Friend in the Closet Chapter Three

Click here to read chapter one of Nolan's story.

Friend in the Closet

Chapter Three

   Terry opened his eyes and immediately closed them; way too early to wake up. He sighed and sat up, throwing off the covers, he stumbled to the closet. The closet door was slightly open and Terry found this odd. He always shut it before going to bed.
   Terry was surprised to find a book knocked off its pile. He shook his head and, this time, set it on the floor next to its pile. Having done that, he selected a dark grey hoodie and blue jeans for the day. He slipped out of his pajamas and hung them up before slipping into the day’s attire. His eyes drowsy and his mind foggy he stumbled to the bathroom.
   The bathroom wasn’t going to cooperate with him. At first, he couldn’t find his comb and then he couldn’t get the faucet to work. He ended up using his percussive maintenance skills to get the water to come out. The water came out as a small trickle. He ran his hands under the water to find it colder than winter snow. He yanked his hands back and wrung them spastically. He decided upon wearing his hood up that day.
   Jennifer walked with him down the stairs, helping him not to fall. That was one thing Terry never understood, how could small children have so much energy at all hours of the day? Whenever an adult asked him what happened to his happy-go-luckiness and his youthful energy he would tell them he killed them and buried them a long time ago.
   Josh was already in the kitchen cooking some eggs for them when they sat down at the kitchen table.
   “How’d you sleep?” Josh asked with the same energy in his voice as Jennifer.
   “I slept fine!” Jennifer squirmed in her chair and giggled.
   Terry rubbed his eyes. “Slept to the point where I’m still tired.”
   Josh chuckled. “How does that work?”
   Terry shrugged. “No idea, you tell me.”
   Josh scooped two three thick eggs into three plates and placed them on the table. “If I’d figured out how it worked I wouldn’t be tired most of the time.”
   That was what was unique about Terry’s father. He’d wake up claiming to be tired but always acted the opposite. He never understood this. What he did understand was that both of them were very efficient at getting ready quickly. After eating their eggs, they rushed to their rooms and got ready for the day’s activities. Terry stuffed his books into his backpack and came downstairs to wait for Josh. As quick as Josh was, he wasn’t as fast as Terry.
   Josh jogged out of his room and to the door, keys in hand. “I forgot, I have to be at work early today. Which means I gotta leave right now. Get in the truck or it goes without you!”

   Terry might not have been a teen of an extravagant life, but he was a teen of routine. Everyday Josh would drop him off at school at 7:30. Then Terry would meet Carl at the drinking fountain near the shop at 7:45. They would screw around until 8:05, then get to their classes.
   His first class of the day was math, specifically Algebra 2. That class was an easy one if you paid attention. Terry did a good job of that. He had to, math was his archenemy. That day they learned more about the standard form of an equation. Headaches were math’s sidekick.
   After that he had English. In English, there was an activity that forced him to mingle. He had to get a partner and figure out which two sentences were similar to each other in structure. At least English was something he understood. His partner turned out to be a girl named Stephanie. She had long blonde hair that was braided into a long strand that looked like a tail. She had hot pink braces and small, round glasses. Terry thought she looked pretty good, but he kept that to himself. Love was a concept he didn’t have time, or the patience, for.
She insisted that two sentences went together when they didn’t. This made Terry want to punch a wall. Apparently, she was one of the most stubborn kids in school. She wasn’t mean about it, she was just very adamant about what she wanted. Terry eventually got her to listen to reason and they eventually won the little game. She was ecstatic about winning and punched Terry in the shoulder good-naturedly. He smiled weakly at her, but other than that, he didn’t show any enthusiasm about winning.
   Then came Ag class. It was Terry’s favorite class, but not because of the subject. The subject was fine, he liked dealing with engines enough. It was just the lack of people he had to deal with in the class that made it great for him. That and Carl was in the class. They were working on an engine that had been giving them trouble for weeks. Every time they got something right, something went wrong. The most recent development was the piston. The piston absolutely refused to go into the cylinder. They used everything they could think of. Today they were trying the method they hadn’t used in days, doing it by the book.
   “Did you find the ring compressor?” Carl asked and he lubed the cylinder.
   Terry walked over with a blue and silver gadget it in his hands. “Yea, found the hex key too. Er, quad key, I guess.”
   Carl finished with the oil and looked over. “Quad key?”
   “Yea,” Terry held up the bent metal piece. It had four sides, true to Terry’s name for it, “four sides.”
   Carl shrugged. “As long as it fits the ring compressor, I don’t care what you call it.”
   Terry handed him the quad key and fitted the ring compressor around the piston head. He held it in place while Carl cranked it tight enough to fit into the cylinder. Terry inserted the piston connecting rod first. The piston fit up to its head, but wouldn’t go any further.
   “Mallet,” Terry called automatically.
   “Mallet,” answered Carl handing him the near-broken mallet.
   Terry slammed the handle into the piston head again and again, but nothing happened. Finally, he gave up and tossed the mallet onto the table. He leaned against the wall and looked at the grime on his hands. He chuckled. If he moved his hands around on a clear sheet of paper, maybe some fool would think it modern art.
   “I’m gonna go get Mr. Joan,” Carl called as he ran into the classroom.
   No sooner had Carl left when Ken strolled over. He was wearing that stupid grin and twirling a wrench in one hand. He leaned on Terry’s table and looked at the mess of engine parts. He snickered and poked the piston with the wrench.
   “Could you not?” Terry asked drearily.
   “Where’s the fun in that?” Ken asked as he poked the engine some more.
   “C’mon, man, we only have so much time. Get your stuff done before Mr. Joan sees you messing around,” Terry warned.
   Ken looked at Terry with astonishment. “Are you telling me that I’m being lazy? That I’m getting nothing done?”
   Terry took a preemptive step back. “I’m not saying anything.”
   Ken had stopped listening. He grabbed a hammer and slammed it into the piston creating a massive dent. Terry took another step back but said nothing. Ken reduced the piston to a mangled piece of debris. He chuckled, tossed the hammer onto the table and walked away. Terry walked to the engine, picking up the piston and stared at it. He ran his hands over the piston, feeling the grooves in the bent metal. He sighed and set it down.
   “What happened?” Carl ran over with Mr. Joan.
   Mr. Joan saw the piston and immediately looked at Ken. “It was Ken, wasn’t it?”
   Terry shook his head dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
   “Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about it!” Carl raged.
   “He’s just a bully, retaliate and he’ll keep coming. Don’t give him what he wants,” Terry looked over at Ken without malice.
   Mr. Joan shook his head. “Carl, go get another piston. We can’t sand this one down now,” Joan waited until Carl was out of the room and turned to Terry. “You expected this, didn’t you?”
   Terry nodded. “Ken’s an eventuality I chose to accept. No use in stopping him, he’ll just keep coming.”
   “That’s...very mature. Don’t worry, I’ll put a stop to him,” Mr. Joan said as he moved away from Terry.
   Terry grabbed his shoulder. “Please don’t. That’ll just make him want to do it more often. He’ll stop, just give him time.”
   Mr. Joan looked Terry up and down. “What happened to you?”
   Terry looked him dead in the eye. “Life.”
   Carl jogged in clutching a piston. Mr. Joan dropped the subject and helped them put the piston in. Turned out the piston before was bent around the edge of the head. The one Carl had got was new and went in just fine. Mr. Joan lingered in the shop for the duration of the class, watching Ken with cold eyes. Terry felt sorry for Ken, he was only getting himself into trouble. Trouble in school wouldn’t help him later in life, and Terry didn’t want that for anyone.
   The class seemed to fly by, before Terry knew it the bell rang and he was on his way to art. He enjoyed art, it gave him a chance to create beautiful pieces. Then again, he wasn’t the most talented, that was for sure.
   Today he painted his sister with grey and gold. To him, the picture looked wet and mushy, not unlike mud after a storm. He sat in his chair and drooped. His teacher, Mrs. Kay, walked over and observed the piece. She smiled and encouraged him. She told him what every other teacher told him daily.
   “You did great!”
   “Good job on that test!”
   “You really improved here!”
   “It looks great, it’s not easy to get it perfect.”
   He was tired of it. He got the same message every day. He was tired of his mediocre life. What was the point of life if it was just the same things every single day? He didn’t know. The only reason he could think of for living was Jennifer and Josh. He couldn’t let those two down, and as long as they were happy and alive, he’d keep going. He told this to himself daily. He needed to.

   When Terry opened the house door, he found it empty. He set his backpack down on the counter and looked around in the yard for Miss Leron and Jennifer, but he didn’t find them.
   He returned to the house and looked around for a note. He checked the fridge and saw a note saying Josh had gotten home early and had taken Jennifer to the zoo.
   Terry smiled. He loved it when Josh would get home and treat Jennifer. It wasn’t a matter of preference of children, it was just that she was smaller and innocent. Josh and Terry had agreed that they should pamper Jennifer as much as possible. Not spoil, though. Josh couldn’t do that even if he tried.
   A crash came from the living room that ripped Terry from these thoughts. Terry ran into the living room to find the lamp in the corner destroyed on the floor. Standing on the table where the lamp should’ve been was a creature that gave Terry chills down his spine. The creature was roughly human-shaped, the only things that betrayed the mold was a long tail and three ridges on its head. Its skin was as black as tar and its three eyes were bright street-light red with horizontal, black pupils. Its hands were soft looking but, had long claws jutting out, razor sharp. Its feet were normal sized but had three large toes with thick, pointed claws. Its face was contorted in a snarl revealing a top row of wicked sharp canines, but the bottom row looked like human teeth. It had no perceivable nose under its eyes. The ridges atop its head were bony and stretched from just behind its eyes to the base of its skull. Terry looked for ears on the sides of the head but saw none.
   Terry ducked into the kitchen and stood, frozen in place. What had he just seen? He didn’t care, he had to get rid of it before the rest of his family got home. He grabbed a kitchen knife and jumped into the living room. The creature had moved to sitting on the couch. It held a piece of the lamp in its hands and licked it.
   “Hey!” Terry yelled. “What’re you doing?”
   The creature dropped the piece and hissed at Terry, baring its teeth. It put its hands in front of it and spread its claws.
   Terry leveled the knife at it. “Get out of here!”
   The creature didn’t move, but it did change its facial expression to one of mystery. “You can see me?” Its voice was smooth but firm.
   Terry dropped the knife. “Y-you can talk?”
   “Yes, I can talk. Can you see me?” It repeated its question.
   “Of course I can!” Terry retrieved his knife. “And I know you can hear me, so get out of this house before I’m forced to use this!”
   The creature laughed. “You’re the kid I’m supposed to help! Oh, man.”
   “What do you mean, ‘kid I’m supposed to help’?” Terry demanded.
   The creature lowered its claws and they retracted into its fingertips. “Will you put the knife down?”
   Terry didn’t move the knife. “”What are you? W-where did you come from?”
   “I’ll answer your questions when you get friendly, okay? I’m not going to hurt you,” the creature relaxed on the couch, confident that Terry wouldn’t hurt it.
   Terry lowered the knife, slightly.
   The creature thought this was enough. “My name’s Akane, what’s your name?”
   Terry blinked. “Uh, Terry. Why-”
   “This is a nice house, Terry. Your family seems nice too. No mother, though. To be expected, tragedy is almost always the reason I have to do a job,” Akane seemed to be voicing his thoughts rather than speaking to Terry.
   “What is your ‘job’ exactly?” Terry asked.
   Akane looked at him. “My job is to provide children with all kinds of help, from fighting help to friendship. I’ve been helping children for millennia. What’s your job?”
   “Uh,” Terry blinked and smacked his forehead, “this is too weird. You can’t be real. I’m dreaming, or hallucinating.” Terry said, moving the knife to his left index finger.
   He cut a small slit and then dropped the knife, clutching his finger.
   “Knives are scary,” Akane said. He moved to Terry’s side and put his hand over the finger.
   Terry tried to move away, but Akane was too quick. Terry’s finger tingled and stopped hurting. Akane removed his hand and stared at the finger. He licked up the blood from the finger and licked his lips.
   “What did you just do?” Terry asked in a daze.
   “I healed you, one of my skills. So what’s your problem? Crack? Cocaine? Girls?” He said the last one with a grin and a wink from two eyes.
   “What? No. I don’t have a problem, my only problem is you,” Terry sat on the couch opposite from Akane and stared at his finger.
   Akane sat on the other couch and leaned toward him, staring him in the eyes. “Do I scare you? I shouldn’t, I’m your friend.”
   Terry shook off his daze and looked at Akane in full. “So, you’re really my friend?”
   Akane nodded. “Yea, man. That’s my pleasure, not really my job. Jobs aren’t fun.”
   Terry could take this, he’d handled worse than a monster for a friend. “Okay, so do you have a place to stay?” Terry stood up and walked into the kitchen.
   Akane followed shortly behind. “I live in closets, I’m a monster, after all.”
   “Oh, so it’s you knocking my books over,” Terry glanced back at him.
   Akane laughed. “Yea, sorry about that. They just smelled bad. Like you humans.”
   Terry pulled out bread and meat and started to make a sandwich. “You really are a friend. Already making fun of me.”
   “From what I’ve seen of your school, that’s what Carl does, and he’s your friend.” Akane crawled onto the ceiling and sat upside down.
   His tail hung down and smacked Terry in the back. Terry swatted at it and looked up. Akane laughed at him and pulled his tail up to wrap around his neck like a scarf. Terry shook his head and ate his sandwich. He grabbed his backpack and walked to his room, Akane followed on the ceiling.
   Terry let Akane into his room and then shut the door. Akane laughed at him, his laugh was deep and gravely. Terry found it disconcerting.
   “Why shut your door?” He asked, his tail swaying in the air with amusement.
   “I don’t want my family to find you. They’d freak.”
   “Oh,” Akane widened his eyes, “you’ve gone from wanting to kill me to hiding me cause you care. How interesting.”
   Terry looked at him dully. “No, I don’t want you giving my family a heart attack. I could care less about you.”
   Akane raised a finger. “Ah! But you do care.”
   Terry just looked at him. Akane laughed again and dropped to the bed, crossing his legs and watching Terry. Terry pulled out his math and sat on the floor.
   “Homework? I can help with that,” Akane said as he launched himself into the air.
   He landed next to Terry and scanned his papers. He flipped through them and looked at Terry, quizzical.
   “What?” Terry asked.
   “These are dumb easy.”
   Terry laughed. “Great, a monster friend who just happens to be good at math. I’m going to bash my head in,” Terry said, resting his head in his hands.
   He felt a hand on his shoulder and saw Akane looking at him sympathetically. “It’s aight, dude. It took me years to get good at math. You’re, what, fifteen?”
   “Sixteen.”
   “Sweet Lord, such a difference,” Akane slit his eyes. “You just need to spend time with it. A long time with it. Don’t worry, you’ll get good eventually. With my help, you’ll be a genius.”
   “Okay, help me with this problem.” Terry turned one of the pages over.
   He pointed at a problem that took up a good portion of the page. Part of it was the problem’s fault, but mostly it was his large handwriting. Akane looked over it and then looked at Terry.
   “Okay, what’s the deal? You don’t know how to do it, or?”
   “I can’t get the stupid thing to work out inside the square root. Keeps turning out negative,” Terry said with a frown.
   “Do you know what an imaginary number is?” Akane asked.
   Terry smacked his forehead. “Duh, don’t know why I didn’t remember those.”
   Terry erased some of the problem and worked it out. Akane left him to his paper and turned to Terry’s closet. He found the side of the wall that had pants and tried one on. He walked to the mirror to admire himself.
   “What are you doing?” Terry asked.
   “I should wear pants more often,” was Akane’s reply.
   Terry stopped working, thought about that statement for a second, then returned to his problem. Akane walked in with a smug grin and socks to accompany the pants. He sat down next to Terry.
   “Why are you dressed like that?” Terry asked.
   “Sexy, right?” Akane grinned.
   Terry shook his head. “You’re something alright.”
   Akane glanced at the problem and smiled. “You got the right answers. Anything else?”
   Terry ran his hands through his hair, exhausted. “No, actually, I don’t have anything else.”
   Terry shoved his math homework in his folder and tossed that in the general direction of his backpack. He meandered to his bed and sat down. Leaning back, he grabbed a knife from under his pillow and pulled a sharpener from his pocket. Akane watched him as he sharpened the knife, wondering what Terry’s problem was. It might be just math trouble, or it could be something much bigger. Then again, from what Akane saw at Terry’s school it could be bully problems. Akane just didn’t know, and he hated not knowing.
   Akane joined Terry on the bed and picked at the ridges on his head. It made a horrendous sound, causing Terry to stop what he was doing at glare at him.
   “What?” Akane asked with an innocent smile plastered on his face.
   “Make another sound like that and I’ll throw you out of this house,” Terry muttered.
   Akane snapped and looked like he’d had a revelation. “That’s it! You’re too grown up! It all makes sense now!”
   Terry put his knife back under his pillow and pocketed the sharpener. “What’re you talking about?”
   “Your problem! You’re too grown up, too mature. You’re sixteen, you shouldn’t be this adult. You need to learn to live,” Akane was getting excited.
   “Let’s suppose you’re right. How do I live?”
   “By going out, seeing people, hanging with your friends. I bet you don’t have a girl, do you?”
   “What? No, I don’t need one,” Terry blushed slightly.
   “That’s the thing, right there. At this age, hormones should be driving your mind to be with someone. Okay, leave a note for your family, we’re going out. I need to fix you,” Akane pulled off the pants and socks and hurled them into the closet.
   Terry grudgingly wrote a note on a piece of paper. “Don’t just throw that clothing on the floor!”
   “Quit momming me! That needs to stop! Make your room a mess, have some fun, personalize,” Akane yelled from the closet. “But not right now, right now we’re going skating.”
   “Ice skating?” Terry asked nervously.
   “No, you dip, roller skating! Now get downstairs and put that note on the fridge. If you don’t come with me I’ll drag you by force. Trust me, I can do it.”
   Akane ran downstairs and waited by the door, holding Terry’s shoes with his tail. He watched him stumble down the stairs and heard a smack in the kitchen. Terry ran out and searched for his shoes.
   He frowned when he saw Akane holding them. “You want to go, or what?”
   Akane lowered the shoes and let Terry have them. “I’m going to make you have fun. We’re going to fix this problem of yours and then I can bust this joint.”
   “You seem awfully desperate to get out of here, why?”
   Akane froze. “Uh, no reason. Now, let’s go, it closes at six and we’ve already got about an hour. Let’s roll.”

   The skating rink wasn’t too far away. Terry and Akane made it there without any problems and found shoes for Terry pretty quickly. Akane was surprised by the sheer amount of teenagers in the small building. The lights were darkened and the music was loud, perfect for fun-having. He strolled out onto the floor and skated around without any problem. Gliding around, he looked back at Terry to find him sitting by himself on a bench on the side of the rink. Akane sighed and rolled over.
   “You tard, why are you over here? Get out there and have some fun. Maybe you can impress those girls over there, they’re already looking at you,” Akane said as he sat beside Terry.
   Terry glanced over at them. A small group of girls was sitting across the rink and giggling, occasionally looking in his direction.
   “Probably cause they’ve never seen me here before,” he looked at Akane. “Speaking of which, why aren’t these people freaking out at you?”
   “They can’t see me, only people I let can see me. That or they’re my next job. I only get one at a time, so no worries there.”
   “Also, how can you skate around without any skates on?”
   Akane laughed. “Dude, my feet are uber slick when I want them to be. Skating is a joke. Now, let’s get out there and show them what’s what!”
   Akane strode out onto the floor and taunted Terry to follow. Terry frowned at him and stood up. On wobbling legs, Terry slowly made it over to Akane. He moved with the painful slowness of a newborn deer. He teetered from side-to-side, barely maintaining balance. Thankfully, Akane was standing next to a pole which seemed to be reaching out to Terry, ready for his crash.
   Crash he did, but fall on his face he did not. The friendly pole saved him. Someone started laughing hysterically at him and Terry looked around.
   “Akane, it’s not funny, get over here and help me,” Terry growled.
   Akane shrugged and pointed to a kid gliding around the rink almost as well as Akane. He was wearing that same smug grin he was notorious for. Ken.
   He slid over to Terry and circled him. “Well, I see you finally decided to come out of your father’s basement. Oh, my bad, I forgot that a cardboard box doesn’t have a basement!” Ken laughed and so did the rest of his gang.
   Ken’s gang included a small girl with purple hair and a skull tattoo on the right side of her jaw. She was known by many as, “Khan”. Terry wasn’t sure why, just that she was crazy and didn’t like anybody. She laughed alongside Ken and leaned against Terry’s pole.
   “You nerd, you can’t even skate without screwing it up. Can’t imagine what your grades are. Is that why your mother died? Couldn’t deal with how stupid her child was, I bet,” she stuck her tongue out at him and skated away.
   Terry leaned against the pole and closed his eyes. He had to calm down.
   “What’s the matter, Starboy? Gonna cry? I bet you’re gonna cry, pitiful,” Ken laughed.
   Akane tripped Ken and moved to Terry’s side. “You need to punch his teeth in, I know you could. I would beat him up, but that'd be too weird.”
   Ken got up and rubbed his forehead. He glared at Terry and rode off to get some ice.
   Terry blinked hard and a hot tear ran down the side of his face. Akane saw this and anger boiled inside of him. He snarled at Ken and Khan, but he did nothing else. He simply guided Terry over to the counter and helped him take his shoes off. Terry gave them to the employee and walked outside. He sat down on a block of cement and listened to the music. He let a tear slide down his cheek.
   “If I could…” muttered Akane.
   “I don’t know what to do,” whispered Terry. “I want to hurt him, or at least try, but I know that isn’t right. I don’t want to stoop to his level.”
   “How long has this been going on?” Akane asked.
   “Years.”
   “Dear Lord, you need to do something about this. If he’d just started, I’d say leave him alone, but he’s been doing this for years. You need to do something, Terry. It’s okay for you to defend yourself,” Akane lectured.
   The door to the rink slammed open and Ken walked out with Khan following close behind. They didn’t seem to see Terry until they were right next to him. Ken looked surprised to see him there.
   “What are you still doing here, Starboy? Shouldn’t you be home crying for your mommy right about now?”
   “Yea, go cry for her. See if she answers,” Khan echoed.
   Terry glared at them. No, now was not the right time, there would be too many witnesses, and he wasn’t exactly defending himself. He stood up and walked toward home. Ken and Khan followed him a short ways yelling at him and telling him to kill himself. Terry closed his eyes, sighed, opened them again, and kept on walking.
   “Little worms,” muttered Akane, but that was all he said.
   Akane simply walked beside Terry, and let him cry.

Click here for chapter four.