BlueyCapsules | VOLUME TWO

Armed Break-In

 William had a very particular reason for having his family sleep together.

Ever since he was a little lad, he'd had a slightly disproportional fear of armed robbery; He wasn't exactly sure what had kickstarted it, but it had followed him into adulthood, and it was, he knew, statistically more likely for a home invader to kill only one person per room. This way, maybe, one of the brats would get it instead of him.

What? He was a survivalist.

That said, it didn't matter anyway; The Afton house had never been broken into, as long as they'd lived there.

Until tonight.

William jerked awake as a loud bang echoed throughout the house; He sat up quickly in bed, and he figured the rustling beneath him was his children waking up as well.

"Fatha?" Michael called, fear lining his tone. "Wh-what was that?!"

William peeked down over the edge of the top bunk. The kids were huddled nervously together. Pathetic.

"Liz, go check and see what that was."

"Wha - " Elizabeth's eyes widened in fear. "Why me?!"

"God," William groaned, running a hand over his face. "I have to do everything around here." Fine, the kids were too scared to go look - he'd do it. It wasn't like he was scared. Not at all. Not even one bit.

Maybe a little.

William descended the bunk bed ladder, grabbing his emergency Nerf gun from beside the bed with a huff.

"Stay here, then. I'll take care of it."

William crept slowly down the staircase, trying to pretend like each crash and thud coming from the kitchen didn't send a jolt of fear down his spine. It was fine, damn it, he was fine - he shouldn't have been freaking out about this. It was probably nothing, some kind of animal or a left-open door, or -

William froze at the foot of the staircase, his veins going ice cold.

Or the puppet's disembodied arm.

Fuck. Fuck. He knew he should've destroyed that thing.

William shot at the thing, but only successfully destroyed his own refrigerator - the stuffed limb darted out of harm's way. William shot again, and again, burning more and more holes in the walls of his home - the arm grabbed the barrel of his gun, suddenly, snapping it downward and effectively disarming him.

"Oi!"

William watched as it slithered away from him, rage filling his chest. What, did that stupid thing think it was getting away? He grabbed a cleaver from the knife block behind him, scowling; Not this time. William followed it into the living room, where it was already destroying all his things - almost every piece of furniture was on fire. It was like Charlotte - or whatever it was - was only here to cause him destruction and wreak havoc. William backed it into a corner, raising the cleaver with a grin and laughing.

"GAWT CHUU!!"

He, in fact, did not have her. The arm slithered right between his legs and up the staircase.

"Wot - " William ran after it. "God Dammit!!"

William paused at the top of the staircase, looking around - where did it go? His eyes stopped at the bathroom door, which was cracked open slightly. Perfect. William marched over, shoving open the door with a grin - and immediately finding himself drenched, a bucket of water toppling over him and temporarily blinding him. He gasped, pulling the bucket up and off of his head in shock. If that stupid arm could laugh, William thought it would.

He threw his knife at it, shattering the mirror.

The arm escaped, again - almost. William grabbed it tight as it flew past him, finding himself dragged out of the bathroom and - painfully - down the staircase, back into his flaming living room. Evidently, though, Charlotte's arm did not like being followed, because there were those horrible long fingers around his neck once again. William grunted, feeling around for a piece of debris or something, and landed on a spatula; It seemed to do the trick. He pried the hand away from him, and smacked it across the room, into a pile of flaming bread.

That seemed to do it. The arm burst immediately into flame, twirling desperately and making an awful nose before it went limp on the ground. It seemed whatever supernatural property was allowing Charlotte to inhabit that fucking puppet wasn't enough to outweigh the physical properties of it being, literally, felt and cotton. William gave a shaky sigh, rubbing his face.

"Bloody Christ..."

...What the fuck was that?

William watched in awe as the arm began to melt into a viscous, glowing, hot-pink liquid. He crawled close to it, staring as the entirety of the puppet's limb deteriorated until there was a sopping pile of pink goo on his carpet. Hesitantly, he reached for a mason jar laying discarded on the carpet, and used the spatula to scrape a gob of the stuff into it, groaning uncomfortably at the consistency. He squeezed the lid back onto the jar and held it up to the light, swirling it slightly in his hand. It shimmered and glowed, even in the jar.

Huh.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you, Charlotte?"

William got to his feet, turning over the jar a few times in his hand. Perhaps...there was a little more detective work that needed to be done. There seemed to be more to this than he initially thought