, you sounded like a little girl-" Squiddo manages to choke out between giggles, holding their stomach with their hands. It actually hurt because they were laughing so hard.
"Okay, so we're just going to laugh at me now, then." Ash rolls his eye. "And we're not going to talk about the other thing standing right behind us."
Slowly, everyone turns around to face what Ash is already staring apprehensively at. Another figure, cloaked similarly to how Zam and Spoke had been. Except this time, there were deep red stains splashed over the "fabric," and this time, the thing was actually floating above the ground.
"Guys," Zam began. "I think we should run." And so they did, out of the apartment building, into the chilly early morning, and they never did set foot into that place again.

─── ⋅☆⋅ ───

𝗮/𝗻: i'm back guys! :] sorry it took so long, i planned to come back earlier but had to get back to school work out of the way first lol. anyways this isn't my best work imo but i wanted to write more stuff w/ glitch duo (ash + squiddo) idk ☆ bk

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