"We're Ready To NOT Believe you!"

September 2005

One of the things Meagan Tully hated dearly about having a ten o'clock curfew was not being able to sleep comfortably until six in the morning, an hour before she had to get ready for school. It wasn't insomnia or caffeine that was keeping her up all night long. The fear of something creeping in her closet was what did it.

Of course, she knew how ridiculous it was to be scared of "monsters in the closet" at 17 years old. But she knew for certain that something was in there, as she had found clumps of blue fur in the corner one day and even noticed a large, animalistic foot with talons pop out from behind the door—although it was too dark to fully notice, she knew it had to be one.

And then one creepy circumstance occurred that particular night at thirty-five minutes pass midnight, when a heavy, eerie growl emerged within the closet, creeping Meagan to the point that she reached over to her bedside phone (after she snatched up her thick glasses) and dialed the numbers to New York's expert paranormal investigators/exterminators, the Ghostbusters. Ever since the attack of the fifty-foot "Marshmallow Man," she was convinced that there wasn't anything these supermen and superwomen couldn't do. And if there was anyone who could take care of the monster in her closet, it was the Ghostbusters.

"Ghostbusters," she heard the tired voice of their secretary, Christina Melnitz, come over the phone, "This had better be good."

"H-Hello," said the nervously polite Meagan, "I've got a monster in my house, and I need the Ghostbusters over here to take care of it!"

There was a long pause, and Meagan wasn't sure if the secretary had hung up on her or not. She suspected that the Ghostbusters got situations like this called in all too often, considering the line of work they were in. But once she heard a yawning noise from the young woman on the other end, she suspected that they must not have gotten very many calls so late in the evening.

"Alright, sweetie. Two Ghostbusters will be over there in less than an hour." Meagan then heard a voice yelling in the background, addressing Christina as she was still on the phone. It was afterwards when the secretary added, "Make that less than two hours."

Despite the lengthy wait time, Meagan was delighted in knowing that the Ghostbusters would soon be there to handle this living nightmare of hers once and for all. After she hung up the phone, the noise from her closet started to grow fiercer and was added with the sudden sound of scratching claws. Beyond frightened, Meagan covered her ears, trying her best to ignore the noises long enough for the Ghostbusters to arrive. However, the noises still could be heard through her deafened ears, causing her to wince in fear. Rather than sit down on the bed any longer, Meagan immediately hid underneath it, waiting there until help came.

At exactly an hour and a half later, faint sirens were heard from outside the apartment building. For a while, Meagan believed it was just probably a passing ambulance. It sounded like it could've been. However, it quickly dawned on her that the Ghostbusters drove something like was like an old-fashioned ambulance, and she realized that it had to be them.

With lightning-quick speed, she crawled out from beneath her bed (still hearing the eerie, inhuman noises that emerged from her closet) and dashed out of her bedroom. Crossing the bedroom that belonged to her parents, who normally slept with the television set on (thus solidifying a late-night welcome for the Ghostbusters), she ran through the living room and opened the front door. She stood out in the hallway outside, searching left and right for any sign of uniformed strangers with nuclear accelerators on their backs. When she saw none, she figured that they hadn't even gotten out of the car yet.

Patiently waiting for them to get to the tenth floor of the building, which seemed to have taken them just as long as getting there by vehicle, Meagan was delighted once she watched Dr. J.G. Stantz and Diana Zeddemore walked out of the elevator. As excited as she was, she barely noticed how they were yawning with tired, bloodshot eyes. Stantz practically needed a big, cold can of Red Bull just to get him past the building's entrance.

"Oh, my god! I'm so glad you guys are here!" Meagan exclaimed, doing her best to keep a low voice in the silent hall. "C'mon! C'mon! This way!" Highly energized, she was practically leaping up and down in her Scooby-Doo pajamas, guiding the two Ghostbusters into her bedroom.

Stantz wiped away a tad bit of crust from his eyes, as he and Diana crossed the young lady's living room. "Jeez, has there ever been a night where we just slept in?"

"It's Venkman's idea, Jay." Diana said. "The more late-night calls we get, the more our finance increases."

"That is just a load of…" Before he could finish his statement, a loud, unexpected belch emerged from his own mouth, nearly waking the young girl's parents as they crossed their bedroom. "Excuse me."

Meagan just laughed off his blunder. "It's no prob. My dad farts in his sleep, while my mom's mouth is wide open." After that comment, all J.G. and Diana could've done in response was stare blankly. But what more could they have expected from someone who wore Scooby-Doo pajamas.

Once they were all inside Meagan's bedroom, Stantz and Zeddemore could barely believe how crowded and cluttered it looked. Diana's shin repeatedly bumped against the side of her bed, just to get past J.G. and Meagan, in order to scan the room with the P.K.E. Meter. Although she had no idea who to read it, she knew whenever it vibrated or beeped, there had to be some ghostly activity in the perimeter.

Unfortunately, at the moment, she was receiving not a single one.

After she looked over to J.G. and shook her head negatively, Stantz then turned to the girl and asked, "Uh…what did you say was your problem again?"

"I've got a monster in here."

The two Ghostbusters exchanged a suspicious glance, which Meagan failed to notice, due to her focus being on the closet door. She realized that the eerie sounds coming from there had strangely stopped, leaving no obvious evidence of any paranormal activity.

"What exactly did this monster look like, hon?" Diana asked her.

"I…I don't know." Her focus was still on the closet door, as beads of sweat began streaming down her forehead, drenching some of her hair and turning it from a brown, caramel-colored to more of a dark chocolate shade. "All I know is that it's coming from the closet."

Diana suspected something like this, before arriving at the scene. The scenario was too plain for her not to see: a teenager, living in the Bronx, late one school night, and a monster in the house. She would've figured on it being a burglary of some kind. But a monster in the closet was stretching it a bit.

With her shin bumping against the side of the bed again, Diana walked over to Meagan and placed an arm around her. "Sweetie, when I was your age, I used to be scared of the dark, too. I used to think Freddy, Jason, or Michael was hiding somewhere in my room, ready to slice my head off or something. But you know how I got over it?"

"No…how?"

"I started drawing pictures of their faces. And instead of putting a scarred face on Freddy, a hockey mask on Jason, and a William Shatner mask on Michael, I just drew Ronald McDonald on Freddy, the Hamburglar on Jason, and…"

"Grimace on Michael?" Meagan inquired.

"No, actually I just put Leonard Nimoy to contradict the William Shatner look." Diana admitted. "But, anyways…instead of being in a scared mood, I just got hungry and felt like watching Star Trek."

J.G. grinned and shook his head over Diana's advice (if that what she was calling it), making certain their young friend was looking nowhere near him, in order to help sell it. Despite the oddity of the advice, he still voiced an acknowledgement of it. "Most psychological fears are usually triggered by imagination, and expressing them into art form is an excellent remedy."

The technical lingo that J.G. used confused Meagan a little. But she understood enough to realize that the two Ghostbusters were pretty much telling her that she had a wild imagination. "I…I'm not imagining this, guys! I saw what I saw!"

"I thought you didn't see the monster." Diana said with a raised eyebrow.

"I didn't! I just heard what I heard!"

"Which was?" asked Stantz.

"Scratching claws, growling, gurgling, laughing…" As Meagan continued on with the list of noises, the fed-up Diana rolled her eyes and moved over to the closet door, grabbing the doorknob and turning it. Meagan stopped once she saw what the Ghostbuster was doing and yelled, "No! Don't open it!!"

But, despite her protest, the door was opened. And they were met with the horrifying sight (and stench) of week-old clothes, tennis shoes that were long past due of being replaced, and even half-emptied pizza and hamburger boxes. If a monster had been in there, he certainly would have died from the foul smell.

"Oh, god!" Diana uttered, holding her nose.

"And I thought only ghosts could make this kind of mess." J.G. stated, waving his gloved hand in front of his face to keep away the smell.

Meagan was left scratching her head. She was too confused to be embarrassed of the mess she failed to clean up in her closet, knowing for sure that she heard noises coming from there. "I…I…I don't get it. I heard something in there."

Diana quickly shut the door, before the foul smell of corn chips and rotten lettuce fumigated the whole building. "Word of advice, kiddo…clean up before you invite anybody into this house."

"Yeah, anybody but Venkman." J.G. added. "I'm sure she'd love to hang out over here."

A look of excitement manifested on young Meagan's face. "You really think she would?"

Diana and J.G. looked at her for a brief second and then to each other on the next. They both slowly shook their heads in mock disappointment, before exiting the room and Meagan's apartment entirely. Still confused over what just occurred, Meagan stood at the center of her cluttered, crowded room, staring down at the floor.

Suddenly, she heard a slow, creaking noise, coming directly from the closet door, which was supposed to be closed. As slow as the noise was made, Meagan's eyes darted toward the door. Her body was paralyzed with immense fear; her eyes being the only movable part of her. The door stopped halfway in its opening, short but wide enough for any creature to slip through. Meagan braced herself for any oncoming encounter she would receive, with nothing whatsoever to protect her from harm.

She expected another growling sound to accompany the creature's entrance, the only noise that was really made was an unusual crunching one, as if there was more eating than scaring involved. Meagan wondered what kind of monster this was to be making frighteningly eerie noises at first and then eating whatever was left in those takeout boxes in her closet.

And the answer to her question seemed to have come, once the creature popped out from behind the closet door, munching down on a half-eaten Big Mac. The creature in her closet turned out to be a Cyclops monster in the shape of a tennis ball, with one large eye, two horns on his head, and arms and legs, but no torso.

It spoke in a voice that oddly reminded Meagan of Billy Crystal, Mr. Toad, and Sammy Davis, Jr. rolled into one, with a hint of burger still in its mouth. "Keep leavin' great meals like this in here, and I might just bring all my friends over during break!" And with that said, he quickly slid back into the closet, closing the door behind him.

Before it had completely closed, however, Meagan's once-paralyzed form suddenly shifted as she ran to the door. She grabbed the doorknob and opened the door all the way, anxiously wanting to see the monster one last time before it vanished.

But, unfortunately, it once again did.

Whether Diana Zeddemore was right in her chosen method or not, Meagan immediately went to work on drawing out the creature she had just witnessed. With the back of a pizza box from inside the closet and a thick black marker from a nearby desk, she started to draw a large circle.