HUNGER ━━ until dawn

ZERO / prank
prologue

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   SNOW FLUTTERED DOWN, delicate flakes twirling through the air before settling onto the ground, covering the mountains with a thick blanket of alabaster to rest upon. The sun had retreated, the moon taking its place as the guard of the night. Its companion, stars, twinkled and blinked in the darkness, small but bright—like many of us.

Outside, the wind was freezing, bringing a deep chill as it always did for every winter on Blackwood Mountain. However, inside the lodge, warmth radiated through the building. Fireplace crackling and cackling along with its drunken inhabitants; heating cracked to full blast to force out the cold. Music was playing: loud, trashy, cheerful. Friends were dancing and drinking and singing and stumbling.

Downstairs, two men huddled in a corner. Giggling, gripping each other tightly to prevent a drunken sway, pressing insistent kisses to whatever part of skin they could reach on one another. The party host—Josh Washington—and his bestfriend of thirteen years, Trick Jones. Now, with drunken confidence, turned lovers.

“They really have no shame,” One of their watchers commented. A girl with short hair, beanie pulled tight over her black locks.

Her twin huddled closer to the girl that resembled her mirror, and simply shrugged, “Josh has spent long enough pining.”

The two continued to gossip to one another—a common practice for teenage girls, especially Hannah and Beth Washington. They continued to watch the men in the corner snicker to one another, rushing off into the kitchen to pour another mix of a burning something that would numb their senses. The twins were unbeknownst to what was consipiring upstairs. The plan that would kill them both.

It wasn’t long before Trick and Josh had resigned themselves to the floor, eyes shut from the sedative they kept chugging. Hannah and Beth, forever protective of their brother (and the man who might as well be their brother), manouvered the two onto a nearby couch in front of the fireplace. Josh blinked open his eyes and gave a tired smile, before cuddling closer to Trick.

And that was the last time Josh Washington saw his sisters alive.

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🪚∘˙ˏ🥩.ᐟ 彡๑

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   “PICK UP THE fucking phone, you stupid bitch!” Josh screamed down the voicemail, shaking so hard that his voice came out in trembles, “Where the fuck are my sisters?”

The phone beeped, and Josh hurled it at the wall. It fell, cracks splintering the screen, dents encasing one side from the brick. Trick was shaking, too, as if he was the one that had been so carelessly and ragefully thrown. Most of his childhood, he'd been surrounded by shouting—but it didn’t get easier. He slammed his hands over his ears to cover the noise.

Prank. That's what the friendship group had called it. Those fucking bastards even had the audacity to show them the video. Hannah Washington, giggling and blushing, as she began to undress for her crush—uncaring to the fact he had a girlfriend, unbeknownst to the fact she was being mocked. And when she realised, she had taken off; out into the freezing snow as it whirled up into a storm. Beth had ran after her. The two didn’t come back. Days later, they still hadn't been found.

They never were.