Once Upon a Nightmare

- Seven -

- Seven -

"Good luck." Jane told me as we approached a closed door just down the hallway.

The upstairs of the house was huge. The stairs opened up into a long hallway with two doors to the left of the staircase and two to the right. Farther down the hallway was what I was told to be a play room of sorts and yet another hallway after that.

"Uh... Thanks." I muttered, knocking on the door.

"Coming!" I heard a voice on the other side say.

After a second Jeff came to the door, moving aside for me to enter.

Jeff and Ben's room was the same design as Jane's, but decorated completely differently.

The walls were scarlet red with black trim and the beds had grey and black sheets and pillows. All around the room there were all sorts of different gaming systems. Anything from GameBoy Colors to X Box were laying everywhere. There was a Wii and a PlayStation hooked up to an enormous flat screen that was mounted on the wall in front of the two beds.

"I take it you two are gamers." I said sarcastically.

"Ben mostly. I just watch." Jeff said, sitting on his bed.

Mounted over his bed was a rack holding various types of knives. Some were small oyster knives, others were large kitchen knives.

"Alright, Pepper, sit down." I heard Ben say. I turned around to see an empty room.

"Where is he?" I asked Jeff.

"Wait for it..." He said, pointing at the laptop on the other bed.

It began to make a high pitched noise and then there was Ben. Sitting Indian-style on his bed.

"That was odd." I said.

"Consider 'odd' the new normal, sweetie." Ben said sarcastically.

"Cyan, sit." Jeff said, patting the bed next to him.

I awkwardly sat down and folded my hands in my lap.

"Alright, should we wait for Slendy or go ahead an tell her?" Jeff asked Ben.

"Tell me what?" I asked. I was beginning to worry.

"I say you wait for Slendy." A voice said from outside of the bedroom door.

The Slender Man walked in then and I noticed that he had to hunch over to even fit in the room.

"Alright, now that we're all here..." Jeff began, trailing off.

"What's going on?" I asked, "If this is supposed to be building suspense it's working."

"Cyan, you're never going home." Jeff spat out. His eyes widened (if that was even possible), as if he didn't choose to say that right then.

"What?" I asked.

"Look, this is gonna be hard to explain, but you won't be going home." He said.

"Why?" I said, my voice rising an octave.

"Because I asked Jeffery to recruit you here." Slender Man said.

"Recruit...?"

"Yes."

"What does that even mean?" I said.

The three of them went on to tell me how this world isn't the only one that exists out there, and that they, and others like them, are from the Under Realm.

The Under Realm is apparently a place accessible from Earth (the Over Realm) using an earth well. The Under Realm was also created by a monster named Zalgo.

The group of monsters living in this house are one of four groups that rotate from Earth to the Under Realm to recruit new people to join them in the Under Realm.

"So basically," I said after they had finished, "you people have corrupted me into joining, not willingly, your little murderous posey so that this Zalgo character can have more monsters in his little wonderland?" Whenever I got upset or angry I always tended to be a smart ass.

"If that's the way you want to put it, yes." Slendy said.

"And to top it all off, I can't go home because my mind has already been 'corrupted'?" I asked.

"Yeah, pretty much." Jeff muttered. He hadn't looked me in the eyes since we started this talk.

"Hey, at least you get to keep your dog." Ben added.

I scowled at him. I may not have enjoyed my mother's company, but she was still my mother!

"Wait," I said, "what's stopping me from leaving? I'm tempted to walk out the front door right now."

"What's stopping you from leaving is the fact that you're under the same roof as fifteen of the most skilled murderers in the world." Jeff growled.

"If you killed me I don't think I would be much help to any of you." I said.

"Honestly, you haven't been much help from the start." Jeff said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, everyone here thought that you would come with me willingly, but instead I had to knock you and that mutt out so I could even attempt to get you back here." Jeff said.

"Well excuse me for not wanting to walk away from my life willingly with a knife wielding murderer!" I shouted.

"I'm going to bed. You two stop fighting soon or I'll get Jack to steal your kidneys while you're asleep." Slendy threatened.

The image of my kidneys being cut out while I was asleep wasn't a pleasant one.

"Oh, and Jeff," Slendy said, walking back into the room, "Here. So you can sleep."

Slendy tossed Jeff a purple eye cover.

"You couldn't have gotten a black or red one?" Jeff complained.

"No. Honestly, I don't know why you world burn off your own eyelids in the first place." Slendy said, holding the bridge of his nonexistent nose with two fingers.

"At least I had eyelids to burn off." Jeff muttered under his breath.

Before Slendy left the room again my mind became just a bit fuzzy and I heard a faint ringing in my ears.

"You hurt his feelings." Ben said.

"He's the fucking Slender Man. He doesn't have any feelings!" Jeff yelled.

"This is when I take my leave." I said.

Neither of them heard me, but instead began to argue about random things.

"So how'd that go?" Jane asked as I barged back into our room and flopped on my bed.

"Don't get me started." I muttered into my pillow.

"It could be worse." Jane said matter-of-factly.

"How?"

"There could be a zombie apocalypse going on." Jane said.

"Haha." I said dryly.

After a few minutes of silence, there was a knock at the door.

"If you're not here to bring me home, then get the fuck out." I said to the visitor. I was in no mood.

"I was just going to say goodnight." I heard Jeff say as he walked into the room.

"Didn't you hear her? She said get the fuck out." Jane intervened.

He turned off the light switch near the door and said, "Just... Try to go to sleep." And the door clicked shut again.

Through the darkness I heard Jane chuckling.

"Don't go to sleep," she said, "you might not wake up."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I'm pretty happy with this story so far. Are you?