Chapter Text
The only thing managing to distract Momo from her rage was the feeling of her bike shorts slowly bunching and chafing between her thighs as she completed her second circuit of stomping around her entire college campus. Well, okay, the central buildings and, like, one athletic building and half the dorms. The point is, she was pissed and trying to walk it off but it was the absolute dog days of summer in New England, and that meant heavy, damp air under a punishing sun.
‘Fucking humidity,’ she seethed. She wanted desperately to adjust her clothes, but she’d left the relative privacy of the quad and entered downtown proper, and she’d be damned if she let some random perv on an afternoon cruise see her picking a wedgie. Momo kicked a rock with extra force, hoping the movement might shuffle the fabrics beneath her skirt, but all it did was expose a patch of her sweat-dampened thighs to a tepid breeze.
‘Stupid freaking heat. Stupid sorority bitches. Goddamn fake-ass no-slip bike shorts!’
The rev of an engine and the crunch of gravel gave her a moment’s hope for the possibility of glaring at some overcompensating douchebag. Even the littlest way to get her anger out, since walking for two hours didn’t manage it. But glancing over her shoulder, Momo saw that it was the guy she’d been dating for the past few weeks pulling up in his bright blue Mustang convertible. She slowed her angry walk and waited for him.
“Yo, Momo! Why you been ignoring my texts?” he called.
“My phone died,” she lied. Momo wondered fleetingly if she could get some distraction or even sympathy from him.
“Is that nasty look on your face ‘cause of the rumor I just heard at the lax house?”
Momo’s heart thumped. The lacrosse house was right next to the Alpha Xi Delta house. They totally could’ve overheard…
“What rumor?” she demanded, her hands balling up into fists.
He scoffed. “That you wouldn’t finish the pledge task and then called one of the recruitment chairs a skank.”
Momo felt her face grow impossibly hotter. “I’m not gonna do fucked up shit just because some whack-ass priss think it’ll somehow prove my worth!” she yelled.
“Christ, it’s not even half the hazing I put up with for Lambda Chi. Where’s your backbone, bish?”
“There’s this total weeaboo that our recruitment head has been seeing at New Grounds every day. Your final step to earning the snap-bid is to get him to the hockey house party this weekend, then totally humiliate him.”
“What?”
“It can be whatever you want, dealer’s choice. You gotta be brutal and fearless to be an Alpha Xi.”
“...You know what? I’d rather gouge out my own eye with a rusty spoon than join a ‘sisterhood’ with the likes of you.”
“Huh?!”
“You can take that bid and shove it up your ass, you skank!”
“You seem pretty bent out of shape about it,” Hot Boy drew Momo out of her thoughts. Then he cocked an eyebrow and pawed at his crotch. “How ‘bout I help straighten you out?”
Momo blinked. “You good for nothing perv!” she shouted.
She stamped her foot into the driver’s side door, aiming for the metallic black racing stripe. Hot Boy made a sound of outrage then flung the car door open, in turn throwing Momo to the ground. She was suddenly grateful for her stupid bunched up bike shorts preserving a modicum of her dignity as her skirt flipped upward.
As Hot Boy slammed his door shut again he said, “Some girlfriend you are! You’re a loser, you got no money, and you won’t even put out. I’m done with you!”
He tried to speed away, but was waylaid by a university bus, so Momo had time to get to her feet and brush the dirt off her ass. She shouted after him, “You’re the loser! Lambda loser! Tiny dick car! Go circle-jerk with your frat bros!”
He flipped her off before turning a corner, not seeing Momo return the gesture. Defeated, Momo scooped up her bag then reached under her skirt to tug her shorts back into place, and stomped the rest of the way to the Tropical Cafe.
“Ugh! He’s a real piece of–” Muko’s expletives were drowned out by the noise of the blender.
“Chya. We told you not to go out with him,” Miko agreed. “You want some extra strawberries in here, babe? Make ya feel better?”
Nobody else was in the smoothie bar, the lunch rush having long passed, so Momo openly languished across the tabletop closest to where her best friends manned the blender and the cash register.
“I’d rather have a little more pity than more strawberries!” Momo lamented. “Come on, guys, I just got dumped!”
Miko and Muko shared a look of fond exasperation. Momo, her face flat on the table, missed this.
“Sorry, Mo, but he was a wicked loser,” Muko said.
“Yeah, and his fraternity lost their charter two years ago. And, like, his car just makes him look like a chode.” Miko tested a sip of the soothie and nodded in satisfaction, then brought it to her suffering friend. She patted Momo’s hand, and poked her cheek with the straw. Begrudgingly Momo looked up and accepted the Sympathy Smoothie.
“You’re right,” she moaned, “you guys are always right. It’s just– ugh! He… he looked like Ken Takakura.”
“Girl, come on.”
“Another one of those old man actors?!”
“Not just any old man!” Momo protested, sitting up and punctuating her passion by slapping the table. “He’s the old man actor!”
Muko gave the counter a few thoughtful swipes with a wet cloth then said, “Honestly I prefer Clark Gable, of your list.”
“He’s got that suave George Clooney look,” Miko agreed.
“Ooh, and how about young Marlon Brando?”
“Guys! Focus! When am I gonna find my own Ken Takakura?!”
Muko groaned, “They don’t make men like Ken anymore, girl.”
Miko patted Momo’s arm soothingly. “Forget about your humiliating love life for now. I wanna hear about this morning.”
“Huh?”
“The meeting with my sorors! We had such a rush earlier, I haven’t really looked at my phone yet,” Miko gushed. Then she fixed Momo with a suspicious glare and said, “Don’t tell me you forgot!”
Momo’s stomach dropped. In her broken-hearted despair she had momentarily forgotten the reason she spent the last few hours storming around campus in a fury. Not that “walking it off” did anything but make her angrier…
‘What should I say?’ Momo panicked. ‘Miko stuck her neck out for me and I totally blew it! What if all her sorority sisters get mad at her? I don’t want an entire pack of crazy bitches on my ass, and certainly not on Miko’s. But does Miko know what a fucked up witch the new recruitment head is?’
At Momo’s hesitation, Miko’s face fell. “Aw, what happened?” she asked.
Momo slumped forward again. “Let’s just say that I don’t think sorority life is for me after all,” she grumbled into the plastic hardtop.
“Huh?! You can’t just leave it at that. Mo, what happened?”
Momo groaned, feeling tears of embarrassment prick the corners of her eyes. God, she hoped Miko wouldn’t be upset with her. “I refused to do one of the pledge tasks, so the recruitment head had her minions show me the door. It’s fine, I swear, I just don’t want it to cause issues for you!”
Miko scoffed. “I met Aira when I moved my stuff into the house last week. She’s whatever, she doesn’t scare me. And don’t worry about me; just ‘cause I submitted you for a snap doesn’t mean I’ll have some, like, scarlet letter on my forehead. We’re not those kinds of bitches.”
Scarlet letter…
“Crap! My book report! It’s due tomorrow and I’m not done!” Momo jolted out of her seat.
“Why’d you take comparative lit this summer, again?” Muko asked as Momo shoved her belongings into her bag.
“Grandma said if I wanted to stay in her Durham house instead of going home to Whitefield this summer, it was knock out more credits or get a job,” Momo grumbled. Her goal all summer had been to find her dream man, and she thought she’d have a better chance close to the seacoast tourist destinations, rather than the absolute boonies of northern New Hampshire. Fat lot of good it turned out to be- she barely even had time to go to the beach!
“We’re both off at five. You going to the library?” Miko asked. Momo nodded. “Then we’ll stop by on our way home. Maybe put you out of your misery.”
Momo hugged her friends and ran out the door.
Muko sighed. “That girl has got to get her priorities straight.”
Momo sometimes acted like taking the course over the summer was a terrible ordeal, but really it was pretty great. She got to stay in her grandma’s house, hanging out at her favorite spots with Muko all summer, and all she had to do was write a few essays and read a handful of books. The final project ended up being almost too easy: pick a book from the course’s syllabus, pick a theme from the list provided by the professor, and compare that book to any contemporary one of your choice.
But, the lack of specific requirements was making it challenging for Momo to settle on a theme. There were just too many options! And concepts on the list were so vague. ‘Feminism’, ‘capitalism’, ‘family’, ‘mythos’... And what constitutes contemporary? It’s too subjective even Google didn’t give her a straight answer. She had picked a book that was published about seven years ago, was that too old to be considered contemporary? She wasted so much time worrying about the exact requirements for the project, that two hours had passed before she finally put pen to paper. Even then, it had been difficult to get into the rhythm of the essay.
Eventually Momo gave up and began to walk around the library. It used to be that movement cleared her head, but today all it had done was make her more antsy. She’d finished the general analysis on the theme of conformity in The Scarlet Letter , the great classic by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and would next need to lay out the argument for the comparisons to Severance , by Ling Ma. That was a lot of paragraphs on paper -okay maybe only like six-, so Momo decided that was enough work to deserve a little break. Maybe a snack. Okay, definitely a snack. And conveniently, the library was just around the corner from the mub– the Memorial Union Building, and location of the best coffee on campus. Even though it was nearing 5 o’clock, she reasoned she would be up late working on this assignment and more caffeine could only be a good thing.
Slumping into New Grounds only served to remind Momo of the unfortunate incident with the sorority that morning, though.
Momo snorted and scuffed her toe at a cracked tile in the ground. ‘What a buncha psychoes. No way Miko had to do something like that. When she rushed freshman year they were wicked anti-hazing. She practically begged her Big Sister to haze her! So what’s up with this new recruitment head! Ugh, this world is full of scumbags.’
‘Better grab a coffee and get out, I don’t wanna risk seeing anyone–’
Sitting by the entrance was a group of three boys Momo didn’t recognize, snickering and balling up napkins. She paused, watching as they hurled the paper balls across the cafe (fully in sight of the bored barista) at someone with their back turned.
Some weeb, she thought subconsciously, noting the symbol of Konoha on the back of his sweatshirt. Then Momo’s heart lurched and she realized, ‘Oh my God, the weeaboo that bitch Anna wanted me to fuck with.’
Without another thought, Momo flounced past the group of boys and grabbed the empty chair at the weeb’s table. She dragged it out and sat with a flourish, crossing her legs and angling her body such that she was directly in the firing line of their gross napkins. She leaned forward to find the weeb clutching some magazine, trying desperately to ignore the harassment of the other students. She could tell by the whitening of his knuckles that it was a struggle. Another burst of rage filled her.
Momo twirled a strand of chestnut hair around a finger and peered more closely at what the weeb was reading. She said, purposefully loud, “Whatcha readin’? Ooh, looks cool!”
She saw what looked like a bunch of weird old polaroids or something, overlaid with a bold image of some Japanese politician. She saw the words “Strategic Air and Space Self-Defense” and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Instead she turned her ire on the boys by the door. Of course, they all wilted under her glare and dropped their napkins. After another few seconds, the ringleader began to gather his stuff up and urge his cronies to make a getaway.
Momo scoffed. “Losers. And here I was hoping for a way to burn off all this anger.”
She stood and left then, not once taking her glare off the offending boys. She muttered under her breath, “Buncha friggin’ scumbags…”
Momo began stomping back in the direction of the library, now bemoaning her lack of coffee and wondering why she even tried when the world was full of nothing but douchebags.
But from behind she heard the rapid scuffing of feet down stairs and across the grass, and somebody shouted, “Miss Ayase!”
Momo turned, more startled by the use of her last name than anything, and saw the weeb in question hurrying toward her. He didn’t really look like a weeaboo, other than the Naruto sweatshirt. Just a normal guy in 70’s-style round glasses, and an unfortunate cut to what was a very lovely shade of black hair. She noticed his Nike’s were a pretty cool shade of green, like her favorite jade earrings. Momo waited for him to catch up, though dreaded interacting with another human.
The weeaboo skidded to a halt in front of her, caught his breath, and then cried, “I think I know what you’re into!”
“Huh?”
“I know what kinda thing you’re into!”
“I heard you the first time, guy,” she huffed. Momo began to turn away, saying, “You got it twisted, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not in the mood.”
He skirted around her with surprising speed and snapped open the magazine he’d been reading before, holding it out before her like some holy tome.
“I’m not talking about anything weird, I’m talking about conspiracy theories! You must be into subculture and the occult, or else why would you have talked to me? Look, I’ve been reading up about how the Japanese prime minister copied Obama and traveled to Mars! They’ve even created their own version of Space Force!”
Momo stared open-mouthed for a moment. In the back of her mind she wondered, When did Obama have time to go to Mars? But aloud she said, “No way, dude, I don’t give a crap about that stuff.”
She waved her hand and moved again to step around him. He flipped to a different page and proffered this one.
“Did you hear about the recent sonar reading of the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee? Apparently there’s a previously unmapped cavern that could be a mile deep! There’s been recent wendigo activity in Franconia Notch, too–”
“Stop!” Momo snapped, smacking the magazine out of her face onto the grass. “Oh my god, I don’t give a shit! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, I wasn’t trying to be your friend, I don’t need a friend! Leave me alone! Jeeze, this freaky shit is probably why you haven’t got any friends in the first place!”
Momo only stormed a few feet away before her conscience caught up with her, pummeling her in the back of the head. She picked up the magazine and brushed off some dirt. Head hanging, she offered it to the weeaboo.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “That was cruel of me. I had a wicked shitty day, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
He accepted the magazine, but kept his sight firmly on the ground. Momo took another step closer to him.
“Look, I don’t buy most conspiracy theories. I don’t believe in UFO’s or most cryptids. But I do believe in ghosts and other spiritual activity.”
A beat passed, then the weeb scoffed. At last he looked up, smirking. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“What? Listen up you, my grandma’s a medium and–”
“Why would ghosts be real? Aliens make complete sense, there’s no way we’re alone in this universe!”
“Are you seriously arguing with a girl who’s trying to apologize and connect with you?” Momo demanded.
“You’re right, I should be sniveling at your feet, grateful that you gave me the time of day!”
“Oh my God, why are you being a dick? All because I don’t think flying saucers are real?”
“First of all, get your facts straight: they’re called UAP’s these days- Unidentified Aerial Phenomena! Second, I can totally prove aliens exist!”
“Bullshit you can! I’ve seen people get exorcised, they totally freak out and start shaking and stuff. That’s proof.”
“Have you ever heard of a grand mal seizure?”
“Don’t assume that ‘cause I’m pretty I’m also stupid! Where’s your proof of aliens? In some obviously photoshopped pictures in a weirdo magazine?”
“Ha! You wish that was all! There’ve been UFO- I mean UAP sightings all across New Hampshire. Across the whole world!”
“Fine, I’ve got an idea: you have to go to someplace haunted, and if you leave by the end of the night believing in ghosts -which you totally will- then you have to be my gopher for a week!”
“Fine! And when I go there and don’t see any ghosts because they don’t exist, you have to go to an alien encounter site and by the end of the night when you believe in aliens, you’ll be my gopher for a week!”
“Tch, why don’t I just go hunting for Bigfoot?”
“Sounds like somebody’s scared she’ll lose.”
“No way, you’re on, nerd!”
At the top of the nearby stairs, watching all of this unfold, stood Miko and Muko, utterly enraptured.
“Homegirl moves on fast,” Muko said. Momo stepped even closer to the random nerd, poking him in the chest while he raised a finger to her forehead. Muko chuckled, “She ain’t even hiding it.”
“Maybe she oughtta try a nerdy guy rather than a douchey guy,” Miko contemplated. “I mean, it’s been years since we’ve seen her so worked up.”
“You go, girl.”
“Get it freaky style, Momo!”
~
Momo stared up at the water tower, craning her neck to see the name of the town emblazoned upon the side in navy blue. A dog’s bark broke the quiet of the night, making her jump. Another answered it nearby, and they continued on yelling at one another until a human joined the mix.
“Are you sure it’s okay I’m here?” she whispered into her phone. “This place is, like, through the trees behind somebody’s backyard and a random business. I don’t want the cops showin’ up. If I get arrested for trespassing, my grandma will kick my ass!”
“Don’t worry,” the weeb answered. She’d saved his name in her phone as ‘Occult Boy’. “The field behind the water tower is public land, people have picnics there and stuff. The path I showed you doesn’t cross private property.”
Momo paused to peer more closely at a loose pile of mouse bones. “It’s creepy as shit here in the trees,” she hissed. “Moonlight’s all spotty and spooky through the leaves.”
“Oh? Giving up already?” Occult Boy teased.
“Never!” Momo flinched at her own shout, then whispered, “You freaking wish. It’s just gross stepping around animal turds and then almost walking through a spiderweb. Okay, I’m going to cross the field now. Are you almost at the campus?”
A few miles away, Occult Boy stared at the orange Warning: Do Not Enter sign before the decrepit medical building. He snapped, “You’re worried about trespassing, but there’s a literal Do Not Enter sign here!”
“Don’t be a wuss, the cops have better things to do than hang around old community college buildings. Freshmen break in there on dares all the time.”
The ghost Miss Ayase had challenged him to find was a little… confusing. He found her claims almost contradictory, but ultimately remembered he’s not an expert in something that doesn’t exist, so he chose to take her word for it. The ghost was a granny. Or a nurse. Or maybe an elderly nurse? But also she ran wicked fast. There had always been ghosts in this building, so Miss Ayase claimed, but tales of the lightning-fast granny-nurse had only been cropping up since the 90’s, not long after the small hospital was closed ‘temporarily’ by the college that had trained in it. Now it was a cracked and sagging old place, stinking of the nearby seaport and stale beer and burnt rubber. It was also covered in graffiti and broken glass, and was creepy as all fuck.
Occult Boy steeled himself, unwilling to accept defeat, and crept closer to the door. The crusted paint on the handle made his skin crawl, but as Miss Ayase had promised, it swung open with only a slight creak. The flashlight of his phone illuminated piles of trash– beer cans and chip bags and cigarette butts, filling a long corridor. It looked like pretty much every episode of Paranormal Investigators he’d ever seen. (He only ever watched the ghost episodes if there was nothing else on, not because he believes in spirits!)
“Are you in?” Miss Ayase’s voice chirped in his ear. Occult Boy swallowed down the last of his fear and stepped inside.
“Yeah. Are you at the water tower yet?”
“Almost. I nearly ate shit tripping in a gopher hole a minute ago.”
“Ha, get used to gopher holes,” Occult Boy tried to joke. Momo knew what he meant, and did not tease him for missing the mark.
“You talk a lot of smack, you know that?”
“Just matching energies.”
Momo snorted. In the back of her mind, she felt a little bad. This empty field and water tower were nowhere near as sketchy as where she’d sent Occult Boy. She tried to give him some advice. “Alright, so once you’re on the second floor, only walk on tiptoe. That way if the turbo-granny tries to grab your feet she’ll have less to hold onto.”
“That doesn’t quite add up but okay.”
“Well it’s what people say online.”
“Okayyy.” He shifted to walk on tiptoe as he crested the stairs to the second level. Though the outer facade was heavily damaged by decades of weather and disuse, the stairs were surprisingly solid and walls untarnished. By comparison, he had no clue how often the water tower was serviced. “You don’t have to climb up the water tower if you don’t want to. I dunno how rusty the ladder is these days.”
“Pfft, I’m not gonna wimp out at the final moment!” Momo argued as she stared uneasily at the weak-jointed metal rungs. It wasn’t the tallest water tower she’d ever seen, but she would be above the treeline, and the ladder did look unstable… ‘But I’m making him walk through a condemned building, I gotta go through the same danger or it’s not fair.’
Momo began to climb the ladder, shifting her phone to her pocket and plugging in bluetooth earbuds. “No big deal!” she declared. Her heart was racing.
“That water tower is a hot spot for alien encounters,” Occult Boy explained, finding some comfort in talking aloud. “You know about ‘the Incident at Exeter’, right?”
“Not even a little bit. What’s that?” Momo asked. She paused to clear a flake of rust from under her fingernail.
“It happened a few years after the famous Hill Abduction, in the ‘60’s. A whole bunch of different people reported the same phenomena one night, notably including a college kid and a few cops. The Air Force of course claimed it was a B-57. Ridiculous!”
“Hmm, it would make sense, since there’s an Air Force Base nearby.”
“As if! A military bomber doesn’t look at all like a UAP!”
“Hey, have you actually seen a UAP?”
“...Speaking of the Hill Abduction! Have you heard of regressive hypnosis?”
“Nice dodging the question.”
“It’s inconsequential whether or not I’ve seen a UAP! The point is I can prove they’re real.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever. How’s it goin’ over there?”
He stood stock-still, staring with his heart pounding in his throat into a dark classroom. He swore he saw a person lurking in the gloom.
“Occult Boy?”
Oh, fuck, it’s just an anatomical model. I think?
“...Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…”
“Are you singing Frank Sinatra?”
“It helps to calm me down!”
“No need to be defensive, it’s chill. My grandma has a bunch of his vinyls. And I heard that loud noises can spook ghosts away.”
“Really?”
“That’s what the Reddit thread said, anyway.”
“Reddit?! I thought you’d seen this ghost before, that’s why you sent me here.”
“Hm? No, I’ve never seen any ghost before.” Silence on Occult Boy’s end, and Momo pictured him coming to an abrupt halt, mouth hanging open in outrage. It was almost funny, almost distracted her from the hollow ringing of her footsteps up the ladder.
“So how can you be so convinced they exist?” he hollered.
“Chill, dude, chill. I know ghosts are real because my grandma interacts with them, like, all the time.” Momo paused her climb once more to hook her arms through the rungs and survey her surroundings. It actually wasn’t so scary to be up high, she could make out the distant lights of the UNH campus, feel a cooler breeze against her face, and see more clearly under the moonlight. It would almost be romantic if the smell of rusty metal wasn’t hanging in her nose.
Momo continued, “You know, when I was a kid I got wicked embarrassed of my grandma. She used to make me do this little hand gesture to protect my spiritual energy. Every day when I walked to school, I had to hold my hand over my head, with my fingers in a certain way. Some kids teased me about it, but it mostly didn’t bother me. I looked up to my grandma so much, I would do anything she told me. I got to go along with her to do exorcisms and seances, and I thought it was the coolest thing.
“But one day, the worst thing ever happened. The boy I had a huuuge crush on made fun of me! I felt soo humiliated. That was like the final straw, ya know? It was bad enough being the only non-white kid in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, but now the cool boy was spreading rumors I was a freak? When I got home that day I avoided my grandma. And the next morning, I told her I’d never do it again and that I hated her, and other crappy stuff.”
Momentarily lost in recollection, Momo fell quiet. Occult Boy said, “I’ve said stuff I didn’t mean to someone before, too.”
“Agh, well, anyway. Point is, my grandma is wicked cool, and so even though I stopped doing the ritual years ago, I believe in ghosts ‘cause of her, and I’ll always defend her. She took me in after my parents died and she raised me all by herself, after all.”
“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.”
Momo groaned. “Aw, come on, don’t go getting all sympathetic on me. It’s in the past. Anyway! How come you’re so convinced aliens are real? Have you ever met one in person?”
“Hmm, it’s possible,” Occult Boy said. Glass crunched beneath his sneakers, and he forced himself back up onto tiptoe. “The problem with alien abductions is that people have their memory wiped afterwards. So they might’ve experimented on me, but I don’t know it.”
“Woah! Freaky! Think they, like, probed you?”
“I don’t know! Jeez, why’s your mind in the gutter?”
“Unclench, I’m just teasin’. But really, why do you believe in aliens and cryptids and stuff?”
There was a significant silence, but then Occult Boy said, “Does a person need a reason to really like something? I guess I saw ET at a young age. I’ve just always thought outer space is cool, and aliens seem fascinating.”
“Hm, I guess so. How'd you get into outer space?"
"Originally I'm from San Diego, but I moved to Michigan when I was 10. The stars I could see out there-" his voice took on an awed and breathless tone "-they were like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Once I started learning about the solar system and space in general, the idea that humans have been staring up at the stars for as long as we've existed... Well, it made me feel less alone. I don't wanna start lecturing you about how interesting thermodynamics and lightwaves are, though, or else you'll think I'm a loser."
Momo felt herself smiling. "Y'know, I never woulda guessed from our first interaction that you'd talk so much crap and have so much to say."
"Oh!" Occult Boy was grateful she couldn't see his face and how he blushed or rubbed at the back of his head. "Well, I guess it's 'cause you're easy to talk to."
"Well, hey, I made it to the top! Have you found the operating room yet?”
The handrail on the water tower was a little low, so Momo held tightly to it as she began to pace around to the north side. Occult Boy had instructed her that most people saw a UAP when looking north. From the top she could see all the way to Great Bay. Again, Momo thought this might be romantic under other circumstances. The only thing creepy about this location was how from this high up she could no longer hear crickets, or that dog barking, or even her footsteps on the metal sheet…
“I think so,” Occult Boy said, a little static dragging out the syllables. “There’s weird paintings on the wall here. Not graffiti, but like… it almost looks like footprints?”
“Huh, creepy. So how long til an alien shows up, do you think? ‘Cause I’ve got a report due tomorrow at 6am.”
“Well at least if you get abducted by aliens you’ll have a good excuse for it being late.”
“Ugh! I better not get abducted!”
Suddenly a ragged gasp from Occult Boy filled her ears and chilled her blood. Momo thought she heard an old smoker croak, ‘I’ll let ya suckle my tits if you let me gobble your schlong’ , but it was hard to be certain when Occult Boy started screaming.
“What! What is it? Did you find the ghost?” she cried.
Mostly she just heard static and screaming coming from Occult Boy, but Momo heard him say, “Nope! No ghost! Not a ghost, just a horny old drag lady!”
“Hey, are you running away? Don’t run away! The people on Reddit say that’s the worst thing you can do! If the turbo granny outruns you, she’ll put a curse on you!”
More yelling, more static, and then nothing. Momo’s heart was threatening to leap out of her chest.
“Hey! Occult Boy, answer me!” Momo pulled her phone out of her pocket to see the red disconnected symbol flashing on the screen. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Oh my god, I totally got him killed, oh my god!”
Throwing away concern for the rickety guardrail, Momo turned on her heel and rocketed toward the ladder. Or, at least she would have if she could see it. The lights of her university blinked out one by one in the distance. The silence, merely odd before, became heavy and ominous. The field below her was completely hidden by a haze of black shadow. Even without light, Momo still would have carefully edged her way down, until she could sprint full tilt back to the main road and attempt to hitchhike over to a creepy disused building at midnight where Occult Boy’s mangled body would surely be waiting for her because oh my god she totally got him to walk into a serial killer’s lair–
But looming just a couple feet in front of her were three… business men? The proportions of the bodies were slightly wrong; torso too wide, limbs too skinny, hair reflecting light that no longer existed. Their faces looked almost painted on, eyes nothing but black holes, their white dress shirts and black slacks starched to stiff points. The wrongness of it all sent shivers through her whole body, pricking her fingertips.
Eyes wide, breath coming fast and shallow, Momo took a step backward. Good thing the tower is a circle. She bolted the other way. Arms lunged after her. She felt fists grab her shoulders, her blouse. She felt it tearing, the scratch of her skirt off her hips, the sound of breaking threads from her backpack straps loud in her ears. A final hand clamped over her mouth, and the darkness closed around her eyes.