Survival Of The Fittest

((Russell 'Fitz' Fitzroy - Pregame Start.))

Fitz hadn’t seen the inside of this second-hand knick knacks store before. It was not dissimilar to where he worked. Kind of cluttered and disorganized in that aesthetic way. That was good. That was his jam. And the only person working the joint was just off-putting enough that he couldn’t be 100% sure it was an act to draw in the tourists. The place smelt pretty old, for all that Fitz couldn’t remember it being here pre-COVID.

Maybe he’d just forgotten about it or not noticed it, but hey. Maybe it was one of those places where afterwards you pointed to try and indicate where it was, and it was just gone like it’d never been there.

He hoped so, because it would a) remove competition for the store he worked at (how many second-hand knick knack stores could exist in Essex Street without crowding each other out? More than the average—it was Salem and all—but there had to be some kind of supply and demand in there) and b) any doll here he found would be, like, guaranteed haunted.

There were a lot of dolls on the shelf he was looking at. A tidy little row of plastic faces.

Fitz eyed the row of them, scratching his chin idly. The hood of his baggy, dark blue hoodie pulled over his head. It was cold today. He should have worn a longer skirt or some stockings or something. His other hand was resting on the doll he’d stuck in his pocket. A plastic one that wouldn’t get damaged easily if he accidentally bumped it against someone. Meredith, the control sample in his usual doll-hunting experiment. Not haunted—probably—but the owner before Fitz had tried to burn her face and left half of it charcoal-black, so she looked like she was.

The dolls here were mostly normal-looking. No obvious damage. Nor were any of them were particularly amazing in craftsmanship, the sorts of things he could have probably found at the mall. Nothing he was going to write home about. But these were second-hand, and they weren’t in any cases.

Fitz pulled Meredith from his pocket and placed it on one end of the shelf before resting her hand on her head. Then he moved it to the first doll in line, hovering his hand over her head before bopping it down lightly.

“Duck,” Fitz muttered. He moved his hand back to Meredith. “Duck.” Then to the second doll, hovering before bopping his hand down lightly. “Duck.” Back to Meredith. “Duck.”

No vibes. Not yet. But there were still a lot of dolls left to check, so Fitz continued his little experiment.

(October Valentine- Pregame Start)

October strolled down one aisle of old, mysterious trinkets that blended together with the last one to her. She had wanted to try something new today since she had some free time, but after a few minutes in the store, she was already getting a strong feeling that whatever this was, it wasn't for her. Hell, she was having a hard time discerning what some of the stuff in there even was, much less who it appealed to.

She came to a stop at a bizarre-looking porcelain figure of a sad clown. Everything about it, from the pose, to the fairly nightmarish sculpting of its face, to the fact that the porcelain itself was lumpy and gave the whole thing an even more bizarre look, seemed to be specifically designed to make it as unappealing as possible. She started to wonder if maybe that was the point.

October's excursion was quickly tiring her, and not even the oddities of the shop were keeping her attention. She was a few minutes at most from walking out and heading to the arcade, or maybe to go get something to eat. She wasn't picky, and she was already pretty sick of this place and didn't feel like wasting even more time out of her day just hanging around and being disinterested. Daylight was burning, and she had shit to do.

Then the heard the word "Duck" being murmured, and she turned to see one of her classmates talking to himself. Fitz was someone that October knew of, although she wouldn't really consider them to be friends or anything even approaching that. Relationship status aside, October found herself creeping closer, trying to figure out just what the hell he was up to. And at the same time, she wondered if it was something that she even wanted to know.

As she took a few more steps forward, her elbow clipped a doll on the corner of the shelf, forcing her to quickly act to keep it from hitting the ground. Thankfully, she caught it before she had to pay the cost of a broken doll that she didn't want in the first place, but any attempt at stealth had been effectively scuttled.

Fitz, midway through doing his research, heard the noise and turned to see October catch a doll that had fallen off a shelf.

“Good catch,” he said, hand still outstretched towards the doll he was currently checking. After patting it, with a quick muttered, “Duck,” and then doing the same to Meredith, albeit quicker than he normally would, he instead approached her.

He didn’t really know her too well. Had a cool name, got taken out of school for attacking someone or something. Intense. But if she was back, it couldn’t have been, like, lethal. Unless she had an amazing lawyer, or connections.

Stopping in front of her, Fitz looked down at the doll and asked, in a similar tone of voice to someone asking if it was raining outside, “Did you knock over the doll, or did it jump at you?”

He reached out and bopped it on the head.

“Duck.” No vibes. Fitz let out a mildly annoyed "psshh" noise. Ahh, no haunted doll worth its salt would just jump at someone, anyway.

The porcelain doll felt cold in October's hand, but that didn't bother her nearly as much as the significant layer of dust that she could feel on the doll, especially with the knowledge that the same dust was now transferring over to her hand. She suppressed the urge to shudder.

Fitz came closer. Had October indicated that she was interested in a conversation? Right now the whole vibe of this store was giving her the creeps, but it looked like it was too late to make a quick getaway. Fitz was already in front of her and... kind of focused on her? He kept on going back to the dolls for some reason, and it was weirding her out more than a little.

"What? Nah, I just wasn't looking where I was going." She said, glancing back at the shelf behind her as she placed the doll back in its spot, no longer letting it befoul her hands before she needed to wash her hands even more thoroughly. When she looked back at Fitz, he was doing the "Duck" thing again. She couldn't even start to guess what he was talking about, or why he kept doing it. What she did know about tact implored her not to pry, but morbid curiosity was a powerful thing.

"What are you doing?"

“Aw, shame. That would have been cool.”

October didn’t seem exactly hype about the dolls. Maybe she didn’t like them. She didn’t really look like a doll-loving girl. Though, really, most didn’t. Fitz probably didn’t fit the bill, either. But something in the way she put that doll down. A little bit gingerly, perhaps? Maybe she was getting vibes?

“I’m lookin’ for haunted dolls.” Fitz leaned back to pick up Meredith from her place at the end of the doll shelf, bopping her lightly on the head before picking her up. “This is my assistant, Meredith. She’s chill. She’s got no ghosts, so she’s, uh, like, the control in my experiment.”

Fitz idly scratched his ear, though doing so pushed his hood back enough to slip off, exposing a mess of pale blond hair squashed in weird shapes from the hoodie.

“Then I do my duck-duck-goose thing, and feel for vibes. Like if I got a non-haunted doll—a goose, I guess—then if I’ve bopped Meredith I’ll feel the difference, y’know?”

Fitz eyed October, head tilting as he continued scratching behind his ear. She had some guns on her. No wonder she’d gotten into trouble over punching or whatever, with arms like that it’d be a crime not to use them.

“You lookin’ for some knick-knacks? October, yeah? Might know how t’find them, if it’s somethin’ specific.”

Fuck, she really needed a coffee.

Trinity Ashmore closed her eyes and massaged her temples, standing, rather awkwardly, in the middle of an aisle, surrounded by shelves of old porcelain figurines and candle holders and chipped glass animals. All sorts of second-hand, once loved things that had presumably, once upon a time, held some kind of value, whether monetary or sentimental, but that now just looked very dull and tarnished and, well… kinda crap.

She let out a short, huffy sigh, and shuffled from one foot to the other, twitchy little indecisive movements. What was she even doing here? She knew why she had originally come here, of course, that wasn’t what she was asking herself. She’d gotten herself stuck in a rut at home while trying to get started on a new sewing pattern, trying to work with hands that felt like two blocks of solid concrete, feeling so drowsy that she’d almost fallen face first onto the fabric and jammed the needle up her nose - she’d managed to get the thread tangled into knots just by unspooling it, for God’s sake.

So she’d tried her usual technique of going out of the house and walking wherever her legs took her until the cloud of stress cleared away from her mind. She had ambled down to Essex Street and taken a turn right into this little second-hand shop full of trinkets and knick-knacks, just on a whim, just because a little idea had taken hold in her brain that she might be able to find some framed cross stitch work to copy, or some ancient books of sheet music to try and learn and play.

But either she’d completely missed any needlework samplers and music books, or this store didn’t actually have any at all; both options were equally likely, and to be quite honest, Trinity didn’t really give a shit which was the truth. She had already wasted way too much time here, time she could have been doing something actually productive; getting back to her room and her desk, a Venti cup of coffee in her hand to clear the fog of sleep in her head, ready to put her head down and work, probably review the notes she’d taken the previous night. Instead she was just… standing around in the middle of some cruddy little tourist trap, staring gormlessly at some wooden carving on the shelf in front of her, probably totally in the way of anybody who wanted to walk past. Her head felt like it was just a mess of pencil scribbles - God she could kill for some caffeine right now - and she just needed to leave but her feet felt like they’d been stapled to the floor, and-

She screwed her eyes shut and took a deep, long breath. She could tell, at the very least, that she was spiralling, and that meant that she wasn’t totally stranded in the weeds just yet. The air in the knick-knack shop smelled old, but in a comforting, warm way, like a library filled with delicate, impeccably looked-after books, or her gramma’s house, copper-coloured kitchenware hanging neat and orderly in her tiny little kitchen. The fuzz in her head cleared up, just a fraction, but enough to let her formulate a barebones plan. She would stay here for another ten minutes, at maximum, and if she hadn’t found anything by then, she would head home, dipping into the first coffee shop on the way there, and then sit down and get to work for, let’s say, two hours before she was willing to let herself take a break.

Now that her aural senses weren’t swallowed up by the sound of her own brain, Trinity could hear some sort of discussion going on a few aisles down, familiar voices talking about, and she could barely believe the words were even crossing her mind, ‘haunted dolls’ of all things. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

… She had to admit, though. She was curious; intrigued, at the very least, to know exactly what would possess someone (no pun intended in the slightest) to believe in that sort of nonsense. She shuffled closer, peeking her head around one of the shelves to look at the participants of this conversation.

Ah. That would explain it. Russell, or, no, Fitz was his preferred name, was fully into conspiracy theories. October was a hard worker and got shockingly good grades, but had been arrested for assault; Trinity knew more than anyone how easy it was to snap under duress, but to go so far as punching somebody? No, no this was certainly not a duo she would normally choose to spend time with.

She turned to look at the closest item to her, a doll wearing a particularly sun-bleached petticoat, pretending to be fully invested in the thing, all the while keeping an ear open for what her two classmates were talking about.

"Haunted dolls?"

October's voice didn't do an especially great job at hiding her skepticism, nor did she make any specific attempt to do so. She was too busy being surprised that this was a situation that she was actually finding herself in, talking to someone who was casing an old store full of junk in a legitimate attempt to try to find some haunted dolls. She could hardly even come up with a proper response to something like that.

Although considering the vibes of this place, if there were such things as haunted dolls, this would definitely be the kind of place they would be hiding...

...No, nope, she was pushing that thought right out of her head. No horror movie shit allowed.

"Huh?" She reacted to Fitz' question. "Oh, no. I just, uh... not really sure what I'm doing here, really. Just kinda browsing."

October clearly wasn’t into it. It was the sort of tone that Fitz heard most of the time he talked about… well, anything, really, and he was pretty in tune with the skepticism. That was fine, like… it was, theoretically, a free country.

“Makes sense. Essex is good for browsin’ and all. Like, you’ll know it when you see it, or something.” Fitz turned his attention towards the shelves, eyeing the dolls before dismissing his initial examinations. Nothing particularly nice or haunted. “You not big on dolls? Hauntings? Or both?”

Fitz’s eyes were still drifting as he asked the question, his mind more focused on his initial activity. His eyes moved over Trinity—vaguely registering her as another classmate with a cool name, while he was stuck with ‘Russell’--before instead his eyes settled on the doll in front of her. From this distance, all he could really see was the faded quality of the dress.

That piqued Fitz’s interest. Faded clothing could mean the doll was old. Or just badly taken care of. If he could get closer, but he was kind of in the middle of a conversation--

Fitz continued to obliviously stare at the doll, entirely forgetting that someone else was near it.

Was Fitz… staring at her?

Trinity could feel the telltale burning sensation of someone’s gaze boring into her, and she glanced to her right, just out of the corner of her glasses. Yes, he was definitely looking directly at her, no doubt about that, facing away from and completely ignoring October, no less. The brief flash of annoyance she felt at that - could he not even be bothered to maintain the stupid conversation he had no doubt initiated? - was quickly washed away by the wave of self-consciousness as Fitz continued to just stare.

What was it? What was his deal? Was there something on her face? If he was staring at the bags under her eyes then he was incredibly late to the party; they were pretty much a permanent feature by this point. She subconsciously brushed the back of her hand across her cheek, swatting away nonexistent crumbs, before an even worse thought popped into her head. Maybe he was just straight up brazenly creeping on her, leering when he thought she wouldn’t notice. She had no idea as to the boy’s orientation, but the idea was now firmly rooted in her brain, and the burning sensation had suddenly shifted from being merely weird to sincerely uncomfortable.

She clenched, then unclenched, her fist, jaw beginning to ache as she ground her teeth together, before she forced herself to breathe, deep and slow through her nose, and turn to look back at Fitz.

“Yes?”

God, she couldn’t stand how her voice got whenever she was even the slightest bit stressed. The stuttering, tremulous inflection it gained, like she was about to stumble over every single word. She tried her best to keep her words as polite and level as possible, but everything that came out of her mouth felt like it was about to wrest control away from her, and go off in some other, awful direction.

“Can I help you?”

Yeah, October was totally lost here. She liked fantasy and stuff, but she wasn't big on intersecting that kind of stuff with real life. Besides, the stories that people come up with about vengeful ghosts and haunted locations? That's some real fucked-up stuff. She wasn't into it, and she kind of went out of her way to avoid hearing about any of that stuff. It just wasn't her type of scene. So yeah, her answer was pretty clear.

Also, dolls just creeped her right the hell out most of the time. No thanks.

"Nah, I'm not into either of 'em. I'm just kinda here due to... circumstance, I guess."

That was when a third person interjected themselves into the conversation. Did October like getting interrupted? Hell no. But she was currently in a conversation that she had no idea how to react to, on a topic that didn't interest her, in a store that she didn't like. So in this case, she didn't mind that much. She turned around and addressed the newcomer. "Oh, hey. What are you doing here?"

“Salem must get tiring if you’re not into those kind of things,” Fitz mused, still mostly focused on the doll in the distance. “Like being a vampire in Italy or something. Sure, you can live there, but it’d be a bummer not to be able to enjoy all the garlic in the food.”

Oh, someone else was talking. Trinity. Fitz looked at her properly for a moment, though not for long—mostly registering her nicely-painted nails, in lighter colours than Fitz’s own dark blue ones, and mentally nodding in approval—before he near-immediately went back to looking at the doll, trying to remember if the clothing looked like it was from any particular period.

“Can I look at the doll when you’re done with it?” It was only polite to let her continue, if it was something that truly interested her. If Trinity was interested in dolls, then that could lead to a fun talk about their hobbies. If she wasn’t, Fitz could examine the doll further. It was a win-win.

“The… doll?”

Trinity stared at the other two for a moment, her brows fully furrowed, mouth hanging open in a small ‘o’ of confusion. Had she missed something here? She thought she had been paying full attention to their conversation, inane as it had been, but it didn’t seem like any of them were on the same page, here. October didn’t seem to have noticed her at all, and Fitz was reacting the exact same way, despite the fact he’d just been gawping at her like a… like…

She blinked once, twice, then turned her head to the left and locked eyes with the doll sitting there once more. Of course. Of course the boy who had just been talking about haunted dolls and was in this very store to look for said cursed item, had, in fact, been staring at this stupid chunk of porcelain, not her. Scratch everything she’d been saying previously; she wished that all this witchcraft bullshit was real right now, just so one of these various creepy dolls could make the floor disappear from underneath her feet.

“Oh. Right. This… yeah.” Trinity said, stiffly, taking a step away from the shelf and giving Fitz free access to it. “I’m done with it now, anyway, so… um, feel free.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead. It was a relief to know that Fitz was just being a weirdo, and not a total freak, but it had come at the price of her looking like a total idiot and putting her dumb foot in her dumb mouth. The door into this little shop was looking more and more inviting as an escape route, but she once again forced herself to take a breath and think logically; if she left now, then she was as good as admitting that this whole diversion had been a waste of time, and that fog of stress from before would come back with a serious vengeance all the way home.

Oh. And she still needed to respond to October, didn’t she? Lest she really look like a totally socially incompetent asshole.

“I’m mostly just, um, looking around, I suppose.” Trinity said, moving slightly closer to October as she did so. She was carrying a light pink shoulder bag with her, mostly empty aside from her purse and various other essentials, and she fidgeted with the strap as she conversed.

“I was hoping to find some old sheet music, something like that, but all I’ve been able to find have been these…”

She bit her tongue, swallowed the words she was about to say, and forced a smile onto her face, one that didn’t even come close to meeting her eyes.

“... fascinating dolls instead.”

"Huh... all right."

October still felt totally lost. She didn't know where this conversation was going or if she had any control over it. Fortunately, a savior arrived and took up Fitz's attention. That gave October the opening that she needed to cut and run. She couldn't just up and bail without at least saying something first, though. It would take a pretty classless asshole to do that. So she sort of waved and looked over her shoulder. "Yeah, it was fun, but I gotta run." She didn't even try to rhyme. It just came out like that.

October made for the door and left the odd little shop behind her. At least she still had some daylight left to try to find something else.

(October Valentine continued elsewhere...)

Fitz, oblivious to Trinity’s embarrassment, stepped up to the doll. He rested one hand on Meredith, while lightly bopping the other one on the head.

...Tingly. Some solid vibes.

“Oh, this is one big ol’ goose. I gotta get it out of here before it strangles someone,” Fitz said cheerfully.

It seemed like October had left while he was too consumed in the doll to notice, so it was probably fine to hopscotch off. He waltzed off, prize in hand, mentally memorizing the address of the store in case he tried to return the doll later and it had vanished from existence.

((Russell ‘Fitz’ Fitzroy continued in Into The Woods.))

Wait. Hang on.

What?

Just like that, Trinity was standing all alone in the shop; if she had blinked, then she might have missed the other two walking off entirely, and then maybe she would have been convinced as to the presence of ghosts. But no, she had seen them walk off, right in front of her. October had mumbled some vague excuse before dipping out of the conversation and the store itself. Fitz hadn’t even offered her that low level of courtesy; he had picked the doll up, said some waffly mumbo-jumbo bullshit, and then he had just blanked her and left.

She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks, and her hands tightened around her shoulder bag’s strap, twisting it in her clenched fists. Sure, she hadn’t been planning or particularly wanting to get into an in-depth conversation with these two, but that wasn’t the point. She’d wound up in their stupid discussions about stupid cursed dolls, and then as soon as she’d tried to be polite and engage with them, she’d just been ignored and abandoned. It was rude. It hurt, to be totally honest, and really just exemplified what a total kick in the teeth this day had been.

Ugh. Fuck this. She was just gonna grab that coffee and go home. She was in a dreadful, shitty mood now, and no amount of rummaging through dusty old boxes in the hopes that she might find a decent book of sheet music would change that. This had been a complete waste of time, and she couldn’t tell if she was more pissed off at October and Fitz, or at herself.

She closed her eyes, and attempted a few more deep, calming breaths, before she too left this crappy old shop to mould and rot.

((Trinity Ashmore continued in Light on a Window))