AN. Sorry about the last one being short.

Richard Simons, the eighth member of the gang, always liked making a grand entrance. There was a certain thrill to it, when every head swiveled to look at him.

So he decided being fashionably late to a spooky anonymous letter was plenty grand.

When he arrived, seven familiar faces—including his cousin's—were already waiting for him at the gates.

"A welcoming party just for me?" he called out. "Aw, you shouldn't have."

"Shut up, you idiot," snapped an irritable blond, shoving an envelope in his face. "You got one of these stupid letters too, didn't you?"

Richard stared cross-eyed. "Yeah, Jules, I did. Wasn't at the prom, though. It got delivered in the mailbox. Any idea what they're about, by the way?"

"It could be a prank," Terrence called. "One of the seniors?"

"It could be, or it could be…something else." Karen countered softly.

There was a deafening silence. The other seven glared at her furiously, enraged that she would even mention 'the Incident'.

"It isn't," Drake insisted, breaking the tense atmosphere. "It's just some messed up prank, is all. Whoever this R.A. is, he's just a sick puppy playing a sick prank."

"So," Richard said with false cheer. "Shall we go in?"

Being curious little pricks, the first thing they did when they went in was to scour the building for valuables. Not to be a mood killer, but that was what they did until dinner time, being rather unimportant, that part of the day will not be mentioned with the exception of this paragraph.

Now dinner, that was interesting.

Dinner is not the most important meal of the day. It fattens you up because you sleep right after that and people are often too tired to prepare a decent one at a late hour. But notice that you rarely get invited to breakfast? It's always lunch or dinner, the latter more often than the first.

R.A. invited them to dinner.

"Do you think it's safe?" Karen stared at the feast.

"'Course it is." Terrence said through a mouthful of food. "I ain't dead yet, am I? Dig in, Peterson."

"Ugh," Harrison wrinkled her nose. "That is disgusting. Close your mouth, pig."

He stuck out his tongue.

Harrison rolled her eyes, getting up from the chair. "Forget it. I'm going to find a bathroom."

Karen warily took a bite out of her puff pastry. It was good; she admitted, but not good enough to die for.

"So who do you think this R.A. fellow is?" Julie flipped her long hair over her shoulder, evidently bored.

"Who cares?" Drake snorted.

"I care," Julie snapped. She took a deep breath. "What if it's about…you know, about the Incident?"

There was a tense silence.

"It isn't," Richard said firmly. "Creep's name was Jake, Jake Adams. That's J.A., not R.A. and he's dead. Dead people can't reach the living. We're not dead."

Then he took a determined bite out of his own food and keeled over, frothing at the mouth and very much dead.

AN. My attempt at crack.

Cliffie!

R&R

JCE