Michael Jackson Imagines

• Muse (Early Thriller Era) •

A/N: Hey loves! Thank you, as always for being patient with my updates. It's been a super busy few months and this concept took a while to complete, but I'm so glad that it finally is!

I also want to thank you all for two things especially; first off, for 55k reads on this book! As cliche as it sounds, I honestly never thought I would reach this milestone and, although statistical success is a bonus with writing, it's given me a big confidence boost. Thank you so much for every read, comment, vote and message you send my way. As well as that, I recently won the best imagines category for the MJFAs! This is really something I never thought I would achieve, and all I can do is thank you all from the bottom of my heart for helping me build this book up to what it's ultimately become today. Not a day goes by when I don't think about how amazing it is that other fans even take the time of day to read my stories, let alone enjoy them. Thank you endlessly <3

Without any further ado, I'll let you get onto what you're ultimately here for, which is some good ol' Thriller era goodness. It's a long one, but hopefully it'll make up for my lack of content recently.

Enjoy Muse!

1981

Muse (n.); a subject of immense wonderment, motive, light, and even love, for the creative soul.

Muse (v.); to become absorbed in thought, reflection, and wondrous daydreaming of life and its possibilities.

Gazing outside the glass window from the safe confines of his bedroom, Michael absorbedly fastens his eyes on the object of his creative motive from across the street. He tilts his head up, notes every minute, intricate detail in his eyeline, and then quickly lowers his gaze back down to his sketchbook in a concentrated fashion. Time and time again he does this, relentlessly marking his paper with graphite trails, flecks and lines that somehow come to exactly reflect his vision. Sometimes he works the pencil with gentle, feather-like strokes, other times with deliberate, bold markings. He scribbles, lines and shades the object of his artistic inspiration until his wrist is nearly burning from the tension of his poised grip. He couldn't care, though- he knows that opportunities like this don't arise as often as he'd like.

"What'cha doin'?"

The sing-song inquisition from Janet, Michael's youngest sister, makes him nearly jump right out of his skin. He had been so utterly absorbed in his sketching that he'd failed to audibly detect her creak open the bedroom door and step inside the vicinity. As a result of being jolted so suddenly from his activity, the pencil scores an ugly line across the sketch and Michael sighs in frustration. "How many times I gotta tell you, Jan? Don't sneak up on me like that!" Michael irritatedly reprimands his mischievous sister, dropping the pencil down and quickly lunging for an eraser, desperate to eradicate the imperfection as he hurriedly begins to rub away.

Janet just shrugs, sauntering over towards her brother's sitting place at his beloved desk. "It's not my fault you scare easy"

Michael doesn't even bother to come up with a comeback to her sisterly mocking as he finishes erasing and quickly scrambles for a book to place on top of his sketchbook, shielding it from Janet's curious eyes.

"Marlon and Randy wanna shoot some hoops out front, two on two, but they won't let me join." she sulks, perching upon Michael's desk with her arms folded, "Join my team, Mike? Please"

"Sorry, Jan, another time." Michael sighs, nonchalantly arranging his graphite pencils back into their container, hoping that she would drop the whole thing once and for all and leave.