Dollie is running out of ideas on how to contact Remi’s parents.
For Dainty Halloween Battle 2023; Ouija board mischief
Characters: Dollie, Remi, Sele
Warnings: Harsh language
Wordcount: 1,601
Vibe: wow these guys straight up hate each other
these prompts seemed fun so! i’m gonna give doing a series of 6 my best shot >: D enter: spooksoween spooktacular! who knows, maybe if other groups i’m in have spooky prompts that fit my fancy, the collection will grow?
i love dollie and their relationships with their roommates. straight up insufferable.
“This is stupid. You’re stupid.”
“Shut up!!” Dollie replied, bapping their friend on the head.
“You can’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried!”
“I seriously doubt that either of my parents are ‘occult’ enough to…”
“And you’re already sitting here with me? In a dark candlelit room? Checkmate.”
Remi rubbed her face and groaned.
Dollie, in her never-ending quest to attempt to prove herself by ‘owning’ Remi’s estranged parents, had been doing some… research.
Since it was the time of year close to a large gathering of occultists, many fliers had been plastered up around the Underdeck – and like the tech-savvy individual she was, Dollie scanned one of the QR codes on the fliers without a second thought. This ended up leading her down a rabbithole of occultism forum boards, archives, and websites last updated decades ago.
Her search concluded after asking directly on a forum board for tips on ‘contacting anomalies’ – to which she received a reply that was several paragraphs long, which ultimately guided her into ordering the very object that was sitting on the carpet in front of her now: an Outside World relic called an Ouija board.
This relic, per the forum reply’s explanation, was capable of providing a ‘bridge’ between different levels of reality through the use of energy.
And since Remi’s parents were both anomalous beings that weaved in and out of perceivable reality… it was perfect.
“Whatever. Who cares. How do we even use this thing?” Remi asked with a frustrated sigh, realizing there was probably no easy way out of this.
“It’s simple!” Dollie confidently exclaimed.
“We… uuuuuuuhhhhhh…”
Feeling around by her sides on the floor of the dark room, Dollie tried and failed to quickly find where she had put the instructions.
“They were… literally right there! What the hell!”
“Oooooh, spoooooooky! Looks like the anomalies took it!” Remi scoffed.
“Shut up! It’s gotta be… around here…”
Dollie’s preliminary search turned into a frantic one, before she soon realized that wherever the instructions had gone, they definitely weren’t in the room.
“You aren’t scared, are you Dollie?” Remi continued, and it appeared as if she was stifling a laugh.
Dollie just let out a frustrated huff.
She didn’t want to admit it, but… the reality was sort of starting to set in for her. Slasher movies and cheesy horror was fine and good, sure, but the culture Dollie had come from was one that held superstition close.
And something like this… screamed to her that something was about to go very wrong, very fast.
But she could never admit that, at least not in front of Remi. And the ideas of fame and fortune from Remi’s parents were more tempting to her than she was held back by fear.
After a pause, Dollie spoke up.
“Of course not! What, you think I’m such a wimp that I’d cry over some missing paper?!” she said with a huff.
“Whatever I have… this!”
Dollie whipped out her phone, showing the bright screen to face Remi as a means to catch her off guard.
Remi flinched because of the brightness, but her expression soon changed to one of genuine shock.
“Dude, what the hell? You changed your lockscreen to that just to freak me out?”
Confused, Dollie turned her phone around to check, only for it to be the same lockscreen she’d been used to seeing.
“You pullin’ my leg? Nothing’s different!”
“I’m not fucking with you, not this time!! It was a black screen with just the number’s ‘618’!”
“You so are fucking with me! Look!”
Dollie leaned over to look at her phone with Remi, and Remi’s expression twisted to one of great confusion.
“What the hell…” was all Remi mumbled, narrowing her eyes.
Dollie was starting to get scared, for real. But she still didn’t want to appear vulnerable.
“Cut it out, you’re not gonna spook me with this whole bit!”
Remi just sighed and pushed Dollie away.
“Whatever, maybe you set a prank and forgot. It wouldn’t be unlike you.” She mumbled, quickly eliciting an offended expression from Dollie. But Remi continued before Dollie could say anything in defense.
“Just look up the instructions online.”
Dollie nodded, and went to re-read the forum poster’s reply for guidance.
“Slide the piece over the letters to spell your message, then let the anomaly take a turn… ok…” she mumbled, skimming the text greatly.
Dollie was going to tab out to put on mood music after finishing, but flinched a bit when her phone unexpectedly went black – before dimly flashing the low power screen, and blacking out again.
“What gives?! I just charged this!” Dollie groaned, slamming their phone on the ground.
“Like, you saw! This thing was literally plugged in 15 minutes ago!!”
“Maybe it’s time you get a new phone, because yours is obviously cursed.” Remi said in a joking manner.
But that joke didn’t land, and Dollie muttered some incomprehensible expletives at her before sighing and taking a deep breath.
“DON’T joke about that.” she mumbled.
“Whatever, put your hands on the planchette.”
“The what?”
“The… little plastic piece thing! We need to spell out our message.”
“Ugh, alright.” Remi scoffed.
“What should we spell?”
Dollie hummed for a second, thinking.
“I dunno… you said my lockscreen said 618, right? That’s short enough.”
Remi gave a shrug and a nod, and put her hands on the planchette.
“Sure, whatever. It’s not like anything’s gonna happen, this thing looks and feels like a toy.”
Dollie didn’t respond with anything other than a sour look, and put her hands on the planchette as well.
6… 1… 8…
The two friends went over the numbers and waited.
And waited.
“See? This is just a bunch of bullshit!” Remi scoffed, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration.
“I don’t know why I even let you talk me into wasting my time with this…”
Dollie didn’t say anything, only glaring at Remi as she kept her hands in position.
Suddenly, the sensation on movement caused Dollie to freeze up.
Slowly, the planchette moved Dollie’s hands to the top left corner – to the corner that said ‘yes’.
Her stomach sank.
“Did… did you see that, Remi?”
“See what? You move it over to yes?”
“That… wasn’t me…! It pushed itself!!”
“What, first the lockscreen and now pretending things are moving on their own? You’ve gotta get better at lying, dude.”
The candles flickered, and Dollie’s eyes darted around nervously.
“What, a little wind is supernatural now?! You’re not scared, are you Dollie?!” Remi mocked, as she got up on her knees from her sitting position.
“I AM!! SO WHAT!!” Dollie shouted, as she grabbed Remi by the shoulders to shake her.
Remi just snickered, but froze as her eyes drifted downwards again.
“…Dollie. Look.”
Dollie let go of Remi, to glance down in horror.
The planchette – with nothing touching it – began to visibly move on its own.
D… E… M… O…
The piece was making its way towards the letter ‘N’, but Remi quickly flipped it over before it could.
“Nope! Not today!! No fucking thank you!!”
Her voice was in a full-on panic, and as quickly as she could, Remi went for the door – with Dollie quick to join behind her.
After rattling, pushing, and pulling for a few seconds, the two friends quickly realized the door was locked.
“What do we do now?!” Dollie whimpered, looking around frantically.
Remi opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t say anything more than a croak as she saw the pale hands reaching out for Dollie’s shoulders from the darkness.
Shakily, Remi tried to point them out – and as Dollie’s gaze caught glance of the hands, she promptly tried to jolt away… only for the hands to clasp down, the candles to blow out, and for Dollie to shriek.
Suddenly, the room’s light came on.
Dollie and Remi were both screaming, and Dollie was thrashing about trying to shake off whatever entity had grabbed her.
Remi was the first to open her eyes again, and she abruptly stopped screaming.
“Dollie! Dollie! It’s ok! It’s…”
“BWAHAHA!! I got you two GOOD, huh!?”
It was Sele – a roommate of the two friends, who had said she was going out to party that night.
Dollie turned around to face her, but got tangled in her own hooves and fell to the ground.
“NOT FUCKING COOL!!” Dollie shouted with an accusatory tone.
“I think you should pay double rent just for that, what were you thinking?!” Remi joined in.
Sele, meanwhile, was laughing so hard she was crying. Dollie and Remi waited for her to speak for herself after her laughing fit, so they waited silent for a moment.
“Well, maybe that’ll teach you to actually fact check things, Dahlia.” Sele snickered.
“Did you even read the profile of that person who gave you all that ‘advice’?”
…Dollie realized she hadn’t.
Scrambling to her phone, which was now working at it’s previous charge level, she opened up the forum page.
Username: Seleneeeeeeeeeeeeee123456
Joined: 12 hours ago
Exasperated, Dollie dropped to the ground with a groan.
“I guess it was my own damn fault, then. Damn it.”
“If it helps, that prank was so good I don’t think I need to cause any trouble for another whole year now.” Sele laughed.
“Whatever, I’m going to bed! G’night, losers!”
Remi gave Sele a rude gesture as she left the room, door now unlocked.
All the while, the three roommates had been too focused on Sele’s prank to notice the tall, one-eyed figure gazing through the window port, before it slinked back into the shadows.
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