Curate, connect, and discover
It’s a nice day. That’s what Alex focuses on, and it’s something to hold onto.
It’s a nice day. Blue skies, no clouds, the sun high in the sky—but with a bit of a breeze, so that it’s not too hot.
It’s a nice day. Which is why it really is a shame that his day is ruined already. It’s 11AM—hasn’t even reached noon—and this is turning out to be a shitshow.
“Fire now! It will not be able to reform as quickly as the other!” Someone shouts in his comm. Agent W, probably. She was always one to see the little inconsistencies. To see how quickly one could heal in comparison to another.
He shoots. He does not miss. It falls from the sky, with its clear sky and cloudless expanse, and lays crumpled on the ground.
He does not approach. That will be someone else’s job; his is to aim, to shoot, and to not miss.
He never does.
A marksman is what he is, no dressing it up. He might wear the white clothes, have the same honorific, but at the end of the day, he is paid to shoot.
He looks at it with curiosity. Even from this far away, he can see the little twitches it makes, as though it’s being electrocuted in small, sharp increments. Death twitches, he’s heard them call.
He smirks to himself at the name; what an ironic phrase, to be a dead thing and to relive your final moments.
He cannot deny that he is curious about it; but really who wouldn’t be?
What a curious thing in that it was a monster masquerading as human. Acting like a human, moving as a human.
He turns away as someone starts to inch closer to it. There’s no need to listen to the pleading, not when it’s mimicry meant to lure.
It’s a nice day. A beautiful day, even. He should take Julia to the park—she’d be turning 8 soon, and he didn’t know when he might have to leave for a mission.
He turns away from the pleading-turned-screaming, and hums under his breath as he checks his rifle.
What a beautiful day.
Gods, it’d be impossible to properly pull off like how I’m picturing, but imagine a story entirely from the perspective of a GIW agent.
Like, put aside all your existing knowledge of what ghosts are really like and imagine entering the story with only their knowledge. As far as you are aware, the main character is correct about their beliefs. You have no reason to doubt them (yet).
You are part of a government branch tasked with fighting monsters. Every single one of them is immune to conventional weaponry and can have a wide array of superpowers.
And they’re intelligent, too. Not like how a person is intelligent though; they’re not sentient. Sure, they can mimic it, but it’s all an illusion. Under the surface, they’re still just mindless monsters. You can’t reason with them.
Oh and also, they could be anywhere. They can theoretically spring up from any time anyone dies, or can emerge from entirely unpredictable natural portals.
And regardless of if any actual ghosts are present, the very material that makes them up can contaminate humans too. Not just making them sick, that’d be one thing, but making them monstrous in similar ways. Even if you’ve gotten rid of the ghosts, the entire town might be too far gone already.
And then, of course, the actual plot progresses. The character actually interacts with the world, and all the little inconsistencies start to add up. Maybe the character eventually notices, or maybe it’s left as fridge horror as only the reader can realize the truth of the protagonist’s ongoing evil actions.
Though of course that concept does rely on the idea that the reader doesn’t know the truth going in, which is impossible for a fanfic since readers would already be familiar with canon. So in reality, it’d have to be dramatic irony instead of a creeping realization (which could still work but feels a bit less evocative IMO). Or maybe calling it an AU would work to distract people enough, but idk.