CREEEEEEEAK...

Moonlight sprinkled into my room like parmesan from a steel shaker. My bedside clock read fifty-four past two, and at that very point in space and time, my beloved sister Trisha was sound asleep across the hall for what would be the final slumber of her life. Meanwhile, I was the precise opposite of sound asleep. In fact, the only sounds were the ones intruding through my recently opened window.

Hesitantly, I peaked my quivering cranium out from under my covers.

A sooty silhouette spilled from the aperture in the wall, viscous and gelatinous in its unearthly movements, sloshing onto the carpet like zombified blackberry yogurt. The creature slithered upon the floor as if it was a reanimated gummy worm, spastically writhing to the left flank of my bed.

Confidently, I retreated my trembling skull right back below my sheets.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…

Somehow, already enveloped in darkness, everything became seven shades dimmer. My bones rattled with the phantom sense that the bloodcurdling beast now towered over me, or maybe that was just the frigid I felt as its lifeless breath began to frost upon my comforter.

Wakey wakey, Todd. It’s only a dream.

I beseeched my neurotic brain to arouse myself from this nightmare. I implored my disturbed mind to press pause on this sickening slideshow. I begged and pleaded and solicited for all which was good in the world that this was nothing more than an irrational reverie.

It’s only a dream. The horrific thing’s claws unveiled the covers upon my petrified face.

Just a silly dream. A menacing knife reached towards my asphyxiated throat.

I’m living the dream, heh. Inches from my last breath, quite soon I’d be living no longer.

I couldn’t simply lie back and relax as this monster diced me alive, simmered me over a stove, and slurped me up in a porcelain bowl, even though I’m sure I must be tasty. I had to do something. I had to fight back. I had to give it everything I’d got. After all, desperate times do call for desperate measures.

The blade grazed my chest.

Showtime.

And so, just as any normal person in such a dire situation would presumably do, I snatched a history textbook from the top of my nightstand, swung the thousand-page behemoth of a novel at this otherworldly being with every testosteronic drop of my teenage might, and, well… 

Hoped for the best.

Now, I don’t condone what I did. In hindsight, it was quite the rash decision. 

I mean, I almost pitied the guy.

I’m not certain if it was some form of primitive survival instincts, deep-rooted childhood trauma, or an enormous culmination of adolescent hormones all gathering together at once… but I launched the dude.

He literally went flying across my room. Flying.

Noggin down, buttocks up, five and a half gyroscopic rotations.

After several seconds of wicked airtime, he smacked the far wall with an atomic thud, and then after a few more moments of cartoonish adherence, he crumbled to the carpet, groaning and grunting and grumbling all over.

“Ugh…” the dude moaned, hidden in the shadows, “What the hell was that for?!”

“Well I’m sorry!” I hooted, switching on my bedside lamp, “But if we’re talking truths, aren’t you the deranged wacko who just crawled through my window with a freaking machete?”

“It’s not a machete, it’s a scythe,” he sneered, rolling onto his haunches and dusting off his all-black apparel. Everything about the guy was boisterously black. His shoes looked like something out of a Skechers commercial, but completely black. His jeans were tight, clean, and what should’ve been denim blue, but black. He wore a black tunic, yet it was overlapped by like a motorcycle gang jacket, which of course was also a soul-sucking black. Socks were black, hair was black, even the dude’s fingernails were a ghastly black. If you had to imagine the color black as a living person, he’s what would come to mind.

His skin was white though. Like really white. Freakily white. Practically translucent.

“I don’t give a crap if it’s a scythe, a machete, or a cream cheese spreader, get the heck out of my room!” I squawked, bounding from my bed and wielding my history textbook in a fairly uncivilized manner.

“Woah there, partner,” the goth dude chuckled, climbing to a wobbly bipedal stance, “Pump the hate brakes… Todd, isn’t it?”

“W-wait… how do you know m-my name?”

He retrieved a clipboard from inside his jacket, snapped his fingers, and poof.

A levitating quill and a floating carton of ink appeared from seemingly nowhere, which he then supernaturally proceeded to scribble upon the clipboard with. A mark and a check here, a splotch and a dabble there. A swoosh, a slash, and a swish too. 

One snap, one poof.

His magical items vanished.

“You don’t happen to know a girl by the name of Trisha Thompson, do you?” the guy frowned inquisitively, hovering his scythe in ellipses around him like an orbiting satellite.

“Uhhhhh…” I gaped, rooted to the spot, “Sh-she’s my sister.”

“Marvelous,” he smirked, giving me a curious wink, “And do you happen to know where within this home she might reside, perhaps even be right this moment?”

“Um… across th-the hall,” I gulped, jitterily pointing to the door.

“Wonderful!” he rejoiced, “Your assistance has been greatly appreciated, Todd.”

He extended his pale palm, a naughty grin carved into the crinkled folds of his cheeks. 

I elected not to receive it. 

“What are you d-doing here…?” I blinked, remaining staunchly still.

“Hmm…” the dude pondered, glancing back at his clipboard and inspecting it rather diligently, “… that’s peculiar… I see, I see… alas! There’s my mistake. It says here that Trisha could be found on the second floor, window number six. I must’ve counted incorrectly.”

He giggled, shrugged, and twisted the doorknob, nearly having exited had I not snagged his flowing garments at the last possible instant. Slowly, he rotated around, the mischievous smile on his face withering like a blighted dandelion.

“What is it?” he hissed, “Your sister and I mustn’t be rendezvousing late.”

“Who… who are you?”

The guy released a dramatic exhalation, rolled his dusky eyes, and began perusing his trustworthy clipboard once again.

“Let’s see… Todd Thompson… ahah! Quite some time, eh?”

“I don’t… I don’t understand…” I mumbled, my train of thought launching off its tracks, “Quite some time? What the heck does that even mean?”

He studied me up, down, and over three times. He gandered into my teenage psyche, gandering hundreds of leagues within me. He patted my shoulder, nodded his farewell, and ushered the door to a squeaking close behind him, whispering with an anticipatory hunger that was more voracious than any I would witness in roughly nine decades.

“See you in eighty-eight years, Todd.”