Cassius St. James's Story

Cassius was always early. It was just a part of him, the pre-punctuality that he always exhibited. Time had even less meaning to him than the others boys. The absence of light, artificial or otherwise, made it hard to tell if they were in day or night mode. He just slept when he was tired, and he had gotten The Box to make him an alarm clock that, when the fourth button on the top was pressed, would announce the current time in a tinny female voice. Pushing that button was the first thing he did when he woke up, because for all he knew he’d only caught a few hours and everyone else would still be in bed… or he’d slept ten and he was late for breakfast.

As a result, he took his time with things. Getting around wasn’t all that hard, not anymore, but it tended to be slow. Counting steps in long hallways required concentration even after the months of practice he had with the more common to’s and from’s in their strange metallic home. He’d probably been the first to arrive for the meeting, crossing the sixteen steps from the door to the round table and then feeling around for a seat. No one had greeted him, anyway, so he was pretty sure he’d been the first one, but then again Pandora might have been there the whole time and not said a word. The quiet boy was funny that way, but Cass could usually tell when he was around. It was just… a feeling. That weird prickling of the mind one got when they were being watched, even if they couldn’t actually remember what watching felt like.

He’d put on his earphones and some Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. He’d been on a classics kick for the last couple of days. Much though he loved music, the boy never, ever sang along. He sang in the shower, when there was no music accompanying him, but with his headphones on he could never tell when someone entered the room, and he didn’t want to annoy anyone with his kind of breathy, inexpert voice. Sighted people could spot an interloper and hush up, but whenever the urge overtook him, he thought about all five of his friends gathering around him, listening without tapping him or anything to let him know they were there. It made his cheeks feel hot to think of that, and the urge to sing usually went away very quickly.

Someone had prodded him when the meeting was about to start. He wasn’t sure who. Oh well. He reached up and pulled his headphones away from his ears, using one finger to kill the tiny sounds coming out of them once they were off. He was slouching, like he usually did, so he sat up. This was a break in the routine, this meeting. Maybe it was something important? He had no idea, and he’d been pondering about it all day, ever since Olly had called for it. He heard a chair scraping about, and then Olly clearing his throat. He did it in a pretty distinctive way, at least to Cass’s sharp ears, so he knew immediately that their leader was sitting to his left. He turned his head so that he was facing him, and got ready to listen.

He blinked his wide eyes when the other boy went on about people blowing their brains out or vanishing. Was that really something he worried about? Cassius found reasons to check in with Olly every chance he got, so it couldn’t be him that Olly was talking about. Probably Pandora and Drew. Mostly Pandora. He wondered where the solitary boy was. Probably away from the rest of them, maybe leaning against the wall.

When Olly looked at Cass’s face… well, Cass’s face could be pretty hard to read. Eye-contact was obviously out of the question. Even though he’d turned himself to face Olly, he was still staring through him rather than at him with those vacant eyes of his. Cass could smile, sure; he did smile, and laugh, and frown, and pout, but more subtle, less natural expressions were alien to him. He’d never seen them, so how could he know how to make them? He heard him sigh, and almost frowned. He hated when Olly was upset. Instead of frowning, he smiled, as encouragingly as he could. At least, he hoped it looked encouraging.

His brow creased. He had that one down, too. Ghost stories? He didn’t have the usual run of fears, so horror movies or creepy stories had never really interested him. That sort of stuff was only dangerous to dumb people anyway. They always wound up breaking the rules, then the bad guys got all of them but one, and it was just stupid how they all separated and got lost and picked off one by one. Maybe that was the point of it? To scare them into sticking together? No… Olly wasn’t that subtle. His heart was in the right place, but he couldn’t have come up with that.

He didn’t really know any scary stories, but he decided to speak up, remembering Olly’s sigh, his exasperated tone of voice. ”I think it’s a really great idea, Oliver.” When he spoke aloud, he always called him Oliver. In Cass’s head, though, he’d always be Olly, who fretted over him so endearingly. Olly, who… well, he liked Olly, and it was a good idea. The meetings were. He turned his head to smile a little more weakly at… well, he wasn’t sure where everyone was, but he probably got most of them before he panned back to Olly. ”I’m all for spending more time together. It will be fun. I don’t… know if we should start a fire… but we could have it make us s’mores and melted chocolate and all of that. I mean, maybe we can start a fire, I don’t know. What if there are sprinklers that just come on? I…” He realized he was doing that thing where he just kept talking. That happened, when Olly was around, more than any other time. He slouched in his seat again. ”I just think the meetings are a good idea, is all,” he finished quietly.

Drew Reinhart

"This is unfathomably stupid."

Drew struggled to keep the thoughts inside. It was late - or at least "box-late" - and Drew found himself more than ready for bed and less than thrilled to be attending a meeting. Especially one run so mind-numbingly slow, and by the far too excited Oliver. He should have known better than to show up, even if he did arrive more than fashionably late, to something Oliver organized. Having all of them in one room and knowing that it was his will that brought them there was obviously too much for his ego, and it soon became apparent Drew wasn't going to bed any time soon. Tuning Oliver out entirely, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, stretching as the boy rambled on. There was no point in listening; if it had been something important enough to interest Drew surely he would have said it straight out. He was probably just laying down more rules no one cared to follow anyway.

There was a short pause as Oliver stopped to clear his throat, and Drew's ears perked up, listening for Oliver to bring his little meeting to a close. "So from now on, we'll have these meetings on a nightly basis. We'll gather here before going to bed. Understood?" Drew's eyes snapped open and he fell forward in his chair. "Every night?" He pushed his glasses back onto his face as a small frown settled on his lips. The thought of spending every night before bed with everyone doing God-knows-what and talking did not sit well with Drew at all. "I suppose we use tonight to do that thing people used to do around campfires and junk. You know. Telling crappy ghost stories."

Kanari of course flipped the fuck out like usual, tossing his doll around and squealing as though Oliver had just offered him something of actual value. Though what was of value in a place like this? In a place where anything you wanted was at your fingertips, did anything really have worth? Did anything matter? He dwelled on this thought, mulled it over in mind with a light sort of amusement, a smile playing across his face as he lost himself in his own brain. Though if one can lose oneself inside oneself, who are you, really? He planted his elbows loudly on the table and rest his head in his palms thinking as the others put forth their two cents. Their chatter became a sort of background noise, a dull buzz that lulled Drew's thoughts closer toward the more abstract realm of dreams. As they continued to talk, Drew fell a little closer and a little closer to sleep. It was silence that ended up bringing him back to reality. Normally the quiet was his welcome companion, but this was the loud sort of noiselessness, the kind that was full of the near tangible thoughts and emotions of the others as they waited for someone to speak up. He yawned loudly, filling the expectant silence that had built most disappointingly.

"What's everyone waiting for, hm? Oliver, this was your idea, though it sounds more like something Kanari would come up with; why don't you go ahead and start us off, Boss?" Drew snickered lightly to himself, leaning back and closing his eyes again, hands behind his head and feet on the table. Oliver wasn't one for scary things. Kanari always insisted on watching horror movies and Oliver would frequently find some excuse to leave during the most climatic scenes. He doubted Oliver had really thought any of this through, and hopefully he'd be able to get to bed after a quick, likely harmless tale. "Come on, I'm..." Drew broke his sentence with a long, overdone yawn, "...tired as hell."

Ivonne Stratsky

Thought that it was too late be having any meetings. He was sleep as hell and he wanted to go back to sleep he was usually the one to sleep first. But, now no one was sleep listening to Oliver rambling about having a meeting every night before going to bed. Plus, he didn't know if everyone else was sleep but, he was already closing his eyes to sleep. Ivonne was pretty tired he kept rephrasing to go to sleep during all of this.

Oliver would never come up with a idea like that. Who would have him bring that up? Kanari was the first person that would ever bring up scary things so it would defiantly be him to tell Oliver to even have a meeting about talking about anything scary. But, before bed? Out of all the different times that people wasn't sleep, why choose before bed. Shrugging his shoulders when Oliver stated sharing any complaints or question would be fine too. Ivonne thought that it would be fine for that at least.

Searching for scary stories in his mind he has heard of some but, he just can't remember them. Sighing he stared blankly at the wall and nothing else. That is what he did most of the time he was sitting down somewhere and thinking. He laid his head on his hand blinking slowly he was really trying not to sleep or anything. Sighing he sat back up and looked at Ri and then at Cass, he then looked back at Ri agreeing with what Drew had said,"Ri you are the one for scary movies and other things like that. You could actually help us think of some things with a story or something." He nodded to himself and Kanari in agreement.

He smiled at Ri and he wanted to jump out of his chair and call him a girl just to annoy him. But, he didn't want to at the moment, he was very tired at the moment and wanted to get some sleep but, he could not with everyone waiting for someone to start a story. "Do we have to do this scary stories thing every night?" It would get boring to him sooner or later, but that was just him. He looked over at Oliver and back at his old friend, the wall. He usually looks over at the wall a lot lately, it calms his mind and it's a wall that can't talk to him. Well, that does not bother him, it was non living anyway.

Ivonne looked back at everyone in the meeting thingy or what ever it was for. He listened for Ri's and Oliver's response. He would be able to tell a scary story if he had any clue on how to start one. Ivonne really wasn't a person to even talk about anything that was even apart of being scary. Though he was pretty random so he wouldn't remember if he even did say anything or not. He probably did he just couldn't really think right now since he was getting tired every time he tries to think of something.

(Fail on my part!)

Kanari Tikoto

“I think it’s a really great idea, Oliver.” did Ri-chan smell cuteness in the air? He was sure he did. Cass-cass was always so cute. The kind of cute that makes you want to snuggle up to them and pinch their cheeks…and. Well yeah. Cass was a good friend of his, other then Olive-chan. But Olive and him were…err…what was the word that ‘thugs’ used all the time before he was stuck in this horrid, but surprisingly nice, place. Tight. Yeah! What was…oh! Right. Cass and Ri-chan were really tight, but not as ‘tight’ as Olive and him. Because Olive was funny to talk to. He was their leader, of course he wanted to be best friends with their leader. Even if he was sort of…an…an…unorthodox kind of leader. “I’m all for spending more time together. It will be fun. I don’t…know if we should start a fire…but we could have it make us s’mores and melted chocolate and all of that. I mean, maybe we can start a fire. I don’t know. What if there are sprinklers that just come on? I…I just think the meetings are a good idea, is all.” See!? See what he said about cute? Of course, Ri-chan was just a little cuter, but he would share that cuteness with Cass. Both of them were cute in a manly way of course. Of course.


A new voice spoke up and Ri fought a small frown. Frowns didn’t look well on him. Made him look…dare he say it? He shook his head. No. He wouldn’t. It would sound stupid, even in his head. So…just. Let’s stick with the fact that frowns didn’t suit his baby face and he was fine with it that way. Totally fine with it that way. “What’s everyone waiting for, hm? Oliver, this was your idea, though it sounds more like something Kanari would come up with; why don’t you go ahead and start us off, Boss?” A soft snicker could be heard and Ri fought the urge to throw Koko at him, just to make him shh-it! Ri-chan did not like people making fun of Olive! Olive was his make-fun-of toy! And if he was nice for a day, when he was really scared Olive wouldn’t be a jerk about it and just let him into the room so he could sleep with him. Stupid Unknown pestered Ri everywhere. See? Did you see that? They were right there, staring at him. He shivered. He could fight them today. They were just being creepy as always. Nothing…nothing he couldn’t handle. It was when they were being nasty Unknowns that they started to mess with his sense of dream and non-dreamy like things and he had to get out. This could be a dream. He didn’t know. Actually…he pinched himself to make sure. And yeah, it hurt. Real. “Come on, I’m…tired as hell.” a large yawn broke the elders sentence and in hearing the yawn, Ri did the same. Yawns were contagious things!

Eve-chan was the last to speak up, aside from Panda-chan, but he never really talked much. Never…talked much at all! Totally the opposite of Ri, but he was a-okay with that! Panda was nice to him and he was nice to Panda and Panda gave him food and…well Eve. Eve, Evey-chan! If Olive kicked him out, he went to Eve. Because bothering Cass was like…kicking a puppy into a street and watching it’s eyes widen as a monster truck ran over its body and left it dead. And alone. So…he didn’t ever bother Cass. “Do we have to do this scary story thing every night?” Ri wrinkled his nose. No, silly! Of course not! As much as he would love to, Olive would try to kill him if he begged more than every once and a while. He would take it easy on the elder man. Elder because…he was small and therefore he just considered himself to be the youngest. In honesty, Panda could be younger than him and he would not know. Because…he was taller and therefore he had to look up to see him. Hence…older.

Glancing around the room, the perfect story formatted in his mind. It wasn’t a story actually. He remembered this happening in his town. It was kind of cool to him. He wanted his friends to go with him to check it out…but they didn’t want to and called him a macho girl and ran off. Of course he didn’t talk to them for a while because they called him female, but the point still stood of…it was real. Really real. He giggled at himself. “Okay, okay! Since no one wants to go first,” he pouted, “I’ll do it! Of course it was my idea. Duh. Why would like…Olive-chan do anything worth…doing…about the supernatural. He’s just…not amazing like me in that sense!” he giggled and leaned over to pat Olive’s shin, smiling. “But enough chit-chat guyyss! It’s scary story time~”

He hummed for a bit and settled down, crossing his legs once more and moving his recently collected, from the horrid place called the ground, stuffed cat into his lap. “So like around the late 1990’s, or the early 2000’s, there was this really nice amusment park in my town, or city, whatever. It had rides for kids of all ages, from like 2 to like…16 or something. I don’t even know. It was amazing and I loved to look at pictures of it before it closed. Of course I never went there, because I was not alive. My grandmother was. And this really…it’s what she told me happened. It’s why…I don’t have a great-aunt, or something equally weird and creepy. Anyways, when they were younger, they used to go all the time right?” he paused and dropped his smile. He hated that he couldn’t tell scary stories…scarily. But whatever. He loved this tale. It made him…tingly inside, “When they were around the age of 9, there was a new ride. All the little kids seemed to love it, is what she said. It was a nice ride too. A large happy smiling face for a mechanized head, and roughly around 4 little train carts following after it. Sounds really cute right? Well that’s what I thought too! Well it seemed that after a few months, children started to disappear on the ride. She showed me records. Deaths and disappearance. There were cases in the double digits. For one year. Just for the ride. Not including anything else. Those that disappeared from the ride itself, seemed to always be gone after the short tunnel, about 10-15 feet long, and even if the parents stood at one end and watched their kid, sometimes they still managed to be snapped away into thin air. Those…lucky, unlucky?” he tilted his head slightly and licked his lips, “Souls that didn’t vanish sometimes went into comatose states. One was just found dead, various shades of blood red on her pretty dress. Other children killed themselves. Razors, wires, they even went ahead and killed other kids before killing themselves. There were several reports of decapted heads on farms, children’s bodies smashed to almost the point of no recongizicon, anything you could ever think of, there were records of it.”

“It was safe to say that not only did that ride shut down, but the whole park did as well,” he smiled, “Actually, just a few years after Grandma told me this story, a group of scientists and other volunteers went to the now over grown park site and found that the ride, while run down, was in perfect condiction. In fact, other than a few spots of rust, that collect no matter what, and the happy smiley now washed into a demented snarl-grin, the ride worked. So, stupidly, they put a scientist on the ride with a video camera and ran him through the whole 2-3 minute ride, thinking that the townsfolk were just making it up. The first one disappeared, the camera showing only what they could see from their own eyes. As soon as he entered the tunnel it turned into static and the only thing they heard was the laughter of small children. The second…both him and the camera remained, the man covered in blood, and not all of it his own, and his throat slit open. The camera…well they couldn’t even hope to recover it. It was smashed.” Ri smiled brightly and giggled, “Well? That’s it really. They haven’t gone back. I guess. I don’t know. But yeah! My creepy story!”

It really did seem like it was Kanari’s idea. Every so often, Drew’s prickliness hit the mark, and the idea was only confirmed when Ri admitted as much. He frowned, though it had nothing to do with children dying at an amusement park; he frowned because he realized he had just felt a teensy, tiny, miniscule pang of jealousy. He knew that Olly and Ri spent a lot of time together, time apart from the rest of them, and apparently they spent that time planning meetings and filling them with ideas that Ri would enjoy. The monster that Olly would go on to describe a few minutes later probably would have enjoyed feasting on what Cass was feeling right then very much, but after a few seconds of fuming, the blind boy only felt guilty for getting so cross about his friends’ friendship. It was only friendship, right?

He tuned back in. Understandably, Cassius was a listener par excellence. If anyone bothered giving out awards for being a listener, he would have swept the competition every year. He had to be good at it. He couldn’t tell what sort of looks people were giving, how they were standing or sitting, whether their arms were folded across their chests or hanging at their sides. All the little visual cues that made up the very diverse catalogue of human body language were almost entirely lost to him, so he had only words, tone of voice, and the occasional interaction with the environment to go by.

Ri’s story wasn’t really all that scary, not to him. He never would have said as much (despite, just a moment before, feeling not-so-kind regarding Ri), but… well, he’d never been to an amusement park. He’d never ride a roller coaster in his life, especially not the one Ri was talking about.

The step that Pandora took caused Cass to give his attention that way. The mysterious boy’s story was even less scary than Ri’s. Killer curtains? And the girl who’d gone and bought them like a dummy had survived thanks to the police. Her entire family had been killed by her stupidity, though, so maybe that was worse than being choked to death by curtains anyway. Besides, where they were didn’t even have windows, so death by curtain was pretty much the last thing he’d lose sleep over.

He started thinking up his own story, one that he was making up in his head without even realizing it. It was a story about a boy whose parents hated him. When he squalled, they decided to sew his mouth shut so that he couldn’t wake them with his crying. When he grew older and got upset at the nasty things they said about him, they plugged up his ears with wax. When he picked out the wax, they bound his hands behind his back with scratchy twine and sealed up his ears again. When he cried silently and they got tired of seeing his tears, they got a spoon and used it to scoop out his…

His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of shuffling foot-steps coming closer to him. He wasn’t sure who it was, and he braced himself for something. A tap on the shoulder, a nudge, or even a random hug like the sort Kanari was so fond of giving him. He was glad it wasn’t any of those things, particularly the lattermost. When he heard Olly’s voice, so close, he realized that the bigger boy, their leader, was the one who had come near. He couldn’t help the shy smile that tugged at his lips, the faint crimson that touched his cheeks. Something inside him wanted him to reach out and take Olly’s hand, but he couldn’t. He’d be groping through the air for it, probably look very foolish, and make Olly look foolish and weak… so, no, that was out of the question.

He listened to their leader’s contribution to the non-existent campfire, and began to frown. The creature he was describing… now that was scary. No, not just scary. There was a better word from it, a word that Cassius knew because of all the books he’d listen to or read with the tips of his fingers. Insidious. That was the word for this nightmare thing that Olly’s voice seemed to conjure. Something that didn’t strangle you or stab you or bite out your liver. Instead it drove you crazy. Insanity was something that scared someone who spent as much time just thinking as Cassius did quite a lot. He could imagine such a monster moving things around in his room. He could imagine it leaving him little bits of paper with raised bumps on them that said terrible things.

He swallowed, and his lower lip became caught in his teeth while he pondered about the shadow-sewn horror. The really scary thing about it, he decided, was that it didn’t really need to exist at all. He might just forget where he put something, but now that he’d heard this… well, what if it was some extra-dimensional thing that fed on negativity? What if someone said something that hurt his feelings (which happened quite a lot), and he decided that it might be because they were having weird stuff happen to them to? Olly’s monster was a perfect metaphor for the fear that affected him most acutely of all: the fear that he might one day be very alone, even with his captive friends still around.

Olly interrupted his thinking again when he abruptly put an end to the story that wasn’t a story so much as a description and the meeting in one stroke. He heard him move away, and sank even lower in his seat. He didn’t want Olly to go away right now, especially not to bed, because that meant… No way, shadow-monster. If you are real, you’re not getting to eat any jealousy tonight. ”Good night, Oliver,” he called lamely after the departing boy. He remained sitting, waiting for the others to say something or depart as well. He needed to wait, or else he might walk right into someone, and really… he didn’t want to be alone right now. The story session had unsettled him. He sat very still, very silent, listening for footsteps and hoping, for once, that someone might offer to help him to his room. He laid his hands on his CD player, his head phones, making sure they were still where he thought they were, and waited.

Drew Reinhart

None of he stories particularly impressed Drew. Of course, that could've been because he only half listened to them. Kanari couldn't really make anything sound scary when he was so damn bubbly about it, and Pandora himself with his shady smile and lurking in the dark seemed creepier than his actual story. Oliver on the other hand seemed to have scared himself right out of the room. He brought the meeting to a close so abruptly, it took Drew a moment to realize that it was actually over. "He must be off to look for the boogeyman," Drew muttered aloud to no one in particular. Drew certainly would not be wetting himself, but he had to admit there was… something about Oliver's story. It was the kind of tale that sort of hung in the air, lingered gently within one's mind, waiting patiently for the perfect night, the right kind of darkness, the moment you were eerily alone to creep back out and frighten you. Drew removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the other hand, swinging his head lightly as if to physically dispel the thought.

Cass also seemed to be rather rattled calling out after Oliver so weakly. The others still hadn't said anything, though that was really only strange for Kanari; he hadn't expected much of a reaction from Ivonne or Pandora, even after Oliver had nearly pushed him out of the way to get back to his room. "Well…" Drew stood up and stretched, trailing off with no real intention of finishing the thought. He settled his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and gave a final glance around the table as a "goodnight" to everyone. Hands shoved into his pockets, Drew walked off toward his room whistling lightly. A surprising amount of time had passed (or at least it felt that way) since the meeting had started, and with each step Drew's feet grew a little heavier.

He finally slumped into his room fell into his bed. He yawned and stretched his arms up hard, arching his back on the still made bed. He knew there was no real point in making it, but still he did every morning. Something about leaving it made him feel as though he'd given up on something. What that something was he wasn't sure, but it gave him a little empty pit in his stomach to see it a crumpled mess all the time.

Drew managed to pull himself up for a moment to toss his glasses onto a nightstand, peel his t-shirt off, and wriggle out of his pants, then fell straight back down and almost immediately to sleep, face down, sprawled atop his covers, one arm dangling off the side of the mattress.

Kanari Tikoto

Panda-chan had spoken up after him, and Ri let a little giggle out at the end of her story. It was funny, in a weird way. Of course it was just a tale, and curtains never ate people. It was silly. And it had a moral to it too. He wasn’t sure if he liked that. Morals were for…tales. Not scary stories. But whatever. It didn’t scare him. Olive’s story…it stuck a chord with him. A very large chord. A chord that made him want to roll into a ball and cry because it actually terrified him. See it started off okay. It was good, the story. Until about the third sentence. Then, for Ri, shit hit the fan. “It’s like…some sort of stitched-up shadow thing. Like a monster that was sewn together from the shadows of other monsters…” Ri had been frozen, the smile gone from his lips. Koko had been in his death grip, and he fought not to scream. To scream at Olive to shut up, because they were listening to him. To not continue due to the fact that he could see them, he saw them, right next to him. Listening to every single word. Instead he just squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath, begging them not to be there. When they opened, the shadows were gone. But he could…he felt them. There. Next to him. Turning he saw their devil eyes staring directly at him, not even 5 feet away. He wanted to cry.

“So this monster thing….It knows that you know it’s there, but it knows you also don’t believe it’s really there.” No. No he knew. He knew they roamed the house. He came to the conclusion that they…they lived on the 6th level. And they were waiting for someone. Someone to kill. Someone to…to hurt and torment. They wanted one of them. And he would do his dammest to make sure that everyone stayed together. They were his family. He would do anything to keep them safe! Maybe not get himself killed or something, but if it came down to Olive or him. Or him and Cass, he would do it. He would take the blame. “So after a while, it’ll start leaving you…presents.” Ri frowned at this. Presents? They hadn’t done that yet. Maybe because he believed in them. He knew they watched him. But of course he saw the good in everything, so at first he thought they were lonely. And they are. They are lonely. But…they are dangerous too. And that’s why he was scared. He didn’t want to become their puppet.

Ri sat there, ignoring, but not actually ignoring at the same time, the shadow monsters that danced across the wall. They taunted and teased him, but he focused on the lull of Olive-chan’s voice, trying to pretend that they were not in this room. It didn’t work, but it was nice to think and hope that it would. “….Notes you never remembered writing. Creepy shit too. Fucks with your head.” They paused at that and turned their red soulless eyes toward the human who was speaking. Ri guessed it was something they didn’t think of. Possessing a human. One of them. Controling them to write things they didn’t. And after a while…he guessed, if he was one of them, he would slowly start to control their actions as well, making them do and say things they didn’t remember because they didn’t do them. Truly frightening. “And before they know it, they go insane. And the monster takes them. They’re never seen again.”

He sat there for a while, barely hearing the rest of them begin the leave. After I while he scowled in the direction of the monsters and hurried off, stopping when he reached Cass. “Cass…” he whimpered, wrapping his arms awkwardly around the boy, “It’s okay to be scared, right?” he squeezed the elder, or so he assumed, and before Cass could get a word in he laughed, “Duh of course it is! Like…I’m talking about you. Of course. I would never be scared. Scared of something so weird and silly. I mean, Olive’s story was awesome! It gave me chills. But he’s just pulling our leg, they aren’t real of course! Well night Cass! I’ll see you in the mornnning!” he darted down the hall and ran into Olive-chan, who was conversing with Panda. Smiling he hugged the tall, silent boy, before tackling into Olive, a grin hiding his fear. “Oliveee-chan! You’re so weird! Telling a scary story and scaring yourself!” he giggled, dancing down the hall toward his room, ignoring the shadow’s following him. Or trying. But he failed. “Kanari…” they said to him. Or was that Olive? He turned and gave another wave before disappearing into his room.

“Stop it.” He whined, pulling off his shirt and climbing into bed, his stuffed animals already taken off and the chosen ones on his bed. Koko joined them and he buried his face into the pillow, willing sleep to come.

He heard Drew’s remark about Oscar and thought about trying to throw something at him. He heard his retreating footsteps as well, and had nothing to throw other than his precious CD player, so… well, it was just another thought for Oliver’s monster to snack on. Maybe that was why the bad feelings he had never lasted so long? As soon as he had them, some creature gobbled them up. It made a little too much sense for his liking.

He heard someone else leave as well. Pandora, since the footsteps were so quiet. Next came rapid movements that could only be Kanari. Cass… and then a very appreciated hug. It was hard to stay mad at Ri, even harder when his long hair wound up sweeping across Cass’s face, tickling his nose and forcing him to smile. He leaned into the hug, and then wound up looking puzzled after the gatling-gun one-sided conversation, unable even to open his mouth, never mind get a word in edgewise. He’d been just about to ask Ri to walk to his room with him, but then the energetic boy was scampering off to assault someone else.

”Good night, Ri. Good night, Drew. Good night, Pandora.” None of them were around to hear it, but he gently said the words anyway. They’d all run off so fast that he was starting to feel more mopey than uneasy.

He sighed, but then remembered that he’d only heard four of his friends take their leave. ”Eve?”. He called out the other boy’s name softly, not even sure he was actually still there. He might have gotten it wrong. ”I don’t… would you maybe… um, if you’re still here, would you maybe want to… walk with me back to my room?” He placed his hand on the table and got to his feet, listening for a response to indicate that he wasn’t just talking to an empty room. In the meantime, he gathered his CD player, tucking it into a pocket of the jacket he was wearing, and then hung the headphones on the back of his neck.

Cass hadn’t slept very well.

The walk back to his room from the meeting had been long and fraught with thinking. A few times he’d become so absorbed in thought that he’d lost track of the steps he’d counted, but fortunately, he knew the main hallways well enough to find a landmark and soldier on. His mood had turned pretty sour. It only figured that the one time he actually wanted a hand, some company, no one was around to give it. When he was doing perfectly fine, that was when the offers to help came.

He managed to crawl into bed after putting on a pair of pajamas… blue and white striped, though he didn’t know that. He’d just chosen them by feel from the drawer. They were very light cotton, quite comfortable. That was what really mattered. There were few things that felt as good as slipping into the sheets in a set of really comfortable PJs.

He toggled his alarm clock to chime in the “morning”, then made sure the volume was on full blast. It would need to be to compete with the music he’d be leaving on. He rolled across the bed to fumble for the small stereo on his other nightstand and started up his Magnetic Fields CD. He endured that for about a minute before deciding it was way too creepy after the evening he’d had, then running his fingers along the Braille labels he’d made for the CDs that were stacked near the stereo. He went with the original cast recording of Les Miserables, then shuffled back to the middle of the bed to fall asleep.

Except he couldn’t. Not immediately. He kept worrying. What if someone (or something) had changed his alarm? He double checked, which was actually quite a process for him, since he had to test to see what time it said it was, and so on, then push the buttons for minutes and hours the right amount of times. Satisfied, he laid down again.

He thought about Oliver and Ri curled up, about how Drew was probably sleeping like a log, like he always did, about Eve and Pandora, how they’d been so quiet at the meeting. He tossed and turned, finally managing to grab a few fitful hours before the alarm went off. He turned off the alarm, then his music, and then heard the knocks on his door.

Lack of sleep made him grumpier than he might have been. He rubbed at his face when Olly swept in, then fell back into his pillows.

”Do you have a pretty floral morning gown, Oliver?” he asked a bit sarcastically, poking fun at the fact that the boy had implied as much. Usually he managed to restrain himself from taking the easy shots that Olly provided, but without much sleep and with the insensitivity that Olly had displayed, it slipped out.

He felt guilty and slightly afraid immediately. Not afraid of reprisal, but that he’d upset Olly and he’d take off. ”Sorry,” he mumbled, echoing Olly. ”I didn’t… sleep well at all.” He wrestled out of his sheets and slid to the edge of his bed before standing up and stretching. ”I don’t understand how you get out of bed so early and get ready and everything.” Something of a compliment, hopefully to soothe his ego if the morning gown comment had hit home.

It would have been rude to just head into the bathroom, but then again, if he stood around Oliver might decide he needed help undressing. It had happened before, and Cass’ cheeks flared crimson just thinking of it. ”Can you pick out some clothes for me? While I get ready?” He’d gotten pretty good at handling the other boy. Give him something to help with, that way he wouldn’t feel obliged to help with something more embarrassing. He tottered forward, still groggy, then took the ten steps toward his bathroom, brushing his hand on the doorframe to steady himself.

He stepped into the bathroom, not bothering to turn on the light for obvious reasons. There would still be light pouring in through the open door, enough to see him by. He ran his hands along the counter, and then turned the cold water on in the sink, letting it run. Once upon a time he would have been more conservative with his water usage, but that didn’t seem to matter as much. He had no qualms about letting the water run while he went about his ablutions, or taking extremely long showers, or better yet baths. If the place they were in could materialize whatever they wanted, he doubted there was any risk of ever running out of good old H2O.

Oliver had agreed to pick him out an outfit, and had been about to say something before Kanari charged in. Cass recognized his voice, of course, and his rapid footsteps, and he definitely recognized the sound of two boys falling to the ground in an awkward post-tackle tangle of limbs. He’d been on the receiving end of those tackles often enough that it wasn’t remotely hard to discern what had happened in the adjacent room.

While Kanari rambled, Cass was only paying half-attention. He was more focused on getting his toothbrush out of the little holder. His fingertips brushed the bristles as he tried for it, but then he had it in hand. Opening the medicine cabinet, he reached for the tube of toothpaste. He kept it dead center on the bottom shelf so it would be easy to find. He’d just gotten his hands on it when suddenly, something grabbed him. He let out a yelp of surprise and wound up knocking the tube of toothpaste down onto the floor; it sort of bounced, and wound up near the corner where the wall met the bathtub.

It was hard to be mad at someone when they were hugging you. Ri’s warmth was familiar, and he relaxed quickly enough. ”I’m fine, I’m fine. You shouldn’t just run in and hug people in the bathroom, Ri. What if I’d been-“ He cut off. He didn’t want to say any of the things that would complete that sentence, not with Oliver in ear shot. With Kanari he wouldn’t have held back so much, just to get his point across. He’d found that he had to be pretty blunt with Kanari when it came to anything to do with personal privacy. That was when Oliver told Kanari to go, and Cass couldn’t help but feel… well, whatever the opposite of the jealousy he’d felt last night was. He didn’t think of it as a competition at all. It was more that there was only so much time, and Oliver spent a lot of it being prickly, so Cass valued what moments they did have without the more eccentric boys around.

”It won’t take long, Ri… I don’t need to shower or anything. Before you go though, can you grab my toothpaste?” He’d been too surprised to listen for where it had fallen, and it could have taken him many minutes to locate it. In the meantime, he touched his fingers to the hot water knob then moved his hand to the left until he found the soap he kept there. It was a face wash, something meant for sensitive skin. His pale flesh didn’t react well to harsher soaps, but fortunately, he could get whatever kind of soap he wanted. This soap had a clean, medicinal scent rather than any kind of fragrance. Squeezing a dollop into his hands, he worked up a lather, dipping his hands beneath the stream of the faucet for just a second to add some water to the equation. He started washing his face, actually closing his eyes (it wasn’t something he did often while he was awake) to avoid getting any suds in them. He rubbed his face vigorously, and washed his neck as well, then tilted his head to either side to wash behind his ears. He got a little out of breath doing it, or rather, he’d held his breath, not wanting any soap in his mouth or nose, then reached out with his right hand, managing to grab the clean towel that he hung there each evening after his nighttime rituals. He wet it, giving his face a cleansing wipe, then used the dry part of the towel to finish up. By then, he should have had his toothpaste again.

Oliver would find plenty of clothing to choose from. Cass favored short pants on the baggy side, so there were several pairs in a few different colors. He usually wore short-sleeved button down shirts over an undershirt, and the same was true of them; many colors, patterns, styles. He’d had the machine spit out whatever. Color really didn’t mean anything to him. So long as it was comfy, he would have worn hot pink all the time. Even so, he hoped that Olly would pick out something that he liked Cass in. Underwear and socks would be the easiest part. The top drawer had nothing but clean tighty-whiteys and ankle socks. He didn’t like crew or tube socks. They felt weird on his calves.