Karkat, Be Haunted

chapter one

Your head lies on your bare mattress as you scowl at your ceiling. You know if someone were to walk in right now, they'd think you are incredibly angry (or annoyed) at something or another. Probably assume something deep rooted within you has been haunting your mind since you were a wriggler. While that sounds like it could be some epic, edgy back-story for some dramatic book protagonist (and if you were being honest with yourself, you'd love to read that) you, in fact, just have resting bitch face. But thinking of your own RBF only leads you to think about all the people who constantly tell you to "lighten up" (your smarmy brother included), and therefore leads to your scowl deepening. It's a never ending cycle you go through at least twice a day. Speaking of which:

"Karkat, what are you doing?" Kankri said to you, leaning against your doorframe. Your sigh of pure ire left him unfazed. He'd grown up with you for 17 years; he was used to your bullshit.

"I'm prancing around my room with joy like I just watched you jump off a three story building." You responded, rolling over to your side to throw an empty glare his way.

"We both know you'd be sobbing over my body if that was the case, brother. You can't fool me."

"Fine then – I am now mourning your grave in the pouring rain while Dad pats my back with grief. Does that sound better to you or are you going to keep complaining about my hypotheticals?"

"As much as I would love to continue to protest your overly-exaggerated theoretical scenarios, I must call you down for dinner."

"Oh, yeah," You swung your legs over to the dark carpet and stretched your arms. "What's on the table for today?"

"The usual."

Indeed, as you stepped into the kitchen, the usual was indeed on the table. The "usual" being bugs. You had heard that trolls once ate "grub" (you personally hadn't seen it before, production of the stuff had stopped way back when trolls lived on Alternia) but your diet has been exclusive to things like crickets and caterpillars. You recall when one of your human peers genuinely threw up at lunch because you ate a cricket. They had obviously overreacted, but you felt bad anyway. You started eating lunch alone from then on out of guilt.

But, then again, that was in the last school. You have no idea how many trolls with be in the new one, but you sure as hell hope the ratio is more even than it was last time.

You sit down at the dining table, which in reality is just a glorified breakfast bar mixed with a kitchen island, and curse at the boxes you almost dragged your chair into.

"Language, Karkat." Kankri says, pulling out three plates.

"I don't see why you bother Kankri; he's never going to stop." Your Dad teases. You would be mad if it was anyone else, but it's your Dad. How could you ever be mad at him? Still, to keep up your nonexistent reputation, you grumble something along the lines of "please shut up". If anyone had asked, you would've grumbled even more about how you'd "never say please to scum like them". Then again, that only leaves you open to an epic response of "but you just did", so you'll have to work on that one.

You watched your Dad scoop out the crickets (yum) from the silver pot with a slotted spoon onto the plates. Your Dad sat to your right, on the end of the table, and Kankri sat to your left as he handed you your plate, now full of bugs and spring onions. For all the slack humans give them, most types taste great. Then again, if a human were to ever eat a few Blister Beetles, they'd die a long and painful death. So, in some respects, you get the caution.

You should probably pay attention to what your Dad and your brother are saying, but you're busy thinking about other things. Such as how you're struggling to get a bug on your spoon, how you've lived in this house for a week and Kankri is the only one who wasn't too lazy to unpack his own boxes, and how you start a new school tomorrow. Oh yeah, you're starting a new school tomorrow, aren't you? You wish you had prepared yourself more, but your past self once again failed you in that area. No matter how many times you've insisted that you are an amazing planner, everyone knows (including you) that you don't really think ahead.

"Karkat? What do you think?" Your dad finally called to you as you finally got that annoying piece of shit bug in your mouth.

"I wasn't paying attention, sorry," You swallow, "What was that?"

"Don't speak with your mouth full, Karkat. That's disgusting," Kankri furrowed his eyebrows at you as you proceeded to purposefully shove a spoonful of food into your mouth in preparation to speak with a mouth full of food out of spite.

"I was talking about school, Karkat," your Dad huffed in fake annoyance. "Are you excited?"

"Dad, this is going to be my first year in a completely new school in Sixth Form. What do you think?" you manage through your full mouth. You at least had the decency to cover it with your fist.

Your Dad chuckled at that: "I suppose not, huh?"

You manage to finish your dinner with only one more little sibling squabble, which happened near the end (It was an argument on who should load the dishwasher. You lost.) And you are now back in your bedroom, picking up your pillows and duvet from the floor. Remember when you commented to yourself how your bed was bare? Yeah, that was because you had a shitfit about something or another. Some people may say that you were mourning about your previous life in Houston, but that was not the case: you hated it there, now that you think about that. You probably just hit your horns on the head rest while throwing your head back in frustration. You tend to do that a lot, now that you're thinking about it.

Once you've finished the bothering task of throwing your bed sheets back onto your bed, you shimmy out of your jeans and throw yourself into bed, narrowly missing the wall. You dread to think about what tomorrow has in store for you. Maybe waking up at the ass crack of dawn won't be too bad?