sasquatchandleatherjacket:

spnhiatuscreations | 2017 week 2
↳urban legends

the sensible grown ups will tell you that they’re just urban legends; scary stories made up to teach little children not to go wandering off in the market, or teenagers not to sneak off at night to make out on secluded overlooks or abandoned parking lots. they’ll tell you that the stories are too fantastical to be true, that there’s nothing hiding under your bed or in your closet, no one stalking outside your window late at night. they’ll tell you that you’re safe. but gracie knows better.

oh, the stories were exaggerated, sure, blurring the line between truth and legend. they’re not seven feet tall, although she can see how someone could think they are. they’re not as wide as a truck, either, although one of them may have trouble fitting through the odd doorway here and there. and they’re certainly not hideous, at least not at first, they smile and shake hands and say yes ma’am and no sir just like her momma and daddy taught her to do. they crouch down to speak with little children, soft smiles and softer voices, completely disarming behind a mask of kindness.

and she figures it is a kindness to some, to the others, the plain and the ordinary and the weak.

she was nine when she saw them, they came right to her house, right to the front door and knocked, asked to be let in, and of course momma let them in because monsters don’t ask, do they, they just enter. but that was all part of the masquerade. gracie saw them for what they were, saw what the grownups couldn’t because grown ups are too busy to think about boogeymen and scary campfire stories and things that go bump in the night. busy putting food on the table, that’s what daddy used to say. 

but their smiles, they were just a little too smooth; their questioning just a little too nonchalant, and it tickled the fine hairs on the back of her neck. when they left, seemingly satisfied with the answers momma provided, she begged and begged to skip town, to move on before they came back. but daddy said nonsense and momma said we seen plenty of detectives come and go, those ones will be moving on soon enough.

it was the big one, not that they’re not both big, that spared her. momma was on the kitchen floor with a silver knife in her neck, daddy was down the hall, head laying several feet from his body. she was supposed to be asleep but the noise had woken her up. there he stood, one half of the story that wasn’t supposed to be real, covered in blood but barely even breathing hard at all for having killed two people. he looked so startled to see her, and then so sad. i’m so sorry, he’d said, and damn if it didn’t sound sincere, but we had to stop them, and then he was gone.

a part of her understands. almost. momma and daddy killed their kind, after all, lured them into dark alleys and drained their blood to the very last drop. but that was their food. they had to. she’s not sure whether they knew if she was like her momma and daddy or not. part of them had to suspect, but he didn’t make one move to hurt her. sometimes she thinks they might come back for her when she’s older. sometimes she thinks she should go after them before they have a chance to.

just stories, her new family insists, like she didn’t see what she knows she did. probably just another vamp they’d pissed off somewhere along the way, that was their explanation. those super hunters, they tell her, those winchesters, they aren’t real. there’s lots of dangers in the world for young little vampires and werewolves and ghosties and ghouls, they say, but nothing so outlandish as giant humans who travel the whole country, who stalk the night and who can’t die. tall tales that grew taller over time, that’s all. urban legends.