The Boogeyman

Michael McCain

Tiny fingers skittered across the touch screen. Pop! The figure was quite comical, a small, hunched over shadow of a child, staring at a bright screen in the middle of an incredibly dark room. He would freeze for a moment, waiting, and then his short fingers would pounce at the colours flowing freely from the bottom of the screen towards the top, eagerly bursting the little fragments of code in a pointless yet entertaining game of a virtual balloon tag.
Pop! Pop! Pop!

This boy was called Michael McCain. He was incredibly intelligent for a young boy aged only seven, and was acing all his exams at school. He was also smart enough to understand that his parents marriage was rapidly breaking down due to his fathers insatiable alcoholism. That fact was what was keeping him up right now. That fact had kept him up for the last month.

He was the eldest of two brothers, and had dirty blonde hair that hung down to his small shoulders because of his aversion to having it cut. Thoughtful, blue eyes watched the screen through a pair of old, wire-frame glasses that almost always seemed to be unclean.His small lips were pressed tightly together in his quickly-fading concentration.
After a minute or two he yawned slowly, looked over at his "Disarm-able TNT alarm clock" and was stunned by the time. 3:07 am the bulky clock spat out in shapes of light into the darkness.
Michael sighed, 10 more minutes and he would go to bed. Ten more minutes of contempt with his balloon popping and he would go into what was always an exhausting sleep. Pop!

Half an hour later Michael settled into his bed and tried to tame his thoughts. However, every time his brain began to slow another image would pop up.
First, it would be his father, Matthew McCain, laying wasted and irresponsible on the large beige sofa with drool dripping out of his clumsy mouth. An air of fermentation clung to his stained, white polo shirt.
Next, his mother Hannah, black and blue with his father's "punishment", shaking and terrified but still pulling a false smile over her slender lips in order to comfort her two little babies while simultaneously trying to hide the wounds littered throughout her fair-skinned body.
There was also a feeling that something was coming. The air seemed to be charged by some imaginary static that penetrated the mind and shook Michael to his core. Something big was definitely coming. Something dangerous.
Finally, his little brother whose ghostly image looked lovingly up at his abusive father who Michael had learned quickly to despise. Charlie, being barley older than a toddler didn't yet understand the concept of hate. But if his father kept up with the drinking and the "punishment" , he would understand. Oh, he would definitely understand.

This last pitiful image scared Michael the most. Charlie was so young, so innocent, so good, that the thought of his fat fingered father laying his piggish hands on him caused bile to swill around in the child's stomach like he was at sea. He loved his brother so much. He wouldn't let that pig of a man hurt his baby brother. He wouldn't let anyone hurt him. Not over his dead body.

It was these fearful images that lulled Michael into a dreamless but uneasy sleep.