Shaggy had loved me. He would sometimes creep into my room late at night and ask to stay with me, because his nightmares were too much for him to handle alone that night.
No one knew that he had nightmares, no one but me. I'm not even sure what they were about, because I was always too scared that I might make him cry he seemed that fragile. Sometimes I wanted so bad to block my ears and shut my ears and sing at the top of my lungs when he came to me with his trembling lip and watering eyes. Seeing him like that – Shaggy, the strong one, the knight in disguise, my knight in disguise – seeing him that close to the edge almost made me loose my mind right there and then.
But I pulled back my sheets like always, I let him press himself against me and I allowed myself to be enveloped in his surprisingly, no, frighteningly strong arms.
I did get a few hints about what he was dreaming of every night though; Shaggy talked in his sleep sometimes, and one night, I remember him whimpering and begging to an invisible foe – 'No, please don't. Don't! You're hurting her! Stop, PLEASE!' His grip on me became so tight just then that when I woke up the next morning I had red marks across my chest and arms. I'm not sure whom he was dreaming of, but sometimes I wonder if he had dreamt of me, because the next morning was the first time he told me.
Shaggy said he loved me.
He started sleeping with me every night after that.
Isn't it funny how the things that you love the most always get taken off you first? I could have watched the world crumble around me if only I had him by my side every night. Even if he had cried, I don't think I would have cared, because after that night he was my everything.
I had never been attracted to men; had never thought of Shaggy as anything more than a friend, and even after that night nothing had changed. But suddenly I felt compelled to be with him at all times. Like, if I wasn't there, even for a moment, he might collapse, and I was the only one who could put him back together, the only one who could make him smile again. But then again, it might have been the other way around. Maybe I was the one who couldn't survive without him anymore.
I had stopped wearing my jumper by then. Long gone were the days when I was the squeamish bookworm; my jumper had been replaced with an orange singlet, my book with a stake, and my squeamishness was slowly but surely melting into something scarily close to malice. But for some reason Shaggy still brought out the coward in me. I blushed when I looked at him and I stumbled over my words when we were alone.
And then he died. Just like that. Picture this – another day, another mission, another mystery to solve. There was a scuffle with one of the suspects in an old mansion, a candelabrum got knocked over and in the confusion no one picked it up. Mass panic ensues as the flames begin to grow out of control, and I became separated from Shaggy, only to see him bolt towards the lake out the back of the property to save himself from the blaze. A smart move in normal circumstances, but it appeared he had forgotten about the monster in the lake we were there to investigate in the first place.
Shaggy cried out in alarm when he remembered the monster, but it was too late; he was already being dragged to the bottom. Down, down, down he went, down into the dark, dreary depths of despair and forgotten souls. I found the biggest gun in the Mystery Machine and pumped round after round into the unrelenting water, knowing it was pointless, but I was so far gone by then that I didn't even care when Daphne and Freddie yanked the weapon out of my hands and pulled me towards the van, screaming for Shaggy, for my love, my life, my friend, my sanity.
Scooby stopped talking after we lost Shaggy. He just sat in the corner, paws over his eyes, whimpering non-stop. I would have joined him, but Freddie made me sit on the couch like a civilized human being every time I tried to crawl away and curl up. It was almost like he was forcing me to be happy.
No one else understood our loss though; they made that perfectly clear when they came knocking on our door just days later, complaining of werewolves running rampant in a little town called Hellview. Well of course we packed our gear and headed up there straight away, with no plan, the death of Shaggy still weighing heavily on our minds. Numbly accepting their pathetic plea for help was the second greatest regret of my life.