Author's Note: I know I should be working on Play Pretend, but this idea came to me at two in the morning and just wouldn't leave me alone.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rugrats.
Tom Pickles had always hated the woods. He had gotten lost in the woods for a couple days as a toddler and the experience left him terrified. Even as a grown man, he couldn't quite shake the belief that there were monkey-like monsters in the woods. It was a childish thing to believe because monsters did not exist and there were no wild monkeys where he lived.
"Who's that baby in this picture?" Tommy asked. His mother started crying and his father took him aside and told him not bring it up. Tommy wondered why his parents would keep a picture of someone they didn't want to talk about.
Tom had no contact with his parents after his grandfather died. He was tired of his mother pushing him away. His father was always on her side, too. He didn't know why, but his grandfather was really the only person keeping them together and now that he was gone, Tom had no reason to stick around.
Didi sobbed in a rocking chair while cradling a picture in her trembling arms. Tommy watched from his crib, not understanding why his mother was so upset and started crying, too.
"Shut up, shut up!" Didi screamed, but her yelling only made Tommy cry more. Stu came running into the room and walked Didi out, glancing at Tommy as he did. No one came to soothe Tommy for a long time.
Tom stood up so quickly that he knocked some papers over. He approached the window where he could have sworn someone was standing near. He looked out the window, but didn't see anything. As Tom was about to sit down again, his eyes passed the clock on the wall. 3:02 AM. Tom sighed. He was probably imagining things. He walked out of his study and upstairs to his room. Tom had trouble falling asleep with the strange screeching of monkey monsters filling his imagination.
"Dad, I'm home!" Tommy called as he walked in the door. "Can you help me with my homework?" No one answered. "Hello?" Still nothing. Tommy frowned, even his mother would at least acknowledge that he was back. He heard a weird buzzing noise coming from the living room and followed it. The television was playing static. He thought he heard a baby's laughter from the chair in front of the television, but he couldn't see anything from his current angle. Tommy's body felt heavy as he forced himself to walk closer to the chair. When he finally got there, he opened the eyes that he didn't realize were closed and found nothing there. The television was off and sunlight poured in the windows. Relieved, he turned to walk away only to hear slow, low pitched, demonic sounding baby's laughter against the familiar noise of static from the television. There was a loud crash of thunder and-
Tom sat up in his bed as he heard a door slam shut. He was absolutely certain that he'd locked all the doors. Then he heard it again. And a third time. Tom grabbed a baseball bat and went to check it out. The door a few rooms away was opening and shutting. It was right next to an open window and the wind from a storm was causing it to slam. None of the windows inside the room were open, but this door didn't latch and there was a draft in the room that Tom had been meaning to fix. The draft was opening the door while the breeze from the window shut it again. Nothing out of the ordinary. As Tom reached to shut the window, a clawed hand appeared and reached for him.
"TOOO...MMM."
Tom jumped three feet in the air and rushed back to the safety of his room. "It's the wind," Tom reminded himself as his heart pounded in his chest. "Only the wind."
Tom took a deep breath and opened his bedroom door. Peering out, he saw that the window was shut and figured that he must have shut it without realizing it.
"That's your brother, Dil." Grandpa said. "He was with you and your friends when you got lost in the woods."
"What happened to him?" Tommy asked.
"We don't know. We never found him. We think he might have been killed by a pack of escaped circus monkeys. Either way, it's such a shame that you'll never know him."
Grandpa left the room, leaving Tommy to think about it alone.
The storm was getting worse. Tom had long since taken shelter in the basement, huddled under a light. Every once in a while, a clap of thunder would take him by surprise. It seemed like he was outside hearing the thunder. Then the lights went out.
"TOO...MMM."
Tom froze. That was not the wind.
"TOO...MMM."
Tom's breath caught in his throat. It was closer now.
"TOO...MMM."
Against his will, Tom looked up meeting the gaze of a creature that could only be called a monster. Sharp claws attached to the creature's flabby arms, claw marks on its emaciated torso, exposed muscle on its lower body and legs. It had white eyes and its face was twisted into a gruesome forced grin.
"You'll have a monkey mommy, monkey daddy and a monkey brother!" Tommy screamed as he pulled Dil into the rain. Tommy held the banana baby food above his head as lightning highlighted the fury on his face. Dil suddenly became scared, but Tommy was too angry to care. He poured the food onto Dil and was pushed aside by a monkey. Tommy heard Dil cry and looked back. The monkeys were blocking his view, but he was sure that Dil would be okay. Besides, Dil made his choice. Tommy walked away to find his friends. He would return home, alone.
Tom stared in terror at the creature standing in front of him. It opened its mouth and laughed. It sounded a like distorted baby's laughter, the kind you'd hear in horror movies. The it stopped.
"TOOO...MMMM...YYY."
In that moment, Tom knew who the creature was. He didn't know why it was there or what it wanted. All he knew was the creature's name.
"Dil."
There was an unearthly shriek and then nothing.
A missing persons' report was filed for Tom Pickles. The house was locked from the inside and all the doors and windows were shut, except for the door leading to the basement. A little bit of searching revealed a door leading outside to the woods nearby the house. It was said that Tom Pickles had once gotten lost in those woods. The community scoured the woods, but Tom Pickles was nowhere to be found.
In a secluded area of the woods, the remains of an infant were cradled by the corpse of a man. A moss covered jar of baby food lay nearby.
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