Young Writers Society

Mischief is in the air tonight, and you're its unfortunate victim.

Some of you are lucky. You know it's Halloween. While you may not expect what is about to happen, you at least know that scary, strange things happen on a night like tonight. You expect goblins and ghouls and everything else that goes bump in the night - or to see cartoonish interpretations of them, at least.

But others of you aren't. Halloween isn't a thing where you're from, but you're wearing a costume - that's what's most important. You all were wearing some kind of costume before you found yourself in this spooky, creepy graveyard on All Hallow's Eve. And while it's one thing to be abducted and brought to a strange place, this situation is notably worse.

You've become your costume.

Today wasn't going as planned.

The chosen from Earth had been relatively good at keeping track of the days on Minecraftia compared to Earth, and were all pretty sure that it was Halloween. Télos, who was only just starting to understand the differences between Earth holidays, had finally gotten a grasp on what Halloween was. And though he didn't know how well this particular plan was going to work, he decided it would be a great idea to try out his prank from ages ago: he'd wear a pumpkin on his head to find if they really hid people from endermen.

And, more specifically, if they hid them if the enderman in question had taken Claire's potion.

But just before Télos could test out the supposed trick, he found himself standing in a really creepy graveyard. An eerie mist rolled across the barren ground, graves jutted out at weird angles, and the gnarled trees all looked like they might come to life.

Besides that, he felt weird. Like his form had changed, but he didn't remember changing it - he was just supposed to be his regular self, wearing his regular clothes with the pumpkin on top. He glanced down.

...That was weird.

The pumpkin guts weren't on his jacket anymore, and his clothes looked older and significantly scarier than before - which was saying a lot, since his clothes were never supposed to look terrifying.

Wait.

Where was his braid?

He reached a hand back to touch it, only to realize that it really wasn't there. He let his hand trail up his back and to the bottom of his head, stopping when he felt how hard it was. Where was his-

He put his other hand on his head.

He let out a sigh of relief - not noticing how creepy and hollow it sounded now. It was just the pumpkin! Seeing that the pumpkin wasn't all that important now, he went to take it off.

There was a popping noise.

And then suddenly he felt his head get disconnected from the rest of his body, and found himself staring up at his chest.

He stared.

He looked up at his neck.

And then he let himself panic, dropping his head and stumbling back into a nearby grave. Only it didn't entirely feel like he was, because his head was on the ground watching the rest of his body act like a chicken with its head cut off.

His body went incredibly still.

A moment passed.

Télos screamed.

Sasha shut the door of her apartment and walked out into the hallway. She trotted down the stairs and found herself in an alleyway. Skipping onto the main road, she headed towards the grave. She crossed the street and looked around for her brother's grave.

Sasha's brother had died on the 1st of October because of a car accident.

Looking at her surroundings, she noticed something was off. The trees looked scary and the graves looked like the people inside were ready to pop out any second.

"There it is." she mumbled, walking to the only proper grave. She knelt down. "Hello, Sawyer."

She stopped.

She couldn't talk. Something felt off. She felt like...

Getting up, she heard a rattling noise. "What the?" she looked around. And saw nothing. She did see someone else walking around the grave, though. A man, it seemed. Maybe it was him who was making the rattling noise.

Shuddering, Sasha started kneeling back down, knowing it was just the spooky October vibes that she was feeling. She rubbed her temple -- a thing she always did when she was nervous -- and gasped. She touched her temple again.

"What?" asking no one in particular. Processing that you had turned into a skeleton was hard.

Then she heard a scream.

And she decided it would be a good time to scream.

So she screamed as well.

He was running. Not from law enforcement; not from monsters; not from some rival assassin. He was running from monster hunters. Why? Because he was a monster now.

This had not been the plan. The plan was to get in, get out, and not be seen. What wasn't on the agenda was getting detected, ambushed, and then find himself in a stupid situation like this where he was sprinting headlong through the trees to evade the half-angel that was hellbent on finding a way to kill him. If he could, Kratzer would be halfway be grateful, since he still didn't know how to kill a pureblooded vampire that wasn't his sire. And he'd already killed his sire, which meant no more pureblood lives for him.

The branches flashed by in the night as he ran, and the sounds of pursuit were gone behind him. He'd probably taken to the air. Verdammt wings. He needed to get somewhere open where he could get his gun and shoot his pursuer instead of getting locked in melee combat again. The kusarigama of his hunter's had superior reach to his knives and he'd already been disarmed twice tonight.

A flicker of light green caught his eye through the foliage and he went towards it, darting through the trees, and when he came out of the woods, it was in a cemetery. Once, that would've creeped him out. Now, he was just glad it wasn't consecrated.

There was a scream.

He spun around at the sound of distress, catching sight of a skeleton somewhere towards the middle that was making such an ungodly sound and a headless man holding a screaming pumpkin. Strange, certainly, but it was Halloween and he was a vampire, so who was he to judge?

His hand went for his gun and that was when the world spun and he hit the ground and his hands weren't hands.

His hands were paws. Black paws. Very familiar looking, canine paws, and everything was much larger, and when he looked at himself, he was covered in dark, dense fur with paler gray highlights and a fluffy tail. A...silver fox?

Well, that gave a whole new meaning to der Silberfuchs.

Normally, such a change would've pissed him off, but as it was, it meant that the hunters were unlikely to find him. How it'd happened, he had no idea, but once again, it was Halloween and weird things happened because witches liked pulling pranks. Hopefully it wasn't permanent.

Oh, god, let it not be permanent.

Amy didn't need Scott. Starfire didn't need Nightwing to have a good time. And yes, it was Nightwing and not Robin. Scott had been very clear of that when they were picking out their costumes.

"But it's the same character..." Amy began.

"Yes, but he was Robin as a child. Now that he's an adult, separate from Batman, he's Nightwing." He'd spoken to her like she was stupid, even though Amy had read a few issues of Titans back in the day.

How couldn't she have seen their breakup coming? The whole thing had been Scott's idea, and she was pretty sure she remembered Nightwing leaving Starfire for Barbara Gordon anyway (another redhead, no less), just like Scott had left her for Tina.

Whatever. She was going to have a good time on her own. She was pretty proud of what she'd done with the costume too. The purple unitard, purple boots, and crimping her hair to substitute for not wanting to attempt to give it impossible volume.

She had fun at the party, even if no one understood what she was supposed to be. She'd passed on trying to give herself orange skin.

Let me guess, Lost in Space?

Star Trek.

Who are you supposed to be, exactly? Ohhhh. You know orange skin would help. You don't even have green eyes.

Amy had excused herself and sat outside, finding a place where she could be alone with her thoughts. She was used to this kind of attitude from middle school kids, but not from friends and acquaintances.

Everything happened quickly after that. She woke up and realized she was in a graveyard. Not only that, her skin was orange and her eyes were glowing green. She stood up, trying to get her bearings, and soon found she was levitating a few inches from the ground.

Holy hell. What on earth was going on? What had they spiked those drinks with?

Amy screamed, and collapsed back onto the ground.

Télos stiffened when he heard the chorus of screams throughout the graveyard - or, at least, his body did. Télos wasn't really sure if heads could stiffen, though he was sure he looked like a deer in headlights.

(Even though he still wasn't exactly sure what that kind of look was. Lex and Liz weren't the best at explaining it.)

He slowly got his body back to its feet and grabbed his head, slipping it back on as he nervously looked around the graveyard. Where had those screams come from? They weren't screaming at him. Their owners weren't anywhere near him. But they were coming from nearby, which meant-

He would have paled if he had the head to do it with.

"Gh-ghosts," he whispered, jack-o-lantern eyes widening in horror. He made a noise that was a gulp - even though he didn't have the neck to gulp with anymore - and looked around again. He had to be brave. This was just like something out of Oracle's stories, but Oracle's stories were just stories. They weren't true. They definitely weren't-

Something suddenly moved behind him and touched him.

Télos gave a terrified shriek and went stumbling into the gravestone in front of him, barely catching his head before it could hit the ground.

He spun around, heart pounding-

And found himself looking at a beautiful black horse.

He blinked.

The horse gave a soft neigh and nudged him. The horse was big, and intimidating, and looked vaguely terrifying, but there was just something about it that seemed so soft.

Télos couldn't really smile thanks to the pumpkin for a head, but he imagined one appearing on his face as he reached out a hand to pet the horse's head.

"Hi, buddy," he softly said. "I'm Télos - god of gold and ruler of the End because democracy takes too long to put into place!"

The horse looked at him funny before nudging him again.

"...You want me to ride you?" he hesitantly asked.

There was a confident neigh in response.

"It's been awhile since I've ridden a horse," he admitted. "But if you want me to ride you, I'm okay with it - I could use a friend right now."

After a little awkward maneuvering and another almost dropping of his head, he got onto the horse's back and gently started to lead it through the foggy graveyard. But the horse seemed to really enjoy being ridden, and it only took a minute before the horse was bolting through the graves - Télos hanging on as tightly as he could so he didn't go tumbling off.

It took Amy a moment to get her bearings. She rolled onto her back and was anchored, if only for a brief moment, by the perfect night sky. She'd grown up in Los Angeles, and they'd never had stars like this. She felt her heart pounding. She afraid to stand up for fear that she would accidentally levitate again. Still, somehow, she did.

She'd realized two other things too. Her hair was piled thickly on top of her head in voluminous curls, and her suit was now made of metal, not cloth.

Was she somehow, actually Starfire? No, that was impossible. Henry, the host of the party who taught eighth grade math, must have spiked them with something serious. But everyone had been drinking. Why didn't she see anyone she recognized?

It was then that she could have sworn she saw the Headless Horseman gallop by on a horse.

"Hey! Excuse me!" She shouted, as loud as she possibly could.

Télos forced the horse to a stop.

It was hard, seeing that he hadn't written one in so long and this horse didn't have any riding gear on it, but he somehow managed to do it. The horse didn't seem to mind when he led it back to the player with orange and glowing green eyes. If he didn't have a best friend with glowing eyes, he would have been a little concerned, but he wasn't too worried about it right now.

"Hi," he said, awkwardly getting off of the horse and landing on the ground in front of her. He hadn't ever seen someone who looked like her before - he couldn't help but stare.

There was a lot of screaming. The fox winced as a third voice joined the chorus and his gaze turned towards the sky. No winged shadow nor blink of chains alerted him to the fact that Cuán was still on his trail. Had he lost him? Come into this graveyard for nothing?

He sat there for several moments in the grass, panting and scanning his surroundings as he waited for some sign of danger. None came. He trotted back towards the edge of the cemetery, padding back into the trees, but the effort was futile: it seemed he wasn’t goin to be getting out of this form anytime soon.

Maybe taking the guise of a hound like Auri had would’ve been smarter.

A long sigh left his small body and he trotted into the graveyard again, weaving through them to find the other people. It seemed that the only way to get out of this was to play along.

He slid between the stones, an inky, moonlit shadow, and he was nearing the skeleton when there was the pounding of hooves and he looked up to see a horse barreling towards him with some pumpkin-headed thing on its back. He let out a yelp of surprise and darted trough its tumbling hooves, scrambling to safety behind another gravestone that he proceeded to jump on top of so he could see what was going on. The horse was coming to a stop in front of an individual with glowing eyes. Who was levitating.

His ears swiveled forward and he listened silently in the hopes of procuring helpful information of one sort or another, and, as he listened, he briefly wondered if he was capable of speech at all.

Revier had decided to go with a costume of his own making this year. He had had some vines that needed taking care of, and decided to add them to the costume for flavor. 'It's creative,' he had thought. After all, such an addition was not often seen, and there was no other purpose he could think of for the vines.

Perhaps it was appropriate that the vines should continue living through him.

He always took the graveyard as a shortcut to his friend's house, and tonight was no different. Halloween would not deter him; he wasn't one to be scared of such places. All the people who could have posed a threat to him in such a place were dead, after all.

He closed his eyes as he reflected upon this fact, humming as he walked. Suddenly though, he couldn't hum, more could he open his eyes once more; it seemed he lacked both a mouth to hum with and eyes to open. However, in a strange way, he could still 'see,' and even better than before. Around him were the ghostly outlines of trees, grass, and through them he could see the outlines of other trees, other living things. Small bugs flying through the air appeared as little spots of light, and a squirrel appeared as an outline with a white flame in the center.

He was connected to the living things around him.

However, this grand realization was soured somewhat when he looked down. All he could see were vines, shaped into the facade of humanity. They writhed and curled, and the sight made him feel ill. He hardly got the time to reflect upon that when there was a sudden disturbance in what he was seeing; a pulse, almost a wave. He glanced up, just in time to see one coming from a slightly different direction, followed by a third.

He was going to figure out what was happening. That meant going towards the disturbances, whatever they were. Luckily, the vines worked well as false legs, and he walked towards where the disturbances had originated.

When Liz suddenly found herself standing in a creepy, misty graveyard, she was sure that she was having some kind of horrible nightmare. She had been dreaming of graveyards a lot lately, and something about how she felt now reminded her of what she had seen in her dreams. It was the return of one of her older ones - she was standing in front of a grave with her name on it, and she was looking like that.

She wasn't sure what had started the dreams again, but they were happening, and she couldn't do much to help. But this didn't have to be her literal worst nightmare - she was herself, she felt alert, and there was definitely not a grave-

She looked down in front of her.

"Elizabeth Hardy," the grave read, listing the exact years that she had been born and died.

Her gaze slowly dropped to her outfit.

She had been wearing it as a Halloween costume. She remembered that much. But everything had been so big on her now, and this looked like it fit perfectly. She reached a shaking hand up towards her hair. It was short.

"No, no-"

She suddenly felt a cold chill run through her - accompanied by a burst of fear that wasn't her own. She spun around to find the source of it, but all she could see was people off in the distance. There was no one or nothing to cause the feeling.

She went pale.

"No, no," she repeated, this time for an entirely different reason. "Please don't be a ghost, please don't be a-"

She came to another abrupt stop, this time when she realized she recognized the name on the grave beside her own. Eyes widening, she rushed over to it.

"Alexander Bailey," she read. The years matched up, and so did the description. Oh God. This was real. They had lived in the same time - they would have been buried in the same graveyard. "Lex, please be here, too. I'm so scared, and I think we're on Earth-"

The cold returned.

And, with it, she felt something trying to take over her body. "Lex help-"

"Liz, I'm right here," her own voice said in a tone that was calming and familiar. It had a hint of panic, too, but was much better at hiding it than she was. "I...I think I'm a ghost."

"This doesn't make any sense," she whispered.

"...Maybe we became our costumes," was the hesitant suggestion. "You were Kaito, and I was..."

"You were supposed to be a robot," Liz protested. "Not a ghost-I threw a sheet on you before we could finish your costume."

There was a pause.

"...Are you a robot ghost?"

"I think I'm just a ghost," Lex safely assumed. "But this is like the other times - we can't be the only ones here."

"There's people over there," Liz pointed out. "But what if they're not like us? What if they're regular people, and this is just another weird thing in our lives?"

Lex was silent for a moment.

"...We can pretend to be normal," he suggested. "I can stop possessing you, too-"

"No," she cut off. "...Please. I was scared at first, but I'd be even more scared if I couldn't see you..."

Lex gave a small smile. "Okay," he promised. "I'll just try to take as little control as possible."

She nodded.

She started heading over towards the group of people, grateful that Lex was still with her - in a situation like this, she wouldn't want to be with anyone else. He was the only one who truly understood her feelings right now. Her boyfriend would have been a comforting sight, too, but Lex was the only one who knew what it was like to be dead on world and alive on another.

As they approached the group, Liz became more and more sure that they were in the same situation - or, at least, weren't the least bit normal. She thought she saw a skeleton in the distance. There was a person made of vines. There was the Headless Horseman - that one made her stop a good distance away - and then there was-

"...Is that Starfire?" Lex asked.

"...Starfire?"

"From Teen Titans - you never saw that?"

She shook her head.

"...I feel like I just dated myself."

"It's alright," she reassured him. "You didn't even know what a Vocaloid was the first time we met."

"That's not helping," he whispered back.

She gave a small smile.

And then she seriously debated hiding behind a grave, because two out of the several people there looked absolutely terrifying. She glanced over at the grave next to her and saw a fox sitting on top of it. It was big, and silver, and had a surprisingly nasty scar on its face.

"...Do you think foxes can speak?" Lex asked, staring at the fox.

"I don't think we want to test that," she pointed out. "What if you got stuck like you did in the skeleton?"

"...I thought we weren't going to talk about the skeleton."

"That's what Aleks and Télos said - I never made that agreement. I wasn't even there for the part that you all agreed you wouldn't talk about - I was talking about how you terrified me in the palace and pretended like you were going to kill me and keep my soul with you."

"It was complicated," Lex said, making her voice jump in ways she didn't even know was possible.

Liz glanced back at the fox.

"...Do you object to me adopting the fox?"

"It's a fox."

"I can take care of animals! I'm good with pets."

"This is Earth - foxes are different here-"

"But it looks so alert. Like it's a person. Come on, Lex. You know that Télos would love a pet fox, too! It could be the palace's pet. We'd all take very good care of it."

Lex sighed.

"...Why do I feel like I'd be the one doing the taking care?" he asked.

Amy felt her head spinning once the Headless Horseman stopped.

Soon they were joined by others. A fox, a walking skeleton and countless other mythical creatures Amy was surer referenced something, but she wasn't sure once. They all formed a semi-circle in the graveyard. From the looks on their faces, she was sure they were just as clueless as she was.

"Does anyone have any idea what's going on?"

No one said anything.

"My name is Amy Fox. I teach middle school English. I was at a party..." She trailed off. They all were staring at her. No, not just at her. A each other. If by chance some random person saw them, she wasn't sure what they'd think. A group of people who got too into their costumes.

But she was levitating again.

Starfire could do more than just levitate. She could fly. Could Amy fly too? She was still too scared and overwhelmed to ponder the question further, and let herself fall to the ground.

"I am not a pet," was the first thing that came out of his mouth, affirming the fact that he could, indeed, speak. It was still thick with that staccato, German lilt of his, but he bothered to put effort towards proper pronunciation so he was still understandable. "Nor do foxes make good ones in ze first place."

His ears swiveled back as the glowing-eyed woman started speaking, seemingly as clueless as the rest of them, and his eyes wandered about the motley crew that was gathering. A skeleton; some person talking with themselves--the one who'd mentioned taking him home, then argued about it; this green-eyed woman; the vine person; the pumpkin-headed man with a horse. This was better than a fairy tale. And not in the way that he'd want to be in one.

Well, if they were doing introductions, he may as well go next. "My name is Kratzer," he said. "Ironically, many also know me as Silberfuchs,or Herr Fuchs, although I'm usually quite humanoid."

Sasha stared.

And stared.

She couldn't make sense of it. Opening and closing her mouth was the only possible thing she could do at the moment. She did that several time and later realized she must look like a boney fish.

She scratched her arm -- a thing Sasha did when she was nervous.

"Um, hi?" she said, trying out her skeletonish voice. It sounded like an echo. "I'm Sasha Silver. Anyone know why..." she looked for the right word, but couldn't find it. So she geustered around at everyone. "This happened?"

Between Lex and Liz, one of them was bound to have come up with some kind of answer to Sasha's question, but both were more preoccupied with the other people in the graveyard: Lex with the fox, and Liz with the Headless Horse.

Lex was trying to turn their head to stare at the fox - eyes widening as he apparently recognized the name. He started to say, "Kratzer-" but was cut off by Liz shutting her mouth as tight as she could. She would have let him speak normally, but this wasn't normally.

The Headless Horseman was looking right at her.

He suddenly rushed over to her, throwing his arms around her in a surprisingly tight hug. Liz paled and tried to wiggle free, but the Headless Horseman refused to let go.

"Li-" the ghost - that was what he was, right? - started to say, only to stop and stare at her with wide jack-o-lantern eyes. "iiii-"

Lex gave Kratzer another look, too distracted to realize how terrified Liz was by this sudden turn of events.

"iii-" the ghost continued to draw out. Even before he finally added in the last letter, Liz knew exactly what was being said: the Headless Horseman knew her name. She went back to struggling with gusto, desperately trying to push him away. "-z! My friend Liz. She's, er, definitely going to get a kick out of me running into Kaito. Because he's, er, her favorite Voca...Voca...Voca....."

If pumpkins could look hopeless, he somehow managed to.

She stopped struggling.

"Télos?" she whispered. She wasn't sure if it was her or Lex who was actually doing the whispering or not, but they definitely shared the same disbelief. She could see it now - they were the same height, wore similar outfits, and who else would give a reply like that?

"It's Vocaloid," she added a second later.

"Thanks," Télos whispered back.

"But you don't have to lie about it," she reassured him. "I think we just got turned into our costumes."

Télos stared.

"...Ohhh," he replied, eyes widening as understanding dawned on him. Giving her one last tight squeeze, he let go and turned back to the group.

"I'm Télos, god of gold and ruler of the End because democracy takes way too long to be put into place," Télos with an energetic bow - he popped up quickly, but Liz guessed it was more because he didn't want his head to pop off.

"I'm Liz," she said. "Uh, Elizabeth Hardy. I'm the chosen of the water god Aquarius. And, um, there's technically someone else here, but we don't usually share the same body. He's just stuck as a ghost right now, so he's possessing me so he can communicate."

She paused.

"...This is really awkward," she sheepishly admitted. "Lex, how did you do this before?"

"Lots of fighting," Lex replied. "And the occasional truce-"

"Lex?" Télos interrupted. "You're here, too?"

Lex turned her lips into a smile.

"I am," he confirmed.

Télos let out a heavy sigh. "That's a relief," he said. "I thought I was going to have to deal with this on my own. Now I have one of my chosen and my brother's chosen. I can definitely handle this-"

He paused and stared at Liz again.

"...Wait," he said, his voice quiet and slightly fearful, "Lex, you're a ghost?"

Lex and Liz let out simultaneous sighs.