Rabid bunnies

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Name of Bunny: Dismembered Bunny (sounds terrible, I know xD)
Fandom: Original
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Probably Sean and Akino. They can tolerate each other enough now to sic the same bunny on me.
What the bunny insists I write:
It's the basis of a really odd nightmare that I just finished having. It was really science fictionesque, but still had a paranormal aspect to it. What put it so high on my top list of paranormal nightmares was the fact that it was one of those that made me jump awake and feel like I was still having it for a second before I grasped the fact that it was only a dream. It felt that real.

It also made me jump awake and check that I still had all my limbs. I may end up altering details of the dream through my planning in order to better fit it to a story format.

It all starts with a small black rock on the ground. Generally set into harder dirt with its top sticking out, a rough sort of circle in shape with a jagged crack running down the middle. Could blend in anywhere, but distinctive when scouted for. Contact with this crack--be it someone picks it up to throw it or steps on it wearing a shoe or barefoot, will result in a minor pain in the shoulder. A sharp stabbing pain concentrated into the area of a single pore in the skin, always on the back of the left shoulder, near the back of the armpit.

The next night is peaceful enough--the pain isn't entirely unbearable, feeling remarkably similar to a splinter. The next day, it's still only slightly irritating. No change for the worse, no change for the better. The next night, if you haven't fallen asleep by 2:50 in the morning, then you will immediately pass out from extreme exhaustion; the last thing you'll hear right before this are hurried, though very light, footsteps coming towards either your bedroom door or whatever room you happen to be sleeping in; no one else in the house, regardless of whether they are awake or not, ever sees or hears anything.

You wake up in pain the next morning whenever you happen to wake up. That little prick in your shoulderblade is gone, which is all well and good, but so is one of your arms or legs.

The baffling question of it all is why. People who are examined early after this epidemic begins, early after they've come into contact with the stones that seem to be spreading this strange fate--nothing comes of it. The pinprick in the back of your shoulder is just a mental delusion, as far as any doctor can gather. It's no flesh-eating virus or parasite, either; post examinations of victims who have already lost a limb reveal that no further flesh is eaten away. In fact, no flesh appears to be eaten away. It looks like a very neat amputation, if nothing else, and it doesn't look like it should even hurt. However, for the first few days following the so-called "amputation," the victim is in extreme pain, once again for no reason any doctor can gather besides a strange mental illusion.

They're given pain killers and sent on their way, since absolutely nothing else can be done for them--aside from prosthetic limbs, of course. As far as the pain goes, however, with as professionally done as the amputation looks, as healed as it is by the time they reach the doctor's office, they look no different than a person who's been missing a limb for years rather than hours.

This isn't exactly the case when the victim first wakes up. It's still an open wound at this point, but is healing over quickly enough that it's almost a process that can be seen by the naked eye--almost. Some get to the ER quickly enough that the wound is still partially opened, but trying to sew it the rest of the way does no good. The needle can't penetrate the skin, and it heals up within a few minutes anyway, under the observation of baffled heath personnel.

It hasn't been happening on a wide-spread basis for very long, but there are isolated instances of it from far back. When my dream actually started, it was almost like a prologue. I was probably about four, asking an old woman in line at a grocery store why her arm was missing--kids, huh? So she told me and my mother, told us to even look it up since there were other isolated instances of it. Little-kid me is intrigued by the idea, and scared as well of course. Then it fastforwards to years later when I'm already a teenager. Dreams with prologues. Sigh. It's like it was just ASKING to be turned into a story.

I still haven't figured out exactly why it's happening, or even what's happening, but those were the main details of the epidemic itself within my dream. I can't even begin to fathom what triggered me to have a dream like this, and as glad as I am that it's over, it's still going to fascinate me intensely until I flesh out the idea more.

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Name of Bunny: Boot to the Bunny.
Fandom: Death Note/Phoenix Wright/This video In short... yes, it's going to be total crack.
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Actually, a friend on AIM told me that this had to be my first Phoenix Wright/Death Note crossover... and Akino freaking jumped all OVER it. In fact, he intends to make an appearance in the fic when I actually write it. Because it's crack, and he therefore believes he's allowed. Matsu is also helping, since he's the only one of my Muses I've managed to successfully involve in my PW fanspaz, and therefore will handle any aspect of the Phoenix Wright fandom within the fic that isn't total crack.
What the bunny insists I write:
The boot-to-the-head video... Death Note style. The only PW character will indeed be a rather confused and disoriented Phoenix Wright. The only things he will remember before the events of the fic will be being knocked out by a floating green apple in the parking lot in front of the Wright & Co. Law Offices, then waking up in one of the courtroom lobbies with a strange floating half-skeletal being handing him a will that he is to read in Courtroom #4 in three minutes time--the will of L Lawliet. *cue dramatic music*

Still working out the exact details of the will... and Akino wants to replace the boot with something more "Death Notey," as he says, but myself and Matsu think that you shouldn't fix what isn't broken and hope to win the battle of leaving the boot.

Like I said, crack crack crack. That's all it is.

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Name of Bunny: Defendent Death Bunny
Fandom: Phoenix Wright/Death Note
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: So earlier, Matsu comes running up and tackles me going "OMGWTFBBQ CROSSOVER FANFIC!!!" ... well, something along those lines. This won't be crack like the previous Death Note/PW bunny, but will undoubtedly have its share of amusements, as most crossover fics seem to. I'm hoping this bunny might get Akino more interested in the PW games, but it's a bit of a stretch given his hatred of videogames...
What the bunny insists I write:
This is going to be totally AU for the PW fandom, obviously, given the severe differences in the timelines between Death Note and Phoenix Wright. In short, the general idea is that all of Phoenix's defendants keep dying of heart attacks before he can get their names cleared (or before they can be declared guilty, elsewise)--looking into it, it turns out this is happening with most cases lately, particularly the more severe ones (murder and whatnot), which means a lot of trials are going unresolved and neither prosecution or defense is getting anywhere... or getting paid. This crippling lack of income, in short, creates a personal vendetta against Kira, and leads a few characters in the PW fandom to begin an investigation of their own into exactly who Kira is, so they can bring him to justice personally.

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Name of Bunny: Nightwalk Bunny
Fandom: Original
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Matsu's been following me around on a caffeine high all day turning all sorts of things into plot bunnies. This one was from a nightmare my brother had when he was young. Akino's going to have a field day with all of this when he comes back to check on me and my newfound Phoenix Wright obsession.
What the bunny insists I write:
It's dark outside. A young boy of about six is up past his bedtime looking for some action figures he had gotten that day, and realizes he must have left them in the car when they got home earlier. Very carefully, very quietly, he sneaks out of the house--easy enough since his bedroom is on the other side of the hallway from his parents' bedroom. The car is parked in a driveway in front of the rural home surrounded by its forest, not very far from the front porch. He hurries to the wood-panel sedan to check it--surely enough, he finds the bag from the toy-store, his action figures still inside, in between the two front seats. He grabs them, closes the door of the sedan, and looks around him--from this angle, the porch seems quite a bit further away, quite a bit of a more dangerous trek back to it than it was away from it.

He begins, cautiously, walking towards the steps leading onto the high wooden porch when he hears a twig snap--he looks down, but he hasn't stepped on a twig. There's a rustling next, and this time it seems to be coming from a thicket of trees in the nearby forest--much closer to him than he is to the porch. He steps cautiously in the direction of the porch as a tall figure emerges, eight feet tall at the least, slim and sleek, wearing dark jeans, a flannel coat and a wide-brim hat. Perhaps a tall man at first glance, in the shadows of the trees, but as it steps closer into view, the moonlight hits its silvery skin, glints across its wide, dark eyes, and it speaks in a mystifyingly casual tone:

"Nice night for a walk."

Its thin, colorless lips spread into a smile, almost friendly at first, but they continue spreading, displaying a mouthful of long, metallic, razor-sharp teeth, until the friendly smile is a sinister grin, until the grin is a hungry grimace.

And that's where it ends so far. Simple. Deciding if I want it to be a short story or lengthen it into a longer plot right now. Either way, this one's getting written.

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Name of Bunny: Smart Alecgami Bunny
Fandom: Death Note
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Well, my brother inspired them, so I'm blaming him, but Akino and Matsu turned it into a bunny and sic'd it on me. Yes. They're working together. And it has resulted in crackfic bunny.
What the bunny insists I write: Light, for reasons unknown which I will figure out later, decides during the fiasco in which he and Misa have to give up their death notes to prove they aren't Kira or the second Kira, to send Ryuk instead of Rem to the next Kira. This means that Ryuk would be the first Shinigami to come into contact with the investigation team. Which would be a brand new form of entertainment for him, likely resulting in him confusing the investigation even further than it already is, and I quote:

"Everything? Sure, I'll tell you everything. *dramatic silence ensues while Ryuk bites an apple in half* Light... is Ryuk. And I'm L. And he-- *points at Matsuda* --is Kira. *finishes his apple while the investigation team mulls this over*"

And the ensuing chaos would be Ryuk's newest form of entertainment.

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Name of Bunny: Role Reversal Bunny
Fandom: Death Note
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Matsu and Akino were on a roll last night >_< I don't know what's gotten into them.
What the bunny insists I write:
Light is a God of Death in the Shinigami realm with a disdain for both the laziness of his own kind and the lawlessness of the human world--the worlds he knows are rotting, and if he has the ability to save one, then he fully intends to. Light goes into the human world as regularly as the laws of his kind allow him to in order to purge the criminals of the human world, then returns to the Shinigami realm until he can continue his reign of justice among the humans. People have come to recognize that someone is killing criminals--and that this someone has godly powers. Kira, the God of the New World, so they call this being. Police worldwide are coming together to search for the force being called Kira, while Light keeps track of their progress from the shadows, amused by their futile attempts to incarcerate a God.

Light's only problem is that he has the eyes of a human--a severe handicap for a Shinigami that he has thus far managed to cope with from his short trips to the human world. He has built up quite a number of years, nevertheless, and simply uses the media to kill off criminals.

Yagami Ryuk is an easily bored, trouble-making slacker in his last year of high school with decent marks, mostly Bs and Cs with the occasional A or D in the mix, though he knows as well as anyone he could do better if he actually bothered applying himself. He isn't up for any outstanding scholarships or being offered a place in any particularly prestigious schools. Mostly because it's what his father wants and he can't really think of anything he'd be interested enough in doing to argue over it, he intends to go to a community college after high school to study law and follow in his father's footsteps. Though he's doesn't have too many talents, he is pretty good at reading people due to his interest in human nature on the whole, which is why his father thinks he might do well in the field of law. Ryuk would just as soon spend his time out wreaking havoc and mayhem himself, as that at least makes life a little more eventful.

Life just isn't as interesting when you know when everyone around you is going to die. Ryuk has been able to see names and numbers hovering above peoples' heads for as long as he can remember--all but his own. He knew what the names were from the time he learned to read, but has only known that the numbers were the person's lifeline from his late childhood, though he can't read the numbers precisely--he can only give a very rough estimate of how long the person has left.

It's a cold evening in early December. After the after-hours college prep class his parents convinced him to take for his last year in school, he heads off to the arcade with a couple guys from the class and twenty dollars he "borrowed" from another kid before the start of class. The three arrive and are left arguing how to split the money between them when a scream from near the back of the arcade cuts into their conversation. There's a huge rush to see what's going on, and the boys manage to get close enough to the front of the crowd to see--an man, probably somewhere in his early to mid thirties, is holding a young girl at gunpoint and yelling for no one to move. He looks panicked, as though he had been planning to get out of here with no one noticing--indeed, he is very close to the exit. Noticing something particularly strange, Ryuk pushes himself closer to the front of the crowd, until he's positive of what his eyes saw--the numbers above the man's head are all zeros, except for one. This one is at twenty-nine, and ticking off second by second.

Light is hovering off to the side of the scene, watching his handiwork play out. At precisely 8:23 p.m., Harushima Tetsuo dies of a heart attack in the middle of a failed attempt to kidnap his latest victim from a crowded arcade. There's no particular reason for the scene except for a bit of entertainment, perhaps in part to remind people firsthand of the presence of Kira. Every person he can see in the arcade is horrified. It's all working out perfectly.

When Harushima drops his gun and clutches at his chest, the chaos begins. Everyone is screaming or yelling, and the rush for the door once the man drops to the floor dead is equivalent to that of a stampede with the number of customers in the arcade. In the chaos, as he is moving to drop the death note into its holster at his side, Light drops it--and loses sight of it as its kicked away by the running crowd.

Ryuk is the only one left standing at the front, gawking at the man that has just dropped dead. He had been skeptical of the whole Kira business that was going around on the news, but could this really have just been a coincidence? He backs up a few paces before turning to run off with the rest of the crowd, but trips over something almost immediately--as he catches himself, he turns to see what it is--a black notebook? Someone's journal, maybe. He bends to grab it, and as his hand touches its black binding, he sees something vaguely human in shape shoot through the ceiling. He only glances at the notebook and sees the words on its front only briefly before stuffing it into his bag and running outside before the police can get there and he ends up stuck in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

He hurries home, unaware that he's behind followed at a distance by the owner of the notebook he picked up.

Once home and locked in his room, closer inspection of the notebook, the front cover of which proclaims the thing to be a "death note," reveals long lists of names written on many pages, some with odd details under the names. He notices times first, then... causes of death? The name written on the last page and the brief description underneath are uncannily reminiscent of the death he himself just witnessed--not to mention it is dated for that day, and the time written is right around the time he had been at the arcade. Perhaps this notebook is the killer's record--Kira's record of his killings?

Though the prudent thing to do would be to turn the notebook in to the police straight away, which would be easy enough as his dad works on the NPA, Ryuk thinks it might be more interesting to keep it for a little while and see what happens with Kira's killings as a result. Risky, perhaps, but interesting. There probably wouldn't be any change. It was just his keeping a record of his murders. He could always go out and buy a new notebook. But nevertheless, it would be pretty cool if the notebook was actually a little more important.

After a failed attempt at getting a new death note from the shinigami King, Light is forced to go into the human world and track down the kid who took his death note away from the scene of that killing--his only way to get his death note back is to convince the kid to give it back. Without a death note of his own, Light is harmless. Killing a human without use of a death note is the highest of crimes for his kind, and he would be punished, would face the highest degree of agony, and worse yet, he would face death. To die now was something he couldn't afford.

A little less than a week after the incident, Light goes to the Yagami household during a school day and waits for Ryuk to arrive home. Even if Light's death note is here, he has no jurisdiction to take it. Once a death note lands in the human world, and a human touches it, it becomes the property of that human. That death note indeed isn't Light's at the moment.

The horror Light was expecting at Ryuk's first encounter with him isn't there--the teenager seems more exited than anything, that the note really was something, that he hadn't just turned it over to the police. When Light threatens him with death if his notebook isn't returned, he's shocked at the reaction he receives--the new owner of the death note laughs and points out that if Light could kill him, and the notebook is really so important, then he would have already.

Light's worst nightmare is realized when Ryuk refuses to forfeit the death note--he's going to be stuck in the human world without his one single weapon, stuck following around a spiky-haired high school student. Things aren't that bad, however. Light convinces the teen to take up the work of Kira in his stead, as long as he has the notebook--Ryuk agrees to on the grounds that he'll keep up with it as long as it proves to be entertaining enough.

That's how it all begins. Honestly, I have no idea where or how it will end--whether it will span the entire manga or part of it. It's going to be very AU, obviously. Some events in the fic will coincide with the main storyline, but some obviously won't. And of course, it will be revealed along the way why Light lacks the eyes most of his kind possess and Ryuk happens to have them. I'm not going to handle this in as angsty a manner as some writers would. The majority of it is going to be a huge laugh. With Ryuk as the lead character, seriously, how could it not be? Obviously he probably has a few mental issues due to having the eyes since he was born--B obviously did--but these issues in his current lifetime boil down as the source of his boredom and want for trouble, his constantly looking for a way to make his life more interesting while it lasts; precisely what leads him to accept Light's offer to take up Kira's work. Death is all just another part of life--he can see death, so why not try his hand at controlling it as well? Even as a human, I want him to be a bit more like a shinigami.

This whole thing was inspired by Ryuk more or less telling Light at one point in the manga that Light seems more like a Shinigami himself than he does human. And it suddenly sparked a whole series of what-ifs.

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Before I post these next bunnies, I would just like to say STOP IT AKINO, I'M BUSY WITH NANO AND IT ISN'T FUNNY. Thank you, and that is all.

Name of Bunny: Running Feet Bunny
Fandom: Original; horror OR fantasy?
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Akino, as horror. Then Janus was like "But WAIT " *sigh*
What the bunny insists I write:
Let's start from the beginning, before the genre split begins; I actually wrote the first page or so of this one while I was out, in a tiny notebook, in a moving car, while being poked and prodded by my nephew, because Akino was like OMG PLOTBUNNY WRITE IT NOW OR I'LL MURDER YOU :'D. On a side note, no more Starbucks for Akino. It makes him extra... erm... It makes him weird.

So we set off in a car, with a mother, Lydia, and her fourish-year-old daughter, Aria, who has a mild speech impediment; she has trouble with the letters "rf" at the ends of words. Single mother, daddy died in the war about a year ago; and the two just moved into this house not that long ago, on a large piece of land that they got for a decent price due to the disused trailer and house upon it; the house they're in is only in slightly better shape.

These two are just getting in the car when their dog (named by Aria because of the sound he makes [Bark], and thus his name is pronounced Barff, creating some interesting... situations... when she's describing her beloved dog to people), takes off across the yard barking at something. Aria claims she saw feet running across the tall grass on this side of the yard; Lydia adjusts her glasses, but can't seem to see anything herself; Barff has already chased whatever he was bothering with behind the disused trailer on the property.

Where it diverges is in what Aria saw. On the horror side, Akino's going for a nice ghost story. Well, not so nice, as then what poor Aria saw would be a severed set of legs from the waist down. Yay. Though not all bad: the legs belong to a young boy a couple years older than her who was murdered by someone or other, and she ends up making friends with him. I think his torso is somewhere around as well, from what Akino told me. In turn, I told him he's a sick bastard, and he laughed at me and asked what else was new, then went on eating his apple. The problem is, the ghost of the murderer is around as well, but no one really knows this initially; so when people start dying on the property, it seems like Aria's harmless little friend isn't so harmless after all. I'm fond of the story; it's a pretty expected twist in things, but I'm a sucker for this sort of ghost story.

And Janus, who shoved Akino out of the way and stole one of his apples (nearly triggering a fight until I distracted Akino with more apples), suggested that the story could go in an entirely different way, and what Aria saw wasn't just a pair of legs, but something short enough to keep behind the tall grass. I asked what, and he said "A gnome! " Akino asked if they could be evil child-eating gnomes and Janus kicked him, then the fight broke out.

Now they're calmly discussing the idea of evil child-eating gnomes over apple cider and I'm worried that I could end up with a third plotbunny from this.

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Name of Bunny: Ceiling Bunny
Fandom: Original; horror, horror, and more horror.
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Akino.
What the bunny insists I write:
Not much on this one yet. It's been around for years as a private sort of fear of mine that I erased by hanging up a poster of Kurt Cobain over top of my bed. But, as it turns out, Akino was the first muse to sic it on me, back before I knew Akino was actually around, and he's back at it again since I had a nightmare about it. It didn't help that I woke up from the nightmare to him hovering over me all "You had a nightmare, is it writing-worthy? O.O" Which he does any time I have a nightmare, pretty much. I'm almost used to it after a few years. ~_~

So. It could go in any amount of ways, because all I really have for it is the shape of a person in a ceiling over top of ones bed when one wakes up. I've discussed it a little with Akino before, but he usually gets bored and goes off to kill something. =/ The basis for the plot I have now involves a few high school or college kids getting drunk in an abandoned house, something horrific happening that none of them remember because they were too drunk, and MC (or killable-character) waking up the next morning in their own bed with this really creepy woman sort of like partly attached to the ceiling; sort of Silent-Hill-ish in appearance. And super-wide-eyed smile for effect. And she tries to strangle the person in the bed as soon as they see her; if the bed is too far down, no worry, as her arms are extendable to add to the creepzors.

I'm figuring she's a demon they summoned or someone they accidentally killed or a spirit they just happened to piss off somehow while they were drunk in the abandoned house. Who knows? Not me, and Akino's not giving any answers yet, so I'll be waiting on this one. I'm fine waiting on this one. Creepy ceiling people are... creepy. And I'd prefer to postpone writing about them; it stems from a nightmare I only vaguely remember having as a child, but that stuck with me no less, and that Akino got hold of when he became my muse and decided to further traumatize me with in the interest of good literature.

He's very lucky I love him. -_-;

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Name of Bunny: Walker Bunny, Take Two
Fandom: Original, horror
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Akino. Ever since my Walker short story, he has been ridiculously peeved with me for not involving him in its making, as he's intensely interested in Walker.
What the bunny insists I write:
Basically, it would be a novel-length continuation of my Walker short story (which can be found here). Jamie Farren is fifteenish now, with a younger sister, Emily (or Emmy), of around nine or ten who likes insisting that he play girly things with her, i.e. Barbie and dolls and make-up and la-di-doo-da etc. Gotta love little sisters. I'm sure I did my fair share of torturing my brother. Except with me, I was throwing metal toasters at his head... so I think Jamie has it easy by comparison.

In short... Walker never completely left. He would disappear for a week or two and always come back; his visits as Jamie have gotten older have started changing slightly, resulting in sleep paralysis and similar phenomena that have led Jamie's parents to seek out medical help, as his lack of sleep is affecting his work in school and his attitude in general (or maybe it's just because he's a teenager; parents never seem to consider that...). He told them about Walker when he was around six, and was given the old "there's no such thing as a boogeyman," but with persistence he ended up seeing a child psychologist. It didn't help, and Jamie got tired of it quick; and started pretending he wasn't seeing Walker anymore.

In short, when he does sleep, Walker is somewhere in nearly all of his dreams, good or bad, whether he's lurking in the background or right in the front lines. Whoever or whatever Walker is, he has taken some obvious interest in Jamie.

Things change when one very late night, Emmy is out of her room to go to the bathroom and hears two separate voices coming from her brother's room, and she opens the door to see her brother, paralyzed to his bed, and a tall figure in a wide-brim hat leaning over his bed for a very split second--the figure turns its head to see her and disappears so quickly that she may have even imagined it. It means, however, that someone else knows Walker is real.

Now, just what is Walker? There are still debates about that between Akino and I; Matsu, who I wrote the original short story with, isn't really taking part in it, since I asked his opinion and he just sort of tilted his head and said "The boogeyman?" so I patted him on the head, gave him a cookie and sent him on his way. He says he'll stick around to see how it develops, but he's not interested in working on it actively as Walker gave him nightmares. My poor Matsu.

Akino and I have come mostly to agree that Walker is, metaphorically (and maybe, in a sense, literally) the embodiment of all that is feared in the world. He can slip in like a shadow, disappear like a ghost, invade dreams, make nightmares real; he lurks in the dark corners of the world, in shadowy forests and behind long coats in closets, and he exists for the purpose of fear. Fear is what he feeds on; if you've read Harry Potter, look at him as a really nasty boggart that can't quite be killed by laughter.

Now, as to what he is literally, I've no complete idea. There are theories in the work. He could be a demon, he could be some other negative entity, he could be pretty much anything. All that's certain is he's taken a personal interest in Jamie, and now Jamie himself can't put it off to madness since his little sister has seen it.

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Name of Bunny: Horrormance Bunny
Fandom: Original; Horror/romance. Make it go away, please. I don't want to write horror/romance. At least it's not going to be horrormance with a happy ending....
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: I dunno. I'm guessing Akino and Janus. They've been working together lately, disturbingly. I think it's all the apple cider.... Also partly inspired by the songs "NIB" by Black Sabbath and "Losing my Religion" by REM and a bit of "Imagine" by John Lennon. And my own pessimism as of the late. And maybe the last Wishmaster movie, now that I think about it O.o I need to rewatch those movies, I haven't seen them since I was like six....
What the bunny insists I write:
A story for all the times that lovely silver lining around your thundercloud actually turns out to be more lighting; it happens to all at some point or other.

A bit nervous about publicizing this one...but possession/exorcism stories have always piqued my interest even with my mostly non-Christian beliefs; exorcism comes from all cultures across all the world, sure, but I'll be writing this one from a more Christian pov, because that's just how this plotbunny happened. The romance? Well, at least it's mostly fake and one-sided romance, I guess. *sigh* I'll live....

The main character, a devoutly religious girl who is, you guessed it, losing her religion (REM!). Times have been hard lately, and what sort of god would allow her to go through what she has gone through? Busy or not, it's just inhumane and unnatural. She finally stopped going to church a couple weeks ago, devoting all her spare time to work in order to take her mind off of things. Haven't really decided on age yet. High school age, college age, a little older? Who knows. I think I'll have her work at a diner in a small town; a small southern town. I know small southern towns, as I live in one, so that would be easiest to write. She's closing up one night at the diner alone and has what she later believes to be a heavenly vision of an angel in the seating area while putting up the chairs on the tables and cleaning up. Beautiful, winged, glowing, all that.

Another waiter has left his coat/keys/object of varying importance behind and enters to find main character having a seizure. Main character is rushed off to the hospital, but she recovers while on the way in the ambulance and starts talking about angels. She's panicking, it seems she's still hallucinating, and she is given a sedative.

Groggy when she awakens in a hospital cot, she sees a glowing figure again before she realizes it's her doctor and the "glow" was her vision coming into focus on his white coat. She is told she had a seizure, and is asked about family that may need to be contacted, so on and so forth, etc. etc. She will need to have a CT scan and be monitored for a bit, but it seems that all of her vital functions have returned to normal and for now she only needs to rest. And thus, she falls back asleep, and has dream about the angel; she is told by him that he will see her again soon.

Relative comes around to see her later; aunt or uncle or something. Think I'll go with uncle. Father's brother. Hasn't seen her in a few weeks or heard from her, asks her why she and her dad haven't around to church in so long, says other concerned-relative things before she interrupts to talk about her vision, says she'll be back at church as soon as she possibly can, as soon as she's out of the hospital, though she "isn't sure" about her father; in truth, she was talked into sharing an apartment with one of her coworkers not long ago, I'm thinking the one that found her; she doesn't tell her uncle because it's not another girl and he'd only make all sorts of assumptions. Her uncle is concerned about the nature of the visions, and tells her to trust her heart rather than hallucinations; if it is her decision to return to church then she should, but be cautious of any future visions.

While she agrees with her uncle out loud, she is in complete disagreement in her mind, and intends to keep an eye out for her personal savior; she hasn't told her uncle of the dream, in which the angel promised to see her again, only of the hallucination during her seizure.

After the CT scan and further analysis, no life-threatening medical cause for the seizure is determined; no blood clots, no problems in the central nervous system. It was a freak incident and shouldn't happen again, likely caused by stress, and the best thing she could do was take some time from work and school to relax.

She takes a bit of time off of school, but continues going to work; the diner has never been a stressful environment, she is more relaxed there than she is even at the apartment and is even allowed to take a little extra time on her shifts, though she doesn't work alone at any time anymore just to be safe.

Oh. Her name is Julia Mary O'Mara. Name just sorta smacked me in the face, so I'm using it. Nickname, Julie ('jewel-lee') or Jules ('jewels'). She's half Irish on her father's side; their family actually came over to the states when her dad was ten-ish, and her uncle was two-ish. Her uncle moved back to Ireland after attending Catholic school most of his life, and attended St. Patrick's College in Thules, Tipperary, taking courses in Theology and Psychology. He switched his major solely to Psychology when he had a bout with the religion blues, and is a fairly successful therapist in current times; he lives comfortably, but not extravagantly, and found religion again later in life (though he's still leaning a little towards agnosticism), and has been living back in the states for only a few years now, five at the most, but visited the family even while he lived overseas, and has thus kept close with them.

Now that background is over.

A few days after coming back to work at the diner again, an unfamiliar face shows up there; odd, since the town is home to at most a thousand people, and the diner is only ever filled with regulars; grandparently types and teenagers/college kids, for the most part, who keep out of each others' ways. Déjà vu hits Julie hard when he takes a seat after ordering at the counter, enough that she accidentally spills the drink she's pouring for an elderly customer; she apologizes and cleans up the mess whilst being complained at by the man, whose wife tries to calm him down. Laughter from a few nearby tables meets her ears, one from the lonely two-seat table of déjà vu guy.

Behind the counter a few minutes later and grabbing a couple plates of food to deliver, she gets a better glance at him and determines it is the angel from her vision. He's gone out of his way to disguise himself, looking, in her eyes, more like a devil than an angel, but underneath the dyed black hair and eyeliner, the leather and the spikes, it’s her angel.

She takes his food over when it’s finished and is quite surprised when he openly flirts with her. Her roommate, who’s working with her (we’ll call him Billy, short for William as per usual), is delivering food to a nearby table and stops to make sure there isn’t any problem; Julie assures him there isn’t before rushing away to get back to work.

While cleaning off his table after he's left, she finds the tip he left her, and sees there’s a phone number scrawled onto one of the bills, as well as neat script telling her to call it; Julie separates this dollar from the others and sticks it in a different pocket of her skirt before resuming work. After her shift, she calls the number on the bill and is answered by the guy she saw in the diner earlier. They hit it off pretty well, and he keeps reappearing at the diner, but it still burns in her mind that he looks just like her angel.

Most of the story vaguely references signs of his true nature: a cross Billy received from his grandmother disappears from the apartment; Lucas is scathing about her religion and tries to talk her back into her doubt on more than one occasion; he’s an overall bad influence; things start going unaccountably well for Julia after his arrival and terribly for those close to her (Billy gets the real brunt of it for trying to talk Julia into keeping away from Lucas); he tells Julia that she would be his favorite were he God. Little things, building up into his talking Julia into murdering her abusive and alcoholic father; she gets away with it on plea of self-defense. Even before this she already started to suspect that her angel is far from angelic, particularly when even the jury appears surprised at the verdict.

It’s Billy and her uncle that she turn to for help, trying to keep away from Lucas at all costs; her uncle is less inclined to believe she has been dating Satan, or even a demon, than Billy, but is won over eventually enough to agree to perform an exorcism on Lucas.

The exorcism ultimately doesn’t go over well; it works, but the uncle dies and Lucas is left in a critical state. Billy and Julia fabricate a story that Lucas and Julia’s uncle argued over the latter’s influence over Julia as of lately and fought brutally. Lucas turns out to be Lucas Smith, a twenty-one year old college student from Nebraska who was suspected of having murdered his parents and as good as disappeared off the map before police could find him; if he lives, he will likely go to prison for most of the rest of his life.

Julia goes to the hospital to talk to Lucas when she hears he’s woken up; and discovers he remembers nearly everything. He invoked the demon in his dorm with a few friends and an Ouija board. He was blacked out occasionally after the possession, gradually lost any control he had over himself and watched as a spectator from within his own head when he killed his parents, killed a gas station attendant here, a businessman there, usually getting others to do the job for him so he wouldn’t be recognized, ruined innocent lives; it saw Julia as a challenge, a challenge much too fun to turn down, even grew to pity her a little for being neglected by God on so many occasions, figured he was doing her a favor in claiming her soul for the other side.

He also apologizes for her uncle, and asks if she would ever consider seeing him again if he somehow managed to get out of his predicament; having gotten to know her as well as demon for so many months, he took a liking to her himself. He manages to convince her of just one date, but dies of his injuries within a week. She convinces Billy to let her move back into the apartment, apologizing for her ignorance; though she’s lost two more family members, her faith in a higher power has been restored and she knows full well the error of her ways. So, semi-positive ending; it at least emanates a hopeful aura, though lots of details are subject to change.

Various Inspirations

Imagine no religion
I wonder if you can?
Nothing to kill or die for
A brotherhood of man
LENNON

I'm losing my religion, trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much, I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
REM

Now I have you with me under my power
Our love grows stronger now with every hour
Look into my eyes you'll see who I am
My name is Lucifer, please take my hand
SABBATH[/size][/font]

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Name of Bunny: Creepy Old Lady Bunny
Fandom: Original; Horror
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: I have NO idea. Akino's right here and claiming he has nothing to do with it and is quite irritated about it, as he's been trying to get me to write again for a few days >_>. I think it might be the new muse that's still in hiding. If it is, I hope for said muses' sake that said muse isn't human, or Akino will likely murder said muse as soon as he locates it.
What the bunny insists I write:
The bunny already made me write. The original plotbunny came from a quote by Mark Twain about writing: "Don't say 'the old lady screamed.' Bring her on and let her scream." A muse apparently took it as a challenge, and without warning, plotbunny attack of epic proportions. This one was nibbling at my toes all day and, after watching my regular Saturday paranormal programs (I say regular, but I have a terrible habit of missing them all but once a month...), I figured I had best right before it properly devoured my entire foot.

And, with no planning or any idea of what was going on, my keyboard produced this:

The old lady screamed.

The build-up was tangible, as though I were seeing bile rise somewhere behind and within the folds of flesh that perhaps had once been a slender neck, but had years since lost its youthful elasticity and begun to droop. I could see her thin, cracked lips colored dark puce begin to part as though in slow motion and widen to a gaping hole that covered more than half of her stern, lined face, as the scream grew in volume and ferocity. The emotions stretched far; first a distressed wail, then fear as I had never heard it, escalating into an angry bellow as the sunken gray eyes in the face began to blaze the color of the blue flame of a blowtorch, as the mouth stretched and her wrinkles cracked as though made of concrete that had become stressed beyond its breaking point. Her white hair grew whiter, more brittle and harder.

And yet her posture remained as it had been when she stared at me in the shrewd manner of a buzzard scrutinizing a dying animal; poised, elegant, her slightly thick, heavily veined legs crossed beneath the gray skirt of her Sunday’s Best, her hands in their white gloves folded together over her left knee and her ironed gray jacket stiff as it could be, buttons travelling a straight line down her torso. All that lay askew was her small gray hat, which had sat before at an angle atop her short, curly white hair, a few long, wispy white feathers billowed towards the back of the little cap; it now lay upon the stone floor at the side of her wooden dining chair, upright and still. And yet her face, contorted in unbridled rage and terror and distress and morose so heavy that it weighed upon me as an anvil.

Her skin, perhaps the slightest bit ashen before, had turned completely to stone, cracking away from her face, revealing the red flesh beneath like fire under white hot coals. More and more of the top layer chipped and cracked away, and I watched silently and stilly, as this old woman put on her show for me. Soon her eyes were engulfed in the blue light, headlights glowing out at me, as her scream became something inhuman, the wailing of an angered panther. I stared, still as a stone sitting before her, naught but an observer of her agony and with no right to end it.

As suddenly as she began, she finished. Her hat sat slightly askew to the right on her head once again, her powdered face poised and collected, those beady little gray eyes back to scrutinizing me from within their sunken sockets. After a moment she stood, in once graceful motion, turned, and walked with purpose to the left, taking as long strides as her short and slightly pudgy legs could manage, gliding across the stone in her black heels as though it were ice.

Not one word, not one motion towards me to acknowledge that she saw me, and she was gone from the darkness to the immediate left of the small circle of light around our two chairs that seemed to reflect from nothing; not one lamp, not one torch, not one candle. It was now only that I moved to look at my arms, and saw that they were firmly chained to the wooden arms of my own sturdy dining chair, but to little purpose; I had not once felt the need to move.

My eyes turned up, once again, onto the chair in front of me as it sat empty now, and wondered aloud a thought that I wasn’t sure was my own: “Who are you?”

The old woman was in the chair again. She smiled, showing the straight, tiny white teeth of her dentures. Her eyes were blowtorch blue once again, and a stark white crow perched upon the edge of her small gray cap instead of the white feathers.

For the seventh night in a row, I sat straight up in my bed at precisely four forty-two in the morning, tangled in bed sheets soaked with my own cold sweat and smelling with the stink of terror. Terror had a very specific smell; smoke, decay, and mould, an acrid scent that choked me even further than my already labored breathing as I struggled to grab hold of my fleeing sanity. I swallowed the pounding lump in my throat that was my heart back down into my chest and hoped it would have the courtesy to keep to its rightful place for the remaining hours of darkness.

Who or what she is, I don't know. I'm not even sure who the main character is; no name, nothing. Just that he's male. I've not written like this in a long time, normally I at least have a name for a character. I don't even know that it's going to stay in first person; I hate writing in first person most of the time, the mood has to be absolutely perfect for it. It's not bad here, but it's not quite to my liking; the only first person work I'm comfortable doing tends to be vaguely or very stream of consciousness style, and this is too linear for that.

Regardless, it's weirdness alone is enough to scare me. As I'm writing I'm going "WTFBRAINSTOPIT." But not it's written, and it's going to end up getting developed. Whether short story or novel or novella length, I've no idea, but it will get developed. Akino's already working on that, and I get the creeping feeling the currently hiding muse also is.

On a side-note, iwl.me says the excerpt is written similarly to the style of Oscar Wilde. Who was Irish. I've only gotten him a couple times before, though. I usually get James Joyce...who was also Irish. I write like my heritage. Mwuahahahaah.

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Name of Bunny: Djinn bunny
Fandom: Original, horror, mystery
Muse(s) that sic'd it on me: Akino. I made the mistake of musing over imaginary friends and how I may or may not have had one in kindergarten. I'm pretty sure she was real, but you know, my memories that far back are really a blur, she was only there for that one year, and no one else I knew in kindergarten these days was in the same class as me and therefore there's no certainty. But anyway.
What the bunny insists I write:
The plot deals with a young single mother, Deborah Saunders, and her five-year-old daughter, Chloe. It's a pretty straightforward plot. Somehow or other, after moving to a new town, the daughter gets a djinn attached to her and granting her every whim (albeit subtly so, so nothing seems odd at first) at the cost of her gradually deteriorating health, with the mother gradually realizing what's going on throughout the course of the story. There will be elements of mystery with the djinn potentially being a few different people: either their kind and motherly landlady Jackie Brinkley, Chloe's "imaginary" friend Jessica Winters from school, Deborah's new boyfriend Frank McGovern, or Chloe's babysitter Jeremiah Majors, Jr.. I'll grant you I already know who it is, but no one else will. That's my intent, at least. It'll be written entirely from the POV of Deb, third person, which is going to be interesting for me as I'm not terribly accustomed to writing in limited third person. I can't write from Chloe's viewpoint as she's fully aware of who it is but doesn't want to tell on her "friend."