Title: Shadow At Five
Author: yubberducky
Timeline: Curse of Darkness
Spoilers: None
Warnings: General insanity?
Genre: Crackfic, Humour
Disclaimer: I don't own Castlevania and all that jazz.
Contest Topic #: Challenge #28, Entry #1
Comments: Hector wakes up to discover that something is wrong with his face. Julia and Trevor try to help him with his problem. I swear I wasn't drunk or high when I wrote this. I was just trying to think outside the box. Honestly.
 

Hector screamed. He screamed and screamed as he had never screamed before - a high-pitched scream, a bloodcurdling scream, the kind of scream that one associates with banshees and men who have recently been deprived of their manly bits at the hands of an irate, knife-wielding spouse. He screamed until his bedroom door burst open and Julia and Trevor crowded into the room in their bedclothes, looking tired, but concerned and alarmed.

“Hector, what’s the matter?” Julia asked.

“GOOD GOD!” Trevor roared, pointing at Hector’s reflection in the mirror and looking severely traumatized. “WHAT IS THAT THING?!”

Hector clawed at his face, eyes rolling back in his head in misery. “I don’t know! I woke up and it was like this!”

Julia looked at him curiously. She then took hold of his face, turning it this way and that, observing it from every angle, until she said, “I’ve seen something like this before. The same thing happened to my father.”

“I thought you didn’t know your father,” Trevor said.

“I didn’t, really,” said Julia. She shrugged and released Hector’s face. “He left my mother when I was four. I suspect it was her drinking problem.”

“Ah, so that’s where you get it.”

“Excuse me,” Hector interjected, “but can we get back to the issue at hand? My... my face! My beautiful face!” He resumed his clawing.

“Mine’s far more beautiful,” said Trevor smugly, smoothing his hands over his cheeks.

“Look, everyone just calm down. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this,” said Julia.

“I don’t want a reasonable explanation,” said Hector. “I want it off! Now!”

“When all else fails, turn to fire,” said Trevor.

Hector recoiled. Julia waved the statement aside impatiently. “Don’t be silly.”

“Shall we saw it off, then?” asked Trevor.

“No, you dullard!” Hector cried in horror.

“Is an exorcism in order?”

“An exorcism?” questioned Julia.

“Yes!” Trevor nodded enthusiastically. “I saw one performed in a village once. A priest flung some water about in a dramatic fashion and screamed ‘THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!’ I’ve always wanted to scream that, you know. It sounds so heroic.” He glanced at Hector, and a sudden unpleasant thought seemed to come over him. “But the demon jumped from the girl into the priest. I’m not sure I want to risk that... thing leaping from your face to mine.”

“Thank you, Trevor,” said Julia in sour tones. “But I believe I already know how to fix Hector’s problem.”

“And how is that?”

She exited the room and returned a moment later holding a very old-fashioned razor. Hector and Trevor stared at it in trepidation.

“My father used this on his face,” she explained. “To remove his beard.”

“Beard?” Hector repeated, letting out a cry of everlasting woe. “That’s only supposed to happen when I’m old! Too old to be pretty anymore!”

“There’s no need to throw a fit,” she said in annoyance. “You don’t even really have a beard yet. You only have stubble. It can easily be fixed.”

“Stubble is almost as bad as a full beard,” said Hector stubbornly. “How am I supposed to sell games when my face isn’t as smooth as a baby’s bottom?”

“That’s one simile I could’ve gone without hearing,” muttered Trevor.

“Look,” said Julia. She took hold of Hector’s face and dragged him over to the water basin. She dipped the blades in the water and went about fixing his problem, holding him steady despite his regular flinching. “It takes five minutes to remove. Why do men insist upon behaving like infants over the most inconsequential of things?”

“This is hardly inconsequential,” he sulked.

“There. Done,” she said. “Go have a look.”

He slunk back over to the mirror and looked into it. He ran his hand over his now-smooth face, but the look of displeasure did not leave his face. Julia crossed her arms. “Well?” she asked.

“It’s itchy,” he whined.

Julia could only sigh.


FIN