#shitty first draft

MAJOR spoilers!

Hope y'all like long chapters tho because this mofo is over 9400 words who even am I

Mommy had put him to bed early because he had been a bad boy. It really had been an accident when his hand had slipped and his marker had gone onto her wooden coffee table. But mommy never believed him, about anything, or any of the things he saw.

His fingers curled around the knob of his cupboard but he paused when he saw movement behind the doors. It was a small cupboard. Just big enough for his coats to hang and for a few boxes of toys to sit on the floor.

Yet there was an undeniable eye watching him from the crack. It was a beautiful green eye that stared at him with unblinking malice.

This was not the first time he had seen something like this but one had never come into his room before.

Pale fingers emerged from the paper-thin crack between the doors of his cupboard, snaking inexorably towards his hand.

Mommy warned him about not talking to strangers and being very careful around people they did not know.

“Hello,” he told the eye cheerfully, not moving his hand away from the eldritch fingers impossibly stretching for him.

Maybe mommy was right, maybe he was a bad boy.

Smiling, he introduced himself to the unknowable entity residing in the small cupboard. “My name is Ariel, what’s yours.”

The fingers paused, then flashed back into the cupboard.

For a protracted moment, nothing happened. Then a voice emerged. “Are you not scared of me child?”

Ariel giggled, “no, why would I be scared?”

The question seemed to flummox the entity. “I am not of your world. I am here to feed on your fear.” Its voice was fluting and sweet and Ariel found himself drawn to it. Pulling on the cupboard handle, he whined when it would not budge. Not even slightly. The doors did not even have a lock. Yet somehow he knew that the doors would not open unless the entity wished it.

The entity did not wish it.

“I know that too. I want to see you.” His little face scrunched with disgruntlement. “What are you?”

The whole cupboard shook, whether with anger or merriment, Ariel did not know, but he did not remove his hand.

“We have no name,” the voice finally came, “you call us ghost, boogeyman, fairy, god, goddess, demon, angel, siren, rusalka-“

The voice stopped when Ariel yawned. “I want my jammies,” he demanded, “I was too tired to fold them up this morning so I threw them in here, don’t tell mommy.”

Silence once again and Ariel crossed his arms, “the jammies,” he repeated. Sometimes adults had bad hearing, he should be patient but he was really tired today.

“Close your eyes, show me your hands and say please.”

Groaning dramatically, Ariel closed his eyes and extended his little hands, “please.” It was not at all genuine, he was starting to get cranky and he would have to try and tell mommy soon if this entity didn’t give him what he wanted.

But then, as if by magic, he felt something warm and soft in his hands. Opening his eyes, he looked down at the blue fabric, covered in golden stars. “Thanks.” The doors hadn’t even opened, at least he hadn’t heard them creak. That was a neat trick.

“Are you gonna stay in my cupboard, you want anything?” He leaned down slightly, getting close to the green eye. It spoke to him again. “Milk. We like milk. Leave out a saucer before bed. You will be glad that you did.”

Ariel nodded, he could sneak out and get some. “Sure you don’t want it in a glass?”

If the eye could have sighed, he was sure it would have judging from its tone. “No, a saucer.”

Ariel scoffed, “weirdo…” he muttered to himself as he began to pull off his clothes, slowly and awkwardly. Mommy said he was old enough to do this himself now. “What shall I call you?”

“None of us have names. We are Other.”

Ariel paused what he was doing and leveled a scathing look at the eye. It watched him, it never stopped watching him. He was okay with that, the eye seemed nice. “I can’t call you Other. What about…” he put his finger against his lips, “what about Otter? I like that! Like the animal!”

This seemed to distress the entity.

“What…no, you can’t just give someone a name,” it insisted, its voice was still beautiful and melodic but it had lost the gravitas of its previous pronouncements. “Plus, that’s a terrible name.”

“No it’s not,” Ariel commented simply as he slipped out of his bedroom.

When he came back, carefully balancing a pool of skim milk on a chipped saucer, he noticed that the eye was gone. Maybe it really had been insulted by the name? Ariel shrugged and placed the saucer of milk right in front of the cupboard before leaping into his bed.

Closing his eyes, he quickly felt slumber persistently tugging on him until, quite suddenly, he was jerked from that same sleep.

The saucer was wobbling back and forth, as if it had been dropped back down from a sizeable height. All the milk was gone and in its place was a beautiful emerald green flower.

Slipping out of bed, he went over to the flower and picked it up. His nightlight spun in circles, throwing shadows and shapes of light over his face and the cupboard. The doors were open slightly so two glowing green eyes were now visible but only when the nightlight spun to highlight them.

Looking away from the eyes, he examined the flower. Perhaps flower was not the right word. He didn’t know what it was. It certainly looked like something from a garden, with a long green stem leading up to gently curling petals that met at the top. From within the petals, a buttery pale light glowed and ebbed like a slow heartbeat.

“What is it?”

The voice spoke again, thought it seemed to be speaking right into his ear. The eyes were gone from the cupboard.

“You do not have a name for it. Why not give it one?”

Ariel giggled, this was fun.

“Glowy!”

It was only many years later, did he realize three things.

One. It was not fun.

Two. Mommy had been right.

Three. He should never have trusted those green eyes.

It was the first time he had ever been punched. It wasn’t like the slaps his mother had given him, nor the rough jostling when he had been pushed out of the way by the other boys about who should get into the swimming pool first.

This punch was a marriage of knuckles, full body force and deep dislike.

His head spun as he fell back onto his buttocks and hands. The world swayed back and forth as though he sat on the dock of a ship.

Three boys in his own year towered over him. They had all hit puberty before him. It had been funny when their voices had dipped and cracked but now, it wasn’t funny anymore.

The boy that hit him wrung his hand out at his side and let out a bellow, “that felt good! See, laughing at me is wrong. But laughing at you….” As if to make his point, the boy laughed, “there’s nothing wrong with laughing at freaks like you.”

Ariel ran his hand shakily over his lips and it came back with a streak of ruby.

“I didn’t mean to laugh,” he started, “it came out all of a sudden, although you have to admit, your voice cracking like that wa-“

He didn’t get to finish as one of his other bullies took that as an invitation to give him a swift kick to his ribs.

Groaning, he fell to his side, clutching the spot that radiated a second point of pain.

“You’re a freak Ariel,” the leader, Matthew, growled. “A god damn freak. Everyone knows it. Why don’t you do us all a favour and go kill yourself huh?”

The comrades, Luke and Brydon, murmured their assent.

Ariel opened his eyes, he hadn’t even realized he had closed them and watched a trail of ants taking some bread crumbs into their den.

“You still see ghosts and shit? You know things like that aren’t real, you’re crazy Ariel.”

Ariel blinked. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before. It washed over him as ineffectually as placing a pebble in the strong flow of a stream. “Sometimes, I just don’t talk about it anymore,” he admitted as he slowly sat up.

When he did, his gaze landed on a white creature behind the three boys. Green eyes. Those green eyes he had spoken to him when he had been three years old.

This time, there were no cupboard doors to separate them or milk to supplicate it.

Some primitive part of the bullies’ brains bid them to turn.

Between the stationary swings sat a cat. Its fur was brilliant virgin snow, and its eyes were piercing emeralds. It did not stir, even as the two swings beside it began to move, swinging boldly back and forth. But when one swing came forward, the other moved backwards.

A wind stirred around the cat and its eyes grew larger and rounder. The wind picked up whispers, two, then three, then a dozen, then so many that it was hard to distinguish between them.

Help me…hungry, so hungry…why? Why would this…milk and honey….that’s not my child…book? A book?....it’s not normal…

On and on it went. The three bullies stared and Matthew took a faltering step towards the cat.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ariel muttered as he sat up, his legs crossed loosely in front of him. “It’s not a cat.”

It seemed ridiculous, and obviously Matthew thought as much. He bent down, picked up a stone and threw it.

It went through the cat, ephemeral as mist and fog.

The cat still did not move. The metal chains of the swings screeched as they began to spin, round and around the metal pole that they were hung from, wrapping themselves tight.

The whispers became screams that circled them like carrion birds.

Brydon screeched and ran for his life, bolting out of the park.

“Come on!” Luke urged Matthew, grabbing him by the shoulder and jerking him out of the park. The moment they left, everything stopped. The screams died away as suddenly as they had come and the swings unfurled themselves lazily.

The cat still did not move and Ariel watched it from his seat.

“Why’d you have to interfere? Now they really do know that I’m a freak.” Ariel sighed and rubbed the heels of his palms over his eyes.

The cat spoke. “They were hurting you.” That voice was so hauntingly beautiful that Ariel couldn’t help but look up to watch the cat.

“Yeah, well, they were going to get bored soon enough.” He rubbed his aching jaw, “why did you help me anyway?”

The answer was something he had expected.

“It’s fun to scare people.” The cat supplied, as if the answer should have been obvious. “It’s no fun hurting people, just scaring them. Plus, I was hungry.” Even as the cat spoke, its mouth did not move. The voice came from inside of it, not from it.

Somehow Ariel knew that and stranger yet, that made perfect sense to him.

“Why have you been gone for so long?” The green eyes were assuredly the same that had been in his cupboard, all those years ago.

This time, the cat moved and it tilted its head to the side slightly. “Gone…long…time,” the cat seemed to taste each word. “Time is felt differently by my kind. You humans make lines, clocks, diaries, computers, sundials, pocket watches, calendars….so many different ways to record something that does not exist.”

Ariel shrugged, “it makes living life easier. For humans anyway.”

The cat righted itself so it was sitting perfectly again, with its milky white tail wrapped around its legs. “You would think…with how humans devote themselves to recording something that does not exist, that they would see the Others far more often. We are very real, but you know that, already…Ariel.”

Ariel nodded, “yeah well, sometimes I wish I didn’t. You aren’t even the scariest Other I’ve come across.”

The cat’s unblinking gaze fixed him in place as surely as a butterfly against a board.

“You have not seen me try to scare anyone yet.”

Ariel scoffed, “what about them?” He gestured vaguely in the direction of where his three bullies had fled.

“I had been warming….up,” the expression sounded as foreign as it probably tasted on the cat’s tongue. “I had hardly begun to enjoy myself.”

Ariel blinked and the cat was gone.

Though the cat had gone, the voice lingered for a moment more, “I will get…a clock….and a calendar.”

He was kissing his boyfriend. In public. Ariel dared to lace his fingers through Mathew’s hair, sighing into his mouth. Matthew’s mouth quirked against his own and when Ariel pulled back, his heart was thumping in time with the music.

They had only ever kissed behind closed doors before but now, they were both brave enough to let anyone who was watching know that they were an item.

The music and lights throbbed, keeping time with his desire.

“Want a drink?” Matthew asked, his hazel eyes flashing with the strobes.

“Yeah, thanks.” Ariel tucked a curling lock of hair behind his ear as he rested his chin against his hand, happy to sit and wait in the little booth he and Matthew had scored when the last couple had moved away.

He bobbed his head in time with the music, idly tapping his foot, when he paused.

Green eyes.

This time, the eyes were attached to a human body. The man was taller than anyone else in the club and moved with the languid precision of a big cat stalking prey. The man, it, had milky white hair that pooled over the black leather jacket he wore, incongruous against the sharp features of his androgynous face. Full lips, bright round eyes, cheekbones that would slice open a mortal’s hand.

Ariel swallowed and tasted the peach chapstick that Matthew wore.

The Other stood before him, somehow separate from the club atmosphere. A bubble of calm surrounded him. A woman was talking to her friend and was on track to bump right into the Other before she jerked back suddenly, as though burned.

The Other did not even look as the woman hurried away, rubbing her hands over her arms whilst glancing back at him.

The Other spoke and he knew then, that this was Otter once more.

“Ariel, you aged.”

It wasn’t the nicest way to greet someone. Ariel smiled and leaned his cheek against the back of his hand, “uh huh,” he grunted in reply, “I did, I’m in college now. Last we met I was a freshman in highschool.”

Otter didn’t blink but stared at him unerringly as he always had. Ariel knew that the words freshman, highschool and college meant nothing to Otter.

“Yes,” was all Otter said in response as he moved to sit down in the booth next to him, his movements fluid mercury. Ariel’s pulse fluttered in his throat. The survival instinct he had seemed to lack as a child had developed a little as he had grown. It said to him.

Run.

He stayed exactly where he was.

He hadn’t listened to his mother and he was not going to listen to that voice either.

Something white hung at the back of Otter’s collar and Ariel scoffed as he reached for it unthinkingly, tugging it off his coat. “A price tag?”

Otter looked down at the barcode, “yes?” It was the first time Ariel had heard any uncertainty in Otter’s voice and he scoffed, “did you steal your clothes?”

Otter hardly moved as he spoke, just his lips, forming words for his lilting voice. “Yes, I was told by a stranger that my clothes were odd. I wanted to try blending in.”

The haunting pricks of green fire for eyes, the alabaster hair, the unusual height and the androgynous beautiful face was anything but inconspicuous.

“I got you a vodka and cranb-“ Matthew’s voice started, then died away as he stared at Otter.

Matthew was broad, the typical jock. Yet against Otter he looked…small.

“Who’s this?” There was wariness in that question and even in the warm dark of the club, he could see the hairs on Matthew’s arms standing on end.

“This is Otter.”

The colour drained from Matthew’s face and Otter turned, slowly, to face him. Otter spoke, “the last time we met….you were hitting Ariel,” he cocked his head, “now you’re kissing him?” Otter ran a single digit over the surface of the table in an intricate circular pattern.

“Curious.”

Matthew’s knuckles turned white against the glasses he held. “What do you want?” Otter held up a hand, “I’m not here for you. I’m here for Ariel.”

Matthew’s fear was palpable.

“I don’t care if you’re here for him,” he slowly put down their glasses as he squared his shoulders.

Ariel groaned, he knew that look. Shoulders squared, teeth clenched…

“I’m not going to let you hurt Ariel.”

Otter rose to his feet unhurriedly and placed his hand with the gravitas of an axe fall  on Matthew’s shoulder. “Really?”

Colour returned in a flood to Matthew’s cheeks. The word was layered.

What can you do?

Do you really think you can stop me?

Aren’t you going to run away again?

Matthew wet his lips but before he could answer, Ariel got up. “What is it Otter? I’ll listen.”

Otter’s attention was diverted but his hand remained on Matthew’s shoulder, the sharp tips of his nails pricking his shirt.

“Come to Elsewhere with me.”

“Elsewhere? Where is that?”

A shrill laugh from the direction of the dance floor made Matthew tremble.

Total word count: 8,392

Should have written: 11,666 words

Excuse for not meeting target: Work deadline, social exhaustion

Accept/Decline

Rate to finish on time: 1,810 words/day

Mood: Pumped

Nano goal: Meet target word count by Day 15