He's baaaaaaack~
Ch. 3, Being Naughty
Ruby was readying to shriek for help when the clown grabbed her by the throat. She clawed wildly at his hand, her feet pushing for purchase until he lifted her just high enough to leave her socked toes brushing the floor.
"No," she gurgled, her heartbeat pounding in her face. She saw the clown's smile stretch, the way his greasepaint crinkled around his silver eyes.
"Yes," he said, his deep voice rumbling with something that sounded like yearning. He leaned in close to her hair and drew a deep breath.
Ruby fought until her vision blurred and her lungs threatened to burst. Her nails raked at the clown's hands, and she could feel a sticky substance running down her arms. It was too cool to be blood, but her other senses were betraying her; the room was growing unbearably bright, and she couldn't hear her heels kicking against the door anymore.
She suddenly felt weightless, and then the world faded to a comfortable dark.
Jack drank deeply of the girl's pain and fear, slaking his thirst. It had been a good while since he'd last indulged, and, while she certainly wasn't a child, this girl was enough. He ran his tongue over his wicked teeth, wishing that those things that gave him true nourishment were physical and able to be chewed.
"Kuh," the girl said. It was a soft sound, produced more by the flexing of her throat than by air escaping. Jack ignored her and continued feeding. He knew he was pushing it if he wanted to keep playing with this one, but the longer he fed, the more he found he was enjoying himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd fed from anything but a child. The little ones' fear satisfied the abysmal anger and hate inside him; it quenched those emotions and cleared the blackness in his brain when he felt himself beginning to slip. This, though… This was different.
He'd fed from adults before, parents that found him as he was nailing their children to walls or playing in their entrails. He killed some of them, too, but their emotions were rarely satisfying enough to be worth the effort. This girl, this Ruby, however, was so very different. Adult though she may be, her terror was sharp. She was afraid for herself, but there was more than that.
She was afraid for the ginger brats.
Jack opened his eyes and cut a glance at his new playmate, surprised and disgusted by this realization. The girl had finally drawn blood with her little nails, but her gaze was unfocused and her face was swiftly turning a bruised color.
He flexed his long fingers around her throat, cheating his grip a little to give her some air. He had meant to earlier, but he'd been so distracted. The girl didn't suck in a breath the way he expected, and so he loosened his grip further. The girl's fingers slipped away from his hand, and it wasn't until Jack finally brought his face close to hers to see what game she was playing at that he realized her fear had dissipated.
Apprehension crept over him.
"Sweets?" he said. He let go of her throat to hold her by the shoulders, and then gave her a little shake. Her head lolled to one side, and spit dribbled from her lips; they were swollen and a dark blue. Jack's apprehension turned to alarm. He had waited too long to let her breathe.
He shook the girl again, but she stayed limp, and when he pressed an ear to her chest, he heard nothing. He blinked in disbelief.
He had killed her.
Jack released the girl. She slid down the door and crumpled unceremoniously at his feet, her purple face turned upward. The sight filled him with a rage he hadn't known in a long while.
He had expected to get so much more out of his new playmate. She was a fighter, but her fear had been exquisitely strong anyway. She truly loved those children she looked after; her fear for their well-being was stronger than for her own.
How fantastic it would have been to manipulate that.
"Damn it," he hissed.
Possessed by a sudden desire to hurt something, Jack grabbed the girl up by the throat again. He gave her neck a vengeful wrench; the bones snapped easily, and he let her thump back to the floor.
He would have to find a new playmate now, unless he wanted to slip. He didn't want to go back to the ginger brats; they would only remind him of the girl. He would have to find someone new, some lonely child with no friends or no parents. He would have to convince them to not be afraid of his long claws and sharp teeth.
He would have to convince them that he was their friend.
Jack's black lips curled at the thought. He looked down at the girl again, and his hatred at the idea of seeking out another child to replace her with began to direct itself inward. He had ruined this. If he hadn't been so careless, he could have played with this girl for days. Weeks. She could have been something truly special: a playmate who could play his games properly. He had planned so many wonderful things.
Perhaps it would be better to slip for a little while.
Jack pushed his hands despondently into the endless pockets of his trousers, hating himself more and more. With a thought, he summoned the wooden box from upstairs into one of his pockets, intending to start his search for a new child immediately. However, when the box manifested in his pocket, he heard a small clinking sound. He felt around for the source of the noise, then withdrew something cold and smooth.
It was a syringe. Jack squinted as he held it up to examine, watching with vague interest as the dark liquid inside it seemed to creep with a life of its own. It looked oddly familiar, but-
The memory of how he had acquired this thing and what it was meant to do hit him in such a rush that the syringe almost popped out of his claws. He burst into shrieking laughter at his own forgetfulness, setting the windows of the house to rattling. How wonderful his eyeless friend was! He had entirely forgotten about the gift, and perhaps intentionally; he had never intended to use it on his playthings, for what a waste that would be.
But this one was different.
Ruby woke slowly, her mind slogging to consciousness as though she'd been drugged. Breathing hurt, like her lungs couldn't expand far enough to take the air in, and her neck was painfully stiff.
She opened her eyes and saw that she was in her room. Sunlight filtered weakly through the window, and she could hear birds. Thunder rumbled overhead.
She tried to sit up, and immediately cried out as a heavy ache flooded her body; it was as though every inch of her had been savagely beaten and bruised. She flopped back against the bed, light bursting before her eyes as her head connected with the pillow. Her lungs strained against her shallow breaths.
"Oh, god," she whimpered, her eyes welling with tears. She couldn't turn her head, and so she sought her cell phone blindly, her trembling fingers aching as they slid across the sheets. She didn't understand what had happened to make her hurt like this, but she knew it had something to do with the clown.
That fucking clown.
"Ah, ah, ah," she gasped as her fingers bumped into what felt like her phone. The sudden contact was excruciating, feeling more like she'd bludgeoned her fingers with a bat than merely bumped them against something. She forced her throbbing fingers to curl around the phone and dragged it, inch by painful inch, in front of her face. When she pressed her thumb against the buttons, she sobbed.
"911, where is your emergency?"
"1409," Ruby gasped. "Willow… Willow Creek. Please-"
"Could you repeat that, ma'am?"
"Will… Willow… Creek…" Ruby wheezed, the pain and effort of holding the phone by her ear causing a sheen of sweat to break out across her skin.
"Ma'am, I need you to speak up. Where are you?"
Black smoke curled in front of her face, and she dragged her eyes to the source of it. A whining cry escaped her lips.
Laughing Jack stepped close to the bed and carefully plucked the cellphone from her fingers. He lifted the phone to his head and said something to the emergency dispatcher, but Ruby couldn't hear it over her own suffering moans. He flipped the phone shut and looked down at her.
"Don't do that again," he said, his voice dangerously low.
Ruby panted as the pain finally began to subside to a more tolerable level. She looked up at the clown, her face wet with tears.
"What do you want?" she whispered. Jack cocked his head at her, his tangled mass of hair falling to the side. He smiled.
"I want to play with you. You know that." Ruby squeezed her eyes shut.
"Please," she said. "Please, leave me alone…"
"That's not how it works, sweets."
The mattress creaked and dipped, and Ruby's eyes flew open. The clown had placed his sharp-toed shoe on the edge of the bed and was resting his arm on his crooked knee.
"You're mine," he said, his silver eyes fiendishly flashing down at her, "and we're going to play for as long as I like. Unless…" He adopted an exaggerated expression of thinking. "I could go play with Zach and Zeke instead…"
"No!" Ruby gasped, and Jack grinned triumphantly.
"So, it's decided!" he said. "You'll be my new toy, and that's that. We're going to play however I like, and if you're naughty," he waggled the cellphone down at her, "then I'll eat the little ginger brats. Got it?"
Ruby nodded stiffly, her lip quivering. Her eyes burned, and hot tears welled out to run down into her hair.
"Now, now," Jack cooed in as comforting a way as his coarse voice could manage. He reached down, and Ruby flinched as his claws stroked her hair. "Don't you fret. We aren't quite ready to play, not with you like this."
"What did you do to me?" Ruby said, turning stiffly away from his touch. The clown rested his chin in his palm, looking as though he were deciding whether to answer her question. He blinked, and Ruby realized for the first time that his eyes appeared to be made of glass. She shivered.
"I brought you back," the clown said at last.
"Back from where?"
"Wherever humans go when they die, I suppose."
Ruby sat up on an elbow without thinking, but the pain that followed was nowhere near what she expected; it had faded to a dull ache. "I died?" she whispered. Her mind whirled, and she vaguely remembered Jack pinning her against the front door. A pressuring hand. Hard to breath. Swallowing darkness.
"Yep," Jack said matter-of-factly, taking his shoe off of the bed. He dropped her cellphone on the nightstand.
Ruby stared at the clown as he withdrew the wooden box from one of his pockets and placed it, almost reverently, next to her phone. Her stiff neck and aching lungs were making more sense as each terrible second passed. She had died? Then how the hell was she here now?
"How did you bring me back?" she demanded, her voice almost bold. The clown had to be lying. She desperately wanted him to be lying. Laughing Jack turned his head to her, and his eyes were suddenly too large for his face. They flashed in the dim light.
"None of your business," he said softly, and Ruby felt every ounce of courage leave her. She shook her head in a silent plea as he crept close and bowed menacingly over her, looking for all the world like a puppet cut from its strings.
"What are you?" he asked, and Ruby stared up at him in terror. She was unsure of how to answer.
"I- I don't-"
"You're a toy," Jack said, looming closer. His eyes had become intensely bright. "You're my toy. Say it."
Ruby trembled underneath the clown. "I'm your toy," she whispered.
Jack blinked at her, the rest of him unnaturally still. He took a deep breath, then, and his eyes closed. "Very good," he said softly.
Ruby looked up at the clown, her hands drawn fearfully up to her chest now. She had unwittingly pulled her knees up, too, and when Jack opened his eyes, his gaze immediately dropped to her exposed lower half.
Ruby snatched the baggy shirt's hem and drew it down to cover herself, drawing a rough laugh out of the clown.
"Modest, aren't we?" he teased, and Ruby's face flushed despite her fear. Jack's grin twisted, and his eyes took on a mischievous glint. "You know," he said slyly, "I know another game we could play."
Ruby's eyes widened in horror as the clown crawled onto the bed with her, his wicked intent clear. He gave a raspy giggle of anticipation and reached out. Ruby cringed and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt a sharp claw trace delicately up the outside of her thigh, and then the hem of her nightshirt was being lifted upward. She whimpered, and the clown gave a hoarse chuckle.
"Stay quiet or I'll bite you," he warned.
The nightshirt slid further upward, baring her thighs and hips, and Ruby clenched her jaw tightly.
A loud banging downstairs made them both jump, and Ruby cried out as Jack's sharp claws sliced into her. The banging redoubled, and then a voice was calling faintly:
"Hello? Ruby? It's Dean. Dean from next door?"
Ruby opened her mouth to scream, but Jack was faster. He had already procured a length of black and white scarves from his sleeve and was stuffing them in her mouth. She fought him wildly, but his long arms kept him easily out of her reach.
"Justine wanted me to check on you. I came over earlier, but you didn't answer."
Jack pushed the scarves further into her mouth with his fingers, and Ruby bit down as fiercely she could. The clown hissed between his teeth and yanked his fingers back. He slapped her hard enough to turn her head.
"Is everything all right? I saw your car out front-"
Ruby gave a muffled cry as Jack scooped an arm under her back and flipped her onto her belly. He tied her flailing arms and legs together with a separate length of scarves, then pushed off of the bed and left the room. As he rounded the doorway, a swirl of black smoke surrounded him.
Ruby stopped struggling as the front door opened. She listened intently.
"Oh! Oh, uh, there you are," Dean said, his flustered voice carrying easily throughout the high-ceilinged house. "Um. Jeez… I was about to call the police. I, uh, saw your car out front and, uh, when you didn't answer earlier I was-"
"Everything is fine," Ruby heard herself say. She almost choked on the scarves stuffed in her mouth. The voice was hers, but the accent wasn't quite right. She prayed that Dean would notice; she wasn't friends with the guy, but they had spoken enough times for him to know her voice by now.
"Oh," he was saying. "Um. Well, Justine just wanted me to check on you. Are you, uh, still here by yourself? I mean, Justine said that the kids are-"
"I have to go," came the Ruby-voice again. The door creaked as though it was being closed, but something stopped it. Dean's voice spoke again.
"Wait, wait. Uh… I need to talk to you. Can we just, like, talk for a second?"
"No. Goodbye." The door creaked again, forcibly this time, and Dean made a surprised sound. There was a slam, and Ruby heard the deadbolt click hard into place. A cloud of smoke burst next to the bed, and she coughed against the sweet-smelling vapors. Jack appeared within the smoke.
Ruby let out a muffled scream as the clown planted his hands down hard on either side of her head. He leaned in close, his sweet breath puffing across her face as he spoke.
"Remember what I said about being naughty?"
Ruby stared up into her terrorizer's white face. She shook her head vehemently, pleading through the gag of scarves.
"Oh, yes," Jack said, his eyes narrowed to silver slits. "We had a deal, and I warned you."
Smoke exploded in front of her face, and she felt the bindings disappear from her arms and legs. The gag, too, vanished, leaving her to choke on sweet smoke.
"No!" she screamed. "Don't hurt them, please!"
But the clown was gone.
Hope you all enjoyed this round of spo0p. I included a little bit of sexiness for you readers that leave substantial reviews. ;o}
