Page 16 of Haunted Mediation
It had been a particularly warm afternoon in May, and they’d been sitting on a park bench, eating lunch together. James pulled his backpack onto his lap and unzipped it, hesitantly looking into its depths and then back up at Leon.
“Whatcha got in there?” Leon drawled, his curiosity not enough to draw his attention away from the adorable corgi playing with a frisbee several yards away.
“I, uh…overheard you telling one of my minions that Yarmen goes through toys faster than you know what to do with. I saw these the other day and…well, I feel like I can’t ever quite make up for how I treated you that first day we met, so…here.”
James shoved a large bag of brightly colored cat toys in Leon’s face. It was filled with rainbow-shaped toys and toys in the colors of the rainbow, as well as the gay pride flag. Leon was pretty sure he’d seen them before, and sure enough, when he checked the tag, it was from a local queer owned pet store thathad flyers up at the Rainbow Bean, advertising custom pride flag colored toys available for special order.
Given that James had never owned a pet, this meant that not only had he gone to the store for no other reason than to buy these toys for Yarmen—who, at this point, James hadn’t even met yet—but he had also custom ordered the toys in Leon’s pride flag colors.
They’d both been painfully awkward about the exchange. Leon tried to say he couldn’t accept it, and James immediately went on the defensive, saying, “What the heck am I going to do with custom-made cat toys?” confirming Leon’s suspicions.
“You’re right. Obviously, while I can’t accept these, Yarmen sure can, and he’s very grateful,” Leon said.
James nodded sharply before stuffing the remaining quarter of his sandwich in his mouth and turning away.
While they’d both been staring forward, Leon cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if I never said this clearly, but I forgive you. You don’t have anything to apologize for, and you absolutely don’t need to make anything up to me.”
“So…what you’re saying is I should cancel the recurring order of cat toys I put in with them?”
Leon jerked his head around and found James smiling softly to himself. For the life of him, Leon couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Where the fuck am I going to put a recurring order of cat toys?” Leon huffed. “My place isn’t that big.”
“Well, that’s not really my problem, is it?” James said, sniffing indignantly. “You’ve never invited me over, so how am I supposed to know what sort of cat toy storage space you’re working with?”
“Alright, mensche, why don’t you come over Friday and see for yourself, then you can figure out what to do with all thesetoys—and any others you may have fucking ordered,” Leon said, shoving the bag of toys back into James’ hands.
James stared at him, his face stuck somewhere between hope and hurt.
“Yarmen instantly falls for anyone who gives him new toys,” Leon explained, turning to look back at the playing corgi. “These are pretty kickass, so I feel like you deserve to be the one to give them to him.”
Thus started their weekly Friday hangouts, as well as James and Yarmen’s love affair.
Along with all these damn feelings Leon had for him.
Now, something made a concerning-sounding creak in the darkness, and Leon pulled James a little tighter to his side as they hurried through the rest of the room. When they finally reached the opposing wall, Leon felt along it with his free hand until he found a blackout curtain. He pulled them both through it and had to squint at the glaring red lights they emerged into.
The room was, quite literally, dripping with blood. It was running down the walls from what looked like open wounds carved into cement. Pools of it were collecting at the base of the walls and slowly draining down a grate in each corner. Leon scanned for threats, but it didn’t seem like there were a lot of places for jump scares to be lurking?—
And then his eyes landed on a person.
He’d been a little surprised they hadn’t encountered any people yet, but the sign at the ticket booth said there would be live scares taking place. They were supposed to yell “Tomato” if the person did anything that made them uncomfortable, or if they needed to stop the skit they were about to perform.
“Welcome,” the person said. They were wearing heavy black robes, with a black veil completely obscuring their face.
“Oh god,” James whispered behind him, and Leon tightened his grip on his hand.
“It doesn’t look like there’s much in our way,” Leon whispered back. “How about we move through this one quickly?”
“Okay,” James whispered, and Leon started walking forward.
“You can ignore me all you want,” the person said, tipping their head at an angle. “But you can’t escape me.”
“Wanna bet,” Leon murmured, and James made a pathetic noise behind him.
“I am your worst fears,” the person said, tilting their head all the way to the other side. “I am what haunts you late at night.”
Leon snorted. It wasn’t very scary if the person didn’t chase after them with some sort of weapon. The last time he’d been to a haunted house had been with his ex, and a woman wielding a chainsaw chased them from room to room. Nowthathad been scary.
