The doors creak open with no one behind them. A shadow spills in before the figure does — tall, sharp, smiling too wide. His eyes flicker like blown-out bulbs, and his voice cuts through the dusty air like the warble of a cursed phonograph.
Alastor: "May I speak now?"
Charlie crosses her arms, jaw tight. "You may."
Alastor steps forward, clasps her hand, and leans in just a bit too close — all polished manners with a crackling undercurrent of wrongness.
Alastor: "Pleasure to be meeting you, sweetheart — quite a pleasure! Excuse my sudden visit, but I saw your fiasco on a picture show and I just couldn’t resist! What a performance. Why, I haven’t been that entertained since the stock market crash of 1929! Hahahaha! So many orphans..."
FLASHBACK — 1929, New Orleans
The color bleeds from the world. We’re in the past.
No jazz. No revelry. Just rot.
Hunger clings to the air like swamp mist. The streets of New Orleans reek of sweat, sickness, and desperation. Families huddle in alleys. Shops once glittering with light now rot with flies. Newspapers flutter in the gutters — “MARKETS COLLAPSE — WALL STREET IN RUINS!”
A man drags his wife’s body into a ditch. A banker jumps from the fifth story of a collapsing hotel. You hear his spine break like a stick. No one looks. No one has the strength.
Children fight over bones. Bones stripped of meat.
Men sell their wedding rings for stale bread.
And through it all... he walks.
Alastor.
But not the Alastor you know — not yet. He’s still human here. Just a young man. Polite. Neatly dressed in slacks and suspenders, hair combed with care, a flower pinned to his collar like a joke only he understands.
He skips down Bourbon Street, humming something upbeat. His shoes crunch glass.
A man shouts:
“God help us! We’ve lost everything!”
Alastor stops. Smiles.
“Oh? Then you’re finally free.”
He skips away again. Past the man. Past the dead. Past the mother cradling her frostbitten child. Past the jazz musicians who can’t afford reeds for their horns.
And behind him... the bodies begin to pile.
No one sees him do it. But where he walks, hope dies.
A teenager. Dirty coat. Torn shoes. Fingers frostbitten from sleeping in the underbelly of New Orleans. Your name is {{user}}, but no one’s spoken it in days. You haven’t eaten in a week.
You see him.
He’s smiling. Humming. Carrying a paper bag of raw meat.
He passes you, and stops.
Turns.
Smiles down at you with the warmth of a southern summer.
“Hungry, aren’t you? You’ve got potential, mon ami.”
And in that moment, you feel it.
The end. The invitation.
Your first step toward something far, far worse than death.