MissAnthropy | Haunted

an odd, possibly panicked look crosses Rae's face at the mention of prison, and she starts to nervously tug at the hem of her shirt as the others laugh it off. She'd promised...She starts to almost seem to go into her own thoughts before the doror swings open. She glances at Zuri for reassurance, now more on not getting into trouble with police other than on any other things they may be trying to get up to, before slowly following the others in.

For a moment she just takes the room in, before suddenly remembering why they were here, and fumbling for the camera to starting to film parts before the ambience got ruined by the others moving through i. It may not get used, but too much footage was better than not enough.

At Zuri's scream she curses and nearly drops the device, even if it's not aimed at her, the young adult being easily startled.

Rae starts at the door slamming shut, and is about to complain before she freezes, staring out the window trying to process what she is seeing. A ghost? They hadn't even done anything yet.. no t she was overthinking. It had to be a person. The window was just dirty so she couldn't see properly. That was it. Not that it still wasn't a problem, given they had just broken in.

'Guys I think we just.. someone was outside. We should go, right? Before they tell someone?' Her free hand not holding the camera starts to tap against her leg in a nervous tic.

Cade directs her light's beam toward the yawning hallway. She glares back at the shut door. "Hey Carl. Check the front door would you? See if we can still open it."

Carl's a big boy so that when Zuri starts making creepy noises on his back he manages to keep his composure. Sort of. In trying to keep a placid countenance he manages to look like the screaming guy from the painting (just for a sec). He waits for Zuri to go reach what now looks embarrassingly more like a sheet of paper than an actual living rodent when the entrance door slams shut and Rae's imagination gets the better of her. Cade is telling him something, but he just stares at her with unfocused eyes.

It's been nearly three months since Carl last had any type of substance in his bloodstream so that obviously imagined giggle coming from the closet strikes him as obnoxiously odd. Also: there's fucking something in that closet. Are the hallucinations back? Should he tell something? Everybody but Zuri and to a lesser degree Steph looks a bit tense by now, but maybe he's just projecting his own unease.

"Sure thing", he replies to Cade, content to have a task that allows him to ignore what he just saw, but while doing that he has a better idea.

"Hey Cade, would you mind checking that closet? I think I've heard some noises coming out from there"

Cade nods. "Yeah. Sure. I can do that, Carl." She says pointing the end of her baton toward the doors of the small closet. "Check the front door first though. If there is a rat in the closet, we'll need somewhere for some of us to run." She adds, with a glance toward the others.

Steph grabs her phone the moment it starts ringing Micky's special ringtone.
At first the reaction of taking her phone is so natural that she doesn't even consider how weird it is that this special tone is ringing. But when she realizes that it is Micky's tune, her heart skips a beat and she nearly drops the phone as she gives a little yelp.

As the phone's screen goes blank, for a moment she thinks she imagined things... but no... she was sure of it. There had to be a logical explanation for it. Probably someone got their hands on Micky's phone. To be sure she checks her history of missed calls. But she doesn't say anything to her friends just yet. She wouldn't seem to be scared or unstable.

"The fuck is this?" Zuri mood changed with the slam of the door and while not thinking very much of the note she gripped it while turning to see plainly that the door was gone. "The fuck... where is the door?!" She moves over with Carl, looking him in the eyes, her own wide and suddenly frightened. Different from all the bravado and bullshitery, but actually worried. Moving to Steph and Rae she looks between them, hoping for some answer.

Cadence's focus is on the something in the closet. "There's no hiding in closets anymore! This is like 2022." She says almost sarcastically and bangs the end of her baton against the bowing door. "Come on out!"

She hears the commotion at the front door, but doesn't take her eyes off the closet. "What do you mean, where's the door, Zuri? What kind of crazy spook ride shit have you taken us to?"

"No door? No fucking way..."

Carl shakes his head a few times in apparent disbelief while contemplating the patch of pristine and uninterrupted wallpaper that has replaced the door. He hears Cade's words as if she is very far away, but she seems to be hinting at a possible solution to the dilemma, which at least excludes Carl's own personal theory of hallucinations, and thus the guitarist turns his head back into Zuri in search of explanations. Zuri's wide eyes are self-explanatory: no one really knows what the fuck is going on.

There has to be a rational explanation for all this.

"Calm down, everybody", he mutters while placing his hands over the wallpaper where the door stood, "Don’t let appearances fool you". It is unclear, even to Carl, to whom he's talking, albeit he's looking at Cade now. "The wallpaper must be a mechanism to blend in with the door", he explains as he continues to examine the wall. "Maybe some new fancy security system or some shit. To fool thieves and trespassers. There’s always only one reality". He's not making any sense and a part of him knows it.

"Hey, Rae, I think we could use that hammer now", he mentions while glancing at one of the windows.

Stephanie frown and giggles a little at Cade banging at the closet door. She glances and throws a smile at Zuri.

But then her focus goes to the missing door.

"Fool thieves, Carl?" she asks as she looks closely at the wall where she would expect a door. "That doesn't make sense. You would want to keep a thief out, not in."

Rae grits her teeth as everyone else seems to dismiss her comment, and make no effort to leave. She whirls around , determined to check the door herself as the other s seemed unbothered, only to once more freeze as she spots along with the rest it's disappearance.

'..Zuri.. whats going on..? This wasn't happening. Dreaming. That was it. It was just one of her weird dreams. That was all.

Ash Carl calls to her she tries to shake her head to clear it. Breath. Relax. Juts a dream, but go along with it and she'd wake up soon. 'Right. On it. She puts the camera down and fumble with her bag, before pulling out the hammer and lightly tossing it towards Carl.

Zuri narrowed her eyes, hearing Cade's bullshit start up quick, but Rae and Carl were getting ready to start tearing at the wall with the claw hammer. Looking to Steph, she notices how she was focusing on her phone. "Are you getting service?" She did not think so, but something was happening that was more attention-grabbing than a missing exit. Zuri sort of goes still, trying to think this through.

Her voice was softer, unsure of herself or what she was thinking, but getting a feeling that beating holes into the structure was not a good thing to try. "... wait... I'm not sure we should do that Rae..." She did not move to stop them, she wasn't sure what she was even saying, as she wondered if perhaps this one time ever the bullshit talk about a haunted house might actually be real.

Cade yanks at the closet door holding the baton ready to bash whatever may jump out at them. "Come on out." She says slightly annoyed by the cat-and-mouse game.

"No service," Steph complains "The stupid thing is acting all up. So much for getting a pre-release model." she shows her call history which is just dates and an iPhone 15 logo. "Garbage"

Still, she puts on the flashlight of her phone and lighted the spot where the door should have been, waiting for Rae to smash it.

Even though Carl failed physics, it does not take a physician to know that glass is an inelastic material and so whatever the fuck causes it to bounce back and push him through the air is just wrong. Beyond wrong. Like the business with the door. But having a stubborn spirit (stubborn enough to have ignored Steph's words and Zuri's warning wrt the hammer business), he does not cease to look for a rational explanation.

"Yo, what's up with that", he wonders, scratching his head, and searching around for Rae's hammer, temporarily oblivious of the other business with Cade and her closeted friend.