Chapter 9- Home Truths

Dust swirled up into the air, circling like leaves on an autumn day as something disturbed the abandoned toys beneath the bed. A little boy, no older than six or seven, was led into the room by his mother, whining that he wasn't tired and therefore didn't need to go to bed. His mother answered that it was late- nearly nine o' clock- and that he should do as he was told. Brushing back a lock of wavy, auburn hair, the lady lifted up the covers, (which were decorated with numerous blue boats sailing on a white ocean) and tucked her son into bed. She kissed his forehead and smiled.

"Now, Tommy, go to sleep."

"Bu…bu…" The boy pointed downwards worriedly, looking up at his mother with wide eyes.

"There's nothing there, 'cept for a few old toys and some dust-bunnies." Randall listened to this sentence with resentment; why couldn't kids clean under their beds, for pity's sake? It made trying to get back to the Monster World a hell of a lot harder since, instead of just having to deal with being in a confined space for a torturous length of time, he also had to stop himself from sneezing and coughing. His throat tingled as he took a deep, soundless breath, and he swallowed.

"Bu' Mummy!" the boy whimpered, screeching slightly at the predicament of his mother leaving the room without checking beneath the bed.

"This is getting silly," his mother replied, rolling her eyes. "There's nothing there!"

"MUMMY!" Randall, only a few inches below the bellowing child, winced. "MUMMY!" Tommy called again, tears welling up in his eyes. He kept saying 'mummy' relentlessly, gripping onto the side of his bedcovers and shaking it up and down as he yelled. "There're scary things there! There are, there are, THERE ARE!"

"Okay, okay, shush," his mother whispered, looking behind herself; her husband was meant to be fast asleep in the next room- he had just had a very long day and felt like going to bed earlier than usual- and at this rate, he would be coming in to wonder what all the commotion was about. "I'll check for you, alright? But you're six years old now, Tommy; you should be beginning to grow out of all this 'monster' rubbish. She kneeled down, lifting up the bedcovers that hung over the mattress's edge, and sighed at the sight of a few old, forgotten toys and some scarily large dust-bunnies.

Randall held his breath.

"See? There's nothing there." Julia gave her son a stern glare. "Now go to sleep." She walked out the bedroom door, making sure to leave it slightly ajar so as to let a shaft of light from the hallway lamp spread over the bed, and walked down the hallway, wanting to check on her husband. As she went on her way, she slowed a little, taking a small piece of paper out of the back pocket of her jeans, and fingering it thoughtfully. It had the number of a psychologist on it- a number that she wasn't willing to dial just yet.

Randall turned back to his usual shade of purple and opened his eyes. He felt ever so relieved- the last time someone had caught him in their child's room…

He shook these thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on the plan. Patterson was in about the same position he was in except for being a house along. They had tried nearly all of the houses in the neighbourhood, hoping for a Scarer to come through one of the closet doors doing what Scarers (at least, most Scarers) do best.

This bed was by far the worst. Randall felt like retching at the sight of a half-eaten beef burger barely inches away from his upper left arm, and by his other side was something that the lizard-monster could only identify as a pile of brown sludge topped with a frog's leg. Sure, that didn't make any sense at all, but he would rather think of…whatever it was as a pile of brown sludge topped with a frog's leg than applying the other ideas he had. There was also a distinct, musty smell under there. Trying hard not to breathe in, Randall moved a few objects- toys and such- away from his torso as to give him a little more dearly needed space, and shook his head.

Tonight was just another one of those nights, wasn't it? Another one of those nights where Randall would wait and wait and wait until he would eventually fall asleep and when he would wake up in the morning he'd have horrible cramp down his left side. Yeah, he could feel it. Like all of those other wasted hours spent under children's beds, this evening was to be unsuccessful.

Then, right on cue, there was a scream. But this scream seemed muffled, distant- which was exactly what it was. Randall felt like just suddenly crawling out from under the bed, but he felt that it would be best to see what Tommy was going to do, since it wasn't actually Tommy screaming.

The boy sat up, (Randall knew this because the under-layer of the bed above him lifted up slightly) and then slowly slipped out of the warm protection of the covers, (and, once again, Randall knew this because of movement of the under-layer; this time it was raised slightly) shuffling across his room carefully and peering around the doorframe. Randall stuck his head out from under the bed, relishing the fact that he could now breathe in air without a whole bunch of other not-so-nice things going inside of him in the same way, and blended into the background. The scream had stopped and Randall could hear the babbling of humans. He followed Tommy as he went to the next room along- his younger sister's room- but stopped at the doorway of this smaller space.

"Shush, Terrie, there's nothing there!" one voice said- that of Julia. Another, lower and male, was a lot more stern.

"This crap is really bugging me now, so shut the hell up and let me get some sleep!" The man stormed out of the room, nearly knocking Randall over, and leapt down the stairs, obviously opting for sleeping on the sofa instead. Terrie had begun to blubber.

"Daddy just wants to get some sleep, that's all honey." Julia lifted the blonde-haired girl up, also taking hold of Tommy's hand, and led them into her own bedroom. Terrie's pig-tails continuously swirled around like propellers as she was carried- the girl was now wide-awake and panicking.

Randall snuck into the room as the others left, keeping himself invisible as a precaution. He looked at the purple closet door longingly, feeling disappointment settle in his stomach. He had been so close

Staring at the golden doorknob, Randall imagined his own hand reaching towards it, gripping its shiny, smooth metal, twisting it roughly and opening the door to reveal a Scarefloor at Monsters, Inc. And he would leap through it, finally free…Of course, he would have to tell whoever the Scarer was at that station to keep the door activated so he could go and fetch Patterson, which had been, in all honesty, the only real hitch in their otherwise well-oiled plan.

He didn't try the door. Maybe it was fate or something, but somewhere in his extensive mind a little voice told him not to. And before, when he had ignored his conscience, things had always seemed to turn out for the worse, so he therefore decided to do something new. After a final, long gaze at the door, Randall turned and strode out of the room. Everyone was settled now- Julia and her two children were sound asleep, and her husband had finally managed to relax downstairs on the sofa.

Randall felt a slight pang of hunger shoot through his stomach, and so slowly climbed up a wall by the stairs rather than actually going down the stairs themselves- they creaked like the metal man from the Wizard of Oz- carefully pawing his way down. His feet fell down onto the ground softly, and he took a left, heading straight to the kitchen.

It was a small kitchen, designed for convenience rather than style, and was, at this time, dark. The kitchen led straight onto the main sitting room where the children's father was sleeping, and so Randall was sure to take his time and do things properly. Cautiously, he reached forward to the fridge's peeling plastic handle and opened its door, his pupils growing small at the sudden burst of light. The fridge was nearly empty- a great disappointment to Randall, since humans seemed to nearly always notice any food that went missing in a half-empty fridge compared to completely forgetting what they had bought in a full one.

Suddenly, a few rooms along, the family's dog began barking. It growled and howled, causing the man in the next room to get up, swearing and spitting. Randall watched, intrigued, as the man entered the room in which the dog had been making such a fuss, and quickly ran out again, screaming and wailing. The dog, of course, didn't shut up.

This room was a spare bedroom- not slept in- and was the only room in the house that Randall had thought not to explore. He also saw no point in waiting beneath that bed, since as there was no child in that particular room, a portal for the closet wouldn't have been created. He had just stuck his head through the door one evening, gave the room a once-over and decided that this room was of no use to him. Tonight, this theory was to be proved so wrong it was practically ironic.

There came another scream, a little more high-pitched than the man's, and a low, stern voice. Randall couldn't make out what was being said, but he was incredibly curious and knew that at some point that evening, he would find out. Taking his time considering the dog, Randall stepped forward, gritting his teeth. His past experience with dogs hadn't created the most pleasant of memories, so being careful was his top priority at that moment. The dog's barking stopped abruptly only a second before Randall peeked around the door, and there was a bit of a scuffle from within. This made Randall have doubts about whether or not entering this room would be a safe or sensible thing to do, but he figured that since a lot of decisions he had made in his life were as far from safe and sensible as Sullivan was from clever. (This thought, inevitably, made him really want to grin and scowl at the same time.)

Slowly, slowly, slowly, he pushed the door open, his eyes blazing with such hope never seen before in such a withheld monster. The voices he heard from within carried on as usual, signifying that they hadn't noticed him, and so Randall stayed where he was, in perfect view of the two figures before him. He would have to hurry up though- the rest of the family would probably be down in less than minute upon hearing what the father had to say about what he had seen- or what he thought he had seen.

There was a distinct lack of light in this room, and so the couple could not be seen very well apart from their outline. From what Randall could make of them, one was quite short with the other a little taller, and one had spikes lining their back- the taller one. The other had a hood of some sort that was quickly rising and falling with shock.

"The dog's dead, so go get on with it, alright sugar? There can't be any delays- the boss is already climbing the walls coz of that incident, so you'd better be on your toes."

"Well after that, I'm not sure I even want to be working for him anymore!" the second replied in an uptight whisper.

"You gotta be kiddin' me sweetheart- no-one wants to work for that tyrant! The guy sure needs some therapy."

"Okay, you go and recommend that to him while I risk my life for someone that I don't give a bleedin' DAMN about!"

"Guess the boss isn't the only one who needs therapy, huh sweety?" The taller one, his voice rumbling, turned to open the closet door. "You just relax and do your job. Nothing bad can come out of this, nothin'!"

"Excuse me, but don't you mean nothing bad can come out of this for you! Because I was almost killed by that animal thing just now, and I bet the second I get going, you'll be sitting down in front of your illegitimately paid wide-screen TV relaxing with a beer in one hand and the phone-number of a prostitute in the other, and you won't even give me a second THOUGHT!"

"Hey, hold your horses darlin'- firstly, I got a lotta work to do when I get back, and secondly, you're not meant to know about that TV, right?"

"Oh, whatever!" The second of the two, who Randall had decided was a girl, strode towards an open window at the sounds of human voices. The first, leaning on the door sleazily, grinned.

"Nice one, toots." He opened the door, revealing a poorly-lighted room beyond, and grinned once more. "See ya later!" The girl pulled back a curtain, letting the streetlight's glow wash over her.

Randall had two choices at this point. He could knock the spiked monster over in a dash for the door and make it back into the Monster World, back home, and fulfil the longing in his heart that been settling there for months. Or, he could stop the girl in her tracks, and fulfil the other longing in his heart that he didn't even realise he had.

He waited one more second, willing the spiky monster to go through the door. As his eyes darted to the other side of his vision, checking up on the girl, he could see that he was half-way out the window. This was it- if he didn't do it now, he would miss the rare opportunity of changing his luck.

Randall jumped out of the shadows, his eyes glittering.

"Zephyr, wait!" The monster in the door gasped at Randall's sudden appearance and quickly stepped through the barrier between the Monster World and the Human World, slamming the door behind him. Satisfied that Zephyr had acknowledged his presence, the lizard-monster turned to his side, leaping towards the door that had only just been closed. He was too late, and as he swung it open, all that was revealed was an inky blackness highlighted by some baseball bats.

Randall sighed. Had he made the right decision, abandoning freedom for, dare he think it, a girl? He turned around, gazing upon her shocked face.

Why bother even asking the question?

"Hey…Zephyr, what are you doing here? What's going on?"

"…Randall…?" The lizard-monster stepped forward, squinting at the light.

"What was all that about-risking your life…?"

"None of your business."

"But-"

"NONE – of your business, alright?" Randall had never heard Zephyr talk so sharply before, and as he noticed that she was trying to squeeze out of the window once again, he strode forward and grabbed her arm, baring his teeth.

"Oh no," he growled- the shock had faded fast- and pulled on Zephyr's arm as she gasped silently. "You're not going anywhere until you explain what the heck's been going on."

"Let's just get out of her first, huh?" Zephyr replied, sounding slightly nervous; Randall could be very intimidating when he wanted to be. "It makes sense," she continued, bartering. "We'll be able to talk without any distractions, and I promise I'll tell you everything." Oh, how many times Zephyr had promised Randall she would tell him everything…And yet, once again, he forfeited, giving in to her soft, hopeful lavender eyes. He nodded, and slowly let go of her. "This way." She slipped through the half-open window, turning back behind herself to make sure Randall was following. He struggled trying to get through the gap- he didn't have the incredibly delicate figure that Zephyr had- but the sound of approaching humans egged him on.

The two of them quickly slithered into the lush greenery, walking straight on for a good two minutes to make sure that no-one had followed them. Randall soon stopped in his tracks as they reached a reasonably-sized clearing, holding Zephyr back.

"We'd better stop; I can't go too far otherwise it'll take forever to fetch Patterson." Zephyr's eyes widened as she swivelled round and gawped at Randall.

"Patterson! The GIT…!"

"You…know him?" Zephyr halted, slowly realising how she was acting.

"I…acquaintance…not really well or anything…high school…"

"You went to high school with him? I'm guessing you weren't the best of friends, then."

"Well, I…He was okay back then, I was fine with him, but then we got the same job at the same company-"

"And things changed." Randall shrugged. "Hey, at least you can blackmail him with, 'you've changed since high school, how could you, you used to be so nice,' etc. With my enemies…They've always been annoying idiots."

"Who?"

"Look, no-one, it doesn't matter. I'm more concerned about what you're doing here, and don't say that it's none of my business because you promised me you'd tell me, and I just can't believe you'd break a promise like that." There was an awkward silence in which the burning smell of trust lingered.

"I can't tell you everything," Zephyr began softly, "simply because I'm involved in one of those organisations that if I started spreading news around, I'd loose more than my job." Randall nodded. "So…fire away."

"Why are you here?"

"I've come to…to find Patterson."

"And what's he doing here?"

"He's researching the habits of Humans."

"In the middle of a swamp…?"

"He's not the only one- we have monsters dotted about the entire Human World."

"Mm-mm. And my I ask why?"

"No."

"Thought so. So," Randall said, looking down at the ground and folding his arms, only looking back up as he continued talking, "who was that other guy, in the Human's house? The one that kept calling you 'sweetheart'?"

"Oh, him? He's just the boss's messenger boy, and because of that, he thinks he's some kind of a big-shot."

"And what do you think of him?"

"To me, he's the equivalent of that giant walking, talking peanut you see on TV that kids worship by wearing pants with pictures of him all over it- loud, obnoxious, and annoying."

"A peanut."

"Yes, well, to be more precise, a walking, talking peanut."

"Okay, a walking, talking peanut."

"Yes."

"Well, I can't say I know what you're talking about from experience since I haven't been in the Monster World for quite a while, but I think I'll just take your word for it."

"How long have you been here, then?"

"Years. I'm not really sure."

"And I guess you've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to get back?"

"Yep."

"Well, here's your chance. You see, I know the next section of doors to be operated, so I know the quickest way to getting back, though it'll take a while to get there."

"Why don't we just wait for some doors to be used here?"

"Oh, of course, you haven't been hearing the news in the Monster World lately!" Randall blinked.

"No…"

"Ah. Right, yes. Well, basically…" Randall gave Zephyr a scrutinizing look. "Basically, nearly all the scream-collecting companies have shut down because of the threat of Human invasion."

"The Humans know about the Monster World?"

"Yeah, unfortunately."

"How?"

"Well…That's another reason why we've got guys like Patterson on guard." Zephyr gave Randall a second to get over the shock before carrying on. "So, only a few areas of the Human World are being used at a time, and I know the next place to be used is a place called England."

"How-"

"Can't say."

"Okay…I…" Randall took a step back. "Are you making this up?" Taken aback by this question, fury rose up inside of Zephyr.

"I've come here to get your butt back into the Monster World, and you think I'm making this up? Talk about ungrateful. Slime-ball." Randall noticed something.

"No, you didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"You didn't come here to get me back home, you came here to find Patterson."

"Oh, you know what I mean!"

"I think you're lying."

"Randall…!"

"And who's the 'boss'?"

"What-"

"You said that that other guy was the boss's messenger, so who is he?"

"I can't say, alright-"

"This is a whole pack of lies…! Ever since this conversation started, you've just been weaving this web of, to be completely honest, bullshit. And I thought you cared." Randall shoved Zephyr aside, pushing some leaves out of his way, when he felt his tail being tugged.

"Randall, wait! Randall! I'll tell you everything, please, just wait!" Randall went on relentlessly, pulling forward nevertheless. Zephyr kept trying to hold him down, but he had a size and strength advantage over her, and this was having its effects. "Randall, you'll die, ya hear me, YOU'LL DIE!" Finally, the lizard-monster stopped, glaring at Zephyr with fiery eyes.

"What are you talking about?" he growled, giving the girl one last chance.

"They're coming to kill you, I swear!"

"What!"

"The boss's henchmen- you keep ruining his plans, so he wants done with you once and for all!"

"…Plans…?"

"The machine, when you were kids…The machine Cy built…"

"How did you-"

"You've got to believe me," Zephyr gasped desperately, "because I care about you SO much and…I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you…" There was a pause.

"Where's England?"

"Psst. Psssssssssst." Patterson turned to his left at the hissing sound coming from…somewhere. He moved a few toys out of his way, his hand slipping on an open pack of cards, and shuffled forward, the bedroom window coming into clear view. Randall was sitting on the window ledge, head resting on hand, looking very nonchalant. "Took ya long enough." He slipped down into the room, holding out a hand, reaching under the bed. "We gotta get out of here before the kid catches on, and don't worry- he's downstairs raiding the fridge.

Patterson took Randall's hand and emerged from under the bed, covered in dust. "Why are we leaving so soon? Have you found an active door?"

"Technically, yes, but we're not going through it since it closed before I could do anything. No, instead, a friend's gonna take us somewhere she can guarantee has activated doors. C'mon." They both crawled out the window, falling to the ground below, Patterson looking bewildered and slightly frightened all the while, but as Randall helped his friend up off of the ground, all of his questions were answered.

"Zephyr Stefani? What on earth are you doing here?"

"I'd like to ask the same, but, to be honest, I don't give a damn. All I really wanna say is that I know how to get back into the Monster World, and that I'm gonna go back into the Monster World, and if you wanna come with me, you follow me and you trust me, alright?" Patterson thought long and hard before giving in.

"Of course."

"Randall's already agreed, haven't you Randall," Zephyr said as though talking to a child, "so I guess I've got the go-ahead, hmm? Though, you know guys, the journey to England isn't going to be easy. We've got a week to get there until the doors are used, and I'll tell you now- the reason we're going there rather than some other place that's closer is because going somewhere closer inevitably means either getting there within…" She looked up at the sky. "…three hours or so, or getting there and then waiting a couple of months before a door's activated. Therefore, England is the only place at the moment that I'm willing to go to."

"So…" Randall started, a question arising. "What's the rest of the Monster World doing for energy without scream?"

"They have reserves, just in case."

"And how long-"

"No-one knows exactly, though approximately, we've got about nine months, which is why we're trying to confirm the fact that the Humans aren't invading- we'll be able to get the scream companies started up again and get the energy rollin' in." Randall nodded.

"Yeah…I know what it's like to live in a place with no scream. It's hard, but it's possible. At least, for them. Personally, I don't think the rest of the world could cope without scream. They're too stupid." Zephyr smiled as she led the way to the closest road.

"You said it." She looked about herself. "Now, all we gotta do is hitch a ride and get out of this dump…"