Kim paused at the landing at the top of the staircase and took a deep, silent breath.
"Definitely a high creep factor in here, tonight!" she thought to herself.
About a minute had passed since they had all confirmed that there was someone prowling the upstairs floor, and per usual, Kim Possible had taken the initiative. After motioning for everyone to remain still and silent, she had nimbly ascended her staircase, the one that she knew like the back of her hand, skillfully avoiding every creak, groan and uneven partition in the flooring.
She turned around and looked down at the foyer at Ron and her brothers; Ron, as expected, looked like he was going to faint, while Tim and Jim (also as expected) looked annoyed as hell, not particularly caring that their lives might be in danger, and only resentfully mulling over the missed opportunity for ice cream.
She forced a smile, gave them all the thumbs-up, and then began to carefully skulk down the upstairs hallway, slowly making her way towards the (now extremely ominous-looking) corner that was a good fifteen feet ahead of her.
"Good thing that Ron and I didn't take in a horror flick tonight" she thought again to herself. "I know that stuff isn't real, but it might have jangled my nerves...and they're jangled ENOUGH as it is right now!" With her eyes focused and her mind clear, she hesitated at the very edge of the corner...and then she hesitated again...and then she hesitated some more.
She couldn't move. At all.
She sighed and faced facts: she was afraid.
Even after multiple encounters with mad scientists, mutants, criminal masterminds, Mr. Barkin, performing death-defying stunts and general weirdness & absurdity that would surely test any sane person's limits, at the end of the day, she was still just an insecure teenager trying to make it in a crazy world that just didn't make much sense.
"It is what it is" she said. "I am just freakin' out, here!"
She closed her eyes, unclenched her tightened jaw and tried her best to center herself.
"Clear your mind, Kim" she reflected, as she felt her heart rate began to steadily climb with anxiety. "Clear your mind and you can do anything. Anything you want to."
But minds are funny things, and they tend to operate independently from their human masters - just like hers was about to do.
Hey, Kim! Remember that urban legend where the babysitter gets a phone call from some lunatic, but it turns out that the call is coming from INSIDE the house? And then later on, she finds all of the kids murdered? Do you remember? What fun!
"Stop it" she thought.
...and then she calls the police, but the line goes dead?
"Stop...IT!" she thought.
...and then the babysitter dies, too! A big scary man with a hook for a hand slashes her throat and then she just SCREEEEEEAAAAAMMMMSSS!-
"STOP IT!" she hissed out loud.
"Stop what?" whispered Tim, who had surreptitiously followed Kim upstairs along with Jim (dragging the pale and petrified Ron behind him.) "Man, you and Ron are BOTH spazzin' out tonight!"
"I thought I told you guys to stay downstairs!" she spat in a whisper that was probably a little too loud to be considered a whisper.
"Yeah, well..." giggled Tim, "I figured since you still sleep with your pandaroo cuddle-buddy, you could probably use all the help you could get..."
If these kids had a death wish, Kim was only too happy to oblige.
She pressed her angry (and embarrassed) face into his now frightened one, and quietly snarled "Okay, tough guy! How would YOU like to go first? Go right ahead! Go and turn that spooky, scaaaaaary corner, and we'll all be right behind you! Just lead the way, Timothy!"
Tim gulped. "Uhhhh...ah...ummmm..." he stammered.
It wasn't often that someone used his full, formal name. And when they did, it usually meant one of two things: no dessert for one week, or even worse - grounding for two...
"Guys..." whispered Ron in a soft, shrill tone, "do you feel that?"
Everyone suddenly noticed that there was a sharp, cold draft coming down the hallway from around the corner. Kim distinctly remembered her mother shutting all of the windows earlier that day, as a rainstorm was forecasted for Middleton later that evening.
She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all. This was definitely a sitch, but this time, it was different. It was one thing to be in extreme danger on the other side of world - in a desert, a jungle, the bottom of the ocean, a devious supervillain's secret lair, or even in the cold vacuum of outer space.
But being in danger at home? At night? Without any REAL grownups to rely on?
It was utterly terrifying.
"It's now or never" thought Kim as she steeled herself. "Enough is enough!"
Squelching her fear, she thrusted her head around the corner of the long hallway. Moments later, Tim then thrusted his head around the corner, comically just beneath Kim's head, followed by Jim's head, and then reluctantly followed by Ron's, making them all look like some kind of bizarre, cartoony totem pole.
But whatever humor there was in the situation instantly vanished at the uneasy sight before them; the window at the far end of the hall had been forced open, the glass pane opened all the way to the top and the screen pried completely off. Outside, it was pure jet black. The night had descended like a dark, heavy blanket and there was no moon and no stars on that particular evening. The sheer lavender curtains, the ones that Kim's mother loved, but her father detested (honey, they look just like UNMENTIONABLES!), were gently billowing in the night wind, as a vaguely threatening peal of thunder rumbled in the far-off distance.
This is just what they had all feared: Visual confirmation. Now there was absolutely no mistaking that there was an intruder in their house that night.
"I p-p-pledge allegiance to the flag...of the United St-States of A-America..."
Kim cocked an eyebrow and grimaced. "Huh?" she said.
"A-a-and to the republic, f-for which it stands..."
Kim spun around and saw that Ron was standing at attention, his right hand over his heart, his eyes glazed over and unblinking as he recited the pledge of allegiance in a dull monotone, looking just inches from going completely catatonic with fear.
"Ron, snap out of it!" she said in a cutting whisper, grabbing his shoulders and violently shaking them, making his head jiggle back and forth like a bobblehead dashboard figurine.
"O-oh, wha-...huh...wha...what happened?" he asked, as he came to, rubbing his head and blinking his eyes. "Owwww...man oh man, I just had the weirdest dream, KP!"
"And we just saw the weirdest crap" said Tim.
"Hicka bicka bizarre" said Jim.
"I dreamed I was stuck in a big, spooky house and then someone broke in, and-oooohhhh..." With a jolt, Ron suddenly stopped short with his remininscence and took in his surroundings as realization kicked in. HARD.
"Awwwww maaaannnn, it's like I never woke up!" he wailed.
"Ron, it's okay! It's going to be okay!" said Kim in a comforting, almost motherly voice. "It was just a dream! Albeit a REALLY short one-"
"Yeah, but we all DIED in my dream, KP! HE KILLS US ALL!"
"Really?" inquired Tim, with a strange level of enthusiasm. "How?" asked Jim.
"With a croquet mallet!" cried Ron.
Kim suddenly felt the kimmunicator vibrate in the pocket of her blue cargo pants, as her brothers buried their faces in their hands with unrestrained laughter. Thank goodness she had turned off the chime and set it to 'silent' hours before, not that her brothers were making much of an effort to be silent themselves.
Wide-eyed and miles beyond paranoid, Ron watched intently as she gingerly pulled the device from her pocket.
"Yeeeeeeeaaaaah, uh, better tell Wade to call the police...AND the national guard...AND the special forces...AND the ghostbusters" he stammered. "AND for good measure, tell him to light a few votive candles and say a few prayers, preferably in Latin or Greek..."
"I think that just calling the police will do, Ron" whispered Kim, reassuringly, as she patted him on the head and pecked him affectionately on the cheek. "I told you, everything's gonna be just fine!"
"Ooooh, maybe we should call the Navy, too", giggled Jim.
"Yeah", said Tim. "Good thing we live right on the water-"
"Shut up, you two!" hissed Kim as she opened the Kimmunicator. "Wade?" she whispered. "Keep your voice down...we've already GOT a sitch."
"Kim?" he whispered, his face completely filling the device's screen, as he had literally pressed it up against his computer monitor. "Are you guys alright?"
"HELP US!" pleaded Ron. "We're all gonna DIE tonight!"
"That, uh, remains to be seen" answered Kim, as she darted her eyes around, making absolutely sure that it was safe to talk for the time being. "Ron and I are babysitting the brats tonight" (Tim and Jim just crossed their arms and smirked at being referred to as "the brats"), "and we're all PRETTY certain that there's a prowler somewhere in our house-"
"Kim, you just might want to get out of there...all of you" whispered Wade, his voice woven with a frightening thread of urgency that chilled Kim right down to the bone.
"Normally", said Kim as she mastered herself, "this is the part where I would tell you or Ron to 'turn down the drama', but it sounds like you've got it turned up for a good reason tonight."
"Oh no, oh no, oh no..." moaned Ron.
"Not even one minute ago" began Wade, "I got a text on the kimmunicator from an unknown number, and it was rea-ll-y-we-i-rd-"
Mysteriously, the kimmunicator's signal was starting to break up, and Wade's frantic visage was quickly replaced with total static.
"Wade?...WADE?!" cried Kim, forgetting to keep her voice down. Just what in the hell was going on, tonight? Things were getting weirder and weirder by the second, it seemed.
Ron and the boys crowded around Kim as Wade's (now terrified) face reappeared on the screen moments later, his voice cracking over the bad reception.
Obviously, he knew something that they didn't.
"The signal's giving out, I think it's being blocked by something!" he whispered, hoarsely.
"Yeah" said Ron, his eyes darting around wildly, looking like a cornered animal about to be devoured by a predator, "blocked by something baaaaaaaaaaad..."
"The-the text, i-t said-" continued Wade.
"Yeah?" asked all four of them in unison, their voices growing tense and nervous.
"j-ust-three w-or-ds -KIM-DAN-GER-TO-NIGHT-"
There was pure static and then the screen died and went black. Total deafening quiet. Kim tapped the screen and vigorously shook the kimmunicator about in frustration, but the gadget had gone completely inactive. Radio silence.
"Yikes" she said under her breath, her normally beautiful, fresh face now drawn and grim.
Ron went ten shades paler, his freckles looking like black stars in a white sky.
The four of them exchanged glances of shock but didn't say a word. They really were in the thick of it, now.
"I need a naco" said Ron. "I need, like, a WHEELBARROW of them right now..."
"Y'know" said Tim, wrinkling his nose and sharply sucking in his breath, "if we'd all just gone out to the ice cream parlor anyway, we could have avoided all of this spooky crap."
"Yeah" answered Jim, worriedly. "And now we probably won't even be able to update our webcomic tonight, either."
"...Webcomic?" asked Kim. "What webcomic? What are you two talking abou-"
"NOTHING." they said, simultaneously.
Kim wasn't being fooled. Even in the midst of danger and fright, there was mischief afoot, and it had their names all over it.
"What...are...you...two...little...MONSTERS...up...to?" she pressed through clenched teeth.
"You guuuuuuuuys!" said Ron, jumping between Kim and the twins and frantically waving his arms about. "Why are we NOT taking Wade's advice and skedaddling the HELL outta' here? For all WE know, there's some big scary guy up in here, with an eye patch, missing teeth and a hook for a hand..."
"Ron, please" said Kim, her anxiety beginning to flare up again.
"Hey, don't forget the peg-leg!" said Jim, impishly.
"You guys!" pleaded Kim.
"...and he's hiding in Kim's closet, or worse, under her bed..." Ron continued.
"R-Ron!" stammered Kim.
Ron started pulling scary faces and then hid his left hand in the cuff of his black shirt, making it look like he possessed a hook for a hand. Tim and Jim started to snort and snicker.
"...And he's just waiting...waiting...for Kim to get into bed and to drift off to sleep tonight..."
"Ron!"
"...and he's patient, too! He doesn't mind waiting...he'll wait just as long as he HAS to-"
"RON, SHUT THE HELL UP!" screamed Kim, completely forgetting all about their imminent peril. Apparently, Tim and Jim had forgotten as well, since they were literally rolling on the floor with crazed laughter, with Jim even pounding his fist on the carpet over the hilarity.
"Thank you SO much, Ron" seethed Kim as she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, incidentally right beneath the large, framed family portrait where she looked just as grumpy.
"Oh, s-sorry KP!" said Ron sheepishly as he thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. "I, uh, I guess I get a little carried away when I've got too much adrenaline shooting through me..."
"And it's funny!" cried Tim, still snorting with laughter. "D-dude, Jim, look at Kim's scary face! Doesn't she look just like our mean teacher from last year?
"Oh, y-yeah!" exclaimed Jim, literally wiping tears of laughter from his face. "Dude, what was her name again?"
Jim frowned and scratched his head as he tried to recollect their so-called 'mean teacher's' name, until his face suddenly lit up again.
"It was...*snort*...it was...MRS. BUTTWELL!"
Tim and Jim completely lost it all over again. Even Ron was starting to chuckle just a little bit, even though he was extremely afraid that Kim might notice.
"Oh, no, Ron, go right ahead!" said Kim, in the frighteningly sweet tone paired with the frighteningly pleasant smile that she had just used minutes earlier on her brothers. "Laugh it up! Enjoy yourselves! In fact, I'll tell you guys what...how about tomorrow, I head on down to the county courthouse, and petition to have my name legally changed to Kimberly Ann Buttwell? How does THAT sound to you g"-
And then the lights went out.