Nihls
Feather Overseer
- Local time
- Today 12:38 AM
- Messages
- 254
- Age
- 28
The recording begins with a face, seemingly a statue looking straight into the camera accompanied by the sound of wings beating. After two seconds, the screen changes to an entirely different picture.
"Be welcome my sweet little demons, I'm Bianca, the witch and this is Penumbra Lives. We have something truly gruesome tonight, because we'll be looking for the scariest denizens of our gloomy Penumbra City to teach us about the true spirit of our most dreaded local festivity. time for us to welcome the coming darkness of winter! So go grab a slimy bowl of entrails and get ready to hoard the best coffin in the lair, because this year's Samhain Special is ready to burst." The young woman dressed with the unwritten traditional black thread of a witch looks at the camera smiling as she goes on with the presentation. At the background, a lonely street can be seen, the sounds of celebration can be heard in the distance. "Alright cut!" The voice of a male announces off-screen before the record fades to black.
"Do you have it? Walter, do you have it?" She repeats, as the camera rushes towards an indistinct target, shadows and lights mingle, blurring until it begins focusing on the sight of an abandoned playground, partly surrounded by a leafy wilderness.
The cameraman points at Bianca, who shields her eyes from the light before it lowers. "Sorry, I have it!"
"Great." The witch raises her thumbs up, smiling before she approaches closer towards the swings, where a single, childlike figure awaits.
"Right now, we're approaching our first encounter of the night, this little fella likes hanging out alone in the middle of a desert park, isn't that ominous?" Bianca approaches his guest, who makes no attempt to acknowledge her presence. Closer still, the lens reveals the sight of a short heighted skeleton.
Once Bianca awaits at his side, and the camera captures them both in the same frame, she addresses the spooky kid. "Hi there. I'm Bianca, today we're conducting a small… social experiment, we hunt for the most terrifying pedestrians, and we ask them how does the spirit of Samhain brings out their scariest side." For several seconds, the kid does nothing, in the distance, the sound of a wild animal can be heard, which seems to make Bianca recoil. After failing to obtain an answer, she begins repeating herself, in response, the skull falls off the skeleton's body and the camera zooms momentarily into it, seconds later there's another cut.
"Alright, here's the good one." This time, Bianca approaches a werewolf conspicuously standing at a street corner lit only by the fire of the carved face of a melon hanging from the post. The creature stares dully as the witch does her exposition. "May I add, it is terrific to have a shocking beast of the night, such as yourself as our guest, sir." Bianca happily chants at the end of her introduction. The werewolf's mouth opens and a growling sound does well putting words together. "I'm a girl, you know?" It mumbles, Bianca smiles awkwardly, eyeing the camera and back at the she wolf. "Forget about it, I'll appear in your shit if you pay me a pizza and a beer, I'm starving." The werewolf offers.
The haggling is short lived, though Bianca shies away from the camera, the furred woman settles for the change in the witch's purse. The hungry beast takes a moment, clearing her throat before speaking non-stop. "The trick, I guess is don't leave school. My mom was always harsh with me after my dad left, and after that, I tried to make things work with my boyfriend, but his folk wouldn't want me no matter what I did. Now I'm lucky if I get enough clients to feed myself. Some will pay more because they are into freaky stuff, but even then, it's rough, everybody thinks I need a medic, you know. At my lowest, I was breaking into people's home to steal underwear and sell them to other hookers."
At the end of that short tale, Bianca's hand is quietly slamming against her forehead. "That's what you wanted, no? Great sob story for tv." The wolf lady asks. The witch breathes, still smiling yet looking too dispirited. "But, don't you eat people? Don't you crave the sweet taste of blood?" She raises her voice, making a theatrical remark on the words eat and blood. "Look, pal. I may be a loser, but I'm not that stupid, ok? Do you think I want hunters shooting silver crosses at my tail?" Although her beast-like face barely shows it, the werewolf gal sounds upset at that point, without warning Bianca walks out of the camera's reach.
"Cheap bitch!" The werewolf loudly insults the presenter right before the record goes dark yet again. Going again through the record reveals a second voice, muttering the word sweet right after Bianca says it, it's improbable it was the cameraman or anybody shown on screen.
"I can't believe it, this is just hellish!" Bianca's joyful yell is heard on top of the rain's low monotone. The camera struggles to focus on Bianca's shape, this time keeping some more distance to the camera, she's seen standing beside the large shape of a castle-like building, some wilderness and even a small group of horses can be seen besides the building, with the shade of the night, and the haze of rain it is a hard to tell picture, the main source of lighting is the moon, and the camera's own light is lacking at that distance, she's accompanied by a tall, masculine silhouette.
The camera draws closer, and Bianca does her thing yet again. "A deliciously twisted fate has brought us to this haunted mansion, currently it is kept by this mysterious gentleman, mister Hawthorne. He has agreed to let us watch as much as we want, and also tell us about the history of its sinister, former occupant. Let's go!" Bianca is evidently eager to get to work, there are several cuts as they enter the mansion. For unclear reasons, there's six minutes of nothing but static noise, it goes back to normal as they begin the interview with Hawthorne, there's no hint that anything other than the sights inside the building were recorded during that time.
The thunders of the rainy vicinity make the camera shake lightly as an enthusiastic witch interviews Hawthorne, no longer wearing a hat and under the lamplight inside the house, two small horns protrude from the top of his forehead and pair of yellow eyes stand out from Hawthorne's middle-aged sobriety as he begins speaking. "Yes, the mansion belongs to my long-time associate, H. R. Cyggurley. From the two of us, he was the most dedicated to our goals, we had a well-connected business, and very few within the scene didn't know of our name. But you see, he was always the most dedicated. He would ramble, insanity and despair to the mortal!" Hawthorne looks at the camera, his stony look appears to soften, reminiscing an old friend and he smiles too faintly. "We brought out the worse qualities in others, very subtle business. At times, we could wait entire decades just for our little enterprises to bear any fruit, but when it did, hell broke loose. Economies, crashing. People, warring. Famine and the plague? Rampant wherever you look." The man kept narrating.
When the camera turned back to Bianca, she appears paler. "But… is something like that even legal?" The witch asks, as much as she does to Hawthorne as to the camera, smiling nervously. In response, Hawthorne's own smile cracked into elderly chuckle. "Oh dear girl, when you acquire power, you realize there is no greater law than the arbitrary instincts of nature. We live for this reason, that's the difference between you and us." The old man admits with condescension, Bianca no longer appears invested in the subject, and asks something else instead. "So the mansion is haunted, right?" The old man shrugs. "Well technically."
After being asked to elaborate by an unsettled witch, Hawthorne complies. "The only thing that haunts this property is my old friend. He does so out of heartache, you see, from all the vices and excess this existence has to offer, his desires became fixed by the only thing he couldn't possess. He made everything to forget the pain through our devilry, but with the years, it became clearer that he would never overcome that pain. This place is still haunted by his grief, he does nothing much of it, mind you, as he no longer sees any meaning in fooling around with the shadow puppetry of this life." Bianca's eyes are wide open with incredulity. "What you're saying is that this place is haunted by spirit of the lamest old devil ever to live?" The witch is then not only angry, but also offended. The camera and the lamplights flicker as the storm rages, making Hawthorne's shining eyes all the more visible. "It's as Cyggurley says, you youngsters lack the vision to experience the ultimate kind of horror, that which exceeds ordinary understanding. Instead, you barely escape it out of nothing but sheer chance… I'll show you to the door."
Afterwards, there are several half frames that show Bianca lashing out of irritation. Then, they are no longer to be found within Hawthorne's manor. More pixelated frames occur, when the recording recovers, the camera is rolled on its side, and Bianca's thigh is seen on first frame, presumably sitting on the bus stop on the hills right outside the city. The video glitches once again, when it fixes, it appears to be earlier, before the rain started and Bianca stands on a different part of the city holding some sort of advertisement prop for a known candy brand.
"Before announcing the winner of the lifetime supply of Mr. Carrie's Secret Candy Corn. I-" Bianca stammers, reading a piece of paper. "I'm contractually obligated to warn that neither Mr. Carrie's Tooth Rotting Delight or any of our other sponsors are in any way responsible for the quick development of severely morbid obesity, autoimmune glandular deficiency, chronic depression… as well as the long term incidence of suicidal tendencies, chemical castration and potentially irreversible loss of cognitive functions. The relation between the consumption of these products and their organic components to the mentioned symptoms has not been subjected to study yet." The witch still forces a smile, blankly staring at the paper after struggling to read through it. "Without further ado, the winner is-"
The video glitches back to a cut where Bianca sits on the bench of the bus stop. "All we got is some dead kid, a furry whore calling me bitch and the ramblings of a crazy old man… this is amazing." The distant sound of bird like noises can be heard in the background, accompanied by the rain, on the side of the shot Bianca faces, Penumbra thrives, boiling with activity and light and on her back, the forest grows thick and dark, impenetrable to the light of the camera. "But you know what? I think I learned something, no matter how fucked up, none of us is as scary as all of us. Individually, we have very little control over what we do and that's on the mercy of others to decide." Bianca breathes deeply, there's a sudden influx of static. "Maybe I'm just a little tired of having a career that depends on shitty advertisement and talking like a fucking thesaurus for children… Walter, I really had no right dragging you into this, I'm sorry." She whimpers and sobs.
"Bianca, that's alright. Listen, maybe there's something I had to tell you before. I-" Walter, the cameraman, pauses midsentence, taking hold of the camera, the frame moves. When it focuses again, Walter holds her hand, and her puzzled face is shown closest to the camera. The light reveals a figure right behind her, perhaps eight feet tall, still covered by the shadows, it appears to be the face of a red horse, with pitch black eyes, slowly stepping closer towards them, quivering. "Bianca, don't panic now, we have to leave." Walter warns, instead, Bianca turns to see, as she does, the face of the creature parts in half, to reveal a humanoid face inside, staring at them.
There is a guttural shrieking which has been described as the cross of a goat yelling and the call of a shoebill. Most notably, amidst the animal noise, something resembling words can be heard, repeatedly asking Am I scary? It is then when the camera presumably falls as the frame bends and the attached light goes out. No screams or other hints of struggle are recorded. A gurgling sound drowns out the rain, what is thought to be giant chitinous leg of an arthropod appears on screen besides the grass, half-lit by the bus stop. Nothing else but a low muttering of a crowd can be heard until the record stops completely, freezing on the very last frame.
What's left of the camera, which was burned to a melting point, was found six hours later by a group of friends on the way to a trip into the woods. They filed a report under the suspicion it was a crime scene. Detectives quickly began an investigation.
The way their clothes were left behind without showing signs of struggle led the detectives to believe this was an elaborate hoax, given miss Belladonna's large debt and mister Adler's known distaste with his recent marriage. Mister Adler's relation with a dentist and miss Belladonna's connection to several hairdressers are believed to explain the various samples of teeth and hair left in the vicinity of their last known location as recorded on the tape. There's no evidence of these samples belonging to any of them.
Miss Belladonna is currently wanted under the charges of fraud, fabrication of a crime scene and deliberate obstruction of justice; mister Adler is to respond as complicit of her crimes.
"Be welcome my sweet little demons, I'm Bianca, the witch and this is Penumbra Lives. We have something truly gruesome tonight, because we'll be looking for the scariest denizens of our gloomy Penumbra City to teach us about the true spirit of our most dreaded local festivity. time for us to welcome the coming darkness of winter! So go grab a slimy bowl of entrails and get ready to hoard the best coffin in the lair, because this year's Samhain Special is ready to burst." The young woman dressed with the unwritten traditional black thread of a witch looks at the camera smiling as she goes on with the presentation. At the background, a lonely street can be seen, the sounds of celebration can be heard in the distance. "Alright cut!" The voice of a male announces off-screen before the record fades to black.
"Do you have it? Walter, do you have it?" She repeats, as the camera rushes towards an indistinct target, shadows and lights mingle, blurring until it begins focusing on the sight of an abandoned playground, partly surrounded by a leafy wilderness.
The cameraman points at Bianca, who shields her eyes from the light before it lowers. "Sorry, I have it!"
"Great." The witch raises her thumbs up, smiling before she approaches closer towards the swings, where a single, childlike figure awaits.
"Right now, we're approaching our first encounter of the night, this little fella likes hanging out alone in the middle of a desert park, isn't that ominous?" Bianca approaches his guest, who makes no attempt to acknowledge her presence. Closer still, the lens reveals the sight of a short heighted skeleton.
Once Bianca awaits at his side, and the camera captures them both in the same frame, she addresses the spooky kid. "Hi there. I'm Bianca, today we're conducting a small… social experiment, we hunt for the most terrifying pedestrians, and we ask them how does the spirit of Samhain brings out their scariest side." For several seconds, the kid does nothing, in the distance, the sound of a wild animal can be heard, which seems to make Bianca recoil. After failing to obtain an answer, she begins repeating herself, in response, the skull falls off the skeleton's body and the camera zooms momentarily into it, seconds later there's another cut.
"Alright, here's the good one." This time, Bianca approaches a werewolf conspicuously standing at a street corner lit only by the fire of the carved face of a melon hanging from the post. The creature stares dully as the witch does her exposition. "May I add, it is terrific to have a shocking beast of the night, such as yourself as our guest, sir." Bianca happily chants at the end of her introduction. The werewolf's mouth opens and a growling sound does well putting words together. "I'm a girl, you know?" It mumbles, Bianca smiles awkwardly, eyeing the camera and back at the she wolf. "Forget about it, I'll appear in your shit if you pay me a pizza and a beer, I'm starving." The werewolf offers.
The haggling is short lived, though Bianca shies away from the camera, the furred woman settles for the change in the witch's purse. The hungry beast takes a moment, clearing her throat before speaking non-stop. "The trick, I guess is don't leave school. My mom was always harsh with me after my dad left, and after that, I tried to make things work with my boyfriend, but his folk wouldn't want me no matter what I did. Now I'm lucky if I get enough clients to feed myself. Some will pay more because they are into freaky stuff, but even then, it's rough, everybody thinks I need a medic, you know. At my lowest, I was breaking into people's home to steal underwear and sell them to other hookers."
At the end of that short tale, Bianca's hand is quietly slamming against her forehead. "That's what you wanted, no? Great sob story for tv." The wolf lady asks. The witch breathes, still smiling yet looking too dispirited. "But, don't you eat people? Don't you crave the sweet taste of blood?" She raises her voice, making a theatrical remark on the words eat and blood. "Look, pal. I may be a loser, but I'm not that stupid, ok? Do you think I want hunters shooting silver crosses at my tail?" Although her beast-like face barely shows it, the werewolf gal sounds upset at that point, without warning Bianca walks out of the camera's reach.
"Cheap bitch!" The werewolf loudly insults the presenter right before the record goes dark yet again. Going again through the record reveals a second voice, muttering the word sweet right after Bianca says it, it's improbable it was the cameraman or anybody shown on screen.
"I can't believe it, this is just hellish!" Bianca's joyful yell is heard on top of the rain's low monotone. The camera struggles to focus on Bianca's shape, this time keeping some more distance to the camera, she's seen standing beside the large shape of a castle-like building, some wilderness and even a small group of horses can be seen besides the building, with the shade of the night, and the haze of rain it is a hard to tell picture, the main source of lighting is the moon, and the camera's own light is lacking at that distance, she's accompanied by a tall, masculine silhouette.
The camera draws closer, and Bianca does her thing yet again. "A deliciously twisted fate has brought us to this haunted mansion, currently it is kept by this mysterious gentleman, mister Hawthorne. He has agreed to let us watch as much as we want, and also tell us about the history of its sinister, former occupant. Let's go!" Bianca is evidently eager to get to work, there are several cuts as they enter the mansion. For unclear reasons, there's six minutes of nothing but static noise, it goes back to normal as they begin the interview with Hawthorne, there's no hint that anything other than the sights inside the building were recorded during that time.
The thunders of the rainy vicinity make the camera shake lightly as an enthusiastic witch interviews Hawthorne, no longer wearing a hat and under the lamplight inside the house, two small horns protrude from the top of his forehead and pair of yellow eyes stand out from Hawthorne's middle-aged sobriety as he begins speaking. "Yes, the mansion belongs to my long-time associate, H. R. Cyggurley. From the two of us, he was the most dedicated to our goals, we had a well-connected business, and very few within the scene didn't know of our name. But you see, he was always the most dedicated. He would ramble, insanity and despair to the mortal!" Hawthorne looks at the camera, his stony look appears to soften, reminiscing an old friend and he smiles too faintly. "We brought out the worse qualities in others, very subtle business. At times, we could wait entire decades just for our little enterprises to bear any fruit, but when it did, hell broke loose. Economies, crashing. People, warring. Famine and the plague? Rampant wherever you look." The man kept narrating.
When the camera turned back to Bianca, she appears paler. "But… is something like that even legal?" The witch asks, as much as she does to Hawthorne as to the camera, smiling nervously. In response, Hawthorne's own smile cracked into elderly chuckle. "Oh dear girl, when you acquire power, you realize there is no greater law than the arbitrary instincts of nature. We live for this reason, that's the difference between you and us." The old man admits with condescension, Bianca no longer appears invested in the subject, and asks something else instead. "So the mansion is haunted, right?" The old man shrugs. "Well technically."
After being asked to elaborate by an unsettled witch, Hawthorne complies. "The only thing that haunts this property is my old friend. He does so out of heartache, you see, from all the vices and excess this existence has to offer, his desires became fixed by the only thing he couldn't possess. He made everything to forget the pain through our devilry, but with the years, it became clearer that he would never overcome that pain. This place is still haunted by his grief, he does nothing much of it, mind you, as he no longer sees any meaning in fooling around with the shadow puppetry of this life." Bianca's eyes are wide open with incredulity. "What you're saying is that this place is haunted by spirit of the lamest old devil ever to live?" The witch is then not only angry, but also offended. The camera and the lamplights flicker as the storm rages, making Hawthorne's shining eyes all the more visible. "It's as Cyggurley says, you youngsters lack the vision to experience the ultimate kind of horror, that which exceeds ordinary understanding. Instead, you barely escape it out of nothing but sheer chance… I'll show you to the door."
Afterwards, there are several half frames that show Bianca lashing out of irritation. Then, they are no longer to be found within Hawthorne's manor. More pixelated frames occur, when the recording recovers, the camera is rolled on its side, and Bianca's thigh is seen on first frame, presumably sitting on the bus stop on the hills right outside the city. The video glitches once again, when it fixes, it appears to be earlier, before the rain started and Bianca stands on a different part of the city holding some sort of advertisement prop for a known candy brand.
"Before announcing the winner of the lifetime supply of Mr. Carrie's Secret Candy Corn. I-" Bianca stammers, reading a piece of paper. "I'm contractually obligated to warn that neither Mr. Carrie's Tooth Rotting Delight or any of our other sponsors are in any way responsible for the quick development of severely morbid obesity, autoimmune glandular deficiency, chronic depression… as well as the long term incidence of suicidal tendencies, chemical castration and potentially irreversible loss of cognitive functions. The relation between the consumption of these products and their organic components to the mentioned symptoms has not been subjected to study yet." The witch still forces a smile, blankly staring at the paper after struggling to read through it. "Without further ado, the winner is-"
The video glitches back to a cut where Bianca sits on the bench of the bus stop. "All we got is some dead kid, a furry whore calling me bitch and the ramblings of a crazy old man… this is amazing." The distant sound of bird like noises can be heard in the background, accompanied by the rain, on the side of the shot Bianca faces, Penumbra thrives, boiling with activity and light and on her back, the forest grows thick and dark, impenetrable to the light of the camera. "But you know what? I think I learned something, no matter how fucked up, none of us is as scary as all of us. Individually, we have very little control over what we do and that's on the mercy of others to decide." Bianca breathes deeply, there's a sudden influx of static. "Maybe I'm just a little tired of having a career that depends on shitty advertisement and talking like a fucking thesaurus for children… Walter, I really had no right dragging you into this, I'm sorry." She whimpers and sobs.
"Bianca, that's alright. Listen, maybe there's something I had to tell you before. I-" Walter, the cameraman, pauses midsentence, taking hold of the camera, the frame moves. When it focuses again, Walter holds her hand, and her puzzled face is shown closest to the camera. The light reveals a figure right behind her, perhaps eight feet tall, still covered by the shadows, it appears to be the face of a red horse, with pitch black eyes, slowly stepping closer towards them, quivering. "Bianca, don't panic now, we have to leave." Walter warns, instead, Bianca turns to see, as she does, the face of the creature parts in half, to reveal a humanoid face inside, staring at them.
There is a guttural shrieking which has been described as the cross of a goat yelling and the call of a shoebill. Most notably, amidst the animal noise, something resembling words can be heard, repeatedly asking Am I scary? It is then when the camera presumably falls as the frame bends and the attached light goes out. No screams or other hints of struggle are recorded. A gurgling sound drowns out the rain, what is thought to be giant chitinous leg of an arthropod appears on screen besides the grass, half-lit by the bus stop. Nothing else but a low muttering of a crowd can be heard until the record stops completely, freezing on the very last frame.
What's left of the camera, which was burned to a melting point, was found six hours later by a group of friends on the way to a trip into the woods. They filed a report under the suspicion it was a crime scene. Detectives quickly began an investigation.
The way their clothes were left behind without showing signs of struggle led the detectives to believe this was an elaborate hoax, given miss Belladonna's large debt and mister Adler's known distaste with his recent marriage. Mister Adler's relation with a dentist and miss Belladonna's connection to several hairdressers are believed to explain the various samples of teeth and hair left in the vicinity of their last known location as recorded on the tape. There's no evidence of these samples belonging to any of them.
Miss Belladonna is currently wanted under the charges of fraud, fabrication of a crime scene and deliberate obstruction of justice; mister Adler is to respond as complicit of her crimes.