Boogeyman

Pete stumbled his way down the street lamp-lit sidewalk trying his hardest not to fall over.  He kept leaning forward as his body wanted to slump over.  It was so hard fighting to move let alone stay upright.  This stuff hit hard and he needed to find a spot to sit and ride it out.  Tranq was the best in his mind but he was finding it to be too much right now.  Instead of waiting for a place to lounge out and shoot up, he did it as soon as the dealer handed him his fix.  It was too much.

They must of mixed the horse tranquilizer with fentanyl and not the heroin he was used to experiencing.  If he didn’t find a place soon, he would have ended up passing out on the sidewalk and most likely get rolled by one of his fellow domestically challenged addicts. He still had some tranq left and wanted to wake up still having it on him.

The junkie finally noticed an alley darker than most as the street light positioned in from of the entrance had gone out.   An overfilled dumpster was pushed against one of the ally walls which would make the perfect spot for Pete to hide behind while he enjoyed the waves of euphoria before succumbing to unconsciousness. Quickly glancing around, Pete didn’t see anyone around but why would there be anyone?  It was well into the night and no one willingly walked around these streets this late in the twilight. He didn’t notice any other homeless.  He was all alone. 

He almost lost his balance when darted into the alley and slipped on some trash.  He needed to be careful because he knew if he fell he wouldn’t have it in him to get back up until the drugs left his system enough and then he would want to inject more and fade away into euphoria again.

 Having stopped long enough to fish out some broken-down cardboard boxes from the dumpster, Pete walked around to the far side of the dumpster and dropped the cardboard down to make a makeshift cushion.  Because he was homeless didn’t mean he wanted to sit in the dirt and filth of the alley. He flopped down on the cardboard and pressed his back against the alley wall with the dumpster to his left blocking anyone from the street from seeing him and the darkness of the alley to his right.

After a couple of seconds, he noticed how dark the alley was.  He couldn’t see the end of it or the opening that should of taken him back to the street on the other side of the block.  Maybe he lucked out and chose one of the few alleys that ended with a wall but that seemed unlikely.  He should have been able to see something at the other end but it was darkness. An infinite darkness that got darker by the second almost like a void.

Despite the amount of drugs in his system, the junkie could feel the buzz going much too quickly. The more he looked into the darkness, the more he grew uneasy.  Fear and adrenaline were overpowering the drug and as much as he wanted to run as fast as his legs would carry him, he was too scared to move.  He didn’t know what was going on and he hoped it was a bad trip. 

Pete couldn’t imagine it getting worse but then he sensed it.  He was not alone.  There was something in the darkness that was looking back at him.  He couldn’t see anything but he he knew it was there and that it was coming for him.

A large, muscular and hair-covered arm shot out of the dark and as soon as its claw tips fingers wrapped around Pete’s neck, it lifted him off his feet and into the air.  The darkness lifted slightly and the homeless man was barely able to make out what was holding him.  The drugs had to be playing tricks with his eyes.  This couldn’t be real.  It had to be some muscle headed thug trying to rough him up and steal from him and the trap was messing with his eyes. 

What was in front of him looked close to the werewolves he had seen in movies prior to living on the streets.  The only difference was the creature also had two of what Pete could only think of as devil horns on its head.  He tried to convince himself that it was some asshole in a costume or the drugs but in the back of his mind he knew that wasn’t the case.  This was a monster and it would eat him.  Pete knew he should try and fight back so he could escape except he felt he couldn’t do anything to stop what was going to happen.  He hoped that the drugs he had taken would at least make his death painless.

The beast pulled Pete in close and they were now looking into each other’s eyes only a few inches apart.  Pete believed those bright yellow eyes of the creature were peering into his very soul and he was unable to even put up a struggle.

“Food”, the monster said in almost a growl and it was all over for Pete. 

In less time than it took to blink, the junkie’s fear peaked.  He simultaneously blacked out and shit his pants. A fact that assaulted the monster’s nose instantly and it dropped Pete to the ground.

“Damn dude. The was foul”, the creature said before turning away from the unconscious junkie and disappeared into the dark.

 The color-filled world around the monster turned to muted tones as he walked deeper down the dark alley.  He wasn’t in the the same plane as the man he fed off.  He was in a place between the world of man and the realm he came from.  He could walk in the open without being seen or shift from shadow to shadow and location to location instantly.

 “I can’t believe he messed himself.  Well, not the first and won’t be the last, but it does spoil the meal”, the creature said to himself.  He passed out the other side of the alley and kept walking without a true destination.  He had eaten and wasn’t sure is he was going to look for more prey or find a place to call it a night to take shelter from the coming day. 

 The stuff of legends, fireside tales, and nightmares, his kind has existed with mankind and fed off them for man stopped being monkeys.  They fed offer the energy man created with their emotions.  The stronger the emotion, the more filling and nourishing.  The creatures would hunt and scare to fill humans with as much terror as they could before bringing the hunt to a climax and devouring the person. Taking that first bite of a frail person, their life force gushing out of the wound released so much raw terror his kind found intoxication.  Something he did miss at times not feeding that way. 

Over the centuries, man got smarter and bolder.  They stopped running and cowering.  They started to fight back.  A new type of human was born centuries ago.  The monster hunters.  These hunters would travel to any place they heard stories or rumors of missing people, mysterious deaths or unnatural beasts and turned the monsters from hunters to hunted.  Some of these humans even found ways to enter the shadows to give chase.  

The monsters had to change or they would be wiped out.  Many were too confident or too stubborn to change.  They never lasted long after they were discovered.  The smart ones learned to feed off the emotions without having to physically eat.  It was all a matter of choosing the prey. 

Kids were the easiest.  Every kid has been afraid of the dark at some point.  Experiencing the monster in the closet or under the bed.  He would traverse the shadows to travel into a kid’s room; that opened closet, the dark corner of the room or the lightless space under the bed.  Kids were easy to scare, and they had unmeasurable imaginations.  He could feed and it would be treated as a nightmare or too much TV.  He stopped feeding off kids as he had with eating people.  Not for a couple of decades.  He has a change of heart and a change of prey. 

The creature’s preferred prey was the intoxicated and strung out.  People under the influence of some drug because it allowed him to let loose.  He could be as frightening as he wanted.  He could even get a little physical only to have it chalked up as an altered state of mind and an animal attack.  No one would listen to the claims of a monster from a homeless drug addict.  It was working out well for him. The best part was in a large city he was living in a buffet though at times he did miss the energy from ripping a person apart. The fear. The raw emotional energy that was so feeling. 

Lost in thoughts of the past and present, the beast almost didn’t notice it at first.  It felt that someone was trying to reach out to him. It was like the tiniest whisper from the past.  The reminiscing of his past was playing with him.  It had to be wishful thinking on his part.  Then the smell crept in.  It was so fainted and yet unmistakable. The smell of the fear could only belong to one person, and he last fed off her so long ago, but he had also taught her how to call for him. 

A person’s energy is unique to them and so are the impression made by their emotions. Like a person’s fingerprints or DNA.  He could smell a person’s emotion from a good distance and when close enough the aura the emotions gave off.  Once he had a scent, he could follow through the shadows no matter how far away or where in the world they were.  

“Why is she trying to reach me and what was this fear?”, he asked out loud.  He almost chuckled to himself as he found it amusing that he long ago started talking to himself as he avoided his kind and it made things less lonely, but he needed to figure out why he was being called before another creature answered to the fear. 

 The creature focused on the smell and took a deep breath in through his nose.  He closed his eyes and let the scent permeate his being.  He could sense her now despite her being thousands of miles away.  It was like the old days of chasing prey and once he found you there was no getting away. 

The monster turned to the closest shadow and the world turned pitch black around him.  In an instance though, the darkness lessened and he peered into a bedroom from a shadowed closet. 

What he saw in the bedroom was nothing new to him.  The room was lit up by a bear-shaped nightlight and the light from the open door to the hall.  Stuffed animals on the floor along one wall with a crib and changing table opposite the toys.  A rocking chair sat in the corner perpendicular to the closet.  You do not live as long as he has feeding off humans from the shadows without recognizing a nursery.  A baby’s emotions were pure but rarely ever afraid and this one he could tell was asleep in the crib.  It wasn’t the baby that had drawn him to the room though. It was her.

She had changed so much over the years since he last saw her.  No longer the little girl she was the last time he saw her, she had grown into a beautiful woman for a human, but that beauty was tarnished with bruised flesh, a black eye, and a busted lip.  She was curled up on the floor in front of the crib looking at someone or something outside of the room and whimpering in pain.  She suddenly turned towards the closet and for a second tried to smile.

After all these years, she was still able to sense him and find him in the dark.  It had been that way since the first time he came across her when she was three and went to feed off her fear. He was going to slip out of the dark, scare her to feed, and disappear back into the black.  It didn’t happen that way. 

“Hi. I’m Emi.  Will you be my friend, Boo Man?”, she asked.  He had just appeared in the room and hadn’t even stepped out of the dark, but she knew he was there and was not the least bit afraid. He was curious about her and introduced himself.  That was the start of their friendship. 

Emi pegged him as something many would call the boogeyman but had trouble saying it and named him Boo Man.  She told him that she didn’t have a mom or dad and that she kept getting sent away because she was “odd” and “weird” as the grown-ups called her.  She was gifted and able to view the worlds within the world and gave off a strange aura because of it.  It made many uneasy around her.  Emi thought Boo Man was the friend she wished for and he indulged her and never said differently.

 Boo Man would visit Emi nightly to play at first but as she grew older more time was spent talking than playing.  He taught her how to call for him and how to hide her presence and aura.  His original motivation for this was to hide her from others like him while it had the added benefit of making feel people more comfortable around her.  She told him that adults had started talking to her about living with them and how happy she was feeling.

One night Emi was just gone.  She had left a note in her closet for him to find explaining that she finally was wanted by a family and she had to move.  She asked him to wait for her to call him because she feared them rejecting her.  It was bittersweet for him.  She didn’t want to wait to see her again and also was happy for her. Unfortunately, she never called for him.  Days became months became years.  He missed her but just told himself that she finally got what he wanted and needed. For some reason, Emi finally called out for him. 

Before he could step out of the dark, a man entered through the door and closed it behind them.  The first the monster noticed was the smell of joy and excitement.  The guy was taller and bigger than most humans he figured and probably what many would consider handsome.  He walked up to Emi and ripped her up from the ground with one hand but the throat.

“I haven’t killed a family before.  This is fun”, the man said while he squeezed his hand tighter and tighter around Emi’s throat. 

“Save my son, Boo Man”, said Emi with a strained whisper as the life left her eyes.  The monster was at a loss having watched his only friend die in front of him. 

The man let go and Emi’s lifeless form fell hard to the ground.  He stepped up to the crib and looked down at the sleeping baby. 

“Now it’s your turn.”

The creature finally looked away from his friend’s now lifeless body when the man spoke.  The shock quickly wore off.  He felt as if his blood was going to boil and the anger he felt started manifesting around him.  The nightlight in the room started to flicker before brightening up passing its limit and going out.  The room fell further into darkness with only muted light from outside passing through the curtained window. 

The killer froze in the dark too unnerved to move.  The nightlight going out didn’t bother him.  He thought it was kind of poetic; the light going out just as he was going to end the life of a child. It was how quiet things had gotten.  The beating of his heart that thundering in his ears.

Thump thump. Thump Thump. Thump. The monster glared at the man from the closet.  Thump. The monster was standing behind the man.

“No! It’s my turn to play!” Boo Man said in a snarl through gritted teeth.

The man spun around but nothing was behind him. Nothing but darkness. A darkness that felt alive and growing with each passing second.  HE could no longer make out anything in the room.  The light from outside was barely visible and when he turned back around the crib was faintly seen in the black.

“What the fuck?” he asked out loud.

The hairs on the back of the man’s neck stood up as the foul odor of hot breath was felt against his face. He imagined staring down a vicious canine but he couldn’t see anything in front of him.  He turned back to the door he had come in from and reached out in desperation for the handle. When he couldn’t feel the door handle he pushed his arm out further until with a squish he hit the door.  The killer pulled his arm back to see what his hand hit but it was missing.  His hand never reached the door and he never felt any pain.  He was handless, blood dripping from the stump, and he never felt it happen.

“Missing something?” said a voice behind him. The man turned back to the crib to see Boo Man standing between him and the baby. The creature was holding the guy’s hand and took a bite out of it before continuing. “I told you that it is my turn to play. You fucked up and killed my friend.”

The man swung at the monster with his remaining hand and when he pulled his arm back his other hand was missing.  He cocked his head a bit and stared at his handless extremities and looked at them in wonder.  The wrist of the first hand was ragged with the bone splintered and sticking out at a point.  The man was pretty sure that the hand had been ripped from his arm despite the impossibility of it.  The other hand was much cleaning in its removal though whatever took it off wasn’t a knife as the cut had a slight curve to it.

“You seem confused so let me explain a few things.  I ripped the first hand off and bit the other one completely off.  You taste delicious by the way.  And I know you are trying to figure out how. Short answer is you are in my world and I am king.  I can move faster than you can perceive because I control the flow of time here. I can stop your pain and control your emotions.  Right now, You are not feeling any pain and could not be afraid if you wanted.  

“Now, I am going to rip you apart little piece by little piece.  You will feel pain you could not fathom and when you hit the peak of terror I will truly feed. And don’t worry, it won’t be a quick end.  It will feel like an eternity.  I haven’t fed like this in so long.  I am going to enjoy myself.  You ready?” said the monster with a chuckle before chomping down on what was left of the man’s hand.

 The man’s mind reared back as it was flooded with overstimulation.  He could feel the pain from his hand as it was being crushed and ripped up in the creature’s mouth even with it no longer attached to his body.  The pain from the hand and his wrists was so intense he could never put it into words.  Along with terror that came from the depths of his soul. It was an ancient fear as if all those who came before him were afraid for him.  It was a primal fear born before modern civilization when man were still hunter-gatherers and there was more to the dark than just a lack of light.  He wanted to scream.  He wanted to run.  He could do neither and prayed that he would just die.

It was a few minutes later the creature was standing in front of the kid and out of his world.  He reached into the crib and carefully pulled out the baby.  Cradling the little boy in his hairy arms, the monster and baby faded from the world of man leaving behind the body of his friend and a pool of blood and bits of flesh where the killer once stood.