Hello! I'm Magnifi-Socks (mag-nee-fee) but you can just call me Socks. This is my first real fic for Newsies, actually my first fic for anything. So I'm a little nervous about all this. I have the first three chapters already all written. This ones mainly just the introduction of the characters and all that jazz. Oh, and the title has nothing what so ever to do with the story. I named it at three in the morning, give me a break. Well, on to the story…

A little boy around the age of eleven stood alone in a damp, dark alley. His chocolate-brown hair flew back in a big gust of wind. The crisp wind caused him to shiver as it surrounded him. He wrapped his little arms around him in an attempt to keep warm. It did nothing, for the wind kept pelting itself at his little form.

'Oh, where was the person who he was told to meet? He should have been there over a half hour ago!' The little boy squinted his deep brown eyes to try and look through the darkness that surrounded him. It was no use; the darkness was so thick you could have cut through it with a knife. He had half a mind to take out his pocketknife and try, but he knew that was a dumb idea, for it would never work. So the boy stood in the cold, dark alley all by himself, waiting for the person who had written the mysterious letter to him early that morning. The letter had said to meet him, or her, here at midnight to discuss something important.

After a half hour of waiting in the cold, he decided that no one would show, so he started to make his way out of the alley. It was hard because the alley was full of boxes and junk, so every few steps, he would stumble into something. As he moved closer and closer to the mouth of the alley, the wind started to get stronger and stronger, until soon it was so strong that it caused him to take a few steps back, for he couldn't move forward anymore.

"What's happening?" he wondered. Then, through the loud noises of the wind, he heard a voice softly calling a name. He listened closely and realized that the name the voice was calling was his.

"Zzzzaaaaacckkkkk...Zzzzzzaaaaaccckkk," it said in a soft voice. The wind got stronger each time his name was said.

"Who's there!? What do you want!?" he yelled to the mysterious voice.

The voice didn't answer, but continued repeating his name, and each time, more and more heavier wind was thrown into him. Soon he couldn't take it anymore. The wind was too much for him to try and fight against. He was blown off of his feet and sent flying backwards into something cold and slimy.

The wind stopped dead in its path, and an eerie silence filled his ears. Green, slimy, oozy arms wrapped around his body. He tried to scream, but no words came out. The creature laughed an evil, spine-tingling laugh that made every hair on the boy's body prickle. As hard as he tried to escape the evil grasp, he wasn't strong enough. The creature slowly pushed the boy against itself, harder and harder, until the little eleven-year-old boy was oozed into its green, slimy stomach.

Once the boy was dead inside it, the creature grew five inches taller and eight inches longer. You see, this is how the creature of the night feeds and grows. Its plan is to eat as many innocent life forms as it can until it becomes so large that it can take over the world. That's its goal, and it won't stop until its goal is complete. So beware, for you never know if you might be its next victim.

The End.

"Wow. Great story, Story!" Snoozie said.

"Yeah! You had everyone on the edge of their seat for that one!" Clover exclaimed.

"Why, thank you very much. I did really enjoy making it up, although I enjoy making anything up," Story said with a satisfied smile. "Well, it's getting late. I think it's about time we all went to bed. We do have to sell tomorrow."

"I suppose you're right," Snoozie said. She climbed into her bed, and before anyone could even blink, she was asleep and softly snoring.

Story smiled at her friend. Snoozie did live up to her name, that was for sure. Her long light-brown hair flowed nicely over her pillow, and although you couldn't see it now, her eyes were a cloudy blue color.

Snoozie had to be the most interesting girl in the girls' lodging house in Story's opinion. She seemed to have a mysterious side to her. No one really knew where she came from; she just showed up one day. Many of the newsies had asked her countless times, yet she wouldn't say a thing. Personally, Story thought that Snoozie really just enjoyed making people wonder about her. She liked to see what they could come up with. Story found this rather amusing.

"'Night, Story. 'Night, Mackenzie," Clover's voice said somewhere in the back of her head. Story was pulled back to reality.

"'Night, Clover," she said.

Clover, another one of her friends. Clover had wavy light-brown hair and a sort of light green eye color. She was the same age as Story, fifteen, yet she was about five inches shorter. Clover was probably the funniest out of all the girls. She always seemed to have a smile on her face and come up with some joke. Her jokes tended to be really stupid at times, but that what made them so funny. Story remembered the first time Clover wandered over to the girls' lodging house, looking for a place to stay and some type of job that she could actually get money for without being stuffed away in a dangerous factory. She was so shy that you could barely understand what she was saying because she talked so quietly. But now you couldn't get the girl to shut up, unfortunately.

Story smiled and went to crawl into bed when she remembered something. Mackenzie. She looked over at the little girl, who was standing next to her bed with big emerald eyes.

"Hey, 'Kenzie, you alright?"

"I'm scared," she said in a whisper.

"Of what?"

"That story you told us."

"Oh! Don't be. I made it all up; I promise it's not real."

"Yes, it is."

"Great, you scared the kid," Clover mumbled over in her bed.

"Shut up, Clover. Listen, 'Kenzie, it's not real."

The girl went over to Story. She looked up at her with beautiful eyes and tugged on her sleeve to get her to bend down. Mackenzie leaned over to whisper something in Story's ear. As she did, the girl's tight ginger curls tickled Story's cheek. "Can I sleep with you tonight?" she whispered.

Story smiled. "Of course."

Mackenzie let out a sigh of relief and hopped into Story's bed after her.

Mackenzie had been brought to the girls' lodging house by her grandmother a year before. It was the only place left for her to go because her grandmother couldn't take care of her anymore, and all the orphanages were full. She was an eight year old at the time, but it had been a year since then. For a nine-year-old, she was amazingly street-smart and not so bad at school smarts either. Mackenzie wasn't her real name; it was her newsie name. Her real name was Sara. She was friends with Les, and Les would get confused when people talked about Sara because he wasn't sure if it was his sister or his friend, so he changed her name for her. It just seemed to stick.

One other girl lived at the girls' lodging house who Story hadn't considered yet. And that one would be herself. She lay in bed, Mackenzie next to her, and thought about everything that had happened throughout the day. Then she would pick the least exciting topic and turn it into a story filled with adventure. It was her favorite thing in the whole world to do, make up stories. Story had the biggest imagination in all of New York, according to the newsies. Because of her great abilities, she was an excellent newsie; she could make up great lies and make them sound so real, as if she had been there. Only sometimes, her imagination could get the better of her and the lies seemed very unlikely to people.

Story was the tallest out of all the girl newsies at 57. She had also been around the longest. Story had seen the girls' lodging house at its best and at its worst. There was once a time when the place was so full that there were hardly enough beds for everyone. Now look at it: four girls, how pathetic. Four girls who didn't make a whole lot of money, so how could the place keep running? Sure, the city helped pay for it, but it also used the money that it got from the girls to get better living conditions and luxuries. With four girls, that was pretty hard to do.

So Story had seen it through thick and thin, and she really hoped that it wouldn't close down, because then they would have no place to go. She sighed and brushed some of her dirty-blonde hair out of her green eyes. Story closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, wondering what Andrew was doing right this second.

Well, that's the first chapter. Like I said before, it was really just to introduce everyone into the story. Next chapter is at the boys lodging house where we meet Andrew. If you want, review, if not, don't. Just please don't say something like, "Your story sucks, you should go get trampled by a pig." Then I would feel bad because I love piggies. CTB!

Hobey-ho,

-Socks