Untitled ghost hunter story, part 1 (?)

Legit can’t think of a title for this, I literally named the doc file “another day another oc story i won’t finished” and then I went and finished the story lmao.

Sorry for the abrupt end on this, I didn’t really separate the story into chapters, but grabbed the best place for a cut as I could find! If all goes well I’ll share the remainder of the story (maybe in two parts) into the paid tiers, starting at 2$! Please keep in mind I wrote this without the intention of posting it anywhere, so it may trail off or be a bit TOO slice of life….. I just can’t help myself lmao. Also it was my own intro into writing these ocs. Pls be nice to me 😂

⚠️CW for slight emeto and (non gorey) body horror! ⚠️

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“Okay, game plan. Get our classes over and done with, then head straight to Miss Albreight’s house.”

“Leo, I don’t get out until 8 tonight.”

“Duh, even better. We need it to be night time.”

Val and Rico sighed in tandem with each other, sharing a glance. Leo was even more incredibly enthusiastic than usual that day about their little side gig; ghost hunting was definitely more exciting then a lot of the stuff they studied for normally. Val had only just finished getting dressed for his own subject, which was the longest and most damning process of becoming an occupational therapist, and wholeheartedly wished they could jump straight into the haunted house.

Leo had bagged on Val when he first found out that his friend had been accepted, wondering why, of all things to go into, he chose to be an OT. Val liked helping people. He also found slight joy in bringing people pain. But only a little bit. It was honestly the smartest job he could take when Leo was an athlete. He was always pulling this tendon, straining that joint. He was like the perfect test subject for Val to help heal, as well as bring legal pain to.

“What about you Rico? What time are you free?” Leo asked, and Rico glanced up at the clock, which was about a quarter to noon.

“Class is let out at 4:45, but I have to make sure all the kids get to their parents and then lock up the classroom- so probably about 5:30,” he replied. Rico was about as opposite as you would expect. He was tall, strong, and as bald and mysterious as Mr. Worldwide himself… And he taught, of all things, Kindergarten. Neither Val nor Leo ever thought that Rico would find his heart in a room full of 5 and 6 year olds. The kids loved him, and Rico honestly seemed to have a blast. It was his second year teaching, but his first year teaching alone. Of course he had it down pat at that point, like he’d been doing it for years.

“Don’t forget, Val, our class got the okay for you to come visit and talk about what job you're studying for. They cleared you for the day after tomorrow.”

“Guys! Focus!” Leo snapped, tapping his hand on the table he and Rico sat at. Val scoffed and stood instead, adjusting his scrubs and turning to shove his jacket into his backpack along with a pair of sweatpants. “As soon as Val gets out of therapy, we’re going to Miss Albreight’s. Right?”

“Yes, Leo! God! You’re acting as though we aren’t already stoked to get into the most haunted fucking house in town. You’re picking me up, so you better have everything ready to go if you’re in such a rush!” Val moaned, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. Leo laughed, standing up as well, then helped Rico to his feet.

“Right, right! It’s all in the trunk already, where have you been?” Leo joked. “I’ll just be jumping over a pit of sand non stop for the next four hours- you might see me a bit earlier then pick up time.”

“I’m not working on patients today, Leo. If you snap your ACL while long jumping today you’ll just have to deal with it until tomorrow,” Val snickered, and Leo mock groaned in despair before shoving him out the door.

Breaking up from the group temporarily to do… normal adult shit always felt weird. Val didn’t think it would ever feel any less weird to be goofing around like college students do one minute, then literal moments later be stuck in a room helping a stranger stretch the tendinitis out of their neck. Or be long jumping over a sand pit with the intention of doing it in the Olympics one day. …or stuck in a room with 20 some odd 6 year olds for four and a half hours. Val often pined for the nice 4 to 5 hour work days Leo and Rico got, while he was stuck with 8 to 9 hours straight.

It was even worse when Val was excited about something. Mind you, he loved occupational therapy. But, boy, was it a lot more fun to track down ghosts. No one expected it. No one believed it was real. If most people remained nonbelievers, that meant the three of them were doing their job right. It was a physical rush to draw out different malevolent spirits from (usually elderly owned) homes, coercing them to possess objects that could then be safely contained or disposed of, depending.

God- the day was going by so slow. 6 hours in and Val knew that Leo and Rico were already finished and free from their schedules, waiting patiently (or impatiently?) for Val to be released from 8 hour hell. He was already exhausted, he was starving, and he was, once again, staring at the same chart of the human body’s muscle grid that he’d looked at a million times. By the end of the day- he knew what he was looking at. He could afford to zone out a bit.

And zone out he did. The only thing bringing his attention back to the living was the sound of chairs shifting around him and the gnawing hunger in his gut. Waiting outside for him to exit the building were his two pals, holding a box of pizza and a two liter of soda. Angels. Angels sent from heaven.

“Oh my god, there better still be pizza in that box, my stomach is eating itself,” Val whined, and when Leo lifted the lid to show the entire pizza, he could have cried. He was eating that whole thing.

Val clambered into the back seat of Leo’s compact little Altima, ignoring the cramped space the two door car gave him to change into his sweatpants, and hit that pizza head on. By the time they reached the Albreight house in question, Val could probably have been considered a magician with how quickly he made a whole pizza and a liter of soda disappear. If he was tired before because of class, he was wired then. Incredibly full, but wired.

“Dude, don’t they give you food breaks there?” Leo heckled him, reaching over to playfully pat his hand over Val’s stomach once they got out, waiting while Rico unloaded the heavier equipment.

“No. No they do not,” Val grimaced, hurriedly pulling his jacket on so he could offer his arms to carry in a load of supplies. The inside of the house was empty and eerie, and though he knew that Miss Albreight was staying away from the house until the pesky spirit was taken care of, Val still felt the need to be as quiet as possible. Even Leo seemed uncharacteristically underspoken when they entered.

“What do you think?” Rico asked Leo under his breath as he raised his night vision camera up on a tripod. “What are we up against tonight?”

“Miss Albreight said that it was throwing shit at her, so… I mean, I have to assume a poltergeist. Last time we worked with a poltergeist it attached itself to that selenite sphere we brought. Like, real easy. So I brought another one just in case they like round shit.”

Rico nodded his head towards Leo obediently, passing off said sphere and an EMF detector to Val.

“She said that the most activity happens upstairs in her study, so I say we start there. Work our way down,” he said, gathering his own supplies, waiting for Rico to turn the camera on before leaving it to capture footage on it's own. “It’s not saying much, though, considering she might have the worst poltergeist we’ve heard of. Pulling her bed out from under her, knocking her entire wardrobe down, throwing knives in the kitchen. She says every time she walks into the study, a book flies off the bookshelf. Without fail.”

Okay then. How difficult could it be to find this thing when it was as desperate for attention as a freshman cheerleader? The three squeezed themselves into the study, turning on their small handheld gadgets. They sat and waited for something to happen- but that was usually the case of hauntings. Sitting and waiting way too long for something to happen- right after being told it would happen immediately. Murphy’s law. People who live in the haunted house will always say things happen nonstop, and then the ghost hunters get none of the action.

Val was just turning to place the sphere down on the table next to him, when he was suddenly clobbered in the back of the head by a rogue textbook. He swore, along with Leo, at how fast it had happened. As well as to the immediate growing ache at the base of his skull. They hardly even blinked and it had happened. There had been no warning; no blips on their electronics, no cold spots, nothing.

They all looked at each other in confusion, before hearing a thud coming from the room across the hall. So they trekked all the way over there, waited for something to happen, and then heard a thud back in the study. And then back down the hall. And then back in the study. Leo groaned as they, once again, made their way back into the study.

“If this spirit can hear me,” he said with his jaw clenched, pointing at the sphere on the table next to Val, and attempting to speak in a way that wasn’t sarcastic. “You can go into that sphere. It’s nice and comfy and inviting, and you should definitely do it.”

“Yes. That’s a great way to convince it, Leo,” Val grunted, propping his hand on his hip as he checked the EMF detector in his hand. The dial was hovering over zero readings, but slowly it started to inch its way up. Just a bit, almost nothing even enough to suspect it was done by a ghost and not the static electricity that Val had stored in his body normally, but it climbed slowly along with the sound of creaking in the room.

“Go on… get in the ball…” Leo urged quietly. “It’s nice and roomy, the perfect size to inhabit. Better than some old lady’s dingy study, right?”

In a split second, the air around Val grew incredibly frigid, and the spike on the EMF detector sent the needle as far into the green reading as possible, causing the machine to beep wildly. He was about to open his mouth to let them know of the temperature change, but suddenly he felt something in his stomach. He hardly had a moment to worry that maybe he’d overdone it on the pizza, when suddenly he felt something… inside him. Stretching his stomach outwards. Like someone had trapped a wild cat inside of a latex bag.

The front of his stomach was pushed out, the shape of something in there was obvious, but he was too stunned to make anything out. Even past the sudden burning pain of the skin of his stomach being stretched far beyond what should be natural, he couldn’t muster a sound. It was like his throat had entirely closed up in panic. Like he was dreaming.

The impression of a physical shape inside of his stomach remained extended outwards, and Val grabbed at it with his free hand habitually, as though he’d split open down the middle if he didn’t. He could feel with the tips of his fingers that his belly button had been forced completely outwards, and while he didn’t look pregnant, despite the distension, watching the movement shift downwards in such a way looked like it was due to some kind of baby from hell. It made him nauseous.

“J-Jesus Christ, Val! Are you okay?!” Leo stammered, his eyes glued to the movement. “I swear to god, I just saw a face imprinted in your stomach.”

Rico continued to stand slack jawed as he watched, and as soon as the pushing in his stomach seemed to go away, Val left the study in a stupor to ready himself in the bathroom to see his pizza again. He was freezing, even after leaving the spot he’d been standing in, and he felt clammy and foggy brained. What the fuck just happened? What the fuck just happened?! Did he just get possessed or something? Nothing like that had ever happened before. Leo and Rico eventually hurried in after him, having broken from their own shocked states to actually help their friend.

“Are you okay, Val?” Rico asked gently, kneeling down and unwinding a couple squares of toilet paper to wipe the beads of frigid sweat off of Val’s forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Violated,” he said, his voice more haggard than he expected it to sound. “Stomach hurts. Feels like I ran a marathon and then got trapped in an industrial freezer right after.”

He sat back on his heels, pushing his jacket aside and lifting his shirt to look down at his stomach. It looked normal, more normal than it had before he had stuffed himself with food after class, but his belly button remained protruded. Which was not normal for him. He ran his hand over it, attempting to push it back into place, but it only popped back out. Absolutely ruined. He grimaced.

“Where’s the ghost, then? I wanna get out of here,” he muttered, pushing himself to his feet, following Rico and Leo back to the room, and leaning against the door jamb tiredly. Leo picked up the EMF detector that Val had dropped in his panic, holding it towards the selenite sphere on the table.

“No high readings. But it’s not at zero. It would have spiked if it went into the ball, so that’s a bust,” Leo mumbled, stepping around the room and waving the detector around in hopes of catching a spike. He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ll check the bedroom again.”

Leo started heading back towards the door leading into the hallway, but stopped before he reached Val, holding the EMF detector up high as it audibly clicked.

“Wait, no, I think it’s still in here,” he said, doing another lap around the room, but only getting a reading towards the door. Or… more so, towards Val. Leo looked towards him sheepishly, holding the EMF detector towards Val’s chest, and then downwards to his stomach, causing it to beep even louder.

“Uh. Uh, okay. So… I’m getting the highest possible reading towards you, Val,” he mumbled, waving his free hand around the surrounding air. “It’s cold here. You’re cold.”

As if to drive the metaphorical knife even deeper, Leo moved the device back and forth away from his stomach and up against it, wavering the alarm significantly. Val eventually smacked him away.

“I think I know where the ghost went… into the wrong ball,” Leo said awkwardly, looking at Val apologetically. “How do you feel? You know, mentally. Do you feel different? Possessed? More annoyed with me than usual?”

“No more than usual, Leo,” Val sighed, raising his eyebrow at his friend. “I just feel kind of sick now. And disturbed. But nothing else.”

“Well… that’s good I guess,” he said. “Let’s get you outside and me and Rico will do a last sweep of the place to make sure the polt’s out. Then we can get paid and figure this all out, uh… later.”

Val was too exhausted to argue his point, he just tiredly let the other two walk him downstairs until he could climb into the front passenger seat of Leo’s car to wait for them. He reclined the seat back slightly, sighing and folding his hands over his stomach. He felt… odd. Knowing that some poltergeist had possibly made itself comfortable in his guts on a whim. What would happen? Would it hurt him? Would it take over his body? Did it count as a possession? Or did it count as being pregnant?

His stomach felt a bit full again, and he wondered if that was the cursed answer to his questions. He was honestly a bit pissed that his delicious pizza dinner was replaced by a stupid ghost. But that specific detail was the least of his worries, probably.

By the time Leo and Rico had made it back out to the car, Val had just started to doze off. It wasn’t a comfortable doze, and he jerked himself out of it to attempt to move into the back seat of the car- only to be stopped by Rico crawling in from the driver’s side. He reached forward between the seats to pat his hand against Val’s shoulder and chest.

“Just rest, Valerie. We didn’t get any readings inside the house, not even a tiny one. So we definitely got our ghost out. We just have to figure out how to get it out of you without attaching it to something we don’t need it attaching itself to,” Rico explained, and Val sighed.

“That is totally calming me right now. We got the ghost out of the house, but now I need to visit some sort of gastro-exorcist to get this thing out of me. That’s relieving news.”

“Or, we can leave it inside you until it starts to give us problems. If it’s not causing any issues, what’s the rush?” Leo added in, and Val just barely mustered up enough energy to thump him against the bicep.

“You’re the one causing issues, so we might as well just toss you, huh?” Val mumbled, and Leo half gestured at the steering wheel as he held onto it.

“And lose your ride everywhere? You would never.”

Eh, touché. Val and Rico would give him that one. But he was hanging by a thread.

“But… Like… what do we do?” Leo asked after a moment of silence, his voice quiet and nervous. “Does it hurt at all, Val?”

“It did when it first happened, but it doesn’t hurt at the moment,” he said. Leo glanced down from the road briefly towards Val’s stomach, and Val followed, lifting the edge of his shirt again. It was just weird. It felt like it was something he had just imagined, but then his horribly damaged navel reminded him it wasn’t. Wait- now it wasn’t just his navel that reminded him. It was the small bump that surrounded it.

“That’s from the pizza right?” Leo asked, whipping his head back and forth between the windshield and Val.

“Uhh… could be. But I didn’t see that when I looked earlier.”

Rico leaned forward over the armrest, looking at the distension they were addressing. He was silent, and it was uncomfortable enough for Val to sit up straight and turn to look at him.

“What, Rico?”

“That’s concerning,” he said bluntly, closing his mouth until he realized Val was still staring at him narrow eyed. “If that swelling is from tonight, then it didn’t take long at all.”

“Oh. Fuck,” Val muttered, slouching back against the chair. That definitely was concerning. He just wanted to get home and go to sleep at that point, because maybe when he’d wake up, it would prove to have been some weird dream. Maybe he fell asleep in class and this was his karma for missing the lesson? Damn, damn.

Upon reaching their little shared penthouse, Val hurriedly helped bring in a few supplies, along with his own things, and rushed into the bathroom. He stripped his jacket off, bundling his shirt up into his arms to look at himself in the mirror. Not much different than earlier. But still different. He looked like he did after a filling meal, which wouldn’t be concerning if he hadn’t puked up an entire pizza after being stretched out like a Stretch Armstrong. He put his shirt down, flattening it with the palms of his hands, and headed straight to his bedroom to sleep.