MIKEL "CAIN" RAMOS

Essentially, Cain is a sarcastic, standoffish dude, who manages to both lack self-awareness and to be painfully self-conscious.He’s incredibly judgmental, either to compare himself to others, or to find an excuse not to like you. Unfortunately, his elitism doesn’t stop at judging strangers—he can’t help but compete with the people he’s grown to like, too. This is especially true if they share his interests: true crime, horror flicks, and alternative music.To the surprise of no one, Cain’s stuck-up attitude helps him compensate for a plethora of paranoid thoughts. People like him had to embrace being the outcast, but he made it his entire world. He needs to be the most bohemian one in the group, lest his inferiority complex kick in. Add some deep-seated feelings of emasculation, some intense abandonment issues, and you got a formula for the most insecure man you’ll ever meet.Cain manages to get attached to people despite his misanthropic tendencies. And he can be a good friend, too: he likes to run errands, act all protective, and take care of others in the name of friendship. Long lasting relationships would be possible if he didn’t self-isolate so much, not to mention the effect his previously stated passive-aggression has on his social life.He’s had his moments of compassion, but Cain is motivated solely by being respected. He uses his creativity to be persuasive, he takes opportunities for a higher social status, and he humble brags in detail and often. His moral compass is somewhat normal, but lord knows he’s broken it before. Being nosy, dicking people over, and fuzzing the truth are all on the table if it means he’ll get what he believes hasn’t been given to him his entire life.

CW: RELIGION / BULLYING / HOMICIDE / BLOOD

Mikel grew up a timid child, raised in an apartment complex in Hackensack, New Jersey. His parents were introverted and moralistic Catholics who wanted the best life for their boys. They were a paranoid bunch, for sure. As horror movies and rock became increasingly popular, they grew fearful of satanic immorality. Unfortunately for them, that was where Mikel's interests lay. He was never a particularly rebellious child, but he'd be damned if he didn't sneak into the movie theater to see Friday The 13th.And so, horror VHS tapes and Black Sabbath were banned from the home, the couple appalled by what their son found interesting. His older brothers were less frightened yet still found it...well, weird. Yeah, slasher movies were cool; but to the extent Mikey liked them? Even if it was just a creative outlet for him, they still found their baby brother strange and consistently teased him about it. Mikel started to sneak his music and dark clothing into school, but that didn't help. Not at all. Of course, it didn't please his parents to know their son was being bullied, but it also didn't please them to know he had eyeliner in his backpack.Mikel never told his parents how he was doing at school again. But if there was one thing that saved him from a complete teenage nightmare, it was the tabletop club, which showed up during his sophomore year of high school. Whenever possible, he'd escape to the meeting room, where he met many other colorful boys. And to his shock, Mikel's enjoyment of horror wasn't a weird thing to them. In fact, his knowledge on the genre was impressive! They said that if he was getting harassed for it, then the others must've been too mainstream, too normal.And so, weekly viewings of classic scary movies and new-age slashers were a constant. He grew a new love of tabletop games, sci-fi flicks and niche bands. He began going by Cain, his character, a year into knowing them all.He cherished every day with the boys and never wanted to separate from them. When senior year started, though, the group dissipated; some members grew out of the game or went out of state for college. Though they promised to keep in touch, said meetings were few and far between. Cain initially went to Rutgers University for Writing (to his parent's chagrin), somewhat lonely, but it was okay. Why would he want to befriend a bunch of conformists?
...
...
June 19th, 1989. A man and a woman were found in the forest, sprawled out and dead. It was a horrible and gruesome tragedy. The two had barely any blood, their livers gone. The killer left little evidence. It was assumed a person had done this, but someone meticulous enough to leave barely any trace. It horrified the nation.Cain recognized one victim, Ana Garcia, as the girl from Rutgers’ poetry club, the girl who wrote about vampires. They met briefly, yet he found himself thinking about her often; so, when the news came out, it hit him like a truck. But he had barely any time to grieve this stranger. The parallels he saw...they itched at him. So he dug more into the case. He couldn't get over how weird he found it: the fact that there were only two foot prints, no witnesses reporting an attacker, almost nothing but the bruising on the two victims' hands to say that someone did this to them.Cain switched his career path from creative writing to journalism. For the past 3 years, he's been looking into this case, into the history of occultism in his state, into vampires and their behavior.He couldn't let this research go to waste. But he definitely wasn't talking to his family about it, and his "friends" started to grow tired of his ranting. Then, around January of '94, he read about a convention in Vermont dedicated to the discussion of conspiracies. Jackpot. Being a hermit had its perks as he found it easy to save up for a badge. Rumors of arson and safety hazards couldn't deter Cain; he saw it as a tremendous opportunity. If people were gonna take him seriously anywhere, it'd be at Freakfest.

CW: MENTION OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES, HORROR

Nighttime
You’re in your bed fit for one. A small, square room envelopes you. Though somewhat dingy, it’s serviceable: A trash can next to your bed, mini fridge in your right corner, a desk across from said fridge, a TV on top of said desk. What’s really a mess is the floor, which is a concoction of crumbled-up papers and unfolded laundry. Shamefully, you scan the rest of the room. If the walls aren’t a dirty tan, they’re pitch black, save for the spots where the TV light hits. The TV should be off at this time. But today you kept it on, revealing the collage of horror posters that surround your little corner.
This collection is massive. You see Pennywise, Ghost Face, Candyman, Michael Myers—everyone. Lots of these posters are testaments to those timeless horror films, but many are smaller, dirty fliers of a much more graphic nature. Screaming innocents, ripped clothes, viscera. Apart from the brief dread, an overwhelming sense of triumph comes over you. This is dedication.In a sensible, more digestible world, monsters would play their role. Vicious deep sea creatures would protect the ocean with fervor, attacking any fisherman that dared to encroach on their territory. Vampires hunt humans due to their inherit demonic nature; they are never to be trusted by society, always to be dealt with before their disease spreads. The atrocities of life obviously point towards a secret cabal, filled with the elite who bar us all from true enlightenment. In your world, it makes sense.The Thing
Unfortunately for you, your monsters are indescribable. Unpredictable. You know it. You’ve seen it before. It’s an amorphous pile, human but not quite, bulging with many faces—happy, sad, furious, apathetic. They sit, constantly winding up and folding back, moaning, gnashing their teeth, screaming, whispering. The tar desperately tries to escape its void of a cage. It pulls itself deeper into the black. It’s somehow unthinkable and just out of reach: it’s just behind the closet door.You can’t face it no matter how desperately you want to. Can you?…Yes, yes, of course you can, if you just peaked through the closet door...It’s useless.
The closet door stays shut, though you prefer it this way. You prefer to understand what you see. You need to understand.