Quote:
You are just getting ready to head to sleep and you're all tucked in when something catches your eye. It's a strange shape, or light, in your room. It's only there for a second, but dread immediately floods through you. It was just a shadow, right? Maybe you pulled too many all nighters? Forgot you put up that new poster and thought it was something else?

...Or was it something else?

Either way, whatever you thought you saw was only there for that fleeting moment. What did you see? How do you react?

...Are you going to be able to sleep tonight?

Victor Finch was not a brave kid, by any standard. He was a very bratty kid, yes. He was a bully, sure. He was a senshi, definitely. But he was not as brave as he knew a super hero needed to be, and sometimes that upset him. He was thinking that maybe getting more used to scary things, instead of avoiding them all the time, was the way to go. Not like, leaping into monster fights, not just yet, but maybe… reading scarier stories or watching scary movies or something.

There was a game the kids at school talked about. It was supposed to be really scary, about a kid’s restaurant full of dancing animatronics that became haunted and murderous at night. They all said it was terrifying, though it did not seem like it was. Could it be that bad? He liked the idea of fuzzy mascots, and had not really been scared of them before. He was pretty sure the ones he saw were people in costumes, though, and not robots, like these apparently were.

He was not in a position to buy himself a new game, even if it was on sale for Halloween. His mom would definitely see if he purchased something on her credit card, so he opted to watch a video on the game on the computer in his room. He started by sitting on his desk chair, watching close to the computer, but in all of five minutes he ended up under his blankets and peeking out at the screen from under the safety of the sheets. Next time he tried this, it would be in the day time.

It was dark in his room when the video ended, the screen still shining but the end slate just black and waiting for the next video. It wasn’t on auto play. He peeked out from under his blanket, taking a moment before crawling up to his pillow and emerging enough to maybe go to sleep. He was laying down, feeling a little safer while bathed in the light of the computer screen, when it flickered. With a yelp, he pulled his blanket up to his chin, staring at the computer screen, but not seeing what caused the flicker. Had something… walked in front of the screen? Blocked the light for a moment? Was he imagining it? Did the video just buffer a bit?

He knew he was too old to even think it, but… what if it was under his bed?

No, there was no sleep tonight. He curled into a ball under his blanket, holding it down around him like it was some kind of impenetrable shield. He was too embarrassed to run to his mom and tell her what scared him, and on top of that he was too terrified to step on the ground and risk being pulled under the bed by whatever monster might be under there. It was like tempting fate, getting up and trying to make it to the door, and he knew that it would end badly. No, he was safest on his bed, in his blanket fort, where he had always been safe before. After all, so far, nothing had ever eaten him from under here so… might as well stick with what was working.

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