Work Text:
Looking in the mirror, there’s something in the bathroom corner he can’t make out. Hidden, shadowed, it sinks into the night-time shade, camouflaged. But there’s something there, lurking, in the shadows. He wonders if it’s a trick of the light or some animal part of his brain, something like a primal fear from the pre-historic ages, telling him that there’s something there when there isn’t. He knows there isn’t. It’s just the shadows of his bathroom, the parts not lit by his dim over-head light. It’s just, the sensation of eyes over him doesn’t cease. He feels it over his back, burning like scalding water, sending shivers down his spine and cold sweat to rise from his pores. If he looks away, he fears it’ll grow, that feeling of instinctual fear. It’s an unknown, a dark abyss, an unforeseen eldritch horror waiting in the wings for him to let his guard down. It’s the feeling of staring into deep sea water, and seeing something move in the great unknown. To drag him out of his safety, to take him somewhere not designed for humans. To pull him in. Somewhere dangerous and evil and resulting in an early death.
So he stares at the nothingness, a flimsy defense against untold terrors. It gives him that security he imagines horror movie characters feel just before they’re killed by the villain in the movie - in some twisted, dismal finale. Blinking becomes a no-no, much like how staring becomes an Olympic sport, not a contest. Eyes burn, like adding salt to an open wound, or how claws rake over flesh.
But he doesn’t look away from that shadowed corner until he leaves.
Slamming his door closed, he makes sure to apply the lock, sliding the metal into place. He knows, deep inside, that a door would be like a paper-made dam to water in the wake of a monster’s strength. But he chooses to be ignorant. Blinds himself in false security, as he squirrels himself deep into his covers, shielded by his nightlight, cocooned in his Hero Merchandise and guarded by his All Might Plush. After all, All Might will always protect him with his bright smile.
Hunkering down in his safe-zone, he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to sleep. He was safe and sound. He was protected and secure. It couldn’t get him. Whatever it was.
The sounds of a sleeping child fill his ears as he grasps the lock in his spindly claws, nudging it smoothly open as he palms the handle, twisting.
A soft creak fills the air, unnoticed by the calmly breathing child buried in his comforter, surrounded in the blue glow of his night light, and the green glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his ceiling. As he shuffles closer, his red eyes and sharp-toothed mouth crescent, his claws tapping, scratching, dragging him closer to his prize.
Carefully, so as not to wake his treasure, he pinches the comforter in his talons, puling it gently open like one would a present wrapped in wrapping paper. A curly mop of green hair is revealed, along with a constellation of freckles on a cherubic face. He clutches a gaudy plush to his chest, that bulges out in an unsightly garish yellow. He’d find another toy for his precious gem to cradle so cutely.
Positioning his spindly arms around the child, like one would hold sugar-glass, he lifts his precious bundle to his chest, cradling his gift as he rises from his crouch. The shadows on the wall cast by his abominable existence elongate unnaturally, spine cracking like popcorn kernels as his skin bubbles and form changes. In place of the grotesque creature, is a tall sharp-smiling man, who turns back to the darkness of the opened door. Shoes gently thudding against the worn wooden floors of the boy’s bedroom, his body sways with inhuman grace, a hum escaping from a closed maw. Working his wicker-fingers around the stuffy clutched to the child’s chest, he drops it carelessly back on the nauseating mesh of coloured comforters he’d stripped from the boy’s sleeping form, turning cautiously so as not to wake his sleeping charge. Long strides take the monster-made-man back into the darkness of the bathroom. As he creeps back into the darkness, teeth and red eyes smile back from the void. A clawed hand reaches over the wooden door’s edge, the very air freezing on the knife-edge, those ghoulish talons gripping distressed wood.
SLAM!