Three things:

I have the attention span of a stupid puppy.

I came up with the idea for this story while in the bath and had to jump out to make notes.

This is the conclusion to my damn horror trilogy. At last!

It was evening but it was warm; a typically hot and humid Japanese summer night. The dark was somewhat blinding, though not pitch, and Tai and Matt were walking through it on their way to Mimi's place, sure footed and marching in unaware synchrony. Tonight was, supposedly, the start of a new, weekly tradition: movie night. And despite their protests, their friends had unanimously decided that their first movie was going to be a goddamned horror movie. "You promise not to pull anything funny this time?" Tai said, looking sideways at his companion.

"I already apologized about that, didn't I?"

Tai frowned. "Promise!"

Matt crossed his arms. "You actually think I'd do that again?"

Tai looked stubborn, like he wasn't going to back down on this one, but then he cracked up and punched Matt lightly on the arm. "Whatever. It's just, jeez, ya think ya know a guy…"

"Yeah, yeah," Matt said, rolling his eyes. He refused to show his lingering guilt over that night. He was sure that Tai sure wouldn't if the roles were reversed. They soon arrived at Mimi's house. The spacious building made a nice change of setting from Matt and Tai's families' apartments. Or at least, it would normally have done, if it wasn't going to be filled with tension and fear, soon. "Let's just get this over with."

Tai and Matt were soon involved in silly conversations with T.K., Joe and Mimi about classes, and school clubs, and about how Matt almost scared Tai to death that one time a couple of months ago, although no one was supposed to know about that. Did Matt tell T.K.? Tsk! "Maybe you're not as courageous as your crest made out, Tai," T.K. teased.

"T.K., that's sort of unfair," Matt said. "Don't be so-"

"Yeah you're right, T.K. I gotta grow some nuts," Tai interrupted, laughing along with the younger blonde. He privately told Matt later, however, that he appreciated the defensive, brooding boy being on his side for a change. He moved in as if to kiss Matt on the mouth and Matt's mind span confusedly in circles. Was it really happening? Oh my g - wait. No. Tai just licked Matt's nose and laughed it off. Brat. "You taste..." he didn't finish that statement.

Later, after kitchen-based antics in which everybody tried to help Mimi make tasty rice balls, resulting in a huge mess, snacks were gathered in the living room, lights were dimmed, and a movie was put in to play. "We can't wait any longer for the others. Let's just start now," Joe said.

"But there's only five of us!" Tai complained. "Davis will kill us if we start early. And so will Sora! And Kari. And-"

"They can't all kill us," Mimi laughed.

"But they will!" Tai assured.

Joe shrugged. "You worry too much."

Tai looked offended for a moment, then suddenly wide eyed, as if shocked by a quick slap in the face. "Oh my god, he's right," Tai whispered into Matt's ear. "Help. I think I've switched personalities with Joe."

The movie started and Matt held onto Tai's hand, covertly, in the dark. That way, they'd both be safe. On the T.V. screen there was an old, two storey house, sitting alone in the English countryside. A new family was moving into it. Everything seemed normal. "I want to play upstairs!" A young girl said to her mother. She ran up the old, wooden staircase, tap tap creak, tap tap creak, and entered a room which had long, semi-transparent curtains and no furniture. She rubbed her hands together to warm them, then started to dig through a box in the closet that was filled with her things. She couldn't see very well, however. "It's too dark in here." She turned to open the curtains, meaning to let more light in, but went deathly pale when she saw the adult sized figure that was standing on the other side of the curtains, face pressed into the material, seemingly watching her. "AGHHH!" the girl screamed. She ran from the room.

"Agh!" Joe screamed back, shaking his head back and forth. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I can't do this, after all. I need to, um..." And so Joe left. The others continued to watch the movie. Of course, by now, the little girl's parents had checked upstairs and found nothing in The Scary Room, as the little girl had dubbed it. The parents decided that the girl's over-active imagination was the only intruder in their new home. "I'm not living here," the girl said with teary eyes and steely determination.

"There's nowhere else for you to stay, honey. I'm sorry."

Time moved on. The family started to decorate, cook and relax there as if nothing was wrong, despite the creepy music in the background and the far reaching shadows all around them. The girl hadn't seen anything else that was spooky, yet. Despite this, as the day fell into night and the air grew frostier, she heard noises more and more frequently that didn't belong to her family. She was certain that something wasn't right about this place.

"I don't want to hear your complaints," Dad said, sternly. There wasn't anything wrong with the new house that he and Mum had worked so hard to buy. Even when frantic banging sounded from a closet upstairs, there wasn't anything wrong. And when the noise stopped just as Dad reached it to investigate, his breath held nervously in his chest, he told himself that there still wasn't anything wrong. But when he opened the closet doors, and when his mouth failed for both words and exhalations, there was certainly something wrong. A skeletal something – man? Woman? – waited inside. It was too tall for the closet, with long, matted hair and pale, dirtied skin. There was some kind of catholic symbol hanging from a chain around its neck. Its shoulders were hunched, its head bent to the side, its back curled, following the angular roof of the closet's interior. It emerged from the closet and rose to its full height, towering over Dad. Dad couldn't move his legs, blink his eyelids or flap his tongue. He was trapped under its spell. But when it took a step closer to him and reached out a hand, he found that his body could run despite his insistence that moving was impossible. Mimi jumped to her feet as he escaped the room.

"I should, uh, clean the kitchen!" she said, shakily. And so Mimi left. Tai held onto Matt's hand more tightly. Their hands were becoming sweaty and tired of being held onto; but it was better than nothing, for sure.

"Help," Dad cried, shouting at his wife. "We have to leave! Someone just came out of the closet!"

"Oh, is it your auntie? I don't know why you're so alarmed. I always suspected she was a -" she stopped short, her eyes fixed on something behind Dad. She then stumbled backwards fearfully. Dad slowly turned to see the skeletal thing once more, a terrifying tower of skin and bone, drawing nearer, its hair hanging from its scalp all the way to below its waist. Its fingernails were long, jagged and sharp like old, grey knives. Its hair fell out in clumps as it came nearer. The hair crawled along the floor towards the parents, swiftly, somehow able to move on its own.

"I should go check on Mimi!" T.K. yelled.

"But-"

And so T.K. left.

"Then there were two, I guess," Matt said, his eyes falling back onto the movie. The scene had changed. The little girl was on her own again, downstairs, having decided never to approach the staircase again. She had heard her parents arguing upstairs, earlier, but they had since drawn into silence. However…

Tap, tap, creak, went the stairs.

'What was that?' she thought.

Tap. Creak,

"Dad? Is that you?" she called out.

Creak.

"Mom?"

Tap. Tap. … Creeeak.

"Anyone?" she asked, knowing who it was. Knowing who it had to be. The curtain person. Come for her again. At last. The curtain person became quiet, stopping on the stairs. 'Why? What are they waiting for?' the girl wondered, frantically.

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM went the stairs, sudden as an un-forecast, overhead thunderstorm, while something charged down them at lightning speed. CRASH. The curtain person came barging into the room. The girl opened the living room window and climbed out of it, running down the street into safety.

Tai smiled. "She's brave and fast. Like me. I like her."

"Yeah." Matt slipped an arm around Tai and pulled him closer. Tai put a hand on Matt's lap, rubbing his warm legs, but didn't turn away from the film. "What a good idea, leaving the house like that. I wish more characters just up and escaped," Matt continued. He put his remaining hand atop Tai's, interlocking their fingers. They'd never done this before. Maybe this night wasn't such a bad idea, after all.

Back to the movie. The ghastly thing's face, framed in the window as it watched the girl flee, seemed in a moment to be suddenly staring through the T.V. at Tai and Matt. This was the last shot that the boys paid attention to, for the living room fell into darkness all of a sudden.

Tai growled, angrily. "Shit! What happened?"

"Maybe they forgot to pay the electricity bill?"

"The T.V.'s still on," Tai pointed out.

"Oh. Yeah." Good point. "We should check on the others," Matt recommended. They walked carefully through the dark and into the kitchen. But Mimi wasn't there. "Weird."

"Maybe she went upstairs?"

"Maybe." But Matt couldn't shake the feeling that the thing on the TV was still staring at him. Maybe even coming out of the T.V., right now, and pursuing them both. He didn't learn many lessons from movies; actively avoided them, in fact, as he figured movies had nothing very good to teach him. But if there was one thing that he had certainly and unwillingly learned today, it was that he shouldn't go near stairs. Ever. "Let's go outside."

"Huh. Why?"

"I want some, um, air?"

"Good idea. I guess it is kind of stuffy in here." They tried the back door nearby, but though they pulled on it, and examined it carefully, it was locked with no easy means of being opened without a key. "Uh…"

Suddenly, a creak sounded in the living room. And then another. Matt was already climbing atop a counter and opening the window before they could hear a third. "What can I say? I really like air," he whispered. He left through the window and into the warm dark outside. Tai, shrugging and smiling, followed the blonde adventurer. They continued until they had left the property, which Tai thought was weird, but who was he to judge where had the best air? Matt seemed to be an expert in these things. The blonde finally stopped a couple of minutes later, outside of a convenience store.

"Hungry?" Tai asked.

"No."

Hm. "Thirsty?"

"No."

"You're too young to buy the naughty manga," Tai smiled. "So that can't be why you stopped here."

Matt curled his hands into loose fists, "I have to confess something to you."

"What? Here?"

"Here isn't important. It just has lights and people in it, so its good."

"Oh."

"Tai, I didn't like that horror movie."

"Yeah, me neither," Tai replied. "It didn't seem as visceral or frightening as the last two scary movies we watched."

"Yeah, maybe. But that's not what I mean. I mean, I don't like any horror movies. There are already too many monsters in real life to be scared of. Who needs to be scared of movies, too?"

"Oh. Sure, I understand."

Matt raised a finger to Tai's messy hair and, with a shuddering, nervous finger, touched it. "But I enjoyed some things about it."

"Like what? The bit with the hair? That was crumby."

"No."

"Because, jeez, what the hell is hair going to do to you? Eat you?" Tai smirked and raised his arms and hands above his head, mumbling in a pretend scary way. "Old hair…digivolve into…Wigmon! Wigmon is using its super special attack! Get into your food somehow! Oh no…!" He fell to the floor and pretended to die of choking.

"It could happen," Matt chuckled, smiling fondly at his friend.

"My ass."

"Well, that wasn't what I liked, anyway. What I liked was when you touched my leg."

"Oh. Yeah," Tai said, apparently unfazed. He looked up at Matt. "That was nice, right?"

"I also liked when you licked my nose earlier."

"I'd like that too. It must be pretty special to have me do stuff like that."

"It'd be more special if you aimed a little…lower," Matt said, kneeling down on the floor next to the brunet.

"Stupid kids…" some guy said as he came out of the convenience store and nearly fell over them.

"Somewhere lower, huh?" Tai asked, ignoring the grumpy man. "Like…here?" Tai leaned in close to Matt's face and sucked on his chin.

"What? Get off of me Tai," Matt said, laughing.

"Not low enough? How about…here!" Tai attacked like a smooth, nice smelling bullet, his hands finding Matt's armpits and tickling him into floored submission.

"Stop stop stop!"

"Stop? Didn't you want this?"

"No no no!"

"Then you need to be clearer, don't'cha?" Tai beamed. "You didn't specify where!"

"Okay, hold up and I'll…I'll…" Matt tried, but couldn't finish due to his laughter. He snorted through his nose, painfully and loudly. Tai laughed even harder and continued his activities. "Look…what you've…done!" Matt complained, giggling.

"What?"

"You…know!"

More customers passed by over time, ignoring their shenanigans. Across from the pair, some older boys sat down with plastic bowls of cooked, instant ramen and lips wrapped around cigarettes. They gave the pair a look. "You're so noisy," one of them complained.

"Yeah, Matt."

"Stop!" Matt finally got the better of his companion and threw him to the side before getting to his feet, grasping the boys arm, and yanking him around the corner of the store and into the relative darkness.

"What now?"

"Kiss me," Matt ordered.

"See, was that so hard?"

"Yes," he admitted. Tai smiled devilishly and pushed Matt up against the convenience store's wall. He leaned in. "You sure you want a dude to kiss you? I know I'm cool, but," he trailed off.

"I've never been so sure of something, you idiot," Matt assured. "How about you? Are you sure you can handle it? You're starting to look nervous. You can't fool me, leader."

"Hmph," Tai answered, closing the space between them with a quick, warm kiss. Matt, his heart exploding in his chest, decided that he may want to do this forever. "The others are missing out. Kissing you is totally better than watching a movie, or whatever they're doing now."

"You said it. Now, how about one more kiss?"

Tai flashed his bright teeth in a grin and touched his nose against the other boy's. "Just one?"

-x-x-x-x-

The others, not only Joe, T.K. and Mimi, but the whole group, were packed into the living room, standing in a circle around the couch where they expected Tai and Matt to be. They were dressed up in black costumes, one per pair, smaller members sitting on larger members' shoulders, and they were wearing huge, flowing wigs of grey hair. "Psst," Davis said, "where'd they go?"

"I don't know. Maybe they went to the bathroom."

"Together?"

"Sometimes it's nice to go with a friend."

Silence. And then, "Should we just wait here?"

"No," T.K. said. "We should definitely search. That would be better."

"But…" Sora said, sounding concerned.

"What?" Joe asked.

"Are you sure they're okay? What if something happened and they left?"

"The kitchen door is locked," Mimi explained, "and we would have heard a front door escape, wouldn't we?"

"What if they were abducted?" a muffled voice asks. Who was that? They sounded like they had hair in their mouth.

"You're being silly," someone else replied.

"But…" The group fell into quiet and, one by one, couldn't help from looking at the T.V., where the horror movie was still playing. The skeletal figure was laying on a bed of purring hair, watching them, eyes unblinking. There was blood all over its face. It seemed to begin to grin until T.K. shot the T.V. to death with the remote. "Phew."

"Let's flip the lights back on. This has been a bust."

Sora sighed, defeated. "Good idea. I feel like getting some air, anyway."

"Does anybody want to go get some more snacks from the convenience store? It looks like Tai gobbled everything up, here."

"Yeah. I'm famished!"

"We should take our costumes off first, right?"

"I'm not gonna," Davis said, confidently. "I mean, think about how funny it would be if we scared someone at the store!"

One nearby pair of friends fell over and onto the couch. Kari rolled from somebody's shoulders and into the open. "Sure, go ahead," she said, tiredly. "I'm gonna just wait here if that's okay. I think I've got hair stuck in my teeth and I need to get it out."

The end.

Gosh. It only took me two or three years to finally come up with an idea for the final part of this little series. I wanted to do a trilogy ever since the first one but I couldn't think of anything I liked til now. Anyway. Thank you for reading. I hope you had fun!

*I didn't check this over as well as I would like, so I apologize if there are mistakes or anything.*