"You idiot!" Mindy grabbed a plate of macaroons and threw them at Boogeyman, who ducked just in time, but had his collar filled with crumbs and shards.
"This was nowhere in the plans, you moron!" she grabbed a pile of books in a fit of rage and hurled them at him. "We might as well just march right back in town and confess right now, you… You…"
"Let me explain…"
Mindy's eyes all but shot lightning bolts. "Jerk!" she tossed the last book at him, and it hit him in the shoulder. It really hurt.
"Take a deep breath, ma'am. You're way off. Let me explain."
Mindy looked at him as if he was a disgusting cockroach, but eventually took a deep breath and sat back down in her armchair. "This better be good."
Boogeyman flipped pages in the Book of Hours. "This thingamajig is useless to us. I knew you were ignorant of this as you hired me for this task."
"Quest," Mindy corrected.
"Whatever; anyway my shoes got dirty," he replied dryly. "As I said; useless. Uuuseless. But that's temporary. And you know… Now that Winter Gates is without the buffer that lets two worlds function, as well as its adorable little curator, the balance of power rests on you." He placed his cold hands on Mindy's shoulders. "And that's gotta feel… amazing."
"Without the Queen present, Mandy's people are doomed. You remember learning in school that the laws that allow mortals and Underworld creatures function together. To break these laws… Well, that's like antidepressants and greasy foods. Apart, mostly harmless. But when consumed together…"
He picked up Mindy's cup tea and one of his trusted poison vials. The "poison" was nothing more than a tooth ache remedy, although known to give weird side effects if the unfortunate user had eaten any stimulants prior. He added a small drop, and the effect was… effective. The tea cup's content frothed, swelled and exploded.
"They become the Folie à Deux of bad lifestyle change in which the results never vary – failure, loss, crisis… Especially without a buffer of some kind… Something to balance it out. Understand?" He sat down and crossed his legs.
"You don't expect me to think for myself, do you, toothpick?" Mindy snapped angrily, like the valley girl princess she was. Boogey groaned.
"Of course not," he said, pretending to empathize with her ridiculous torment. "I only suggest that you give me another chance. Remember, we have a house guest that will be needing a welcome wagon any time now."
Mandy woke up and immediately started coughing. She lay on a white stone floor wearing nothing but a long chemise, in a vast, empty room. She felt drowsy and it was difficult to sit up.
"Hello?" she croaked.
No answer. She crawled over to the wall and held on to it, fighting her way up into a standing position just like an infant. She failed, sunk down to her knees and started rocking back and forth, nauseous.
"Hello? Where am I? What's happening?"
"Oh, you're awake. Excellent."
Mandy's eyes widened as Boogeyman, one of the Winter Gates' most notorious criminals, just walked right through the wall with two equally wanted goons. Boogey was dressed in a custom-made lab coat and carrying a clipboard.
"Where am I?" she repeated.
"You are in Southern Sun, your very own mental hospital. I used to work here, you know. And some of my contacts here agreed that you would benefit from a stay here."
Mandy crawled into the corner and embraced her knees while trying to find out what to do. Boogey sat down next to her. "You have been sick, Miss Mandy. What do you think, nurse Butterbean?"
Butterbean smiled; a deceitful smile, but Mandy could see in her eyes that she was possessed. Mandy blinked slowly; she felt numb as if sleeping.
"Where is my head band?" she noticed her hair being loose.
"We took it away. We didn't want you to try and hurt yourself with it."
Of course.
"I feel honored, well, kinda, to finally meet You, Your Majesty," Boogeyman said and smiled in a similar manner to Butterbean. "It's been a while since I was an accepted attendee at court."
Mandy took a deep breath and replied him with all the pokerfaced dignity she could muster. "And why is that, I wonder? How many more cases of hepatitis have you managed to spread around lately?"
"Oh, I don't know – fifty… Wait, that's not the point!" Boogeyman was angered. "Your silly laws alienated me! I used to be the most terrifying demon and bang, bang! There you were, with your no-bullying-humans policy and anti-terrorism laws making sure no one would ever feel like putting a file in my birthday cake!"
"I'm sure that's not the only reason, you freak. If I'm not all wrong, some of your most heinous crimes include releasing the Black Death on humans as well as the so-called "Vogue" where you possessed young women into eat their kids."
"Husbands," Boogey corrected. "And I did the cooking."
"You're sick." Mandy's eyes were narrow.
Boogeyman snorted and he cracked a twisted smile that gave some sharp teeth fresh air. "Oh, man, I'm such a sucker for flattery. Thank you…"
The Book of Hours lay open at his feet. As it could feel Mandy getting angrier and angrier, it chose to divulge sketch of The Darkness. Boogeyman saw it and picked up the illuminated book.
"So this is your master plan, Your Majesty," he said in petrified disbelief. Mandy glared impudently back, which just enraged him. He lifted her up by the underarms and held her hard back against the wall. "Tell me now."
Mandy turned her face away in disgust. "Let go of me, you deviant!" Her naked foot hit him right in the knee.
"Oh, damn it!" He dropped her, and she stepped back against the wall again.
"I wish you hadn't done that. Nurses?"
Boogey's two assistants, Ghastly and a dark-haired woman better known as Margaret Butterbean, flung the door open. They wore matching nurse's uniforms that looked nothing like the typical ones of the Mandy Dynasty.
Ghastly pulled up Mandy's sleeve and manhandled her arm. Boogeyman retrieved an implement of glass and metal; a needle, and an ampoule with a glowing green liquid from his bag.
"No!" Mandy screamed.
"Oh, why the long face? This will make it all better, tut, tut," Boogeyman wiped her arm with an antiseptic pad and injected her very professionally.
The substance stung like bees all the way from the vein to her central nervous' system, and she groaned in disgust.
"Good girl. Now..."
Boogeyman clicked his fingers, and Mandy saw the lowering of a bundle of harness in different sizes.
"We developed this in my time here. Of course I needed the best test subject for it, and here you are."
"I'll…" Mandy struggled to breathe, "Will… make sure… you… face the… breaking wheel."
"Oh, why can't you see my genius?" Boogey clenched his fists and looked melodramatically into the ceiling. "I am so sick of humans like you and the old cheap tricks of possessing them and scourging them with nightmares and social diseases. It's time for an advance in my profession. Nurses?"
The two 'nurses' grabbed Mandy's hands and feet before lifting her up and securing her belly up in the harness.
He stroked her hair gently and removed it from underneath the harness, so she could feel the cool air on her neck. "Relax now and enjoy the ride, Your Majesty."
Nurse Butterbean pulled a switch and the harness lifted Mandy up. A trap door in the ceiling opened automatically, or so it would seem, and as she cursed Boogey's name the lights in the room started flickering between pitch black and too bright. Mandy trembled and groaned, visions of faces popped out from behind the flashing shadows, but before she could identify any of them, it stopped. The harness stopped pulling as well.
She gasped as she tilted her head to look down; it was apparently no "down", just a bottomless crater of shadows.
"Help!"
The cry was just sucked into nothingness. Her heartbeat however echoed around the place and then the strains loosened from the coil and sent her screaming down the dark shaft. She had never been so scared, not even in the past when facing fears others would die from. Her heart skipped at let four beats and she counted her blessings. What she wouldn't give to be at home again.
The falling sensation passed, and when she opened her eyes, Irwin stood before her offering her a daisy. "Hello, my pet. Long time, no see."
Mandy clenched her fists. "Oh, Boogeyman, curse you!" tears welled up in her eyes. She kicked and kicked and thrashed, fighting the restraints and screaming.
"Mandy." A voice broke through, a voice she had not heard for a very long time. A pair of warm, sweetly scented hands wrapped around hers.
"Mom?"
A tall, blonde woman appeared before Mandy; and it was her mother, though wearing plain clothing and almost no makeup. She smiled kindly.
"Why don't you join us, Mandy? Come back."
"Mom!" Mandy cried out. "Help me!"
The walls of gloom perished and the room started flooding with cascades of water. It filled the area like grain in a silo, and it felt like cool air on sunburned skin. Mandy drifted upwards, but only halfway to the surface, hovering like an odd balloon. The water brushed her hair up and it floated around her face like seaweed in low current.
Before the pressure of the depths crushed her body an entity dressed in black swam up to her and grabbed her hand, pulling her to the surface. By a touch of his hand the harness disintegrated and she was free to breathe.
"Grim?" she coughed.
"Don't worry, Mandy. We'll be home in a second."
"Oh, Grim, it was awful. I thought I was gonna die." She shivered as she climbed out of the tank.
Grim wringed water out of his garments. "Not on my watch." He wrapped her up in her coat, that he had taken with him.
"The forces will be here any minute now to seize Boogeyman. But I need to get you out first."
Before they got to go anywhere, the door to the floatation room went up, and a scary-looking orderly with a straight-jacket in his hands marched in, heading for Mandy.
"Ok, miss Mandy. Time for your feeding."
Grim did not look too rattled. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned to the man.
"I guess no one held you when you were little." Grim looked bored.
The orderly stopped, sunk to his knees and cried pitifully.
Don't be angry at Boogeyman. Maybe he's trying to save Mandy... Sort of?
