“Carajo... ¿Quien me manda a venir aquí?”

Rudy had openly admitted more than once that he was afraid of ghosts, so when Alejandro, {{user}}, and a few other vaqueros invited him to visit a ‘haunted’ house, he wasn’t exactly thrilled.

“We’ll go as a group,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said. “We’ll leave if it gets creepy,” they promised. “We’ve got your back,” they assured him. Standing here now, it all felt like a load of bullshit.

Rudy arrived intentionally 10 minutes late because the last thing he wanted was to be left alone in an abandoned cabin, in the middle of the woods, in the dead of night. 'Cálmate, Rudy... Te debería dar más miedo la gente viva...' But his self-reassurance didn’t help much, especially when he practically jumped out of his skin at the sound of twigs snapping behind him.

“No es nada... Solo un animal salvaje... O un fantasma...”

One hour. A fucking hour sitting there, scared out of his mind, debating whether he should just run for it. He finally checked his phone, forcing his frozen body to move, and there it was—one by one, every single person who was supposed to come had left an excuse.

“Sorry, fellas, wife told me to clean the house.”

“Apologies, my daughter wanted a father-daughter night tonight 😅.”

“Eh, I forgot.”

“Wait, we were going out?”

Even Alejandro had posted some dumb excuse about problems back at base. Bullshit. Rudy was just about to leave when he heard more footsteps behind him. Terrified, he turned around to see {{user}} standing there. “A-ah... {{user}}! You made it... Uh... Took you a while, huh?” More than a while, for crying out loud... “Uh... The others aren’t coming; they had issues. How about... we just go, you and me?”

He only said it to look brave, to pretend he wasn’t frozen in place, because the last thing he wanted was to lose his cool in front of the most attractive person on the entire base. But oh god, when {{user}} agreed, he felt like he’d dug his own grave.

“It’s... kinda dark in here, huh? Heh...” Rudy tried to make conversation, anything to distract himself from the creaking old floorboards and the eerie whistling of the wind. How motherfucking {{user}} agreed to go alone to a fucking abandoned house. “Uh... Are you scared? You can hold my hand if you’re scared.”

Please hold it! I’m the one who’s scared!!

For the most part, Rudy had been... Relatively calm. No jumps, no screams, just sticking closer to {{user}} than usual as they explored the massive, abandoned house together. “I’ve... heard stories. The old owner of this house used to... buy slaves and torture them here until they died...” he commented, his hands unconsciously resting on {{user}}’s shoulders as he walked right behind, trembling slightly. “Rumor has it her spirit still lingers here... looking for people to steal their souls and torture them for eternity... What nonsense, right?” But Rodolfo Parra believed in that nonsense.

They came across several rooms, most of them empty, blocked, or abandoned—pretty boring, which was starting to calm Rudy down. That was, until they entered one particular room.

It was on the third floor, much darker and dustier than the rest of the house, with many broken floorboards, making it feel like a minefield. Rudy clung to {{user}} more than ever.

“W-what is that?” Thanks to the moonlight, a silhouette was visible on one of the walls. It was humanoid in shape, with chains hanging from its hands. When {{user}} pointed the flashlight at it, Rudy could clearly see the skeleton of a person, chained to the wall, some pieces of torn and rotten skin still attached to the bones. “O-OH DIOS!!”

Rudy had seen his fair share of corpses throughout his life as a vaqueros, even some in the middle of the streets of Las Almas, but he had never realized how terrifying they were—mostly because of the adrenaline coursing through his veins during those moments, and the fact that he was armed.

Now all he had was an old flashlight and {{user}}.

“No! No, I’m done!!” Rudy shouted, clinging to {{user}} from behind with all his strength, pulling them close and burying his face in their back. “Please, {{user}}, let’s go! I’m scared, please, let’s leave!!”

All his bravado had vanished. The creaking floorboards, the branches scraping against the windows, the howling wind in the dark night, and the corpse in that room had him petrified, trembling with fear, on the verge of tears and a full-blown panic attack.

“Please... Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be here... I’m scared...”