So, I watch Edward Scissor Hands and this popped into my head… I now realise it's more Beauty and The Beast meets to Kill a Mocking Bird meets a bit of my own imagination but still…

I'm really not sure how people are going to react to this, so I'd really like to hear what you think. I may not carry it on if the general consensus is that it's not going to work. And if I do carry it on, I can't promise you as quick updates as with my other stories, because, to be honest with you, this sort of came to me at the worst possible time. I've got school tomorrow and exams starting Friday *cries softly into pillow*.

Also, my mate Left T (she writes for NANA, check her out if you're into that kind of stuff) has made me write a sequel to 'Who Said It Would Last Forever?' - so for anyone who's interested that's on it's way too. Thank her for that.

Anyway, sorry for that ridiculously long A/N! I'll shut up now!

D/C: You know the drill by now!

--

Icy, wind whistled around the large Victorian mansion. The grey slates on the roof rattled. The shingles on the wall clattered together and the lone, dead tree in the garden bent and swayed dangerously. Now and again, the constantly closed curtains fluttered in the draft, giving any interested watcher just the smallest of glimpses of the unusual gas-lit rooms or the mysterious old man, who dwelled within them. This man was known to the villagers simply as Moon, because it was thought that he only ever came out at night.

The mystery that engulfed the man had soon turned into a legend. Children were terrified of him. They'd run past his house so as not to be caught by the monster and they'd whisper nervously from the opposite side of the road;

"I heard he eats children."
"Well, I heard he keeps their heads on his wall."
"He killed my kitten."

But the rumours weren't restricted to the terrified children, the adults were no better ("I wouldn't go to near that house, you know he killed his wife and buried her in the garden."). Everyone in the village was intrigued by the house, but one young man, in particular, was mesmerised by it.

Vince Noir was the youngest son of the town's baker and his wife. The Noir's had been the perfect family. Husband, wife, son, daughter. And then Vince had arrived, almost fifteen years later, ruining the perfect symmetry. Often, after a few sherries, Mrs Noir would call her son a 'happy accident' and after a few more sherries, she would refer to him as 'bit of a mistake'. He'd learnt by now to ignore his mother when she was drunk and to ignore his tradition-governed father all of the time. In fact, he'd learnt to ignore almost everyone in this dead end town. He dreamt of leaving, of finding something new beyond the bridge that guarded the town's entrance. He dreamt of becoming an artist or a musician or a…

"Are you filling your head with ridiculous notions again, Vincent?" croaked his grandmother from an arm chair in the corner in the living room.

"What Gran?" he asked, looking up from his painting.

"What have I told you about saying 'what'?"

"Sorry Gran… pardon."

"I said, are you filling your head with ridiculous notions?"

"No Gran, I'm just painting."

"Painting what?"

"The view." Vince smiled, gazing out of the window at his favourite muse.

"Shouldn't you be doing some form of homework?"

"Gran, it's the summer holiday and anyway, I've finished school. I'm nineteen in a few days."

"As though we'd forget that." sighed his mother entering the room.

"You forgot Antony's thirty-fifth last month and he's the golden boy." This was true, Antony was the eldest and most successful of the Noir children and had fairly recently become the only lawyer in the small town, making him the apple in his fathers eye. His birthday, however, had been totally over shadowed by the 50th anniversary of the Great Gherkin Festival, which was something Vince had never understood and quite frankly wasn't bothered about trying to understand.

("Come on Vince you'll miss the finale!"
"Mum, it's the Borsch twins dressed as cucumbers…"
"Gherkins."
"whatever, they're dressed as an indistinguishable green vegetable."
"Cucumbers are fruit."
"I don't care, the point is, it's twins dressed like idiots doing an even more stupid dance. It's the same every year, I'm not watching it again, it's like acid for the eyes.")

"Don't be silly Vince." scorned his mother. "We love you just as much as Antony and Shelly."

"Hmph."

"Vincent." came the shrill voice of his grandmother, "Don't be so impertinent."

"Inper- what now?"

"Rude." explained his mother. "And we're very proud of all our children."

"You're proud of Shelly?" scoffed Vince, "Why? She flunked out of school and married her teacher."

"At least she doesn't dress like some time warped hippy." That was Gran, popping up with her unwelcome opinion. Vince was used to her insults about his clothes, his ditsy ways, his daydreaming, his… well, everything actually, so he contented himself with rolling his eyes and ignoring her.

"That's as much as we could have expected from Shelly." sighed his mother.

"Didn't you want her to have ambition and dreams?" Vince asked.

"Don't dream; don't fail." was his grandmothers typically pessimistic contribution.

"But if we don't dream, then how can we make our dreams come true?" Vince said distantly.

"Silly notions!"

"Hmm," Vince grumbled under his breath, going back to his picture.

"Here," said his mum, handing him a couple of euros. "Pop down the corner shop and get me some milk, will you?"

"It's 200 yards, why can't you go?"

"Impertinence!"

"I'm sixty-five," exclaimed his mother, "a walk like that could kill me."

"Only if there're a bunch of gunmen waiting for you outside the shop."

"Honestly Vince! Where do you come up with such things?"

Vince pointed at his head, before sighing and saying, "I'll go when I've finished this bit of the painting."

"What are you painting love?" asked his mother peering curiously over his shoulder.

"Nothing." he gasped in horror, picking up the picture and running out of the room.

His family simply couldn't know about his fascination with painting the house. They'd think it was weird and they certainly couldn't know about his fascination with the man inside the house, the mysterious Moon. He, like Vince, didn't fit in with this 'perfect village' and Vince was convinced the old man wasn't as terrifying as people suggested. He went into his bedroom and pushed the unfinished picture under his bed, before looking out of the window over the lazy summer afternoon. Children playing football in the road. Men mowing their lawns. Women cooking tea. All of them ambitionless, stuck in tradition. As always, Vince's attention was soon captured by the house. It's not a lazy summer afternoon at that house. It's dead and the garden seems as bitter cold as the winter.

"VINCE!" cried his mum from the bottom of the stairs. "Milk please!"

Vince rolled his eyes and walked a little sulkily downstairs, taking the money from her outstretched hand.

"Blue lid." she reminded him, as he shut the front door.

He pushed his hands deep in the pockets of his metallic purple jacket and kicked idly at a few stones as he walked along the pavement.

"Hey mister." A child's voice called, causing him to look up. "You're about to walk right past the monster's house. You should cross the road before he hurts you."

"Hurts me, what, you mean with his laser beam eyes?" asked Vince smirking slightly.

"H-his w-what?" stammered the child.

"Yeah, didn't you know? He's got bright red eyes that shoot lasers at kids who's footballs go in his garden. And I've heard that he takes that child and uses it's head as a football." The child's eyes were wide and terrified and he whispered,

"How d'you know that, Mister?"

"I've met him." Vince lied, getting lost in his own imagination and anyway, it wasn't entirely a lie. At night, when he closed his eyes, he had met Moon. Vince was much braver in his dreams. He would stroll up to the front door confidently, knock three times before a little wizened old man would open it, green eyes shining, full of knowledge. And then they'd talk about life outside this godforsaken town.

"What did you do when you met him?"

"We…" Vince was just about to lapse into the comfort of his own made up world when one of the boys playing football cried out as though he'd been shot. He was pointing, white-faced, into the garden of Moon's house. Vince followed his terrified gaze and saw the football perched in the middle of the frosty mud.

"Oh no!" gasped the child Vince had just been talking to. "He's going to shoot you with his laser eyes. Run Jimmy! Run."

The five boys on the road scattered, hiding behind walls and cars. One kid, the one called Jimmy, even sought refuge behind a lamppost but, as usual, what everyone else seemed to be terrified of, Vince only saw as a glorious opportunity.

"I'll get your ball." he smiled, walking boldly to the rickety gate and fumbling carelessly with the latch.

After a frustratingly long time, he figured it out and pushed the gate open with some difficulty. It was very stiff and Vince could tell it hadn't been opened for ages, years probably.

"You're crazy mister!" was the only thing that broke the silence, but he ignored it and stepped onto the dusty muddy floor. He picked his way carefully trying to avoid getting too muchmud on his pristine white shoes, until he reached the football. He reached down to pick it up and just as his fingers brushed the ball, he heard a scream from one of the kids. Suddenly, a large, cold hand gripped his thin wrist tight and yanked him upright hissing,

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to trespass?" Before dragging him towards the house roughly. Vince wasn't sure whether this was a good thing. On the one hand, he was getting the chance to enter the house he dreamt about and meet the mysterious Moon. On the other hand, the slightly larger hand, a possible psychopath had just caught him trespassing on his property and was dragging him into his house with a look on his face that could be described only as… murderous.

--

Vince found himself flung into a old fashioned arm chair. He closed his eyes on impact, the sudden movement winding him a bit. Slowly, he recovered enough to open his eyes and was greeted by a rather bland red room with dark wood trimming. Apart from the chair he was sitting in and an old bookcase in the corner, the room was completely deprived of furniture. But Vince wasn't concentrating on the serious lack of… well, anything. His eyes were fixed on the surprisingly young man, with floppy brown hair, small brown eyes and a moustache, who was stood in the centre of the room glaring at him. They both just stared for a while, both seemingly trying to work out what to make of the other. To Moon's surprise, Vince was the one who broke the silence.

"You're not really what I expected."

"What?"

"I thought the man who lived here was old and wise"

"I may not be old but I'm wise beyond my years Sir."

"But I thought you'd be, oh I don't know, maybe a shaman or something."

"A shaman? Vincent, what are you talking about?"

"All I meant was…" then he stopped. He looked nervously at Moon and squeaked, "How do you know my name?"

"I know everything about you."

"W-what?"

"What has your grandmother told you about saying 'what'?" Vince just stared dumbly, so Moon, who was enjoying himself by now, continued, "Her names Elspeth, isn't it?"

"How could you know that?" Vince asked. He sounded surprisingly calm considering, but his wide eyes were giving away how frightened he really was. "You never leave this house."

"I make it my business to know." smiled Moon, "Just like you make it your business to know that I've never left the house."

Vince felt him his cheeks go very hot.

"Anyway," Moon continued, "I have to watch someone in this ghastly village, otherwise I'll have nothing to do. And who am I going to watch? The vicar, with his ridiculous god-fearing ways, the children with their pathetic little games, the local school teacher with her infuriating do-gooder attitude. No! I watch the imaginative, pretty little Vince Noir, because he's ambitious. He wears… unusual clothes." Moon gave a half smile noting Vince's jacket and white boots. "He paints fantastic pictures and tells little story's that make me laugh. But most importantly than that Vince, you dream."

"Silly notions my Gran calls it." the startled man answered boldly. He couldn't understand why he wasn't running away. This man was clearly as nutty and Crunchy Nut cereal and he'd clearly violated his captive's privacy long before they'd met each other but, strangely, Vince didn't feel threatened, not yet.

"No, I don't mean daydreaming!" Moon snapped angrily. "I mean at night, when you're asleep."

"What, those pictures that I see in my head?"

"Yes."

"I love those. Their always so wonderfully weird."

"I know."

"Once a man had polo's growing in his hair and we had to run up and pull them out before he noticed."

"I know."

"And last night, I was being chased by nuns." Vince was on his feet by now, to better demonstrate his dream. "and they were wielding bread knives." Vince struck 'a bread knife wielding pose' but Moon, looking totally unimpressed, just sighed,

"I know, Vince."

"But the best bit is," Vince continued excitedly "was that they were riding on-"

"unicycles."

Vince stopped, mid-performance and stared fearfully at Moon.

"How could you know that? You said those pictures were in my head. Have you been in my head?" His hand shooting instinctively to his temple.

"No." Moon said. He was still infuriatingly calm and Vince wanted to scream with anger and confusion, when all the mysterious man said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world, was "But I've been in your dreams."

"How?"

He smiled, "You invited me there Vincent. Every night, knocking on my door, begging me to enter your dreams. It would be rude to refuse an offer like that?"

"Who are you?" Vince whispered.

"I go by many names; to children, I am a monster. To adults, I'm a wife-murderer, it doesn't matter that I've never been married. And to you, I'm a…"

"weird, head-invading pervert!" Vince gasped, suddenly seeing the situation for what it was. A thirty-something recluse, who watches pretty boys had captured him and brought him into this weird room, for what? Vince didn't like to think. He realised that Moon probably peered into Vince's room every night. After all, Vince had chosen to move into Shelly's room when she moved out so that he had a better view of the house. Moon probably watched him sleeping. Vince never bothered to shut the curtains, he liked to look at the stars just before he nodded off. He shuddered at the thought and began to edge slowly towards the door.

"Well," Moon continued, "I was going to say wizard but it doesn't matter, neither are true."

"I'd like to go home now please." Vince whimpered, edging ever closer to the safety of the door.

"I don't think so." said Moon. He clicked his figures and the door snapped shut. Vince's jaw dropped open. "Don't look so surprised," the older man smirked "you thought I was magic."

"Y-yeah, but… I mean… magic's not real, is it? It's not really real?"

"What do you think Vince?"

Vince went quiet and stared defiantly at Moon. "I think I want to leave." He said, walking bravely to the door and tugging on the handle. "Open it."

"What's the magic word?"

"There wasn't one, you just clicked your fingers."

"I meant say 'please'."

"Oh, open it, please." Vince flashed Moon one of his best melt-your-heart smiles but Moon's heart was made of pure ice and it seemingly could not be melted.

"No."

"What?"

"Once you come in, you can never leave."

"W-what?" Vince stammered, the colour draining from his face."I'm kidding."

"Oh." Vince didn't know what to make of Moon, his joking voice was identical to his serious voice.

"Come on Vincent." Howard said, his tone changing entirely. "Sit down." Howard waved his arm loosely and a sofa appeared. Vince gawped. "How is that…?"

"Magic." Moon interrupted, stepping a little menacingly towards the terrified younger man. Vince stepped backwards straight into the doorknob, which dug into his back as a painful reminder that there was no escape.

"Open the door." Vince said shakily, "Or my brother will send you down, forever."

"Your brother? He's the worst lawyer I've ever seen."

"You've seen other lawyers?"

"Yes and Antony is appalling."

"He's won every case."

"He's the only qualified lawyer in the town of course he wins."

"How d'you know all this?" Vince asked, he was on the brink of tears.

"I know everything Vincent."

"Please let me go now. I'm scared."

Suddenly, Moon's seemingly harsh persona broke and he flopped dramatically onto his new sofa, saying "I scare everyone. I just thought you'd be the exception."

"Of course you scare people. You're different. You don't fit in! You're a loner. You're completely alone."

Moon lifted his head and fixed the trespasser with a slightly bemused look.

"But Vincent, so are you."

Vince shook his head, black hair flying everywhere. "No I'm not. I'm not a freak like you." he knew this didn't quite ring true but he didn't care. He didn't want to believe he was like this man. "Open the door." he ordered.

Moon rolled his eyes, lifted his hand lazily and clicked. The door unlocked. Vince tore it open and ran. He ran like his life depended on it (and perhaps it did). He reached the huge, crooked front door. His hands were shaking so much he could hardly grip the lock let alone open it. From behind him, he heard Moon advancing slowly. "We're not so different you and me, Vince. Ask them about dreams."

Finally, he slung the door open and ran through it slamming it behind him. He didn't stop running. He daren't look back. He felt sure he could hear Moon's heavy footsteps behind him. He was vaguely aware of a few children calling after him, but he wasn't about to stop. He clattered into the door of his own house, hammering on it like something demented.

"Alright, alright." came his mothers shrill voice, "Keep your bloody hair on."

No sooner had the lock clicked open, Vince threw the door (and his mother) against the wall and legged it up the stairs into his room. He shut the door of his bedroom and sank to the floor in a breathless, sweaty heap. He pulled his knee's in tight to his chest and could feel a few salty tears dropping onto his nice, new jeans.

He felt somehow empty and alone, even though his mother was banging furiously on the door screaming at him to let her in. Vince felt as though something important had been taken from him, as though the wonders of the house had been some kind of comfort to him; a far off hope that there was more to life than baking bread, house chores and a batty old grandmother. Now, he wasn't so sure. His tear-filled eyes were soon drawn like a magnet to the silhouette of the house in the fading light of the low sun. There were still so many unanswered questions. He got to his feet slowly, ignoring his mother's unrelenting rampage against his door and went to the window. The house was still winter-bleak as it ever was. Then, for the first time ever, Vince shut the curtains.

'Some questions are better left unanswered' he decided, before picking up his iPod and disappearing into a fantasy world, with the only people he could really trust, namely Jagger and Numan.

--

Vince's dreams, by the way, are two of my most recent dreams! =].

Review?

Thanks for reading!!!

Sisi…xx