Foster's

Kyle 2

Angelica came home to a quiet but dark house. She purposely didn't leave lights on because she knew her new roommate didn't like the light.

She slowly shut the door behind her and then turned back around.

And there he was right across from her. Angelica, who hadn't been expecting it, yelped and threw herself back against the door.

From the TV came that rapidly becoming familiarly staticy cackle.

Her shadow monster liked startling her. He thought it was funny. She was guessing he got a bit of a snack from it because his main source of sustenance was fear.

She had started calling him her shadow monster because he didn't like being called shadowman. He couldn't properly articulate why it was he didn't like it, but from what she had gathered she figured it was kind of like an offensive term. Like a racial slur.

She was finding out a lot about him since she started this arrangement. Like, fear wasn't all he ate.

It turned out that her shadow monster did have a mouth. A sort of gaping opening that wasn't always visible but was situated right under his chin. Every time he'd open it, there would be a ripping sound and then his mouth would descend from his chin downward. It was this unhinged void of black with spiky white teeth haphazardly stuck into it, that hung down to the center of its chest.

After showing that to her he had proudly told her that it could fit a whole person down there. When she didn't look proud but instead horrified, he reiterated that he didn't mean her. He wasn't there to eat her.

Still gave her nightmares though.

With the introduction of his mouth, she established that, while it could chew and flare and hood out like a threatened cobra, he couldn't talk with it. He could make sounds but nothing that she couldn't really understand. But you know what he could do with it? He could eat.

He didn't have to eat often, but, after a week of letting him try some of whatever she liked they discovered that he really liked rotisserie chickens. So every other day or so she brought one home for him.

"You know I don't like that," he snapped but her shadow monster just stared at her, a sort of crinkling around his eyes that told her he was smiling at her, or was what she assumed was his happy expression.

"No, now, see now you don't get chicken," she said walking away from him and to the kitchen.

She noted, as she went, that the baby name book she had bought him, was sitting on her coffee table closed, which odd because he normally kept it open. He had been flipping through it over the past week and a half looking for a name that he liked. He got through a letter a day.

She had asked if he was a boy or girl monster but he hadn't given her an answer. She figured that maybe he didn't have a gender. She had asked if he preferred he or she and he also didn't have an answer. So she had decided to give him the he pronoun until he picked a name. If it was a girl name she'd change it, or ask him what he preferred.

Right now he didn't seem to mind but she was going to clarify once he had a name.

I'm.... sorry... hissed out of the TV and she half turned to see that he had followed her into the kitchen.

"If you're so sorry, you should stop."

There was no response to that. Her shadow monster didn't really like to talk so if he didn't have something to say he would just stay quiet.

He was quiet a lot.

He also spent a lot of time just hovering right out of her line of sight. Far enough to not really be seen but just in the edge of it. She had honestly gotten used to it, she even stopped trying to catch a full glimpse of him.