THE FIRST OF THE B'S!

Anyways, I'm not going to be posting again for a couple days, I'm going to be in Spain!

Yay me! so check out my other fics if you want, and pelase check the poll in my bio and vote if you haven't done so already.

Thanks guys, enjoy!

Balk, v
- You object to something and may refuse to do it

"I'm not eating them mom!" the ten year old cried, brushing his brown bangs from his face before dropping his forehead down on the table, grumbling to himself.

Jackson Overland pouted as his mother bustled around the kitchen finishing their dinner, putting the steamed fish on a plate to set in the middle of the table, while she dished the vegetables out between four plates.

"Jack, you'd better do what mom says," Emma sang, four years old and always doing as her mommy said. Jack shot her a dirty look, and she shut up immediately, while their father laughed and rubbed his knuckled lightly on Jack's head.

"Hey!" the boy shouted, swatting his dads hand away, but grinning up at the man. They were the spitting image of one another, his father just being noticeably older, with flecks of white peppering his dark hair already.

"You'll do as your mother tells you," he said gruffly, ruffling his sons shaggy hair.

"I don't even like them though," he sighed, staring down at the plate his mother set in front of him, grimacing at the broccoli there on his plate. "They taste like dirt."

"Jack, I've cleaned them," his mother snapped, sweeping her brown hair from her face as she took a seat beside her husband, smiling slightly at him as he took her hand, then snatched at her sons. "Why don't you say it?"

Jack sucked in a breath and sat upright, taking Emma's hand and closing his eyes.

"Grace!" he cried, letting go of his mothers hand and reaching for a slice of bread, but she snatched his hand back and looked at him sternly, ignoring how Emma sat in her own seat giggling.

"Properly," she warned, and he shrank a little under her glare. He didn't want to be sent to bed without supper after all.

"Lord," he started grudgingly, "bless this meal and those who are about to receive it. Amen."

"Amen," everybody around the table echoed, and Jack looked tentatively up to his mother to see her smiling down warmly at him, and he felt a little more at ease, although he still didn't want to eat his vegetables.

"They're going to taste like dirt," Jack muttered under his breath, which made his mother drop her cutlery to the table with a clatter as she rounded on him.

"Jackson, do you know what happens when children don't eat their vegetables?" she asked sharply, and he looked up at her with a blank expression.

"No, what?"

"They become sick, because they don't have the goodness in them, and then because they're sick they get scared and the Bogeyman steals you away in the night to turn you into a shadow. Now do you want that Jackson?"

"No mom," he whispered, looking down at his plate again.

"So even if they taste like dirt, you're going to eat them, because there is no way on God's given earth I'm losing my baby boy."

"I'm not a baby," Jack huffed, but a small smile played on his lips as he shovelled his carrots into his mouth, and lo and behold, they did not taste like dirt. Rather, they tasted like carrots.

As the family ate their meal, they didn't notice the shadowed figure in the window, or the golden eyes watching them, and as Jack and Emma bickered over what had been said at Sunday school, Pitch Black smiled to himself.

He was being pushed further and further into the shadows, his name tarnished and trodden into the dirt. But stories like the mother's were keeping him alive, and even if it wasn't completely right, there was a hint of truth behind her words, and it gave him a small thrill to think that the little boy he was watching now had thoughts of the Bogeyman running through his young mind.

Pitch watched him shudder, feeding from the fears the boy had of a dark man snatching him away, and he shovelled his food into his mouth a little faster.

Something told the Nightmare King that this Overland boy was one to watch, because if his mother's words could strike a sliver of fear into the boy, then Pitch could feed from it. He'd definitely keep an eye on this one.