[Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

What do you call a fic that's not a fic

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Archaic Cluster
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[Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Archaic Cluster »

Hello, everyone! Today, I introduce to you a universe! My favorite universe!

An alternate universe!

All differences (major, minor, and sharp) will be revealed whilst reading the story, I promise. I've already written five small parts, but I'm still a bit iffy about posting all of them, so I'm going to only post the first one. If you post something relating to what could happen next, I will take it into account and may or may not revise accordingly. I'm not looking for harsh criticism, but 'tips and tricks' types of advice would be perfect! (Seriously, I'm not a professional writer, so please don't treat me like one.)

A few things before we get started:
1. This story will be dealing with GHOSTS! Spooky, scary ghosts!
2. The main place in which this story takes place is within a mansion. A spooky, SCARY mansion!
3. There will be mention of death, but it will not written out in detail.
4. The characters and their actions may seem over-exaggerated at times. This is so that their thoughts can be shown through their actions.
5. Your thoughts, no matter how small, matter to me. I will be developing this story with my own two hands, but that doesn't mean I'm deaf to your words. Say them, please.
6. School is coming. As such, I might not get very far with this story, but I certainly hope to.
7. 'Slanted text such as this means thought. It will also have a single quotation mark at each end.' "Ordinary speech is written plainly, and will have double quotation marks at each end." Any other slanted text most likely means that the character is emphasizing the slanted word.

And now, an introduction paragraph.

Bino, Fido, and Joey have, through an unfortunate night involving excessive amounts of orange soda and a triple-dog-dare, found themselves before the abandoned mansion in the forest. The general belief is that the place is haunted by, well, ghosts. Nobody's ever gone past the doorstep for some reason, but the three brothers will be spending the night there. They could never imagine the strawberry flavored spookiness that awaited them...


Joey wasn't a scaredy cat.

Er, not the best way to say it.

Joey wasn't a chicken.

He was a dog, because he lacked feathers, and - oh, to howl with it.

Joey was scared out of his wits, although he was not one to be scared easily. Nor was he one to show it. Instead, in times of stress, he did his best to appear calm and collected. Unbeknownst to him, he had several nervous ticks that mysteriously disappeared when he was frightened.

His brothers knew it, though, which kind of sucked for him.

"C'mon, Joey, what are you, a scaredy cat?" Bino teased, a smug grin on his face. "If you want to, we could go home, and you could admit defeat."

The wind swirled around the forest, sending leaves into colorful cascades of orange, red, and yellow, like miniature, beautiful, not nearly as destructive tornadoes. The mansion before them was tall - three stories, in fact - and had not been in use for decades, and it showed. The garden was unkempt with weeds and vines, and what looked like crawling ivy crept up the walls.

Several of the windows were broken though not shattered, and the paint had long since faded to irregular, barely recognizable patches of sky-blue. It was definitely a sight to behold in it's hey-day, but now...it was creepy as all get-out.

"Pff, I'm not scared." Joey said.

'I'm thouroughly scared, right down to my toes. That's a thing, right?' Joey thought.

Fido, Dog bless him, was merciful.

"You don't have to do it, Joey. Bino and I will be fine without-"

"Oh, alright then, I'll just be on my -GHK!" Bino had already gotten a paw fastened around Joey's collar as he started walking towards the house.

"Oh no you don't, pup. C'mon, Fido, we've got a haunted house to sleep in - while we're at it, maybe you could stop undermining my authority?" Fido just rolled his eyes and followed, doing his best to ignore the temperature drop.

"Sabrina said this place was legitimately haunted, y'know," he said as they climbed up the steps.

"You mean that black cat? Of course she'd say the paranormal stuff was true - she's named after a witch, for Pete's sake!"

"I don't see what Pete has to do with any of this, maybe we can ask him?" Joey asked. Bino ignored that, and instead let go of his collar to open the tall double doors. The evening light cast their shadows to be tall and skinny against the dust-laden floor before -

"Yep, stereotypical as ever. Honestly, it's like there's some sort of reverse janitor putting dust everywhere," Bino complained, walking briskly forward. "Everyone spread out - if we're going to be sleeping here, we should clear the floor."

"Wait, we're going to be sleeping at the bottom of the staircase?" Fido asked as Joey went off in search of a broom. Bino just rolled his eyes and motioned Fido in closer.

"Look, you know what Sabrina can do - if she says it's haunted, it's haunted. I even brought her here yesterday for a quick read. Therefore, we will be playing it safe. Joey, however..." Bino grinned wickedly, as if a particularly devilish thought had wandered across his mind. "Well, Sabrina said the ghosts were 'benign', right?" Fido frowned.

"Bino -" he started, before being interrupted.

"Hey, I found some brooms!" Joey said, holding them out to his brothers. "What were you talking about?"

Fido opened his mouth, before catching a glance at the look on Bino's face.

'Am I really going to tell him just because he's going to get scared?'

He sighed.

"Nothing, Joey. Let's start sweeping."



And that's part one. I think that, because of the lack of things happening in this chapter, part two will come a lot quicker than the others might.
Last edited by Archaic Cluster on Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Amazee Dayzee
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

This actually looks like its very promising! Keep up the good work!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Saturn381 »

Nice job, Archaic Cluster. :)
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Buster »

...Wait, Bino hangs out with Sabrina? this AU already confuses me.
Most important thing I've learned from D&D?
No matter how tempting it may be, as a DM I can't both present a problem and solve it.
Every time a DMPC or NPC fixes something a payer couldn't i'm diminishing and undermining that player's contribution.
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by The-J-Man »

You might as well be an English major like me.
Although I do have some advice:
Try to avoid the over-use of "uncommon words" like you did in the opening parahraph, because they will confuse your younger readers and make them lose intrest...really fast...
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Archaic Cluster »

Before we continue.

Buster - Sabrina's the local psychic (besides Tarot, who couldn't be bothered with this). Bino maybe be a jerk, but he's not...well, he is kind of stupid sometimes, but it's a haunted mansion. Would YOU go into a haunted mansion without consulting a psychic? Wait, that's a stupid question. Besides, this is Bino we're talking about. Eh.

The-J-Man - I've removed a few of the unnecessary 'uncommon' words and simplified a few others, but I think there must be a phase where a writer thinks, 'HMM. Common words are USELESS! I must use words that any given person wouldn't have come across in a month!', because I feel like I'm going through that. I also feel like that would have been taught in English class...

And now, the story. Part 2. You know that time when you're super-angry at somebody but you haven't told them yet, so everything comes out more aggressively than you want it to? Bino and Fido do. Or they don't, and they're going through it right now.

"One of the only reasons we had to come to this stupid house was to sleep in it, and you forgot the blankets!?" Bino exclaimed, trying to glare his older brother into submission.

"Oh, like you'd know anything about being prepared! Where are all the pillows!?" Fido shot back.

"They were right there, I swear-"

"Would you stop making excuses and take responsibility for once?"

"You're one to talk about responsibility! That was a nice year we had while you were in la-la land at the academy!"

"I told you, I didn't do it because it was fun, I did it to make a difference!"

Joey, to his credit, was unrelated to the explosion of built up anxiety and rage that had been stewing over the last month or so. He was pretty sure it had started sometime around June, a few days after Elementary school got out and Fido had some more off-time.

As for how it started, he couldn't even guess.

At least he could take comfort in knowing he didn't want to sleep on bare floor.

"Uh, maybe I could look in the bedrooms for some -"

"FINE!" they shouted at the same time. Fido stomped up the stairs and Bino stomped down the right hall. All in all, there was a lot of racket.

He must have zoned out for a moment. Whoops.

"...I'll just go look for those blankets and pillows." Joey whispered to himself.

He grabbed an old candle-holder with a good candle, lit it, and went down the left hall.
______________________________________________________________________________

The hallway was pretty bland, and didn't have much in the way of decor. There were a lot of paintings on the walls, and Joey couldn't resist stopping to admire them. They didn't reveal much that he didn't know. A married couple with two pets, a female cat and a male dog, had inherited the house from a relative, and moved in. For ten or fifteen years, nothing happened.

Then, one day, the dog died.

Bino, when asked about this, would proceed to bring out his list of outlandish 'possible' causes of death. Joey, however, knew better, as did Fido - the dog's obituary (which was framed neatly on the wall) stated that the cause was a fever in the middle of winter.

The cat was grief stricken, and after falling asleep whilst mourning his grave, died to hypothermia. Her obituary was framed next to the dog's.

' 'Till death did they part,' he thought sadly.

Bino had theories about her death, too, but Joey had already walked away at that point in the conversation, as had the other few dogs who'd asked him about it.

According to the paintings, they were the closest friends on the planet. It looked like they shared everything, as if they were born siblings. Joey noticed that the dog always looked more eager to be painted than the cat was, though. In fact, he looked like he was always having a good time, regardless of the occasion.

Joey smiled at that. The world could always use a little more optimism, outdated as it was.

There were a lot of paintings, though, and as much as he liked them, he had to find some blankets to sleep on. So he started walking down the hall, keeping one eye on the paintings.

Then one winked at him.

He stopped dead in his tracks and whipped his head around so fast, it was a wonder he didn't get whiplash.

'That did NOT just happen.' The painting remained motionless. He stared at it for a while more before another thought crossed his mind.

'Maybe it was a fluke?'

So, against his sense of self-preservation, he kept looking. Each painting was just as normal as the previous ones, and none winked, but he noticed something different about the ones after the obituaries - their fur had an indistinct silver tint to it. Either the painter had mixed his colors, or something seriously weird was happening with the candle light.

He moved the candle to the left. The tint remained. He moved it to the right. Still there.

"Okay, I'm creeped out now. I'm just going to keep looking for blankets," he said to no-one in particular.

It might have been his imagination, but he could've sworn he heard someone respond to that.
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

This chapter is even better than the first one! Great job on this!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Saturn381 »

Nice update, Archaic Cluster.
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by The-J-Man »

As an English major...I am thoroughly impressed
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Archaic Cluster »

The best way to get over writer's block is to write out every idea you have until something comes out that you actually like. I can attest to this, as can the six unused chapters that I tried out.


Joey found a bedroom.

Joey could have been a good dog. He could have grabbed the pillows and blankets and taken them down the hall, all the way back into the entrance parlor. He could have waited for his brothers to come back with whatever they might have found.

He could have, but he didn't.

And who could blame him? Walking through long, boring corridors and opening every door he finds can really wear a dog out. The worst part was that he had no idea how big the mansion really was.

Being completely surrounded by trees, it was kind of hard to figure out. Howl, it could have had seperate wings, and poor Joey never would've known. There could have been trapdoors that led to an underground section of the mansion, the only difference from the upper floors being the 'underground' part.

Poor Joey could have gotten lost in all of that, only to walk out the front door at 3:27 the next day, slightly worse for wear and refusing his brothers' apologies.

While that was all so very unlikely, it could have happened, and Joey didn't like taking risks. So he let himself flop onto the bed and see how many sheep he could count before he fell asleep.
______________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, somewhere else in the mansion...

Below the rafters of one of the mansion's taller segments, a door slammed open and a ghostly figure rushed in, calling up through the rafters of the building.

"GRAAAPE!"

A second ghostly figure sparked into existence, near the top of the room.

"Agh! Peanut, I swear, if you found that stupid mole again-"

"No! There are dogs in the mansion!" Peanut interrupted her, waving his arms up and down.

"Yeah, I know, you! Can I go back to-"

"No, you don't get it! Three living dogs just walked in the front door! They didn't even wipe their paws, Grape! What do I do!?" Grape narrowed her eyes and looked down at him.

"What do you mean by just now?" she asked.

"Uh..." Peanut did some mental backtracking. "Ten, fifteen minutes ago? You're kind of hard to find sometimes." Grape grinned sadistically. Most people would run for the hills, but Peanut wasn't part of that group.

"Ooh! Do you have an idea? Tell me, tell me!" he asked, zipping up to her level.

"Well, I'm not sure," she said slyly, "I mean, it would be awfully rude to scare their pants off..."

"Ooh! You have to tell me now! C'mon, what is it!?" Peanut exclaimed, grabbing her hands. Grape had him wrapped around her finger.

"It'll be touch and go for a while, but I know where to start." She flew down from the rafters with Peanut in tow. "We're going to give them a night they'll never forget."
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Really enjoying where this is going! Nice job!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by The-J-Man »

This is so exciting to read!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Archaic Cluster »

You know something's up when you look at your previous author notes to figure out what the flying feline you want to put before your latest chapter.


Bino was, in his mind, the bravest dog he knew.

After all, running headfirst into a haunted mansion would have lesser dogs trembling in their collars, but not he! No, he was a knight in shining armor! The stalwart hero on a never-ending quest to save the princess and reclaim the kingdom!

First, though, he had to find a princess to save. As for the kingdom...he wasn't so sure about that.

He was already respected enough in the dog community to be a leader, but literally every one of his decisions had been overturned by Fido in some way. He was doing his best to fight it, but Fido just had more support than he did.

This is why Fido was the evil wizard in his fantasy world.

His fists clenched and he grit his teeth. Fido was definitely the ultimate evil in this equation, and everyone who followed him were his henchdogs.

As for Joey, Bino had no idea whose side he was on. Howl, nobody even paid attention to him in the first place.

Maybe...

No. No, Bino was completely in the right here. Confirming anything that Fido said would be giving in, it would be losing. And he wasn't going down unless Fido was going right down with him.

"Hello?"

Bino stopped. A voice just came from the room to his left, but it wasn't Fido or Joey. It was someone else's voice...

"Is anyone there?"

Hesitantly, he opened the door fully and peeked in, his candle eerily lighting up the room. There was a stack of boxes, but other than that, it was just an ordinary room. He was about to turn around, when one of the boxes suddenly fell off of the stack. He stood still for a few seconds before cautiously walking over to the boxes.

He stepped around the fallen one and looked behind the stack, when out of nowhere -

"AIRHORN!"

Something ghostly and dog-like jumped out and let an airhorn blare right next to Bino's ear.

Bino's scream echoed through the entire mansion.
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

Cannot wait to see where this is gonna lead! Great job!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Archaic Cluster »

I've been writing out a lot of 'past' chapters recently. They deal with some darker content, but not pitch black. It's more like the light is flickering. ANYWAY, enjoy.


Joey was better at daydreaming than he was at 'actual' dreaming. Maybe it was something about the grey walls, the one-way window, or the straight jacket, but the situation in general was pretty boring. The walls and floor were cushiony, but he didn't feel like going to sleep at all, so what was the point?

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

"Huh," he said to himself, "I wonder where that came from."

It took a few minutes for anything else to happen.

The door slammed open, bouncing off the padded wall, and one of the nice men in the white coats ran over to Joey, picked him up, and started shaking him. Violently.

"WAKE UP, JOEY!"

'Huh,' Joey thought as he started to feel nauseous, 'My eyes are closed.'

When he opened his eyes and saw the man in a white coat was actually Fido, he realized his dinner was quickly becoming disgruntled with its place in society and wanted to move up in the world. Being in his stomach, there was only one way out.

"FIDO!" he yelled, "STO-" He suddenly shut his mouth and closed his eyes. His insides felt like they'd been turned upside down. Luckily, Fido got the message, and let Joey fall back onto the bed.

"Sorry, but I had to wake you up because Bino's in trouble!" he exclaimed.

"Urgh...what? What happened?" he asked, trying his best to stand up. "And why is the room spinning?"

"You're just dizzy, now come on!" Without a second to lose, Fido bound out the open door and into the hallway. Joey picked up his candle from the bedside carefully.

'I probably should have put that out,' he thought as he followed his brother.

"Come on, this way!" Fido started running down the hall the moment Joey left the room. Not wanting to be left behind, Joey started sprinting after him. He was running too fast, and his candle flickered out.

"Fido, my candle just-"

"Don't worry about it, just follow mine!"

'Easier said than done,' Joey thought. Fido was still several steps ahead of him, taking turns left and right. It was like he was on a track, following the rails to a destination.

Fido soon came to a screeching halt in front of one of the many doors and flung it open.

"Go inside, I'll follow!"

Poor Joey was just about as gullible as they come, so he ran in.

The moment he entered, the door slammed shut behind him, and Joey slammed into a wall.

"OW! Fido, what the heck!?" he yelled, holding his nose. "That was painful! Why!" It took a moment to realize where he was. He reached out to his left. There was a wall. On his right was, oh boy, another wall. He turned around and tried the knob, but the door didn't budge.

"Oh, ha ha, trap the scaredy-dog in a closet. Good job, Fido. Can you let me out now?" There was no response.

"Uh, F-Fido? This isn't cool, can you l-let me out?" He started banging on the door.

"Fido! Fido, please, just let me out! FIDO!"


(Don't worry, Fido hasn't developed a sudden sadistic humor. OR HAS HE)
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I love how this chapter has come out! Great job on writing it! I hope that Joey is alright!
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Re: [Fanfiction] Spooky Sandwiches Alternate Universe

Post by himeakira »

looks awsome !!
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