The tiny, bedraggled transport, an old 4×4 automobile with a single passenger, inched its way down the narrow, rocky road. Mist hovered around, not sure what to do with itself other than obscure vision and make everything feel dark. It may have only been 7pm, but it was already pitch black, and the lack of any sort of moon didn’t help with the permanent lighting issues – even during the day, the road was particularly treacherous.
Teekay hated driving. It was just one of those things he despised, because he wasn’t particularly good at it. The 4×4 wasn’t helping Teekay’s confidence, it was an old, Thanatian, wheeled vehicle, rather than the sleek, shiny hovercraft most Rethans used. Even an ancient hovercraft would float above the hideously rocky path, but the 4×4 was all he had.
The shadowed road made everything worse. Annoyingly, it was the only decent road back home. Every other route was little more than a dirt path meant for riding, hunting or walking pets. Teekay was in a truck full of shopping, you couldn’t take that down a nature trail.
Finally, Teekay reached the fork in the road. The left one led to a river, the right one to his shared home. Normally, the fork was marked with a plastic statue of an Aggelad, something which amused Teekay greatly, but today, someone had stuck a large, round, orange kolokyth on its head and carved a silly face into it.
“What a waste…” Teekay tutted. He could have made a perfectly good soup out of that.
As Teekay continued down the path, he realised that a lot of the small lights they’d placed on the road had also been covered with kolokyths. He couldn’t work out why anyone would want to even do that. All it did was make his life more difficult, since he couldn’t properly see the edges of the road.
Finally, Teekay made it back home and parked his 4×4 quite far away from the house. Normally, despite its old, wooden frame, the house was full of life, hustle and bustle, as his family came and went, doing various chores and jobs and stuff.
Right now though, the house was as dark and eerie as the road. There were no lights on or anything.
Confused, Teekay checked his communicator. There was a single message.
“Power is off at home. :(”
Teekay tutted at himself, angry that he didn’t check the message earlier. But if there was no power, why was it still so dark? Something was wrong. Surely the thirteen other residents of the house hadn’t all gone out? Someone was always at home to keep an eye on things, since the old house was quite easy to break into.
The strangeness of it all was making Teekay nervous. He decided to leave the engine running, but in park, just in case. But as soon as Teekay stepped out of the car, he realised what an idiot he must have looked, and turned the engine off. Teekay was supposed to be a professional military sort of thing, he didn’t need to be panicking.
Small problem, he couldn’t carry the shopping in on his own. Well, he could have, he had telekinisis, but Teekay was lazy. That wasn’t a problem. The shopping could stay in the car until Teekay could fetch a sibling to help him. He pulled a small torch off his keyring, then headed to the front door.
After some confusion as to which key was for what, Teekay managed to get the door open.
Inside was empty. No lights, no nothing. Silent. Cold. De-
“BOOOOOOOOOOO!”
In a panic, Teekay fell backwards, out the door, down the steps and into the mud outside. Standing in the doorway was a horde of giggling Rethans.
“Happy Halloween!” Elkay grinned as the rest of his Ksa laughed around him.
“Fuck the lot of you!” Teekay growled as he pushed past everyone and headed straight to the bathroom to clean himself up. “What the fuck is Halloween anyway?”