Kim Possible belongs to Disney. This is a work for fun, not profit. A Fan fiction by Six-string Samurai.
Brush with Life
"It was terrible, those eyes…Y-you can't! You can't make me go back in there! Don't leave me alone!"
As Ron had promised, once they'd gotten back to the apartment, they'd eaten, and spent the rest of the night just trying to enjoy each other's company. Kim had finally settled down, letting the antics of the Griswold family take her mind off of the car accident. Eventually, Ron dozed off during the sled scene and Kim rested against him, pulling the blanket they'd been sharing up to her chin. She was warm, and comfortable, and before the end credits roll, she'd joined her boyfriend in the land of nod.
An indeterminate time later, a soft steady sound repeated, carrying on for a good minute or two, until the redhead drifted back to consciousness. Kim glanced around the living room bleary eyed, trying to figure out what had woken her. On the Television, the movie had returned to the main menu, and the little animation was playing on a loop, but that wasn't the sound she'd that had bothered her. Sitting up a bit, the redhead waited, hearing nothing over the sound of the DVD's music. Digging for the remote, she shuttled the volume down, straining her ears. But, whatever it was, had since stopped. From outside maybe, she wondered, eyeing the shut blinds.
It was easy enough to see the faint glare of the streetlamp poking through the slots in the wooden blinds, since they'd turned off all the lights to watch the movie. The bright lamps lining the street where mostly the reason she'd put up the blinds in the first place. Waiting, she convinced herself that it was likely a passing car that had woken her. She knew it had happened often enough, over the last few months that they'd been living here, then a longer sound, almost like something was dragging against the rug. It was coming from the hallway.
Sliding back down, Kim wracked her brain, desperately trying to think of what it could be, and her only consolation was the fact that the dragging was receding and not getting closer. Nudging the blond with a sharp elbow, Kim attempted to prod him awake. Under normal circumstances, she would have gotten up to go check herself, but the memory of a rail thin, cracked and bleeding arm reaching out of the snow to snag her ankle was too fresh in her mind, no matter that Ron hadn't seen it, convinced she'd been imagining things. "Wake up, Ron. There's something wrong."
The only response she got was a murmured, "Go back to sleep, Ron-man's too tired to play."
Kim elbowed him in the side a little harder, but he just rolled over and jerked most of the blanket away, tossing Kim off the couch in the process. It was just enough to rile her up, the faint spark of anger overriding her irrational fear. "Fine, don't think I'll forget this," the redhead huffed, picking herself up.
By the soft light from the TV set, Kim navigated around the small coffee table, and across the carpet to the entrance of the hall that lead down to the three rooms at the end. Still clutching the DVD remote in one hand, she brandished it like a weapon close to her chest, reaching around the corner to fumble for the light switch. For a brief moment, the hall was covered in 60 watts of track lighting, and then just as quickly the lights snapped and fizzled out. "You've got to be kidding me," Kim held her makeshift weapon in a death grip, seriously contemplating just dragging Ron off the couch with her, sleeping or not.
Setting her jaw, she made up her mind to just get it over with, if she could take down megalomaniacal villains bent on world conquest, she could deal with a prowler in her home. After all, wasn't this her world on a smaller scale? What kind of hero was scared of a little darkness anyway?
Kim made it a few steps into the corridor when the lights recessed into the sides of the ceiling hissed and cracked to life, blinking then going back out, killing her night vision in the process, before winking back out. The process repeated a couple more times, resulting in a bizarre strobe effect that started to give her a headache. Between the spurts of light and dark, she didn't see anything out of place, or any indication that she wasn't alone.
Despite the lights, which had to be a problem with the fuse, she was already beginning to feel a little foolish, just her mind playing tricks on her like Ron had already said. She looked down at the remote, "This is stupid," reaching back she flicked the light switch, effectively killing the flickering lights. The last thing she needed was the bulbs to blow, or start an electrical fire.
Down the hall, one of the doors shut with a sharp click, instantly drawing Kim's attention.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she tiptoed down the hallway, silently gliding across the carpet until she reached the last door on the left, the only one that was all the way closed; her own bedroom door. Frowning and narrowing her brow, the teen hero closed her fingers around the knob, raising her other hand up to defend herself should the need arise. Kim eased the door open a little, taking a peek through the small crack.
From her vantage point, she could just make out the foot of the bed, and the edge of her vanity. Ron must have left the blinds up again, she realized, because the room was all awash in faint light that streamed in through the window on the far side across from their dresser. Outside the snow had long ceased, and the clouds had thinned, allowing slivers of moonlight to sneak through.
She stood there, silent and barely breathing, peering through the door for almost half a minute, while she waited for something, anything, out of the ordinary to catch her attention. Kim just started to feel herself calming down when a section of the sheets shifted, pulling up away from the foot of the bed. Biting the inside of her cheek to stop from gasping, Kim widened the door just a few hairs, until she could get a better view.
With the light from the window slicing across the door, Kim's lone visible eye was illuminated as it widened for a split second, focusing on the large lump in the center of the bed, covered by a mass of sheets and blankets. Gone was the thought of a hidden attacker, or an ambush from behind the door. The whole of her sight narrowed to the occupant of the bed shifting around sporadically beneath the linen.
Who the hell broke into someone's home and snuck into their bed? Kim was incensed at the sheer audacity, and momentarily forgot herself, pushing past the door and into the room. Her only thought was that this had better be some kind of joke, a stupid prank of Ron's, or there was going to be an ass kicking like none other. If it was Ron's idea, two ass kickings would be in order.
Grabbing the edge of the covers, Kim yanked hard, tearing the comforter off the bed along with several sheets. The accusations and threats she had prepared died an ugly death on her tongue as her mouth suddenly dried up, her breath catching in her throat. "Geh," she choked out, stumbling back with numb fingers as gorge threatened to rise up past her throat. The remote fell from her hand as she backed into the wall in an effort to put space between her and the bed.
More than anything it was the smell…the scent of death and baked flesh, that rose cloying from the blackened and twisted thing. Flecks of black powdered and streaked the bed all around what she suddenly realized had to be a body. Barely recognizable as such, it twitched, and a thin stick that might once have been an arm reached out toward the redhead, clawing the air in lethargic swipes. From its head, pits darker than black, where eyes once had been, seemed to meet Kim's horrified stare.
For a fleeting moment, Kim thought it might vanish, a phantasm of some forgotten nightmare, but it didn't. It rolled onto its side, painfully slow, and pulled itself across the intervening space with that trembling arm, dragging inch by inch over the king-sized mattress closer to her. Those twin black holes, never wandering or wavering, locked onto her with a horrible intensity that squeezed at Kim's chest, crushing the breath in her lungs.
Kim knew with a terrible certainty that it was going to try and touch her with that hand, and if it did, she was going to start screaming.
"Kimmie," a rasping whisper came from just over her shoulder, an old name, cold and forgotten, one that burned at the edges of Kim's mind. It was a long gone flicker of a memory, and a jagged thing that tore instead of tickling. Softer, it came again, all but daring her to turn away from the thing on the bed. "Kimmie."
"Pumpkin…," the third call could not be denied, and the redhead tore her eyes away from the bed, turning in what felt like slow motion, to look toward the voice.
Maybe that was her mistake.
The moment her eyes broke contact, thin fingers snagged the front of her shirt, tightening in an iron grip.