Preview: FIC - “Kill the Ghost”

Hi again!!! Here is a small sneak peek of Kill the Ghost, my new multi-chaptered BKDKBK urban fantasy AU starting on Friday! I hope you like it!

+++

CHAPTER ONE

On his tenth lap around the block, Izuku spotted the monster watching him. It was crouched against the wooden post of a neighbor's mailbox, little more than a shadow with large-knuckled fingers that raked at empty air.

Izuku stifled a groan. Sprinting through his neighborhood at midnight was hard enough without an unwanted audience. He stopped to catch his breath beneath a lamppost, his hand braced against the cool iron.

The monster across the street moved, shifting on spindly legs that trembled beneath its slight form. Its bulbous eyes glowed an eerie yellow in the dark.

Izuku had learned that if he ignored them hard enough, eventually, they went away. Didn't help his doubts about his sanity, but at least it worked. Except they'd been showing up more frequently the last few weeks, and the watching thing was new. Pretending something wasn't there was a lot harder when it was staring at him.

His phone vibrated in his back pocket. With a glance at the screen, he put the phone to his ear.

"You sound like a goat on the rack," Shouto said in greeting.

"How," Izuku asked between breaths, "do you know what a tortured goat sounds like?"

He shook out his legs, but it didn't help. Even running for three miles hadn't burned off the energy. Great. He considered just rolling into a ditch and letting the monsters have their way with him.

Shouto’s voice was perfectly flat as he answered, "Animal Sacrifices Hour. Wednesday nights at eight. Bring your own blood bucket."

Izuku could never be entirely sure that Shouto was joking. His deadpan was just too powerful.

"Did running work?" Shouto asked.

"No." Izuku didn't know what else to do. Imaginary monsters he could deal with—those, at least, went away. Sort of. The restlessness, combined with the insomnia, was something else.

After weeks strung between exhaustion and energy, his days now passed in a blur, and he'd begun naming his counting sheep (he liked Sora, number one hundred and seventy-two).

At least he wasn't still trying to get Shouto to knock him out for some quality unconscious time. Shouto refused anyway, even though it was Izuku's best idea. What good were best friends if they wouldn't be accomplices?

He didn't have the nerve yet to do it to himself, but he'd give it another week before he started searching the house for handy bludgeons.

"What do you want?" Izuku asked.

"Just making sure you didn't pass out in someone's garden."

"That would be the best possible outcome actually. Gonna head home now. 'Night." He tucked his phone into his pocket and continued on, ignoring the way the monster across the street rattled forward again.

He turned the corner, out of the monster's line of sight, and drew in a slow breath of relief. He turned his face into the breeze, which barely stirred the green curls sticking to his forehead.

The heavy air smelled of grass and drying paint from a neighbor's fence, but beneath it sat the bitter scent of the city. It smelled of distant summer evenings beside the docks, scraping mold off rotting wood with the sharp edges of stones, of soil and brine and Dad's arm around his shoulders as they watched shadowy barges pass like ghost ferries.

A lamppost illuminated the crooked steps of Sasaki-ojisan’s house and the banana tree sitting in a clay pot beside the door. Its shriveled leaves were curled against its trunk like a giant spider.

Izuku crept inside and made a quick detour to the bathroom to wash up. Once in his room, he stripped down to his boxers and collapsed onto his bed.

His limbs twitched with the need to move. Groaning, he considered smothering himself in his pillow.

The restlessness had been gradual, building slowly enough that he hadn't even noticed until, one day, Shouto had given him a puzzled look and asked, "Can’t you just sit still?" and Izuku had realized that no, he really couldn't.

Even stranger, he felt certain that if he just did something, it would go away. Sprinting hadn't worked, and he'd given up on drugstore sleep aids after falling asleep in his bed and waking up in their tree. He felt overwrought, with no way to release the energy, and he'd begun to wonder, in a morbid way, if he would eventually explode from the pressure.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and counted backward from Hoshi, number one thousand and one.

+++

The full first chapter goes up on Friday with a new chapter posted every week! This fic will be completely exclusive to Journeyman and Master tiers! I hope you like it 🥰