[Please read the instructions before jumping in!]

Tam curled his fingers into fists; even as short and blunt as he kept his nails, he could feel them biting into his palms.

The initial shock was making way for waves of helpless anger, and he tried to breathe evenly. He had to keep in control—not because they didn’t deserve his anger. Right now, they probably deserved it more than anything in the world. How many of his and Ash’s lovely shared birthdays had been because of some sort of guilt from his parents? As if they were paying off a debt to their children, who foolishly thought it was love instead, for a full twenty-one years?

But if he lost his temper, he wouldn’t be able to get more information.

And he needed information if he was going to be able to save his brother.

So he focused all his anger on those slices of pain in his palms, like he could push it all down into his hands and keep the rest of him clear and calm. Envisioning it helped, a glowing red aura around his two clenched fists, focused there and leaving his body a soft blue.

“Okay,” Tam said, and was amazed at how evenly it came out. “I don’t understand, though. Did the witch show up last night? If it’s the night of his twenty-first birthday, that’s tonight, right? Not tomorrow?”

“I’d hoped so,” his mother said. “But… I think it was like Christmas Eve, you know? The night before the day itself?”

What a horrible comparison, Tam thought.

“At any rate, her servant showed up at exactly midnight.” Eric sounded grim now that he no longer had to be quite so defensive. “We were waiting up, in case that was how it was going to be.”

Tam couldn’t look at them, not and remain calm. He cast his gaze around the room instead, noting the empty wine bottle and stained glasses on the counter. He wasn’t sure if it made him feel better or worse that they’d needed some liquid courage to go through with this. “Her servant?” he asked.

“Maybe her son? He didn’t exactly look like her,” Eric said. “Human, though.”

“Or human-looking,” Alice muttered. “He had a picture of the contract on his phone, held up by the witch? As proof.”

“He didn’t even bring the real contract?!” Tam’s voice was rising, and he forced it down. It was true that if this man was the witch’s servant, then he’d be acting in her stead. Even so, it seemed so… careless. Losing their son was one thing, but not even insisting the witch come herself?

His head was whirling with their betrayal. He had no way to assess whether or not giving Ash up to a witch’s servant would have been breaking the terms at all. He drew a breath. Let it out. “Okay,” he said. “Do you know the witch’s name?”

“Miss Bella Istem,” Eric said sourly. “That’s how she signed the contract.”

Tam had never heard the name before, but didn’t expect to. He’d spent a little time in the Valley, of course—it was unreasonable to avoid it entirely if you lived this close, and besides, his brother worked down there. But visits to the shops there, going to meet his brother at work, and having a few monsters attend his old high school… that was about the extent of his personal involvement in the Valley. It was a huge district, and the vast majority of people who lived there were from the Otherworld, or tied closely to it. He wondered if he’d be able to find her with a name alone.

He wished he knew more about how these things worked. Of course, he’d watched TV shows about Otherworldly crime bosses duking it out in Valleys in the big cities, and remembered one storyline about a witch making herself a child army, but he doubted that TV was going to give him an honest view of the sale of family members to the supernatural.

But he had to work with what little he had. Something else occurred to him, then. “Do you still have your copy of the contract?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “It’s too late now, though, for it to do any good—”

“I just—” His voice cracked as he forced it back down from a shout. “I don’t have a brother, right now, so I’d like that instead. For my birthday.”

Alice and Eric shared another one of those hard looks, but Alice got up. Tam followed her upstairs to her office, where she pulled down the bin of important papers—the house’s deed, tax forms, old receipts—and dug through it until she found a single piece of old printer paper and held it out to him.

In return for a blessing on the household and a promise to mark to the denizens of the Otherworld that Eric Lynes, his wife Alice Lynes, and their immediate descendants, will be recognized as under my protection, I, Bella Istem, lay claim to Alice and Eric’s firstborn child on the eve of said child’s twenty-first birthday, to collect as my own.

It was signed, as noted, by a Miss Bella Istem, as well as Tam’s parents. Tam forced himself to hold it carefully, straightening up. “Did you seek her out or did she come to you asking for the child?”

“We… we put out an ad,” Alice said.

“An ad?” He could hardly contain himself anymore. “Wanted, one witch to protect human household, will sell child for it?”

“Just—just the first part!”

“I’m taking this,” he said hoarsely, turning away with the contract. “Thanks.”

“Tam—”

He had to get out or he was going to explode. “That’s it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

It was the nicest way he could put it, under the circumstances, but he was amazed he hadn’t said anything worse. He headed back to his room, pulling out one of the folders he’d bought for university, and sliding the paper inside.

There, Tam sat on his bed, holding the folder, head throbbing, throat aching. He felt desperate to get up and do something.

But what? Beyond greeting Ashton’s coworkers when he saw them around, and maybe seeking out any old schoolmates who hadn’t left town, he didn’t know anyone from the Valley. He could always just go down there himself and start asking around, but would that be enough? Should he risk getting any of his human friends involved, or should he go it alone?

Maybe I should put out an ad, he thought with an edge of hysteria, a warm knot sitting in the center of his chest.

[Please suggest an action in the Comments.
As a reminder, it can be thoughts, words, or deeds!]

[Completed Parts: Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 | Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Day 26 | Day 27 | Day 28 | Day 29 | Day 30 | Epilogue | Author’s Notes]

[Thank you to those who suggested names! All suggested names will appear in the story. ‘Tam’ was chosen because the name meaning (twin) was, coincidentally, a perfect fit.]

[Please read the instructions before jumping in!]

Tam woke up knowing what would be waiting for him downstairs: His parents, his twin brother Ashton, and the identical pancake stacks that his parents made them every year for their birthday breakfast. It was their first cake of the day, they always joked, stacking them like tiers and icing them with maple butter.

They’d end their day with cake as well. The pancakes were for Ashton, who had been born a few minutes earlier, and the dessert cake was for Tam, the second twin.

It was tradition, and maybe one that would end soon—at twenty-one, both he and his brother knew they’d probably move out sooner rather than later. But Tam was determined to keep it alive as long as possible. They’d both got into the same university, right here in Branwin, Ontario, so they were planning to room together when they eventually moved out.

No reason not to carry the tradition on by themselves. Tam could get up early and make Ash his cake, and Ash could make one for Tam in the evenings.

He flung on his clothes for the day, jeans and an already well-worn t-shirt with the logo of his favorite band on it. Trying to get his mess of dirty blond hair in some semblance of order, he combed fingers loosely through it, squinting at himself in the mirror as he tried to make it lie flat. The sunny summer was already starting to bring out his freckles; it was one of the few ways to differentiate him from his brother. Ash never freckled, which they’d always both found a little weird; the only mark he’d ever had were the five flat brown moles on the bend of his arm that looked like fingerprints.

Ready now, Tam thumped his way downstairs.

But he knew something was wrong before he even reached the first floor.

The lack of any kind of baking scent was the first sign, but so was the quiet. His first thought was, absurdly, that maybe he’d woken up before everyone else. It wasn’t the first time that he’d gotten up to find that his clock was set wrong; both the summer thunderstorms and leyline spikes had taken the power out in the past. It was just one of the risks of living so close to the Uncanny Valley.

But the colour of the sunlight streaming in told him otherwise. It was late morning already, and even if Ash had slept in, their parents would be up and getting things ready.

“Uh, guys?” Tam called. Weirdly uncomfortable, he turned the corner into the kitchen.

As he’d thought, his parents were up, but they weren’t cooking anything, and no breakfast was set out at the table. They were sitting there, though, frowning at him, lines of worry between their brows.

“Hey,” Tam’s dad Eric said, uncomfortably. “Take a seat. There’s something we have to tell you.”

Tam didn’t sit. He couldn’t, that feeling of anticipation and nerves grown almost nauseating. He couldn’t eat now even if they had prepared something. “Is it important? I can go get Ashton—”

“Your brother isn’t going to come home any more,” Alice, their mother, said abruptly. She put this awful smile on her face, like she was trying to be reassuring, but her eyes were hard. “I’m sorry, Tam. We always hoped this day wouldn’t come.”

His world spun. Had Ash run away? Had something happened to him in the night? He had been out late, Tam remembered, celebrating his birthday with some friends from his job in the library down in the Valley, but Tam had seen him come home. They’d waved an equally drunken goodbye to each other on the landing.

“What… do you mean?” Tam asked slowly. He fumbled a chair out with numb hands, sinking into it. His legs felt like bloated balloons at the end of his legs, and he thought if he had to stay on them they’d crumple underneath him.

His parents looked at each other and held hands. Normally, the gesture seemed romantic; they always were the sort who had secrets between them that their children weren’t privy to. Now, it was alienating, a barrier to keep him out.

“You know, when Alice was pregnant,” Eric said, “that’s when the Valley opened.”

Of course Tam knew. The Valley might have been a constant presence in his life, but everyone knew the story of its opening, the gate to the monstrous Otherworld cracking open in the middle of Branwin, space warping around it to form a space not quite Otherworld, but not quite their world either. Branwin’s Valley was only one of hundreds of these gates that opened in the world—a world still adapting to its reality.

“You have to understand how scary it was for us,” Alice said. “I was pregnant, and we’d just put so much money down on our house, and then the Valley opened up just blocks away from our new place. We couldn’t afford to move, and nobody would buy even if we could. All sorts of man-eating monsters were roaming around. So… well, we made a deal for safety.”

“A deal,” Tam heard himself croak.

Eric sighed, holding up his free hand as if to forestall an argument. It was a gesture that he did when he felt one of his boys was being unreasonable, and one that Tam felt had no place here. “Safety from the denizens of the Uncanny Valley for us and our children. In return, the witch wanted our first-born child on the night of his twenty-first birthday.”

“But—”

“We knew we were having twins,” Alice said. “The witch didn’t, I don’t think. We thought that maybe it would be a loophole, that there wouldn’t be an eldest child. Or, if there was… well, at least we’d still have a child left.”

Tam’s breath was strangling in his throat.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Alice pleaded, but her gaze was still hard. Tam could only assume she’d been preparing for this betrayal his entire life. “You have to understand you weren’t people then.”

“We’ve done our best,” Eric said, “to give you both a good life for as long as you’d have it.”

[Please suggest an action in the Comments.
As a reminder, it can be thoughts, words, or deeds!]

[Completed Parts: Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 | Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Day 26 | Day 27 | Day 28 | Day 29 | Day 30 | Epilogue | Author’s Notes]

Į̺̩̥̻̠t͉̦̩’̸̭̝̱̲s̸͈ ̲̟̭͍t̨̗̣̖̰̱̣ͅh̩̼̹̩̙̠à͎͖̩͙t̨̲̲ ̝̤ṯ͕͖̞̖͎̖i̤̺̝m̡e͈ ̮̩̀ơ̮̝̙f̭͖̠͈̱ ̬y̘̰͝e̜͈͙̙a̼̙͞r̙͈̳ͅ ҉̺̲̯͓͕͉ḁg̛̪͖̭̱̭̘ͅa͙͖̰̤̥̟i̧͕n̠͓̳̤͓.̢̦͙ ̠̮͕S̶̞̗̖h̖͕a̮͇̼͉͈̰l͏̩̯͙l͈͈̤̻ ͉͇̜͈̰̦w̤̠͈̻̠͖ḙ͉͇̝́ ́p͎͉̪̰̯l͇͇͙̖̫̘͍ą̼͙̱̥͔͙y̢̝̻̝ ̖̻̥a͙̲ ̵̮g͢a̼̘͟m̴̩̮͍̟e̺̖̟̪̹̺̕?̲̦̤̤̬͎

As with last year’s October story, Septimus and Sweet, I thought it’d be fun to celebrate Halloween together with a little bit of fun interactive fiction! This year’s fiction will be a m/m paranormal story about a young man who lives near to a known rift to the world that monsters come from.

Here’s how it works:

Tomorrow (Oct 2) I’ll put up the introduction to a story, describing the situation the character finds himself in. Then, you can click to reply to the post’s comments and leave a suggestion for what the character should do next! Basically, you’re an invisible audience shouting things at the screen–but the things you’re yelling will help influence the character’s actions.

Examples of what suggestions might look like: “Examine the mirror” or “break the vase” or “Don’t give up!! Think about your family!”

Get your comments in by no later than 5pm PST the next day. Then, between 5pm-9pm PST (approximately; on some nights I have other commitments it might be a lil earlier or later), I will put up the next part of the story. A new post will go up every day until Halloween!

If contradictory actions are suggested by different people (“Break the vase” and “take the vase with you”, for example), decisions on which to go with will be based on a) which gets more suggestions and b) which is more in line with the protagonist’s personality as established so far. ‘Think’ actions will usually never be contradictory and can include anything you want him to think about, with the exception of a) things he won’t know or b) if it’s in the middle of an action sequence since he might not want to stop and think about unrelated things right then. But in general, you can suggest whatever you want, even if it isn’t relevant. For example, “what do you look like, though?” could be a suggestion just as much as anything else—you are more than welcome to use your comment to learn more about the character(s) as well as advance the story.

(If you want to see how it works, take a read of the first couple of parts of Septimus and Sweet).

New people are completely welcome to jump in on the most recent post at any time–don’t feel like you have to be there from the start to play! Of course, if you’re jumping in late, I suggest reading the previous parts just so you’re caught up on what’s been done so far.

Ready? If so, feel free to comment to this post with NAME SUGGESTIONS for the protagonist! He’s 20 and lives in a world much like our own, except for the monsters. (I can only use one name, so if people like an already-suggested name, please comment to repeat that name suggestion. However, additional suggested names may be used for other characters throughout the story).

(The small text: I reserve all rights to this work. If I eventually get this published in any form and need to take this down, I will send copies of this online version, with comments people left intact, to everyone who contributed suggestions (if I am reasonably able to get in contact with them).)

Please Suggest a Name

[Completed Parts: Instructions | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 | Day 13 | Day 14 | Day 15 | Day 16 | Day 17 | Day 18 | Day 19 | Day 20 | Day 21 | Day 22 | Day 23 | Day 24 | Day 25 | Day 26 | Day 27 | Day 28 | Day 29 | Day 30 | Epilogue | Author’s Notes]