Nightmare Fuel

Donna Bell wasn't the kind of girl who found herself becoming afraid in most situations. Growing up, the supernatural and occult had always been some of her favorite things to learn about. Even as a young child, she had been fascinated by it. There had always been strange occurrences that fell around her, and it only helped to push forwards her desire to learn more. 

After all, she'd grown up only a few doors down from a seemingly haunted lake. While the adults of Addleton didn't speak much about what had occurred in their town's lake, the younger citizens couldn't help but notice the stigma that surrounded it. The most popular rumor by far was that a boy had drowned and his body had never been recovered. 

Donna was so interested by this rumor that she tried to see if she could unearth anything about it herself, sometimes going to swim in the lake or trying to get on a boat to investigate. While she never found anything, she always kept her head up for any paranormal things that happened around the Addleton lake. 

But despite her lack of fear towards these things in general, there were always things that managed to slip through the cracks and get to her head. Mostly it was things in video games that ended up getting to her, as strange as that was. Perhaps it was just how staying up until dawn was about to break that made things seem strange within the television screen. 

One thing that had always bothered her was Deadhand from Ocarina of Time. Her friends had always laughed at her for that one, that was for sure. There were so many jokes to be made about that zombie-esque slug that slid around and tried to grab Link that for them it wasn't even scary anymore. 

But Donna found herself always disturbed by it and feeling desperate to run away. It wasn't something that ever really went away. But as she got older, she just had to make sure to stop showing her weaknesses to other people and just hide it with a smile. This had been her philosophy ever since she was a smile child - just hide it away. She wasn't always successful, but she always tried. 

This, of course, was a habit she'd inherited from her mother. She seemed to inherit everything from her mother, but that was mostly due to the fact that she never had a father to gain anything from. Donna couldn't remember ever having a father from the day she was born. As a child, she'd always wanted to find out exactly why this was the case.

Her mother would immediately clam up, place a smile upon her glossy lips, and offer her daughter some ice cream or some other trace in order to divert her daughter's attention. In her younger years, she always fell into this trap. But as she grew, she started to notice it and began to realize she wasn't going to get any answers.

Instead of pushing further into the situation, Donna just ended up picking up her own mother's behavior. Then she turned to her friends in order to make theories about what had really happened with her mother. This, of course, was something they never did at her house in fear that her mother might end up noticing. 

The main thing they'd come up with was that Donna was illegitimate (something her friends never failed to tease her on) and had been born while her mother was still in high school. As Allison Bell was by far the youngest mother of a teenager around, this certainly seemed to have some base.

On top of making theories, Donna's friends had always provided solace to her in one way or another, even if they weren't exactly the most comforting people. Their talents stayed more within the "making her laugh when she was down" zone, and she just got used to that. She'd gotten used to their crude ways of speaking and interacting, knowing that deep down they truly did care. 

She'd learned to love each of them in a strange sort of way - which they did in turn for her. The group remained rather solid for the many years they'd been together, even though they did have fights now and then.