Hello.
Yeah, it's me — Sexy Bouldur. Or Muscle Man.
Honestly, I'm still not sure which one I'm supposed to go by these days. The marketing department keeps arguing over it like it's a prophecy: one sounds heroic, the other sells better on coffee mugs. Raven says it depends on which cursed mug she's drinking from that morning. Either way, it stuck — and I've been living with it ever since.
The nickname started after a hunt a few years back. I was tracking this slasher who crushed people under, you guessed it, boulders. Media got hold of the story, saw the muscles, saw the blood, saw me holding what was left of the perp — and boom. Instant headline: "Mortal Man Stops Boulder Butcher." They trimmed it down to Bouldur, threw a "Sexy" in front, and suddenly I was brand material. I had a rockin' time for about a week before realizing fame just means more paperwork.
Still, I'll take the laughs where I can get them. Raven's got all the brains — necromantic strategist, death-law scholar, and eyeliner sharper than most blades.
Nicky's the wild card, pure chaos wrapped in glam and glitter.
Vicky's like everyone's dad — calm voice, crisis clipboard, moral compass with an attitude.
And me? I'm the only mortal in the squad. The big, dumb puppy with a pulse. Sometimes they treat me like a little brother; other times, like the team's emotional-support human.
Some mortals — and a few immortals — get jealous that I get to work with them. They see the fan vids, the magazine spreads, the bounty-app highlights and think I just lucked into it. Truth is, I bled for this job. I clawed my way up through the Painline Division, back when mortals were just bait with name tags. Every mission I survive adds another scar to my résumé. I might not glow, float, or summon hellfire, but I've got grit — and that still counts for something in the Network.
And yeah, I'm star-struck half the time. You would be too.
Standing next to the top-rated immortals on the board, all ranked, tagged, and trending — it's like touring with legends while knowing you're the roadie who keeps dying in every song. But hey, someone's gotta keep them humble.
Man, you should've seen Raven when they came back from their last job. They looked proud, like they'd just hit number one on a necromantic chart and exorcised their way through a live stage. We even got to eat real food—not ghost-scream-seasoned leftovers. It was a whole vibe. Peaceful, even. The kind of peaceful that makes you side-eye the forks in case they're cursed.
Honestly, I was kinda shocked we weren't getting murdered.
But then again, slashers love the theater of it—the quiet before the guts and glitter. They love playing their little roles.
Still, I'll admit it—I don't like working resort cases.
Used to love them when I started out. I'm island-born, somewhere close to the Network's version of Hawaii, so palm trees and ocean breeze used to mean home. But after enough Hasher assignments in "luxury retreats," the appeal fades. Every infinity pool feels like a trap door, every towel folded too neat means something's been watching. After a while, you start missing the normal kind of quiet—the kind that doesn't hum with blood wards under the floorboards.
Raven didn't want to skip this one, though. Said they needed a low-stress job—and they sure as hell weren't about to deal with Nicky and Vicky's late-night moans and marital arguments echoing through the wall by themself. Their words, not mine. I didn't ask which kind of moans they meant; didn't need the mental imagery.
That's the thing about the Hasher Network—dating on the job isn't just tolerated, it's practically policy. The Orders figured out a long time ago that love makes us fight harder. You've got someone you actually care about waiting on the other side of the bloodshed? You push through the pain faster. You think sharper. You crawl back from things that should've killed you.
Sure, it's risky. Slashers love couples—the emotional symmetry, the screaming duet, the heartbreak close-up. We all know it. But even the so-called lone-wolves end up biting the bullet eventually. If you die on mission, the slasher moves on and kills again. If your partner dies, though? You get one hell of a revenge arc. It's brutal, cinematic—straight out of Friday the 13th meets Cabin in the Woods—but it works. HR even has a line in the handbook that basically says, "If love boosts your kill count, we're not judging the PDA."
Hasher never works alone. Even when you swear you're solo, the job finds you a partner—or makes you remember one. It's dangerous, messy, and half the reason our death stats look like romantic comedies written by demons. But hey, it's the risk we all take. Because at the end of the day, love's just another kind of weapon.
So yeah, peaceful dinners at the resort still freak me out.But I guess if Raven gets to keep their sweet boyfriend nearby and I get hazard pay for emotional damage, I can survive another round of fake paradise.
So hey, if you're just tuning in — or if you're one of those weirdos who reads horror forums for bedtime stories — I'm the mortal in this whole mess. The dude with a heartbeat and, apparently, the youngest on the roster.
Which is wild, 'cause I'm pushing thirty. Maybe past it. I can rent a car and everything. But compared to a necromancer K-pop legend, a dryad elf of science, and some mythos-born wildcard? I'm basically the puppy in the pack.
When I first joined up, I figured Raven only noticed me because they needed someone to haul the heavy gear. Then they surprised me — asked me out. A real date, not a fake "team debrief disguised as dinner." I thought it was weird at first. Necromancers don't usually flirt; they summon. But the more they kept at it, the harder it got to pretend I wasn't into it.
They'd toss out these small comments mid-mission, stuff like, "You know, you've got good bone structure for someone who spends this much time getting punched in the face." Or they'd walk by, brush my arm, and say, "Mortals aren't supposed to have that kind of jawline." It wasn't subtle, but it worked. Somewhere between the teasing and the near-death calls, I stopped wondering if it was a joke.
Our first night together wasn't candlelight and roses — it was a busted campsite, two mugs of reheated potion-coffee, and a storm that kept trying to eat the tent. Still, they looked at me across the fire and said, "You're kind of cute when you don't know what to do with your hands." And just like that, I was done for.
They surprised me again a few weeks later by insisting on a proper date. Paid for everything, too. I remember saying, "You know I'm older than you, right?" They just laughed — that kind of laugh that makes you feel like they've seen whole centuries and you're just catching up — and said, "You're kind of younger than me, actually. I only date guys in their thirties."
So yeah. That's me: the mortal who somehow ended up dating the necromancer everyone else calls untouchable. Half the Network still bets on how long we'll last, and honestly, I don't blame them.
And before the lore nerds start writing in — yeah, I'm also the uncle of Hex-One and Hex-Two. My brother married a goblin from the Chaos Realms, so now I've got two hyper-cursed gremlins calling me Uncle B. Don't ask me how goblin marriage contracts work. I'm not asking either. And yes, they can bench-press me with one hand — and have definitely done it live on stream.
That's life, folks. Mortal in a crew of immortals, boyfriend to the necromancer everyone secretly fears, and uncle to two walking glitches. Some days I wonder how I'm still breathing. Other days I remember I've got a team worth dying for — and a reason to keep living, even when the blood starts singing.
As for how I got into this gig?
No epic backstory. No tragic curse. Just plain old 90s indecision.
It was either follow the family into the military like everyone else, or pick something equally classic: construction, security, mall-cop duty, mechanic school, or maybe try my luck as a stuntman — which sounded way cooler in theory. There was also that tiny voice saying, "Hey, computers are the future." Should've listened, maybe. But instead, I went for blood and chaos and signed with the Hasher Network.
Didn't think I'd last a week. Mortals usually don't. But I stuck around — and honestly, I'm glad I did. Hunting a local slasher back then wasn't half as streamlined as it is now. No drones, no cursed-data trackers, no AI ward mapping. Just you, your boots, and a screaming walkie-talkie that always shorted out around blood magic.
Back in the day, it was called The Painline Division.
Yeah, the name sounds dramatic, but that was the 90s for you — everything had spikes, fake blood logos, and trench coats two sizes too big. Recruitment posters looked like heavy-metal album covers; the training VHS tapes had more static than safety instructions. The company gym was a literal dungeon with rune-etched dumbbells, motivational quotes carved into the walls, and the world's worst playlist — half grunge, half ritual chanting.
For us mortals, though, training hit different. People always assumed we were just bait — and, yeah, they weren't wrong. But because of that, the program had to enhance us somehow. Just in case someone like Nicky or Vicky couldn't swoop in to save the day. So we got the full makeover: specialized workouts, ritual injections, resistance drills that made boot camp look like a spa retreat. Painline instructors called it "conditioning through contradiction" — if you could lift, run, or scream through an enchantment circle without puking, you passed.
They didn't make us invincible, but they made us durable — fast enough to dodge claws, strong enough to stay standing when the magic backlash hit. The upgrades weren't glamorous, but they worked. One instructor told me I had the kind of build that could "survive being thrown through a prophecy." Still not sure if that was a compliment or a threat.
And, look — don't tell Nicky or Vicky this, but I've still got one of those old Painline promo calendars tucked away in my locker. Back when the Network tried to market itself like a supernatural sports league, they released a Hasher pin-up edition. Each month featured a field operative in half-armor, half-sin, signed in glitter ink potent enough to charm a ghost.
Nicky's spread was infamous. Her Play-Spirit era — skin dusted in moon ash, hair glowing like neon sin, a ribbon of ghost honey sliding down her throat just to torment the cameras. She winked right into the rune-lens, and half the production crew needed purification after. I was just a mortal kid standing in line at a fan booth pretending it was "for research." She signed my page with one claw, dragged it through the ink slow, and told me, "Stay alive long enough to earn the next one."
I did.
Sometimes I think that's the real reason I joined.
If younger me could see older me now — working beside his spirit-playboy crush, watching her argue with Vicky over kill-angles while I try not to stare — he'd absolutely lose his mind.
Hell, I still do.
Anyway, I'm walking around the halls on the second day, trying to activate Rule Two somehow. Unlike the rest of them, I don't need tattoos or cursed gear to draw a slasher in. I'm mortal. That's enough.
Slashers always go for people like me — it's the food chain of horror. They can sense it, the pulse, the breath, the soft little tell that says, this one still dies the human way.
If you gave a slasher the choice between hunting someone who can summon a black hole and a nice little family watching reruns on the couch, they're going for the family every time. Easier kill. Cleaner pattern. Familiar screams.
It's a trope for a reason. Every horror flick starts the same way — somebody human, someone "normal," gets caught up in the chaos while the audience yells at the screen. They wander off, say they'll be right back, or try to fix a fuse box in the dark. That's me, minus the bad decisions and plus the combat pay.
And that's what makes Rule Two so damn dangerous. Slashers thrive on routine, on cinematic setups that loop until someone breaks the pattern.
I look like I don't belong here — like I'm the extra who dies first. But that's the trick. I do belong here. I just play the part long enough to make them believe they've picked the perfect victim.
Though… I started to feel it.
That prickling sensation, crawling between my shoulder blades like a thought I couldn't finish. Something was following me. Not loud. Not clumsy. Just there—clinging to the air like a shadow that hadn't figured out how to cast itself.
I spun fast and slammed my back against the wall, hoping whatever it was might lose its grip if I moved quick enough. But nothing dropped. Nothing breathed. The hallway just stretched out ahead of me—silent, pale, and stinking of mildew and floral soap, that cheap motel perfume that always means something bad happened here once.
And that's when it hit me.
Rule Two was working.
Rule Two is simple on paper: "Invite the scene."
If a slasher's born from the rhythm of a story, then you have to give it a story to step into. Rule One gets their attention—blood, noise, bait. Rule Two keeps them there by building the set. The music, the lighting, the pacing of fear. It's the reenactment stage where the killer feels at home enough to reveal itself.
You don't chase a slasher. You let them think they're chasing you.
I could almost hear Nicky's voice in my head from training: "You're not the final girl, babe. You're the fake-out that turns around with a shotgun."
I almost reached for my music device. Maybe it'd help trigger the scene, make the vibe feel alive enough to pull whatever this was closer. But we already played that card in Rule One. Would they really fall for it again? Or would it just make me easier to follow—like turning on a spotlight and dancing straight into my own death cue?
So I started thinking.
What horror trope would Rule Two cling to in this setting? You know the types — the slumber-party bloodbath, the poolside massacre, the rave gone wrong, the birthday bash with a cursed clown invite. Rule Two slashers thrive on that kind of setup. Social energy. Noise. Celebration. Something pure and human that they can twist until it screams.
And then it hit me. We're in a resort.
You want to trigger that energy? You throw a party.
Honestly, I kinda hoped this slasher would turn out to be a mermaid or some kind of succubus. I've got a growing collection, and I'm just one wing short… or a fish tail, if the gods are listening. I know, priorities.
So I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through the hotel's map. That's when I saw it — an arcade room and an event listed as "Party of Games."
Now, I know what you're thinking: why make it so easy? Why not hide?
Well, that's the thing about slashers — they don't always make sense.
You'd think because Rule Two says the setting has to fit the story, the killer would match the theme. Resort job? You expect a drowned bride, a pool ghoul, something elegant and wet. But half the time, what we get is something completely off-script. A scarecrow in a spa. A butcher in scuba gear. A mime haunting the sauna. Slashers are like riddles written by drunk ghosts — they follow rules, just not the ones you think they do.
Some of them crave contradiction. They love the aesthetic mismatch, the chaos of showing up where they don't belong. You give them paradise, they bring the bloodbath. You give them romance, they show you ruin. It's a creative compulsion — violent improv.
That's what makes them so damn unpredictable.
You can study all the rules, memorize the tropes, follow every ritual in the book… and still die because you didn't realize the monster likes breaking its own script.
So yeah — Party of Games.
I figured, if Rule Two was hungry for a setup, this was it.
So I headed toward the arcade room, walking down the hallway expecting a cheap jumpscare or some spooky whispering in the background. Instead? Mascots. Puppets. Just… standing there. I flinched, not gonna lie. At that point, a proper jumpscare might've been polite.
It brought back memories — back when I did gigs for arcades like Ruck Tesses and other spots. One of the Hasher duties back then? Making sure there weren't any child-murdering psychos lurking around the ball pits. You'd be surprised — that late-'90s to early-2000s spike in kid injuries wasn't just from jungle gyms. Slashers knew how to sneak in.
Hashers had to do PSAs. We were those people going, "Hey, where are your kids? No, seriously, where?"
As for the folks who tried to harm kids? We didn't forget. We put them on an island — yeah, a real one — where the same kids they once hurt, all grown up and trained by us, could hunt them down. It takes real strength, you know. When those kids choose to let their abusers live, that's something. But when they don't — well, us seniors step in and finish the job.
Some of those sickos only ever targeted children. The worst kind, I mean. The ones who did it for reasons that make your skin crawl. Seeing Little Timmy finally take out Jimmy the Butcher? That's the kind of beautiful no therapy can give. That program helped reduce the number of kids who grew up mimicking the monsters who hurt them. Turns out justice with a machete — and a little guidance — does wonders for the psyche.
Child slashers, though… those are a different breed. I've had to put down a few in my time. It's not easy. But if some little bastard knows better and still murders the girl who turned him down — or the boy who liked someone else — then yeah, Samantha, it's your time to go.
I'm bringing this up because slashers who use arcades usually fall into one of those two categories: predators who target kids, or kids who turned into predators. That's what I'm walking into. And I've got my eye out.
When an adult Hasher handles a kid slasher — not one of the junior ranks — that's serious. We don't dump everything on the kids. We step up. Nicky always says she keeps things 18+ with her crew to keep the heavy stuff off younger shoulders. We've got all ages in the fight, sure — even schools with some of the best security around. College? Expensive as hell. Unless you're like Hex-One and Hex-Two — then it's combat training and a diploma, no bill. I am still wondering why they went the field route and not sit in the office like everyone else from those colleges.
So yeah, I'm glad this is a catch-them-all order and not a kill-on-sight. Kill orders suck, man. If I had to go that route… well, I would. For the greater good. But I won't pretend it doesn't sting. Still, here's the kicker — they pay five times as much when you're taking down kid slashers. I know, it's messed up. But that's how the Orders justify it. Kid slashers are rare, dangerous, and leave scars that don't heal easy. The payout is dirty, but it spends. And honestly? Most of us just cash it quietly and try not to puke while looking at the receipt.
Anyway, I finally got to the arcade, and there it was — someone absolutely demolishing the whack-a-mole machine like it owed them child support. From behind, they looked like a little girl in clown makeup — small, twitchy, with big pigtails bouncing as they swung the mallet. My stomach sank faster than a rigged claw game.
Then they turned around.
I almost cheered. It was some weird little old dude in a frilly clown dress, with blush caked on like expired frosting. The fake high-pitched kid voice was disturbingly good — Saturday morning cartoon meets horror-core. But I've seen better makeup at half-priced cosplay cons. Still, I'd take a wrinkly goblin in ruffles over a demonic Girl Scout any day.
"Dude, I am so happy it's you," I said, throwing my hands up like we were old high school buddies.
The slasher blinked, genuinely confused. "You're happy to see me? That's a first."
I facepalmed, relieved not to be staring down some cursed adult slasher in a child's body. This guy? He actually looked like an old man — makeup, wrinkles, the whole deal. Thank the peach realms for that.
You know that horror trope, right? The one where something looks like a kid but isn't? Japan loves that stuff. Creepy children, haunted dolls, cursed third-graders with thousand-yard stares. My niece and nephew are way into anime and manga, and as their uncle, I made the mistake of reading a few of their recommendations. I still have regrets.
It's not even all bad, but it's a real pattern. The Japan branch of the Hashers stays booked. Every time some middle school ghost turns out to be a 300-year-old vengeance spirit who thinks Pokémon battles should end in blood, guess who gets the call?
"Sorry," I told him with a casual shrug, "I was just really hoping it wasn't a kid slasher. But hey — what's your gimmick? Classic arcade death match? Haunted joystick possession? Maybe a casual round of 'Guess Which Game Is Cursed' before you try to flambé me?"
He let out a long sigh. "I told the others we should've done a more thorough magical background check on your team. But nooo, 'let's have some fun,' they said."
Probably why they haven't been caught yet either. When you're just out here playing slasher games instead of filing magical paperwork, you tend to slip through the cracks. Which means, yeah, the Sonsters are probably going to have to start doing missing person reports again. They're the ones who track all the souls — and if you start losing track of soul signatures? That's when protocol turns into a damn audit.
That's when I noticed a flicker behind me — just a shimmer at first, like heat rippling off pavement. My instincts didn't just kick in — they exploded. I spun fast, yanking a joystick clean out of a busted cabinet with a crack so loud it echoed like a thunderclap in a tin can alley.
Then came the flame. A jet of fire blasted from the shadows, hissing past my shoulder like a personal hate note from Satan himself. I dropped to the floor, rolled sideways, and came up crouched behind a skee-ball ramp, joystick at the ready. The heat had barely missed me — close enough to make the back of my jacket bubble. The air was thick with the smell of burning plastic, scorched ozone, and something suspiciously like flaming bubblegum.
I wasn't just dodging fire — I was dodging humiliation. Getting toasted in a retro arcade by a clown grandpa? Nah. Not on my watch.
I flipped the joystick in my hand like a dagger, testing the weight, heart racing.
Then something flickered in the corner of my vision. A CRT monitor flicked on — one I swear was unplugged — and the slasher's face warped onto the old Atra game screen.
"You can't catch me," his grainy voice crackled, eyes glitching like corrupted pixels. "Take out that Atra, and you might never catch me. This model doesn't even need cords. And you need damage to bind me. If you'd played with the right people, you'd know that. I've got your trap where I want it."
He started laughing, and the laughter echoed around the room — every screen flickering to life like possessed arcade mirrors.
I stood still for a second, scanning the room. My eyes landed on the old shelves in the corner — old cartridges, Atra game boxes, copies of ancient titles stacked like dusty relics from a cursed Blockbuster.
The slasher kept up his circus act, making dumb little faces like he was auditioning for a haunted puppet reboot of Looney Tunes. I had to hand it to him — he was committed. But he made one big mistake: he went full retro. And I've been learning from the necromancer nobility themself.
See, Raven showed me a trick. Something about how certain spells — especially binding or locking magic — work better when paired with surprise variables: colors, textures, emotional intent. I wasn't just grabbing anything. I reached into my bag and pulled out a neon pink marker.
Yeah, pink. Go ahead and laugh, but pink's magic kryptonite. Raven explained it like this: black's been used so often for protection or curses that even weaker spirits know how to slip past it. Same with red — aggression, fire, pain. But pink? It's like telling a ghost to run from bubblegum. The magic short-circuits. It doesn't know what to do with that kind of energy.
So there I was, channeling my inner Uncle B energy — like I was about to bust out a classroom pointer and give this little gremlin a full-on lesson. I started drawing all over his junk with a neon pink marker, chanting one of those new rhythm-based spells. You know the kind — crafted it myself after paying a local magical poet twenty-three bucks. Raven tested it, too. Said it slapped. Perks of that sweet Hasher discount.
He paused, twitching like a glitching sprite, his voice rasping through the speakers with mounting horror. "What in the burnt byte code are you doing to my collection?!"
The way he said it — panicked, desperate — reminded me of a toddler watching someone cut the head off their favorite plush toy. All squeaky outrage, like he couldn't believe someone would defile his little shrine of evil nostalgia.
"Me? Just doing a little spring cleaning."
I started to mess with a couple of the creepier ones right in front of his digitized face on the monitor. Flicked on a lighter for some of the more common models — watched the reflection of flickering orange panic in his glassy, fake doll eyes.
"This one's gonna melt real nice," I muttered, letting the flame kiss a glossy boot.
And of course, I kept a few for myself. My nieces and nephews are going to love these new action dolls. Weird collectible karma with a side of cursed plastic? Yeah, they'll eat that up.
Then I looked at his posters, then back at those games he had stacked like little altars. He was begging me not to do it. Said I was ruining his livelihood. I might've felt sorry — if the guy hadn't just tried to roast me alive.
I stalked from game to game, yanking cords, cracking cases, pulling boards. The plastic snapped under my boots as I stomped them into oblivion. I deleted all his save files first, watching him writhe behind the screen like I'd deleted his soul. Then I started mangling the cartridges and discs.
"Oops," I said, holding one up. "Is it Zelda or Zoodle? I can never pronounce it right."
He let out a scream like I'd unplugged his last shred of dignity. "Nooo! Not that one! That was original print!"
"Yeah, not anymore it isn't," I said, cracking the shell clean in half.
He screamed, trapped in every screen now — too late to escape.
"Not Mario! That was a collector's edition!"
"Should've thought about that before you tried to roast me."
I smashed the last copy with a clean stomp. The lights went out. The screens died.
I pulled out my phone and called Nicky.
"Pick-up. We're done here."
She answered while sipping a milkshake. Figures.
"Game over," I said, tossing the remains of the joystick into the nearest trash bin.