Nightmare And The Babybone Sanses

Storytime

Now that the boys have been living with Nightmare for a little while, they've started to become more confident around him. Cross still glares at the dark skeleton, but even he has been getting more relaxed and has taken to playing with his brothers a lot without keeping an eye on their guardian. Killer was possibly the first one to start showing signs that he enjoyed the evil skeleton's company, while not trying to eat him. While Killer has always had no problem with climbing on Nightmare, he never really seemed to be clingy as he is now.

This behavior from Killer first stared after he had an accident in the kitchen. He was trying to climb onto the counter to get to the knives while Nightmare was reading a newspaper. Of course, the larger skeleton knew what he was up to and told him to stop climbing on the counter without even looking at him, but it must've startled the little skeleton, because he slipped and fell soon after. The fall resulted in a small crack on his knee from colliding with the hard kitchen floor.

Nightmare told the boy that if he would've listened to him, then he wouldn't have gotten hurt. The dark skeleton's lack of sympathy caused the babybone to start tearing up at his sockets. This was back before Nightmare learned to just ignore them when they cry, so he decided to act and prevent the boy from shedding any tears. He took him to the bathroom where he kept a first aid kit and bandaged his knee. Ever since then, Killer has been actively trying to get closer to Nightmare. He once even crawled into his lap one day and started trying to poke at his fangs, which lead to the larger skeleton yelling at him.

Currently, Nightmare is in his library, reading one of many books. Despite what he has become, he still enjoys reading. Over the few hundred years, he's gathered quiet the collections of books and had to dedicate one room in the mansion specifically for them, turning it into a small library. As he read his book, he could hear the sounds of the boys playing in one of the rooms upstairs. Since he has so many unused rooms, he decided that it would be fine for the boys to play in whichever room they want, as long as they stay out of Nightmare's room.

From the corner of his eye, Nightmare saw the door to the library slowly open and close from where he was sitting in his reading chair. Seems one of the boys decided to leave the game going on upstairs. Not to Nightmare's surprise, Killer quietly walked up to him and crawled into his lap, pushing his arm out of the way when the larger skeleton didn't move it for him. The dark skeleton watched the small boy as he sat in his lap, making sure he wasn't going to try to poke at his face again. When Killer only sat and looked at the book he was reading, Nightmare looked back to the book as well.

As Killer looked at the pages, he didn't seem to be focusing on the words very much. He constantly looked back and forth between the pages as if trying to decipher a dead language. Nightmare tried to ignore him, but that was proving difficult with his small skull now blocking the pages as he leaned closer to the book. Before Nightmare could tell him to move, he leaned away from the book and looked up at the larger skeleton.

"read to me?" Killer looked excited as he asked this. He must like stories.

Nightmare looked from the child to the book in his hands and back again. "No, I don't think you would like this book very much anyway. It's made for adults, so there's lots of big words that you wouldn't understand."

Closing the book, Nightmare moved the small skeleton from his lap so that he could stand. He walked over to the shelves filled with books – Killer following close behind him. He ran a finger on the spines of the books as he searched until he found what he was looking for. Pulling the book form the shelf, he gave it to the babybone.

"This is a popular children's book written by monsters. Apparently, adults even like this one, but I'm not sure why, since it's for children."

He watched as Killer took the book and sat down on the floor to open it. He seemed to like all the colorful pictures on each of the pages, but he didn't seem to be reading the words. He just flipped though it and only looked at the pictures without really understanding what was happening.