No one answers my calls as I step into the darkened hallway. At least a voice doesn’t.

But footsteps do.

Stomp stomp stomp stompstompstomp.

I spin my head, my hair flying like ravens wings as I look in the direction of the stairs all the way at the other end of the dark hall. It resembles a tunnel getting darker the farther you go down it, the footsteps echoing against the walls. I make out a figure at the very end of the darkness, sprinting. Not toward me, but away from me. The creature isn’t out to get me, more like… afraid of me. But what vampire, werewolf, or zombie would be afraid of a worthless rat like me? What deranged psychopathic killer would run from its prey? They wouldn’t. That’s the weird part.

I dash after it.

I do not think. I do not judge. I do not stop.

I only run.

And it feels as though I’m in my dream with the blood, except no one is chasing me. I am doing the chasing.

I am the killer.

I yell for the figure to stop, but they either don’t hear me or blatantly ignore me because they continue to run, down the stairs their boots bang bang banging on the creaky crooked steps and I wonder how they don’t trip and fall.

I reach the stairwell just as they hit the bottom step, catching a glimpse of the dark red hoodie on their back. Adrenaline pounds in my head as I stumble down the stairs after them, my body moving faster than it ever has before. I have to catch them. I just absolutely <i>have</i> to. It feels as though catching them could unlock the secrets of the universe and more importantly, the secrets locked away in my own head.

I reach the bottom step just in time to get a glimpse of them opening the front door. The outside light brightens up the room and they aren’t just a figure anymore. I can see their red hoodie, their ripped and mud stained jeans, their boots. I catch a glimpse of the back of their head, but it’s covered by the hood of their jacket which isn’t red but a light grayish color.

At first I think their hoodie is just oddly colored but then… no, it’s not.

“What?” It comes out in a winded choked sort of breath and I can hardly tell that it’s my voice.

And then it hits me.

Well two things hit me.

First, the fact that the hoodie isn’t red at all. It’s gray, covered so thickly in rusty redish stains that I actually thought it was red.

And second, the floor.

It rushes up to meet me quicker than you can say ‘murder victim!’ and a bright flashing pain explodes in the center of my face, hot liquid bursting onto my cheeks and chin and lips and just… everywhere. It’s everywhere.

I don’t see it but I hear the slam of the door and the shake of the house from the violence used to shut it. My ears ring and a feels like a hammer is being knocked around the inside of my head. I groan, slumping into the puddle of blood I’ve made for myself on the floor.

“Ugh, you suck Gerard. You suck major balls.” I mumble to myself after a moment of lying in my own self-pity. I sit up slowly, swiping the back of my palm against my face, trying to get the blood off but only succeeding in smearing it more into my nose and mouth. I can taste the salt on my tongue; smell the iron in my nose. It makes me almost woozy. I cough sporadically, the blood still leaking from my nose. There doesn’t happen to be any tissues around and I’m assuming there isn’t any toilet paper in the bathroom so I have to strip off my jacket and then pull off my shirt, pressing it into my nose. The draft is chilly, and I manage to slip my jacket back on while simultaneously holding the black fabric to my nasal cavities. I cough again -this time the noise coming out muffled and nasally- as I lean back against the wall next to the staircase. There’s a nail sticking up at the very bottom of the stairs, black and twisted, sort of ugly actually. It juts out of the wood like a tooth, as if the doorframe is a big gaping mouth, with a dark dank inside. It seems appropriate. The staircase is a bit damp and it does sort of smell a little weird.

The jeans that fit snugly on my left ankle are slightly ripped from where they caught on the nail. I curse to myself, knowing Mikey will probably have a hissy fit over the rip. The kid probably had both OCD and ADHD. He was a spazz about that sort of shit.

I look up at the door, realizing that it’s no use to try and chase after the person. They were long gone by now. I sigh to myself. Everything is just fucking perfect. My head hurts, my nose is most likely broken, I could get caught by the cops for breaking and entering, my key to unlocking the secrets of the universe is gone, and I’m in a creepy house most likely full of monsters that are out to get me. On top of that there’s most likely a serial killer out to get me, my shirt is now all bloody, it’s cold, and I can’t remember a fucking thing about my past.

Oh wait.

Oh shit, I’m an idiot.

I jump up from my slumped pity party, dropping my bloodied shirt, and head toward the stairs. They don’t seem so scary anymore because there’s hope! For my memory at least. Maybe not for my living breathing body, but at least I can remember some crap before I get eaten or murdered or whatever.

I climb the stairs as fast as I can without tripping and make a mad dash down the hall into the- no wait. I skid to a stop and turn my head to look at something new. Something I hadn’t noticed before. A huge tarp is tacked to the wall, covering the large gray space between the second bedroom door and the bathroom. I stare up at it, remembering the rustling sound that had went along with the footsteps.

The tarp is gigantic, a wide expansion of white shiny space. Across the surface in huge red swooping letters is a message.

'You said you saw the monsters.
So he took you home.
And you broke it.’

I blink.

Is this supposed to be another riddle? ‘Cause I am fucking done with those.

Apparently I saw monsters. Apparently he took me home and-

He took me home?

Too many questions bubbled in the back of my head like sea foam, the waves of annoyance and frustration lapping at the edges of my mind. I squint a bit, staring at the bright white tarp.

No one would want to ‘take me home’ would they? Unless… unless it was my captor dude from Before.

My heart sped up. He took me home! Something happened when I was captured and I got taken back to my house and given back to my family! That’s the only logical answer at least. It’s not like anyone else would have felt the need to ‘take me home’. Unless the police came. But even then, why would an officer take me home because I said I saw The Monsters?

I don’t know a lot about The Monsters. I’d seen from my dream that they came out when I was alone and off my ‘medication’, whatever the hell that was. It seemed as though I hadn’t taken any medication lately except for those pain killers that Helena freaked out about at the Hospital. But she had only flipped because she didn’t want me to leave her alone yet again. Right?

I try not to doubt myself too much before I get a headache.

So apparently I had seen these ‘Monsters’ which would mean I wasn’t on my ‘medication’. And I told this to Ocean Eyes and he took me home to my house.

And then I broke something. But what in the world broke that was so important that it needed to be written on a big tarp in red painted letters? I could have been something expensive I guess. Or something very special. I might have broken my dad’s laptop or his precious signed copy of Lord of The Rings. I might have broken my mom’s thousand dollar heels or one of her ridiculous real snake skin purses. I might possibly have crashed Mikey’s Mustang or snapped the strings on his guitar. I might-

Guitar.

And then I remember that thing that I’d come up here to do in the first place. That hope I was supposed to be running to. The instrument that was my new key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe. The guitar in the room is smashed. Broken.

And it’s a possibility that it’s the very thing I supposedly broke.

I run down the hall.

The room hasn’t changed. The curtains are still open; the guitar is still smashed, the corners still reek with shadows. I step toward the broken guitar in the middle of the room and kneel down on one knee to look at the rubbish.

There are two possibilities.

Either this is like the ice cream thing and I have to figure it out for myself or there’s something hidden in the rubble. A note, a key, something.

I really hope it‘s the later but after a good look through the wreck I sort of lose confidence in that idea.

This is getting increasingly annoying.

I stand up, placing my hands on my hips and peering down at the mangled guitar. Frustrated, I kick rather roughly at the pile, the toe of my Converse colliding with the head stock, sending it skidding across the hardwood floor. The sound is hollow and bumpy, echoing just a bit as it thumps against the back wall.

That sound.

And whatever the fuck happened with the ice cream in the basement happens again. My mind shifts, images blur, the sea foam of questions vanishing with utter unimportance. The room is quiet, my nonexistent audience clasping hands over mouths to not make noise.

But the whispers come anyway.

It feels as if someone has put their face right up to my ear, their voice a soft feathery breath ghosting into my ear canal. There’s a quiet mumble of laughter and more voices. I can’t make out what their saying, I’m not even sure if they’re speaking English, but it’s just enough for me to hear.

And the voices collide into one big freight train rumbling down the track faster and faster, making my head do somersaults and backflips and handsprings, my vision blurring and my ears ringing.

And then it all stops and my vision goes white.

Color seeps back into my head like a rainbow as I relive a thing of the past.

+-+-+-+-+-+

“Have a fantastic night in the dark, darling.” And then the boy with eyes like the ocean and a smile like the sun was gone, an echo of a laugh and utter darkness the only things left in his wake.

Yeah sure, what a fantastic night I had.

As soon as the door shut, the entire room was immersed in complete darkness. There was literally not a single bit of light. I couldn’t even see my own hand an inch from my face.

Have you ever scared yourself into feeling or hearing something that isn’t there? Become so paranoid that you felt the light prickle of spiders run up and down your legs or just barely heard the boogie man creeping around your closet? I have.

This darkness was so deep, so murky, I couldn’t even hold onto my own mind. I started to hear things. Little things like faint footsteps or quiet scurries in the corners of the room. Sometimes I would hear whispers somewhere off in the distance and I started to get that weird spine tingling sensation in the back of my neck, the bit of hair there standing on end.

I knew I was just being a paranoid freak, but it felt so real. The darkness was starting to get to me, filling up my eyes and ears and lungs with a dark black that clouded my mind. The darkness was everything, which was ironic, because it felt like in the dark there was absolutely nothing.

I eventually got over the paranoia. Everything was pretty okay for a little while. And for those short few minutes of quiet sanity I thought maybe the monsters wouldn’t come that night.

But like most of the time, I was dead wrong.

And then the real whispers started.

They were nothing at first. I brushed them aside like dust on my shoulder and waited for morning. But soon they became too bothersome to ignore. They weren’t just wispy nothingness anymore. They started forming coherent words.

“Gerard.”

It was low and raspy, as if the person who had said it hadn’t spoken in a million years. As If they had swallowed fire and burnt the inner walls of their throat. As if they had been sitting in a tomb for the past century, their voice box drying into a shriveled mummified hunk of flesh.

I spun in my chair, almost falling over from the duct tape around my ankles. But there was nothing there. Just empty space. Nothingness.

My heart began to race in my chest, my teeth digging into my bottom lip as I sat back in my chair.

Oh please please pleaaaaassseeee don’t eat me.

“Gerard.”

I squeaked, spinning around again. Nothing.

You’re finally going insane, Gerard. The doctors were right. You’re bat shit nutty.

“Gerard. Gerard. Gerard.”

The simple whisper began to grow into a chant, my name being called over and over methodically. But it wasn’t just one voice. It was many, a crowd of people whispering, laughing as they said my name over and over and over. I couldn’t take it.

“Shut up! Shut up shut up <i>shut up</i>!”

And just as quickly as they started, the whispers ceased to exist.

I sat there, hunched over, my eyes shut tight, and my breath coming in fast and hitched.

They were gone. I chuckled a little bit hysterically, sitting up straight in my seat. It was okay now. There was no one there. I was all alone again.

Or not.

A heavy, labored breathing began panting in my ear and my back tensed. But it wasn’t just a noise this time. I could actually <i>feel</i> the hot breath on my neck, feel the moisture of their mouth condensing just a little, right below my ear.

I squeezed my eyes tighter. Maybe it would just go away, like the voices. I just had to wait a minute.

There was a chuckle, the voice deeper than the ocean, darker than the very edges of the universe. “Quite the contrary, Gerard. I think we’ll be staying right here tonight.” It said, answering my own thoughts.

I swallowed again, my hands shaking, sweat building up on my brow. "Please. Please. Just leave me alone.” I was surprised that the voice that escaped my lips was my own. It sounded tortured. Small and afraid.

The other voice laughed, a loud booming cloud frayed with evil. I pretty much started crying as something cold touched my shoulder through the still slightly damp fabric of my hoodie. It gripped my shoulder blade; five fingers digging into the soft flesh of my back and arm. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. It felt like I was paralyzed.

Something brushed at the side of my face, cold and sharp, leaving tingles down my cheeks. “They’re here,” sang the voice and suddenly the hand on my shoulder and the knife on my face were gone. Poof, just like that they disappeared.

For a moment there was silence, but I knew better than to think it was over.

Have you ever heard a sack of potatoes being dragged through the mud?

That’s what the next horror sounded like. Or maybe it was a body being dragged through the dirt.

I really hoped it was the sack of potatoes.

It was sort of a sick dragging sound with wet thuds in between. Something was being pulled across the floor, and then dropped. Pulled and dropped. Over and over. And it was getting closer.

My heart pounded. It pounded so hard that I seriously thought it was about to bust right out of my chest and flop to the floor. I wanted to yank my legs up from the floor and clutch them to my chest. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. Anything but sit in the middle of the open, hopelessly vulnerable. A wet hunk of dead meat thrown into a pit of hungry dogs. I was helpless.

At first the drag-drop sound was only coming from my left. Just one. And then, out of nowhere there was a second to my right. Drag drop, drag drop, drag drop, over and over and over.

I scrambled, pulling my feet away from the floor. Trying at least. But my legs wouldn’t move. The stupid tape was wrapped tightly around my ankles, keeping me motionless. Something was coming for me in the dark and <i>I couldn’t move</i>.

I spun my head when a new sound started. A thud thud thud that interrupted my panic. They were footsteps. Heavy ones that echoed in the never ending abyss.

The dragging noises continued.

More footsteps.

I wondered if I was going to cry or not.

I wondered if I was going to die or not.

And then the worse thing happened.

Something grabbed my leg. It was warm and thick, wrapping around my ankle like a snake would coil around prey, squeezing.

Someone somewhere was screaming, maybe it was me. I couldn’t really tell, too lost in the fact that a hand was clutching at my shin, pulling at me.

And then, oh god, finger nails. They were sharp, almost like claws, digging through my jeans and burying into my flesh, creating tears in my skin. I couldn’t see it but I sure could feel it. Pain shot up my leg, a warm heavy liquid spilling into my socks.

Yeah I was pretty sure it was me screaming.

I pretty much threw my body forward, my fist knocking into whatever was hanging on my leg. My knuckles collided with the hand suction cupped to my ankle, beating it, punch after punch. Fingernails dug further into my skin. Crying out, I wrapped my hands around the fingers that constricted my leg, digging my nails into flesh.

I might have gotten it off if it weren’t for the second hand on my other leg. I had forgotten about the other drag-drop sound.

The hands began to pull. They pulled hard. What they were trying to do, I’m not sure, maybe pull off my skin entirely, but what they did do was actually pretty helpful. The duct tape strapped to my legs was being torn away. By the time my right leg was free I was lashing out, my foot colliding with what might have been a face. The hand on my leg came free as whatever had attacked me tumbled backwards. The second hand came off with another foot-to-face collision and I lunged forward to yank off the remaining pieces of duct tape on my left leg.

The last piece of tape came off and I threw myself out of the chair, stumbling into the dark, anxious to get away from whatever the fuck had just tried to maul me. I found the stone steps fairly easily, they weren’t very far. The concrete dug into my knees as I climbed the stairs to find the door. My head smacked straight into metal. Found it.

Laughing hysterically, ready to cry with joy, I pushed at the doors. Freedom. Finally, I was escaping.

I used all of my strength on the door. Literally all of it, wedging my feet on the stone steps and leaning into the metal with my shoulder, using the force of my back and legs to try to get it open. It must have been locked.

I slumped to the ground when it wouldn’t open. I sat down on the concrete steps and cried into my sleeves, getting snot and tears all over my already damp jacket.

Just as I thought it was over, just as I thought I was free of all of the darkness, I was left in a closed room. A locked box. A tomb perfect for me to rot away in.

I’d die down here from starvation or from dehydration. Maybe from the monsters.

Mikey would write my eulogy. My mother would pay for the funeral. God knows what my father would do. And my tiny fucked up family would cry over my casket as Helena and I watched from the corner. And eventually they would all file out of the room leaving me for an eternity of nothingness.

I didn’t want to die. This was terrible. This was horrible. This was absolutely outrageous. This was impossible. It was utterly inconceivable.

And the worse part?

Drag-drop.

They were back.

“Holy fucking hell, when is this gonna end?” I groaned, leaning my head back and waiting on the steps for the monsters to come and devour me, tear me limb from limb.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The darkness didn’t do much to comfort me. The sharp edge of the stairs dug into my back as I folded in on myself. I pulled my knees up to my chest, the bloody holes in my calves screaming at me to stop moving, pain shooting up my legs. I let my head rest upon the tops of my knees, wrapping my arms around myself and whimpering. Sweat drenched every inch of my body, filling up every pore. Tear stains led down my cheeks and onto my jawline, marking my face until I wiped them away. I sniffled, shaking all over, waiting for the horrible creatures that lurked in every five-year-old’s nightmares to come alive for real and pull me apart like a rag doll.

I sat for a long time, just waiting, feeling the cold jagged steps against my skin. The drag-drop sound had begun to fade away, a distant memory.

And only in the blank deafening silence could I hear the whispers.

The laughter.

The faint echo of voices, a whole crowd of them, crowing and giggling in my ears.

They taunted me. They whistled and hollered and cackled. All in silence. Never really there, like ghosts.

It was torment. Worse than the pain of the monsters that gnawed at my legs. Worse than the boy with the ocean eyes. Worse than anything in the world. My hands came slapping over my ears, trying to block out the sounds as I cringed, tucking my head into my knees further, but the whispers still came, louder than ever. They fed off of silence. They fed off of the lonely. They fed off of my fear. I wanted to scream. Maybe I was screaming. I couldn’t really tell, too consumed by the whispers.

It felt like a great weight was lifted from my back when they stopped.

And not just in the metaphorical sense either. The doors that pressed against my shoulders as I huddled there were lifted open and the whispers simply ceased to exist.

I spun around.

Looking down on me was the boy, his eyebrows scrunched in annoyance. He wore the same exact clothing he had before, except the rain had dried from his shoulders. His big boots were right in front of my face, in his hand was a plastic bag from a Chinese takeout place, a smiley face printed on the front, and atop his head, half buried in his chocolate hair was a pair of aviators. Behind him the sky was turning a purplish blue color, the sun getting ready to come crashing onto the horizon.

It was morning already. I wondered how long I’d been down here.

“Screaming like a little girl isn’t gonna help you. There’s no one around.” The boy waved his arms toward the street, gesturing at the emptiness. Something glimmered in his palm, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was.

I blinked.

“Well, move out of my way, dumbass.” He gave me this look that made my insides squirm.

I scrambled from the steps and shuffled across the floor so that I was sitting in the dirt near the chair; my legs sprawled out in front of me.

The boy descended down the stairs, flipping on the light, closing the doors behind him and swinging the plastic bag back and forth, the big yellow smiley face staring at me. He walked across the room, his boots kicking up dust from the floor, and emptied the bag out onto the workbench into a little heap. He pulled something from the newly formed pile and tossed it at me. I retrieved the Zip-Lock baggie off the dirt floor in front of me, ripping it open.

My stomach rumbled. I had forgotten how hungry I was.

The sandwich that came out of the bag only had Peanut Butter on it, and I was about to call him out for forgetting the Jelly when I realized the sandwich he was eating didn’t have any either. He must be an alien. I mean really, who likes Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches without the Jelly?

“What the hell happened to your legs?”

I looked up from my thoughts and half eaten sandwich mumbling a “What?” through a mouthful of bread and Peanut Butter.

My calves were a hot mess. It looked like someone had rubbed a human size cheese grater across them and then stabbed each several times with a considerably large kitchen knife. The dark fabric of my jeans were stained and ripped into ribbons, the freakishly pale skin underneath them riddled with cuts and painted with the yellowish black color of bruises. On top of it all, dried blood ran its way down like tracks in the snow, snaking into my socks. The pain had subsided, partly because the wounds had started to scab over and partly because of distraction.

They really hurt now that I was looking at them.

I reached out to press the pad of my finger at the corner of one of the largest gashes, the skin splitting slightly, a bead of red swelling at the top. I winced, wiping my newly bloody finger on the side of my thigh.

“Did you…” Ocean Eyes had made his way back across the room to crouch in front of me, his hands hovering over my legs as if he wanted to touch them. “Did you do this to yourself?” He asked, jerking his head up to look at my face. I shrunk back a little, wanting to be as far away from this kid as possible.

“I- what? No!” I looked at him like he was crazy. The fact that he had me captive in a basement, originally duct tape to a chair, was beside the point. “Why would I do that?”

“You did, didn’t you?” He grinned maliciously, completely ignoring what I‘d just told him.

I frowned, scrunching up my nose. “I didn’t.”

“Oh yeah? Then what happened?” He had this cocky look on his face, his nose in the air. He was taunting me. He was right, and he simply knew it. And I knew that he wasn’t going to let me change his mind.

“I-I…uh…” Who’s going to believe a seemingly delusional teenager that’s had a medical history of being completely wacko when he says the huge, deep cuts that cover every inch of his calves were caused by ‘The Monsters’? Definitely not the stubborn kid who had said delusional teenager locked in a basement.

Haunting memories of the hands on my legs, ripping and tearing at my skin, came back to me. Fictional fear sprung up in the bottom of my stomach, churning my insides all up like a blender. I tried to make my paranoid glances into the corners discrete, but it didn’t work very well, and Ocean Eyes raised an eyebrow.

“Heh… I mean… uhm… i-it wasn’t me.” I shook my head, wrapping my arms around myself and looking at the floor.

Ocean Eyes laughed. He actually laughed at me, bracing his hands on his knees and standing up. I watched him walk over to the work bench and grab a rag. He ran it under the sink, which choked a bit as it spit yellowish water into the basin.

“Try not to hurt yourself too much. That’s my job,” he said with a smile behind his voice as he shut off the tap and wrung out the dish towel.

A sick sinking feeling twisted up my stomach as he spoke. Hurting me was his job. So he was going to kill me, wasn’t he? That’s fantastic.

The wet rag landed in my lap.

“Clean yourself up,” he said, smirking and lifting himself to sit on top of the workbench, his legs swinging back and forth.

I picked the rag up, wondering if it was safe to use the brackish water that had come from the sink. It probably wasn’t, but the expectant look Ocean Eyes was giving me struck a bit of fear in the pit of my stomach, and I anxiously began dabbing the dried blood away from my legs.

“Y’know, I usually don’t ask these sorts of things, but I don’t think I caught your name.”

I raised my head to peer at him. He raised his eyebrows. I had the bad feeling that he had something up his sleeve. “It’s Gerard,” I mumbled, looking back down to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Huh. That’s a cool name.”

I nodded slightly, turning the rag and scrubbing away at the next patch of blood.

And there was a thought somewhere in the back of my mind subconsciously wondering what his name was. Because, I totally wanted to get to know him before he slaughtered me.

It was so surreal, knowing he was going to kill me at some point. I could be dead within the next sixty minutes. Abducted children were considered a lost cause after the first twenty-four hours. My time was ticking, faster and faster, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Nothing but hope that someone, somewhere would be smart enough to find me. The only person I knew who was that smart was my brother. And I hoped to whatever god was up there that he would find me.

No one really wants to die.

Not even me, the kid who sees monsters.

And I found tears springing at the corners of my eyes.

I quickly swiped at them. It really wasn’t the time for water works.

“You’re crying.”

I didn’t even glance up that time. I knew who said it and by the tone of his voice it seemed as if he just found the answers to the universe.

I shook my head, biting my lip, and scrubbing harder.

“You’re sad… why are you sad?”

I stopped scrubbing. Why was I sad? The nerve this guy had. Seriously.

I looked up to meet his eyes. His face was blank, confused even. I swiped at my tears again, removing them completely. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I choked out, taking shaky breaths to hold back my tears.

He looked taken aback. “I was planning on it, yes.”

I didn’t know how I expected him to answer my question, but I definitely didn’t think he would be that blunt about it.

Besides everything, the weight of his words came rushing up to me, exploding fireworks in my face.

I gaped at him.

Holy fuck. I was going to die.

All hope diminished from my heart. Everything. Gone. Who was I kidding? Mikey wasn’t going to save me. No matter how smart he was, he wouldn’t know where to find me. That twin telepathy thing was bullshit.

I crumpled in on myself, hunching my shoulders and letting the tears fall like raindrops into my lap.

Why couldn’t I be a raindrop? Raindrops didn’t die. Raindrops couldn’t feel this hopeless. This helpless. This utterly and completely vulnerable.

“No… no don’t cry. I can’t… no, no, no.” I couldn’t see him through the tears but I could hear him standing, hear him picking something up, hear him walk across the room. He pointed something at my face, growling. “Don’t you fucking cry. I will poke your eyes out and the only thing coming from your tear ducts will be blood.”

I swiped at my cheeks. I would have very much liked to keep my eyes, thank you. I blinked, discovering a knife pointed at my face. It was big, the biggest kitchen knife I’d ever seen. Bigger than the ones Martha used when she cut the turkey on Thanksgiving. It was the shiny thing that had been in his hands when he came in and it could very well shovel my eyes out of their sockets.

“S-sorry. I’m sorry. I d-didn’t mean to. I-I-I’ll stop. Please, please don’t poke my eyes out.”

Ocean Eyes pulled the knife from my face. “Good,” was all he said. He headed for the door.

Oh no. No, not the dark again. Not the Monsters again.

“W-wait wait. Don’t… don’t leave,” I mumbled, defeated in every way. I looked up at him, trying to plead with my eyes. “Please?”

He rolled his grunted like an animal, locking his jaw. “Why the hell not?” He said through clenched teeth, annoyance and anger all over his face.

“I… I don’t like the dark… The Monsters… they come out in the dark.” I casted my gaze to the floor, feeling stupid.

“W-what?” Ocean Eyes choked on the simple word, stopping in his tracks. “Did… did you say The Monsters?”

“Y-yes….?” I looked at him funny, still swiping at the tears.

His face twisted into an odd expression. He looked torn, lost. He looked almost… human. He didn’t seem like the vicious creature that was going to kill me anymore.

And then the look was gone, and his face became cold and stony again. The snarl of a monster blossomed in his mouth as he stared at me with a fire in his eyes. “You sound like a fucking five year old.” He barked and turned to leave again.

“No! No, wait! Please! Don’t go. Take me with you! I-I’ll be quiet. I won’t bother you…” It felt weird pleading for a murderer to take me with him.

He stared at me. He stared hard, searching my eyes. “You’ll be quiet?” He said after a very long silence. I nodded quickly. He rolled his eyes, muttering something to himself and slipping off his hoodie. He tossed it at me, along with the aviators on his head.

I caught the glasses and scooped up the sweatshirt from the floor. “Does that mean yes?” I gaped at him.

“Rule number one of following me around like a duckling. Shut up.”

Yeah, that meant yes.

I felt like a little kid who just got their parents to let them get dessert. Except I wasn’t a kid, he wasn’t my mom, and I wasn’t getting dessert. Close enough, though.

I grinned, congratulating myself silently, shoving the last of the tears off my face, and slipping on the hoodie and the aviators. The jacket was a bit tight but I figured he’d get angry if I mentioned it. I stood up, brushing myself off, and followed him up the steps. Before we walked out, he turned and gave me a hard glare.

“If you say anything, to anyone I will personally find your family and chop off each of their fingers and each of their toes, their ears and their nose and then gauge out their eyes. They’ll bleed out and die. It’ll be painful and I’ll make sure they know you caused it. Got that?”

I swallowed, remembering that yes this guy was going to kill me. I was getting away from the monsters, sure, but this wasn’t much better. And apparently he wasn’t afraid to do anything.

“O-okay.” I stared, wide eyed,

He smirked. “Good, boy. Come on, we better get going now, Gerard.” He said my name with a malice that made my skin crawl and my tongue swell up.

And as we walked out of the basement I realized that I still hadn’t learned his name.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The sun busted through the barricade of the horizon in an explosion of color, fire across the sky. A red hazy glow spilled across everything like the blood of a thousand soldiers and casted shadows in places that should never be so dark. The street before us was a battlefield strewn with old, forgotten houses like the carcasses of the diseased, with black, lifeless, window-shaped eyes. The long expansion of black tar seemed to go on forever and ever, an endless sea for lost souls to walk upon, gathering toward the place where the earth meets the sky.

My future killer and I were those lost souls as we traveled East bound.

I really wasn’t sure where we were going, but a bit of regret harbored in my throat. I was following a murderer, who happened to have a very large knife on hand, down the street to god knows where. There was no explanation to why he wanted to kill me and there was no telling when he would do it. I was walking shoulder to shoulder with a ticking time bomb as he brought me to an unknown destination. It’s hard to tell the motives of people when you know nothing about them. And I had the sickening feeling that this guy knew much more about me than I knew about him.

I followed him like a breathing shadow, mimicking his confident footsteps as he led me on a long trek toward a street called Carolyn Rd. Near the end of the road was a small mint green duplex labeled with sticky gold colored numbers. The left side said 21 and the other said 22.

The sun hung ominously in the sky, just above the tree tops, blood still swamping the horizon, as Ocean Eyes and I walked up the three rickety steps of the porch. I followed him to the door, and watched as he pulled out a key to unlock it. The brass doorknob clicked and the door slowly fell into the house. Ocean Eyes turned to me and put a finger over his lips, his eyebrows furrowing in menace as he let a little bit of air rush between his teeth.

Quiet. Right.

I nodded vigorously.

He stepped through the doorway, into the house. I was hesitant to follow fear pitting in my stomach, but I remembered that he had the knife and I was so not about to risk him dicing me up into little pieces. I trailed behind him into the dark, closing the door.

The house was very cold despite the April air cooking in the springtime warmth outside. Even with the t-shirt and two hoodies I was wearing, the cold still got to me. It was the kind of cold that burrowed inside of you and took captive of your heart. It was lifeless.

The darkness wasn’t helping either. It was hard to see the rest of the house through the shadows. We stood in a long hallway that seemed to be never ending, descending into a desolate black tunnel. I had to squint to make out the two doorways, one on either side. To our right was a closed door and to our left was the bottom step of a staircase.

“Gimme my hoodie back,” he said quietly, turning to me in the dark. I didn’t want to make him angry so I slipped the jacket off and handed it to him, giving him the glasses for good measure. He slipped the sweatshirt on over his t-shirt, and placed the glasses back on his head.

After getting himself situated, he grabbed my hand, his rough palms pressing into my skin as he yanked me viciously up the stairs. I tried not to make any noise, but that’s sort of hard when out of nowhere someone’s trying to pull your arm off. I let out a squeak as he pretty much dragged me up the stairs, landing us in a second hallway. It was just as dark up there, two doorways lining the right hand wall and a third at the very end.

The door at the end was slightly ajar, just a tiny bit of light falling into the hall. Ocean Eyes started for it and I wouldn’t have followed if it weren’t for the death grip he had on my wrist. My feet moved mechanically as I stared at the door. I had the worst feeling mucking up the bottom of my stomach. What if this room was where I would die? These were probably my last moments in this world, my last footsteps, my last breaths. I could barely wrap my head around it all, but my stomach caught on quick. I felt like I was going to throw up.

Slaughter. Homicide. Death. Headlines in the newspaper flashed before my eyes. Words that would be in tomorrow’s paper. If they even found me. So far I was just some missing kid. Maybe they wouldn’t even know I died. Maybe Mikey and my mom would never know what happened. I would become just another dropped case. Another face on a milk carton.

The room came to me quicker than I thought it would. The dark tunnel ended as Ocean Eyes slid open the door. I expected to find myself on the set of a cheap horror film. Blood, guts, butcher knives, hatchets and maybe the occasional corpse.

I was wrong, of course.

It was just the normal room of a teenage boy. There was a bed pushed into the corner, blue sheets unmade and sloppy. The floor was littered with clothing, a dresser pressed against the wall opposite the bed, sporting a small lamp. Posters of metal bands were plastered all over the walls in such a way that there was barely any room to see the black paint behind them. There was a plastic trash bin by the door, full with soda cans and crumpled up paper. The window on the back wall was framed with thick heavy curtains, a bit of sunlight coming in and giving the room a soft glow. It was slightly chilly and it smelled a bit like cat pee, but I was relieved anyway.

It looked like the work of a slob, not a serial killer.

Ocean Eyes was probably both but at least I wasn’t walking blindly into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

“Here’s your bunk.” He said it like I was his best friend spending the night so we could talk about girls and read comic books together. Although I’m pretty sure your best friend wouldn’t make you sleep in the closet. He had his hand on the open closet door, gesturing for me to come over. Obviously, I hesitated. “I’ve got a revolver under my pillow. I could shoot you in a heartbeat.” He said lazily, rolling his eyes.

I would’ve much rather bunked in the closet then have a bullet in my brain so I skidded over to the door as quickly as possible, peering in. The closet was very small, maybe four feet deep. There was a lonely old hoodie hanging on the rack, a shelving unit bearing a few squished boxes, a bare light bulb on the ceiling and a guitar case in the corner along with an enormous pile of books on the floor. Ocean Eyes smirked. “Good boy,” he said, like I was a dog, and pushed me harshly on the back. I fell forward into the closet, squished in between the wall and the huge pile of paperback novels.

“Rule Number One of staying at my house. Don’t. Touch. My. Stuff.” He hissed each word with the venom of a snake, glaring down at me. “Got it?”

I nodded, quivering in the corner, pressing my back up to the wall and pulling my legs to my chest.

“Good.” He smiled and shut the door.

“Hey, wait! You promised not to leave me alone in the dark!” I scrambled to the door, going for the handle, fear freezing up any coherent thoughts. The lock clicked just as my hand slapped down on the metal.

“I never promised anything.” He said, voice muffled, but I could hear his smirk through the door.

I whimpered falling back to lean up against the wall. The darkness creeped up around me as the abandonment seeped in. He was just going to leave me here, all alone. And in the dark too.

Just a bit of light came shining from under the door, and I could make out the shadows of his feet as he moved around the room. I could hear him doing things, opening drawers. At one point there was the jingling of metal clashing together inside a box or a bag or something. And then he flipped the light switch and the door to the room slammed. The only light slipping into my little closet was soft and gray, probably coming from the window. There was a second door slam, more muffled this time, probably the front door. The house became eerily quiet.

All I could really do was sit and tremble in the corner and hope that the monsters wouldn’t come. It was bad enough knowing you were going to die, but having to face your worst fear on top of that was maddening. The shadows loomed, dark and ominous and I couldn’t help but remember the hands on my calves. The pain came back, duller this time, but it was still there. Oddly enough, it felt like it was getting worse, like the wounds were reopening, skin tearing and splitting, blood leaking into my socks again. I winced, reaching my hands out to touch the gauges in my legs.

My fingers didn’t hit skin.

It felt sticky, whatever it was. A thick mass of silly string, only the string was thinner than a single strand of hair. My fingers entangled in it, trying to feel what it was. The strands stuck to every inch of my skin, from my knees to the edges of my shoes, dipping downwards into the bloody craters in my calves. In fact, it seemed as if the string was coming from the wounds, starting at the edges and expanding around them to cover all of the open areas of skin. My heart raced as I felt around more, coming to a conclusion.

They were spider webs.

Spider webs were coming out of the gashes in my skin.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it was fake. I knew it was only a trick that The Monsters were playing on me. But it felt so real.

There was only so much room in the closet and the only way I could escape from the horrors coming from my skin was up. I scrambled to stand, knocking over books on my way and hitting my head on the shelving above me. I grabbed handfuls of the webs, yanking them away from me, my skin crawling.

I wanted to get away. I needed to get away; the spider webs would suffocate me if I didn’t. But I couldn’t get away; I was locked in a closet. The only thing to get rid of the monsters was to get out of the dark and there was no way out.

And then it occurred to me that this closet had a light.

Man was I stupid.

I threw my hands out into the ominous dark, frantically searching for the string attached to the bulb on the ceiling, trying to find my saving grace before the webs could eat me whole. My fingers found it, the frayed strands of thread hanging in the open, and I grabbed it clumsily, yanking downward. The string clicked and the bulb flickered on and off, buzzing a little, before coming to a grimy constant, filling the tiny space with a dim yellow light.

I breathed heavily, falling to a slumped heap on the floor, relief washing over me. I sat there, trying to catch my breath, and wiping the thin veil of sweat from my forehead. Breathing regulated, I found the courage to look down at my legs.

All of the webs had vanished. Gone, just like that. The cuts didn’t even look like they had been reopened. If anything, they looked better. I had known it was a façade all along, deep down in the back of my mind. But it had all seemed so real in the commotion. Either I was falling further and further into insanity or the Monsters were getting better at illusion. It was hard to tell, and I honestly didn’t want to know.

At least they were gone now, and I wouldn’t have to deal with them until it got dark again. I was okay. For now.

After catching my breath, my first order of business was to get out, to fully escape from the Monsters. But breaking out of a locked closet was pretty much impossible considering I didn’t have a sledge hammer or an axe handy. I stood, as gracefully as one can in a cramped closet, and kicked at the door a couple times, jingled the lock, and got down on my hands and knees to look out into the room under the crack in the door because maybe he dropped the key and maybe it landed a fingers length away. I wasn’t very lucky. No one was in the house to hear my kicking, the lock wasn’t old and it wouldn’t break under my hold, and he hadn’t dropped the key. Trying to get out was utterly useless, so I sat back against the wall and just breathed.

The light began to flicker.

I held my breath, because oh fuck, if it went out I’d be dead.

The light bulb choked a bit, but the yellow light became solid again. I let out a big gush of air, the sudden rush of fear slowly draining away.

Eventually sitting and breathing got more and more dull and less and less time consuming. It’s not like I could go anywhere, so I decided to rifle through the various things in the closet.

The books were the first thing I looked at. The pile was huge. It was like a miniature library in there. There could have been forty or fifty books in that pile, easy. Almost all of them were paperback, and a good portion of them were horror novels, Stephen King and such, and there were a couple of classics. I recognized a few from Mikey’s pile of oldies, stuff like Of Mice and Men and The Lord of The Flies. The guy had several copies of Frankenstein and a nice hard cover of Dracula too. What caught my eye though was a black, beaten looking hard cover, tossed farther into the back. I picked it up, turning the thick book on its side so I could read the binding. In silver printed letters, read a single word.

Poems

I squinted. This couldn’t possibly be his, could it? I mean really, what kidnapper who threatens to scoop out eyeballs actually reads poetry? In fact, none of these books could really be his. I couldn’t imagine him even going to school and knowing how to read, let alone being able to. Maybe it was just me, or the fact that I was his captive. Maybe I was the only one he threatened to scoop the eyeballs out of. Maybe he was actually really nice around everyone else.

I snorted, shaking my head at the thought, and opening up the black book. There was a small bit of text inked on the inside cover in blue fading pen. I had to bring the book up close to my face to read the tiny loopy letters.

I heard somewhere that you like to read. Not something I would expect from a person like you, but weirder things have happened.

Happy Birthday, Frankenstein

XOXO Charlie

At least this Charlie person agreed with me. It was anything but normal that this guy liked to read. Assuming the novels were even his. Then again, weirder things had happened. Like getting kidnapped by someone who has no apparent reason to actually kidnap you.

Maybe this Charlie person would’ve known why I was kidnapped. They would’ve definitely known the name of my captor anyway. I was pretty sure his name wasn’t Frankenstein. Unless his parents were just as weird as he was.

Charlie might’ve been able to help me, but it’s not like I knew where they were. Or who they were for that matter. And I didn’t think it was even possible to get out of this closet and find them without a key, which I didn’t have.

So stuck in a closet, the only thing I could do to occupy myself was to go through the book.

I began flipping through the pages, the paper thick and sandy between my fingers. The edges were worn down and yellowed, some of the writing on so faded you couldn’t make out what it said. The binding was crumbling and it got more and more difficult to flip through. Near the end, one of the pages was 98 on the front and 101 on the back. At first I thought it was merely a misprinting but the paper seemed unusually thick and after further examination I discovered that that it wasn’t one page but two stuck together. It took me a second to gently wiggle them undone, unveiling a massive amount of large red stains.

At first I thought it was ketchup.

It definitely wasn’t.

Thick dark splotches clung to the page, scattered all over, some thick and globby some small and oval shaped, almost resembling fingerprints. In between all of the blood, written in pencil were the words ‘I’m so sorry’ over and over again in various sizes and levels of neatness. The smell of iron and sulfur quivered under my nose, and the dust that sprung into the air made me cough lightly. I squinted at the black printed words on the page, pushing the sick feeling in my stomach to the side. The letters were faded and watermarked in several places and it was tricky to make out, but I managed.

It was a poem entitled ‘Listen to the Sunset’ written by a properly named Anonymous.

The poem was simple, with a melodic A-B-C-B rhyming pattern, the words flowing like butter across my tongue as I muttered out loud to no one. The last stanza stopped me in mid-read, however. It was highlighted in blue, the marker a bright light in a dark storm.

So listen to the sunset
Enjoy its beauty true
When you see it, think of me
And I will think of you

It was a very pretty poem, definitely, but I couldn’t wrap my head around why there was blood all over the page. Or why ‘I’m so sorry’ was written around it. Or why the last part was highlighted. It was just so weird. I was no psychologist, but this guy was pretty fucked in the head.

I could only imagine what this whole thing was supposed to mean. It didn’t make sense. Sunsets and being sorry really honestly had nothing to do with each other. Not to mention the blood. And that was the really disturbing part; the fact that the page was practically soaked in red. It felt like something out of a horror movie. Imagine if The Dead Poet’s Society had a love child with Dracula. This book would be in it.

I gently pressed the book shut, and set it atop the large pile in the corner, jerking my hand away as quickly as possible as if it were on fire. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. I’d had enough horror movie experiences for today.

Deciding to completely avoid the book pile and forget the whole thing, I began rummaging through the rest of the closet. There were two boxes on the shelf, one full of old clothes, another full of notebook after notebook, all of them spilling with guitar tabs and song lyrics. After a while going through the notebooks got boring and I moved to the guitar case. I actually wasn’t expecting anything to be in it. Even if he did have half a million pieces of sheet music, I didn’t think he would actually play. He was my captor, a monster. Not a human being. Kidnappers weren’t supposed play guitar. They weren’t supposed to read. They weren’t supposed go to school and they weren’t supposed to have lives to lead either.

An unreasonable assumption, of course he was a human being. He had a face and a house and a voice and habits and a personality. It was just hard to consider this, because human beings aren’t supposed to scoop each other’s eyes out. That was a practice reserved for and only for monsters.

The guitar that came out of the large black case was old. Very old. But not the kind of old that hasn’t been taken care of. It was in great shape. The edges were rounded, the pick guard had been completely worn down, and the wood was scuffed and dulled down from wear and tear. But it wasn’t damaged, just well-loved and worn out. I brushed my fingers across the neat row of strings, listening to the harmony. I knew very little about guitars, Mikey was the music wizard, but I really liked the sound of this one. I could tell why Ocean Eyes had loved it so much.

I really couldn’t do anything with the guitar, so I set it aside, leaning it against the wall. I had officially gone through the whole closet. All of the interesting things had become distant floating ghosts in the back of my mind, and I couldn’t quite muster up the courage to pull them back out. There was nothing but boredom.

I found myself a seat on the ground, leaning my back against the wall and folding my legs crisscross-applesauce.

I am seriously the most unlucky person ever to walk to face of the earth.

Just as I sat down the light began to flicker again.

This time the light didn’t become solid yellow again. This time it went out completely and I was immersed in a blanket of darkness.

My toes curled in my shoes, my breath hitching in my throat, my insides churning.

“No no no no no no,” I muttered to no one, pulling my legs up to my chest, and squeezing my eyes shut. My arms quivered, my back shook, and a small whine escaped my throat. This was ridiculous. I wanted to kick my Karma fairy in his tiny little balls. This was so not funny.

A blood curdling silence fell over the tiny space, the darkness seeming to expand, on and on, forever. And for a moment everything was fine. But, though I hate fortune-cookie sayings, it really was the calm before the storm.

The first one was small, the size of half a grain of rice. It was just a tickling feeling running up my arm, like little legs skittering across my skin. My hand came slapping down on the tickle, smearing it across my upper arm. I cringed, knowing what it was, but not wanting to admit it to myself.

I slumped back against the wall, waiting for more. If there was one, there was a million.

They came few and far between, at first, single bits of tickling on my arms or my legs and just as before, my reflexes went crazy and they ended up smeared across my skin.

I went through seven squashed mini-monsters, and it was all okay. I could handle a tiny one here and a tiny one there. But I guess that wasn’t working for the Monsters, because they began to bust out the big guns.

They came in a wave, like water spilling over my shoes. And I swear, they were everywhere running up my legs and onto the wall and over my back, a sea of crawling black. They were a slightly darker shadow to the black backdrop of the room, and as they moved, it seemed as if they were one being engulfing me. I flailed, throwing my arms around and kicking my legs trying to get them away from me. Trying, and failing. Little soldiers were lost in the fight, but more and more just kept pouring in from the deep abyss. I knocked into the book pile, sending novels all over the place, corners jutting into my back, as I writhed under them. And that’s when they started to bite.

Yes, I was about to be eaten alive by an army of spiders.

Their little fangs dug into my all over, leaving red welts across my pale skin. The vicious creatures tore across my body, unusually strong for something one thousandth of my size. Knocking them against the walls didn’t even help much. All I could do was squirm and squeal like a little girl.

And even through my squealing and squirming I could hear the scratching of little claws on hardwood. And this wasn’t claws belonging to spiders the size of half grains of rice.

It came for my feet first. It was big, the size of a small dog, and hairy. Its spider claws dug into my ankles as it weaseled its way onto my legs. I reached down, horrified, and ready to knock the thing off, but of course, it wouldn’t budge.The thing wriggled under my hands as I grabbed it around the abdomen, my thumbs pressing into the thick fur of its warm underside. I could feel its chest move as it breathed, hear it grunt. Spiders don’t grunt. What in the hell? And suddenly two fangs were submerging themselves into my wrist, a searing pain jolting from my hand all the way to my shoulder and down my back. I whipped my hand around, the giant spider deciding to hang on to my arm instead of my leg. I swung it into the wall, its back hitting against the plaster with a thud, its long spindly legs flailing around trying to claw at my arms. I levered my foot up against its hot writhing body and smashed my heel into it. It exploded in a shower of guts, dark thick goo getting all over my foot and arms, specks littering my face. It made a horrible screeching noise, unlatching it’s fangs and crumpling to the floor.

Foot stomping worked for big spiders, but not for little ones, unfortunately. The pain in my arm throbbed as I waved my hands around, still trying to get the little black spiders to come off. They were scattering now, the sea lessening, retreating back to where ever the fuck they came from. I sighed in sweet relief, brushing off the last of them. I had no idea why they picked now to leave, but they were gone and there really wasn’t any room for question.

The pain in my wrist throbbed and I turned it over, lightly brushing my fingers across the two deep holes in my skin. I winced, resting my hand on my knee, wondering how an illusion had created real holes in my arms.

The Monsters were demons, they were ghosts who had turned evil and were terrorizing me for whatever reason. Whether I pissed them off somehow or they just did it for kicks, I had no idea. But Helena and I both agreed that we didn’t like them. They were bad joo-joo for sure. And they created illusions. They had physical bodies that they could jump into sometimes, which are why my legs had real wounds on them, but they usually couldn’t jump into spiders. That was sort of ridiculous.

Scrtch Scrtch Scrtch

Cue the little girl in pigtails, saying “They’re baaaaack.”

I spun around to gaze into the darkness, the sound of scratching on hard wood pulling up haunting memories in my mind. But these were louder, bigger, deeper. Too big to belong to spiders the size of small dogs. I suddenly realized why the little spiders had gone away.

Out of the thick shadow I could make out eight saucer shaped eyes, glossy and blood red. They stared with a sort of menace that made my skin crawl. For a moment everything was still. It felt like we were having a staring contest. I didn’t want to blink, afraid that something would happen in the millisecond that my eyes were shut.

I swallowed. The big Mama Spider took that as a cue to step forward.

A single spindly leg came out of the dark, the light from under the door catching on the billions of tiny hairs that covered it in a thick mass that almost resembled fur. It was probably a mile long, unfolding out in front of me. A second leg came, and then a third and the whole body lifted itself high into the air, hovering over me as I scrambled into the corner. My back hit some sort of wood, my sneakers squeaking on the floor. The spider’s fangs glistened as it raised its head, ready to slam down on me, its abdomen curling inwards, its legs bending in anticipation. And down it went, fangs the size of my forearm ready to skewer me into a spider shishkabob ala Gerard Way.

Fangs hit wood with a ringing hollow smack.

My back had pressed into the guitar which I had leaned onto the wall behind me earlier, when the lights were on. Heart racing, I swung it in front of me, shielding myself from being Mama Spider’s lunch.

The massive arachnid let out a rip-roaring screech, jerking its head around, and ripping the guitar right from my hands. Another swing of its head and the guitar hit the wall and crashed down on the floor.

Mama Spider hung above me, fangs aimed straight at my chest. She was only an illusion, but if the dog-sized spider could bite me, she sure could too.

I did a strange duck and roll thing, that I’d learned from Mikey dragging me to his Karate lessons. It was off balance and I ended up hitting the wall and pulling my neck in an odd painful not-supposed-to-be-pulled-like-that direction, but successfully avoiding Mama Spider’s fangs. The closet was too small for her to maneuver very easily, and as she clambered around to face me, I reached for the guitar, picking the instrument up and swinging it at her long spindly legs. I was off. Way off, missing her legs by like a foot. The instrument hit the floor with a loud hollow sound, the body detaching from the neck. There wasn’t even enough time for me to properly say the word fuck before Mama Spider was on me. Her legs swung around to grab me, but the hard wood floor gave her a bad grip and suddenly she was skidding and falling right on top of me. I cringed ready to be crushed by a whole lot of spider weight.

She landed with a sick wet thud, her face right in front of mine as she screamed. I watched as the life left her eyes and her jaw hung loose, her legs curling up under her. Hot sticky spider goo began running down my hands, which were still wrapped around the neck of the guitar. The thick piece of wood was shoved right through Mama Spider’s abdomen, sticking clear through, and jutting out her back. I scrunched up my nose, wiggling myself out from under the massive weight, and standing up on wobbly legs, dead carcass before me.

I had killed her. But on accident? I sort of felt bad but bitch, she messed with me!

“You don’t mess with Gerard fucking Way,” I mumbled triumphantly, breathing heavy, and shoving her with the heel of my converse.

And then the weirdest thing happened. Out of the dark came the sea of tiny spiders, millions upon millions of them cascading onto the hardwood. But they didn’t come for me. Instead they all crawled up under big fat Mama Spider, lifted her from the guitar neck and hauled her away, back into the dark, leaving behind nothing but a pile of guts.

I blinked, shaking my head, and sitting back against the wall. Stranger things had happened I guess.

And for a long moment there was nothing but the sound of my breathing.

And then a door slammed from downstairs.

Cursing under my breath, I huddled in the corner. He was back.

There were heavy, fast, footsteps coming up the stairs as if someone was running, and then the door to the room slammed open. More footsteps dashed across the room and I could make out the shadow of his boots under the door. My heart clenched and my gaze settled on the doorknob as a key was pressed into the lock and twisted. The door swung open.

“What the actual fuck.”

I cringed as a flustered looking Ocean Eyes stared down upon the chaos that was the closet. And it really was a mess. Books were strewn everywhere, the guitar smashed to pieces. Although the spider guts were gone. It was all an illusion of course. When the lights came on, it all went away.

“You…” Ocean Eyes had the worst look on his face. He looked like a wounded puppy. He looked like he was about to cry. “…you broke my guitar…?” He bit his lip, the sadness morphing into an angry snarl as he turned on me. “You broke my fucking guitar? Big. Fucking. Mistake. Asshole.” He growled, swinging his arms down to grab the front of my collar and lift me up.

I wasn’t supposed to touch his stuff. That whole part of our nice little conversation before had escaped my mind. Man, was I knee deep in dog crap.

He pressed me against the wall, his fist balled up around the front of my hoodie, his face merely an inch from mine. His big ocean eyes were filled with hot fire, his eyebrows lowered and his nose scrunched. He looked rabid. He looked insane. And I watched in horror as he pulled a knife from behind him. And this wasn’t just any knife. This was the giant kitchen knife from before. I swallowed. This was it. He was going to kill me right here and right now.

“I’m gonna teach you a good ole lesson, bud,” He said, barring his teeth, and pressing the knife to my throat. I inched back as far as I possibly could, trying to escape the sharp blade.

“P-please…” I choked, a hopeless attempt at getting out of this.

“You-“ He stopped mid-sentence, a loud knock coming from the front door downstairs. “Oh fucking hell.”

His fist came undone from my collar, and I fell into a heap on the floor, breathing hard.

I watched helplessly as he dashed out of the closet and toward the window, throwing the curtains wider. His eyes bugged as he stared out the window. He started cursing left and right, dashing all over the room, grabbing a converse box off his bed and pulling a large revolver out from under his pillow. I blinked.

“Well get up! Come on! We don’t have a lot of fucking time, you lucky bastard!” He dashed over to me, grabbing the hood of my sweatshirt and yanking me to my feet.

Ha, sure, the luck I had.

“Frank Iero, we have you surrounded. Come out with your hands where we can see them.”

The crackling unmistakable voice of a megaphone came busting in through the crack in the window.

The cops were here.