a/n: hey everyone! just a quick announcement informing you that updates will usually not be this swift. i didn't work all week and basically had this chapter done since the beginning. i would love nothing more than to promise you all a new chapter everyday, but i can't. i was particularly happy with the reception of the first chapter and wanted to thank everyone, you guys who followed, and reviewers, since most of my reviewers were actually anons and i couldn't message back. all right, i've been talking long enough. enjoy.
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I don't believe in fairytales. I'm fifteen years old, not stupid. And I know what the Bogeyman looks like. But like I said, there's a six foot tall man I don't know lying on my bed saying he's the Bogeyman, and I'm too scared to even scream.
"Fuck, I'm gonna die," is all I can think to say. Yes, I know zombies and ghosts aren't real, but you know what are? Murderers and serial rapists and baddies that hide in your closet and wait until your whole family's asleep to strangle you with a pair of pantyhose or thong underwear.
"Dude, whatever you heard about me," he begins in southern drawl, licking his sticky, chalkboard chalk white fingers and unwrapping another piece of candy. "It's probably not true.
But those words don't make sense, and neither does anything, so I just stand there and try not to pee myself as I ask, "What are you gonna do to me?"
He snorts. "Wow, what a question. What am I gonna do to a scrawny and gay nerd with a boner for a totally supernatural dude sucking his fingers? A whole lot'a nothing."
My face is burning, and I'm too slack-jawed to talk, but I don't have a boner.
"Sit down, I'll try to clue you in, retard," he says lazily, but I don't do it. I just keep staring at him. That's when I feel my body moving on its own, and the next thing, I'm sitting painfully on the hard floor. "You're lookin' a little pale there, dude. Try using your hands." My arms reach out slightly behind me until my palms touch the floor, bracing me from falling over backwards.
"Ah, stop!" I cry helplessly. I'm a little freaked out, yes, you try to stay calm when some monster is manipulating your body against your will, and yes, after this, I will believe in the monster thing.
"Sorry. I try not to do that to humans. They tend to get a li'l hot under the collar."
"What do you want from me?"
"Great, you're coming along just fine. Already submissive. 'Make a perfect human slave for my condescending and slightly perverted underworld business."
I know I'm gawking and blushing, but there's no way I can control either of those things. I can't even stop shaking. I know how stupid my face looks, because I can't look away from the mirrored surface of his sunglasses. There's no possible way to see his eyes through them. He's a lot taller than me and his skin is so starkly egg shell pale that it's almost as white as his hair. He has faint little spots all over his face like freckles, and his lips have barely any pink in them, not that I usually notice guys' lips.
"Just kiddin'," he continues, extending a leg and nudging me with his toe. He's wearing all black sneakers, which is a weird way to accessorize a red suit. "What? Cat got your tongue?"
"Y-you're the Bogeyman?" I manage to blurt out. He tosses his head slightly, smirks caustically, and gets up from the bed to approach me on the floor.
"No, don't be silly," he begins in a soft voice, kneeling down so he's right in my face. I want to move back as he cups my chin, want to scuttle away to anywhere but right there, but my body feels frozen again and I know it's because of him... Or maybe it's because of me this time. His grip is icy cold and his teeth are straight and white and weirdly perfect. He still smells like caramel when he breathes in my face. "There's no such thing as the Bogeyman."
I see him open his mouth, flick out his pink tongue, lean in closer to my neck. I don't want him licking me, would you? His saliva might be poison or something, and he probably sucks blood like a vampire. I try to move back or dodge him or anything, but I am still frozen to this spot. "Ok, I get it, you're the Bogeyman, I believe you!" I shout in his ear, not that he seems affected. He's still tasting my neck in a creepily sexy (wait no. Not sexy.) sort of way. I am so not turned on right now, so please take a moment to banish that thought ENTIRELY from your head.
He slowly pulls back, looks me in the eye (well, I think he is) and asks me my name. He smirks, cants his head, and asks, "What's your name, dork?"
"John Egbert," I answer. "Shouldn't you know that? You live in my closet."
"I don't live in your closet," he answers, a bit defensively, I should note. "I can be in any closet I want to, anywhere in the world, whenever I want to. And I am so mad popular in all these exclusive closets that I need my own two fucking bouncers in skin tight T shirts and waxed heads following me everywhere I go. You don't even know how it is to get swarmed with this many groupies all beggin' if they can kiss my class ring or see my tattoo. Shit is stressful, man."
"Sounds glamorous," I respond sarcastically, rolling my eyes. I know he sees this, because he's still inches from my face, but he decides not to acknowledge it.
"Yep. But that's the price you pay for fame and fortune, dude. That's just how it is when you are Dave fucking Strider."
"I thought you were the Bogeyman," I point out wryly, to which he scoffs.
"Yeah, but I have a name. How 'bout the governor? You think his name's just 'Governor' or is he Arnold Schwarzenegger?"
"Ok, good point. But you know, we're not in California, and he's not really a governor anymore..."
"Whatever. Damn, Egbert dork, yack my ear off, why don't you? Gimme the skinny on these human facts. Just let me have it."
"...So now that we've met, you'll tell me what you want, right?"
I meet his reflective gaze bravely, but I'm terrified. I beg myself to wake up, but somehow, I get the sinking feeling that all of this is real. Usually when you realize you're dreaming, you wake up. I'm not waking up. I'm still staring at him, and he's still in my room, in his red suit and black sneakers and white hairdo. His face isn't changing at all, no smirk or frown or anything but just his puffy lips making a line. Suddenly, his hand shoots out, and I flinch, but he stops an inch before he slaps me in the ear.
"Just testing," he murmurs, slowly lowering his hand.
"...Testing what?" I mumble back, feeling strangely vindicated in his decision not to hit me.
He snorts. "Your reflexes, what else?" he asks sarcastically, but his reasoning isn't as clear to me as it obviously is to him. "Just to see what you'd do. To see if you were... well, you know."
"What?"
His lips move to whisper a solitary, one syllable word, but at that moment, I hear footsteps trundling up the stairs, stopping every so often as if to listen to something. And then I hear my Dad's voice call out.
"John?" he asks. "John, who are you talking to?"
Dave Strider, the Bogeyman, turns his head at me, and I see him smirk. After that he's gone. There's no crappy ninja smoke or anything, he just sort of disappeared like a bad special FX in an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Then my dad appears in the doorway in his slippers and his bathrobe, his pipe halfway to his lips like he got stuck that way at the bottom of the steps, or whenever he first started hearing me. Talking, presumably, to myself.
"I'm talking to him," I blurt out, pointing daftly to my closet, "you know. The Bogeyman, the zombie."
"Champ," he begins slowly, carefully, fingering his five o' clock shadow in an irritated way. "Do you want to see a psychiatrist?"
"No, Dad."
"Then we're not going to talk about the monster anymore. We're not going to talk to the monster. You understand, right son?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Good. Sleep tight, John."
"G'night."
I sit as still as a painting until he leaves, and not like one of those talking ones in a Harry Potter movie. I don't breathe until I hear his own door close, the shuffling of his feet fade into silence. Then I whip my head around and glare at the presence who has finally decided to show up behind me, his thick eyebrows raised high above his mirrored shades. "Was that... a dad?" he asks, and I can't figure out if he's being ironic or serious.
"You need to leave," I snap, snatching at him, but he slips through my fingers like smoke and reappears on my bed, eating caramel again.
"Johnny boy, I thought we were going to strike up a deal."
"You heard him!" I hiss, standing up. "I'm not going to see a shrink, ok?"
"Yeah, yeah, enough of your petty problems." He has licked the candy until it's golden sludge, dripping off his fingers and making a mess of my bed. "Can we talk about mine?"
"What could you possibly want from me?" I don't want to shout with my dad in the next room, but I am just exasperated by him.
"First of all..." he begins, pausing while he continues to eat, unwrapping every caramel I had until he has eaten every one of them. "Candy."
I look at him, wondering what this guy's problem is, when he is going to burst into bouts of hysterical laughter over the fact that he is trolling me so hard. But no, he's still just waiting expectantly for my reply. He is poker face with a capital P. When he doesn't get one, he just moves on without missing a beat. It's like he has no regards or concerns for my opinion, and as rude as it is, it's actually making him seem really cool.
"And a place to stay." He is now kicked back on my bed, arms folded behind his neck, sunglasses reflecting the overhead light and staying perfectly impenetrable.
"That will not work. Absolutely not. No, no, no!"
"Cool it, dude. Daddy won't know a thing, I swear."
His head is now angled towards me, platinum blond hair tumbling onto my pillow. This is the first time I feel like he is really looking at me, but of course, that's probably bullshit because I can't tell what he's looking at anyway. I'm just considering things, how I'm not going to wake up, how this... person? Monster? Demon? In my bed has some kind of otherworldly mind control powers or something. I wish that things would just go back to the way they were, that I was back in Maple Valley, and I think how stupid I was to hope I got to live in a haunted house someday. I wish Dave Strider, the Bogeyman, was just a bad dream. I wish he was gone.
I try to still my shaking hands and take a deep breath. "What if I say no?"
For a moment, he still stays unmoving on my bed. He doesn't speak, doesn't even seem to breathe. Under all the ostentatious red fabric, I can barely see his chest rising and falling, and for a second, I think he's fallen asleep. In the next one, he's behind me, grasping my arms in a vice grip and holding me up so I'm barely able to touch the ground on my tiptoes. I feel his cold, sticky lips on my neck as he whispers the words, "You won't."
He lets go before it has time to hurt and lets me fall on the floor loudly, standing in front of me with his arms crossed over his chest. I wasn't about to argue any more despite the fact that I wanted him away from me, so I just gave him my most resentful glare as he looked down at me, seeming disappointed.
"You're not like other humans..."
"What do you mean?"
"...Lemme ask you something."
"Ok, I guess so."
"Why aren't you scared of me?"
He's taken his glasses off. His eyes are preternaturally vermillion and more brilliant than any star I've ever seen in my life. I feel my shoulders go up and down as I just stare into them, sort of mesmerized by the color. "I'm just not."