Skeletons In The Closet is a Littlest Pet Shop (2012) fanfic written by Canzetyote. It's about Sunil Nevla being contacted by the ghost of a dead pet and helping find her body buried deep within the basement of the pet shop. It can be read here.
Tropes you'll encounter as you read it:
Tropes:
- Ax-Crazy: Irene
- Berserk Button: Sunil snaps when Irene threatens to go after his friends
- Berserker Tears: Sunil cries these in the final showdown against Irene. She reacts to this by mocking him for crying.
- Big Bad: Irene Whitman
- Big Damn Heroes: Kim helps rescue Sunil from being beaten to death by Irene
- Black Comedy: Pepper Clark tries this shtick in the 4th chapter.
- Break the Cutie: Kim, a hamster who lived a life of complete isolation, breeding and experiments. It's no wonder why Sunil wants to help her ghost find peace.
- Sunil himself reveals the fact that he's so skittish is that he can see ghosts and has been a victim of Mind Rape. On top of this, he has to help Kim find closure by searching for her dead body hidden in the basement of Littlest Pet Shop. Finally, she requests he cries at her funeral. Sunil finds himself sobbing for 25 minutes in the pouring rain over the grave of a girl he barely even knows and later tearfully blames himself for ruining the happy atmosphere of LPS by helping find Kim's body. The icing on the cake is when Sunil gets molested the very same thing that mind raped him when he moved to New York City.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Russell does this as an
Author's Saving Throw in the 5th chapter once Pepper's humor gets a little dark in the previous chapter. - Chekhov's Gun: The magic dust Sunil gives Kim ends up helping him defeat Irene
- Dance Party Ending
- Dark Fic
- Demoted to Extra: Minka Mark gets only a few lines in the story.
- Distressed Dude: Sunil in the 6th chapter before he snaps and goes berserk on Irene
- Driven to Suicide: Subverted. Irene mind raped Sunil intending for him to kill himself so he wouldn't meddle in her affairs. Sunil didn't kill himself but wound up with a form of PTSD
- Due to the Dead
- Freudian Excuse: Irene Whitman was divorced by her husband and gave birth to a daughter who ate her own twin.
- Gray Rain of Depression: Sunil cries in the rain at Kim's funeral.
- I See Dead People: Sunil can talk to ghosts in the story.
- Insane Troll Logic: Irene gave birth to a daughter who ate her own twin sister. Her solution? Buy a hamster, breed her and feed her fetuses to her own daughter in hopes her daughter would birth her own parasitic twin.
- It's All My Fault: Sunil blames himself for ruining the happy atmosphere of LPS over the whole dead body thing.
- It Always Rains at Funerals
- Knight in Shining Armor: Kim sees Sunil as this.
- Knockout Gas: Sunil breathes in some from a booby trapped locker containing Kim's body at the end of chapter 2 and spends the whole 3rd chapter at the vet.
- Libation for the Dead
- Mad Doctor: Irene
- Meaningful Funeral
- Mind Rape: What Irene did to Sunil.
- Nightmare Face: The face of Irene Whitman's ghost consists of a mass off bloody wiggling hamster fetuses. She often hides it behind a mask
- Nightmare Sequence: Sunil has a few of these
- Noodle Incident: The chocolate pudding joke that Vinnie told Sunil.
- Not Afraid of You Anymore: Sunil gives one of these to Irene
- Our Ghosts Are Different
- Put on a Bus: Zoe Trent spends the story on a cruise and returns for the final chapter.
- Revenge by Proxy: Irene tells Sunil she'll hurt his friends. He does NOT take it kindly
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Sunil delivers one of these to Irene
- Sick Episode: Sunil spends the 3rd and 4th chapter at the vet after breathing in Knockout Gas.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Irene
- Tender Tears: Sunil cries quite a bit in this fic and he has good reason to.
- Took a Level in Badass: Penny Ling apparently knows martial arts.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Pepper Clark cracks constant jokes about dead bodies in the 4th chapter. Russell is not amused. She shapes up later on, though when she sees how depressed Sunil is.
- Unstoppable Rage: Irene manages to provoke Sunil into this when he starts hallucinatinating that she's a cobra
- White Mask of Doom: Irene wears one of these.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Irene Whitman, a skilled surgeon who had her husband divorce her for another woman then became pregnant with parasitic twins. She then bought Kim and bred her just so she could feed her fetuses to her daughter in hopes her daughter would birth her own twin.
