Author's Warning: Like everything else, this takes place in my series, set up by the events in my first story "More Than My Friend" where the big event is that Frankie adopts Mac as her "little brother". If you haven't read that story yet, I strongly suggest you do so now, or else you might get terribly confused.
"…A raise? For me?"
The lanky redhead repeated incredulously. Immediately, the euphoric Frances "Frankie" Foster grinned joyously from ear to ear at the unthinkably remarkable offer, and despite her best efforts to keep cool and composed, she couldn't help but laugh softly a little in her immense delight.
"Oh, no really, Mr. Herriman I...I oh my God, I don't know what to say, you shouldn't have, you…wait, what? Five-day workweek? Hold on, hold on, you mean…wait, I get Saturdays and Sundays off? You really mean it?"
At this point she was giggling ecstatically like a toddler on Christmas morning; never had she heard anything so unthinkably wonderful in all her life. It was like she had died and gone to heaven, for it was almost like a dream come true.
"Almost" because that's precisely what it really was; nothing more than a wonderful dream, a rather unfortunate reality the young woman was forced to come to rather harshly.
"AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"
The hideous, bloodcurdling scream suddenly echoed all throughout the massive Victorian mansion, as if someone was being violently hacked to death by a bloodthirsty maniac. The second the spine-chilling racket assaulted her ears, the slumbering redhead's dreaming came to an abrupt halt a her eyelids snapped wide open.
"Huh?" she grunted in panic as she shot upright in bed with a start. "What the- OOF!"
She had barely awoken when the bedroom door burst open as if smashed by a battering ram, allowing a small silhouetted blur to race in and throw itself headlong at the startled woman.
"EEEK!" Frankie shrieked in gut-wrenching fright as her mysterious assailant tried to grab her. As she become practically possessed with blind terror, the hysterical redhead immediately began to frantically fight off her nighttime assailant.
"Getoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoff!" she screamed, while furiously struggling to fend off her attacker. Much to her utter dismay however, the more she grappled with the mysterious intruder, the more desperate the stranger became to get a good hold on her until finally she could feel a pair of arms throw themselves around her neck.
"AUGH!" Frankie screeched at the top of her lungs, and immediately shut her eyes as she anticipated a violent strangulation. Thus, she was baffled out of her mind when her assailant suddenly burst out yelping,
"Make it g-go away, Frankie! M-make it go away!"
"Mac?" The twenty-two-year-old gasped in shock as recognition struck her like an eighteen-wheeler obliterating a possum.
As her eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness, Frankie hastily saw her senses did not deceive her; their sat her charge right in her lap, nearly mad with fright and quivering uncontrollably with terror as he squeezed her neck in a tight hug.
"Oh, pal!" the young woman instinctively exclaimed as her overpowering maternal instinct aggressively shoved her initial bewilderment aside. "What is it? Are you okay?"
As she swept him into a tight hug, the ashen-faced Mac replied with an incomprehensible whimper as he shook wildly, as if he had just had a vision of hell itself.
"It's okay pal, it's okay….shhhh, calm down, it's okay… what is it?" She whispered as she gingerly stroked his head. "A nightmare? Was it a nightmare?"
"G-g-g…g-g-g…gh-gh…" he struggled to murmur as she strove to pry the answer out.
"Nightmare? Was it a nightmare? It was a nightmare, wasn't it? Nightmare? Did you have a nightmare, Mac? Was it a-"
"…G-ghost." He finally managed to answer hoarsely in a barely audible croak.
Instantaneously Frankie's jaw dropped, and for what felt like an eternity of silence the skeptical redhead gazed straight into the shaken little boy's temporarily saucer-sized eyes.
"…Pal…you have got to be kidding me." she blurted out crankily, abruptly dropping the warm-and-nurturing attitude.
"No! It's true!" Mac tried to sputter in protest. "In my room, I saw it! It was right there -"
Without a word, the immeasurably grouchy caretaker just tightened her hold upon the fearful eight-year-old, stumbled from her bed, and made a prompt beeline across the hallway.
"C'mon, Mac," she grumbled darkly. "This is no time for dumb jokes, I really -AAACCK!"
She suddenly gagged violently in mid-complaint as he abruptly tightened his hold on her neck without a warning in his colossal fright.
"No!" he begged frantically. "Don't make me go back! Please don't! It's still in there! No! No!"
"Hey, quit it!" the lanky redhead snapped as she attempted to pry off the eight-year-old's arms before he crushed her windpipe. "Knock it off! Do you want me to pass out? Honestly, Mac, I expect so much better of you! You should be the last person I expect to pull off this kind of nonsense! What in the world has gotten into you-"
"No! Please, don't go in there!" he wailed.
"That is it, mister!" she scolded as she stumbled across the hall. "No more scary movies before bed, you hear me? No, you know what? No TV period at least an hour before bedtime! Got it?"
"Frankie, no! Don't make me-"
"It's late, and I'm tired, Mac Foster!" she announced grumpily as she kicked his bedroom door open. "I don't know what's going on, but don't you dare say that you're serious, because I'm telling you, there's no-"
She took but one glance into the room, and immediately the words promptly died upon her lips as she was temporarily paralyzed by the sharps pangs of fright. Whether ghosts actually existed or not she wasn't exactly sure, but one thing certainty could be admitted; whatever the flash of white she spotted ambling about the room was supposed to be, it was very much alive.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!"
The earsplitting shriek nearly rocked the house of its very foundations, rudely awakening countless house residents and thoroughly confusing many a startled imaginary friend.
However, there was but a very small minority who could at least recognize that it was none other that the resident caretaker who sounded like she had just stepped in a steel bear trap. Wasting not a second, the freshly awoken band hastily organized and bravely rushed onwards through the house in search of the mysterious terror, despite the initial hesitance of some amongst them.
"…Please! Why we try and go find nasty spookiness?" A badly shaken Eduardo continued to beseech shamelessly as he and the others rushed up another flight of stairs. "Can't we call 911-"
"Coco co!" Coco snapped as they charged headlong.
"She's right!" Wilt breathlessly agreed as he rushed at a steady sprint. "Frankie's in trouble, we gotta help her! Right, Bloo?"
"…Can't it wait until tomorrow?" the drowsy little blob whined pitifully as he hung limply in the crook of the gangly imaginary friend's arm.
"No time!" Wilt's replied frantically as they successfully ascended another floor and began a mad sprint down one of the hallways. "We need to – WAUGH!"
As they rounded a corner, they coincidentally nearly ran smack into the very redheaded caretaker in question who, while nearly mad with fright, made a beeline for the relative safety of "high ground." Needless to say, Wilt wasn't exactly happy with her decision.
"AAAAAA!" he wailed as Frankie shimmied up his towering legs and began clambering all over him like a crazed squirrel. "Frankie, what are you-"
"Get it away! Get it away! Get it away!" she babbled freely in terror and absolutely refused to be still in her panic. "Oh my God it was right there in Mac's room and I looked right at it and…"
"Calm down! Calm down! Frankie, get down!" the lanky imaginary friend yelled as he stumbled about and struggled to grab hold of her.
"Coco! Co coco co!" Coco flapped her stubby wings and squawked frantically, while Eduardo instinctively cringed and clumsily backed away from the chaos.
"…Can we go back to bed now?" Bloo, blissfully apathetic of all the pandemonium, just moaned sleepily as he lay facedown upon the floor where Wilt had dropped him
"…and what was that? What was that? Christ almighty and in the name of all that is sacred in this world, what was that?" Frankie screeched as she continued to climb all over the unfortunate gangly imaginary friend. "What in the hell was-"
"WHAT WAS WHAT?" Wilt yelled in frustrated exasperation as he finally wrapped a slender arm about her waist and managed to force her still, although he still had yet to silence her hysterical jabbering.
"That! That!" she yelped as she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. "What was that?"
"What was what? You're not making any sense! Frankie, what are you talking about?"
Unfortunately he was on his own, for in the middle of the bedlam a dreadfully spooked eight-year-old boy finally managed to arrive on the scene, and probably would've kept sprinting for his life had not Eduardo taken the initiative and managed to easily scoop[ up Mac with his hefty arms. Once the paled-faced boy was subdued, Coco and Ed swiftly learned the unpleasant truth that Wilt actually had it much easier trying to communicate with his own terrified captive; at least Frankie was spacing her words somewhat.
"Guysguysthere'sathinginmyroomyougottabelieveusthere'sa…" Mac, trembling uncontrollably, sputtered out his story and thoroughly baffled the two imaginary friends in the process.
"Coco? Co?" Coco chirped bewilderedly as she tried to make an iota of sense of his gibberish.
"Senor Mac, please!" The bullish imaginary friend begged in his thick gruff accent. "You talk muy fast, we no understand what you-"
"Understand?What'snottounderstandthere'ssomethinginmyroomguys yougottabeleivemeyougottabeliefeme there'sa-"
"In his room!" Frankie managed to shriek and point down the hallway. "There's something in Mac's bedroom!"
"What?" Wilt yelped incredulously. "Oh jeez, what could possibly be in-"
"I didn't stop to ask!" she snapped. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! Whatever it is, it's alive, and-"
"Frankie, calm down!" he pleaded. "Please!"
"I can't! I can't!" she wailed. "That…th-that thing broke into the house, snuck into Mac's room, and God knows what would've happened if-"
The still dozy Bloo finally managed to care just enough about the chaos around him to lift his head and gaze straight ahead, allowing him to make the simple observation,
"Hey…who's that guy?" he mumbled as he spotted the unmistakable flash of white further down the hallway. Instantaneously the others went dead silent as soon as it became apparent there was no need to take the initiative to investigate Mac and Frankie's spook; it seemed it had decided to make the first move.
Except for Bloo, who looked like he was ready to drowse off any moment, they all went dead still in dumb shock. The only thing that moved besides the rise and fall of their chests were their eyes, and in near perfect synchronization, all wordlessly peeled their gazes off one another and slowly glanced over to the-
"KITTY!" Eduardo instantly lit up and bellowed joyously like a giddy schoolchild. Before anyone else could make a move or utter a single word, the behemoth of an overexcited purple bull promptly dropped Mac in his surging excitement and stomped over to the "kitty" with arms outstretched.
"Oh, you no scary!" Ed cooed gruffly. "You just lost little fluffy cutesy kitty! Is you fluffy cutesy kitty? Yes, you is so fluffy and cutesy! Oh, look, he more frightened then us! C'mere, little kitty!"
As he rushed headlong, the others simply stood back and gawked silently in shock as they all struggled to adjust their vision to the darkness and see whether their ecstatic friend was indeed correct.
It was then that Mac suddenly realized the horrible, horrible truth with a loud gasp, for Eduardo was indeed correct that the "ghost" was in reality no more than a surprise encounter with a small furry animal. There was but one glaring major problem with the gentle-spirited imaginary bull's theory: the boy knew of absolutely no breed of cat that was pitch-black with a massive white stripe running down the length of its back and tail.
"Ed, no!" he screeched at the top of his lungs. "Don't pet the kitty! Don't pet the kitty! Leave it alone, that's not a kitty! EDUARDOOOO!"
"…Wait, wait, wait, wait! So Ed did what?" Goo inquired far too eagerly for her friend's liking as she fought rather unsuccessfully to stifle her giggling.
Rather than give in to her incessant prying, Mac simply shook his head and ignored the question. Not that he was being rude however, he was simply weary of being used as a cheap supply of amusement. After all, he had already told the story three times for her since she had arrived to the house to find her friends out in the driveway where they struggled to clean a certain malodorous violet-furred bull.
"I cold and…and still so stinky…" Ed whined piteously for the umpteenth time as he sat in a large basin of tomato juice.
"It's okay Ed." Wilt murmured reassuringly with a wan grin. "We'll have you all cleaned up in no time."
"Until then, you smell like rotten tomatoes." Bloo grumbled darkly as sat on top of Ed's head, where he was hard at work with a juice-soaked sponge. "I gotta be honest, I love the smell of reeking bull in the morning. It smells like…what's the word? Oh, yeah, death."
"Bloo, stoppit!" Frankie snapped as she wisely scrubbed from a distance with her mop. "We can all do without the sarcasm!"
"Oh don't act all high and mighty on me, we're all thinking it!" the little blob shot back crossly.
"Yeah but you don't have to…wait...wait no, no we don't!" she barely caught herself, and desperately began to strive to sound convincingly sincere. "I…we just…Ed, you believe us, we don't-"
"I know you think it. It's okay…at least you have decency to no say it out loud." He murmured with a forgiving grin as the group scouring session continued.
As they strove to return their friend to his original odor, the immensely exuberant Goo continued to skip about, cackling madly while happily enjoying the ridiculous spectacle for all it was worth.
"Heeheehee! A big ol' skunk, wandering in the house! Hahahahaha! You guys actually thought a stinky skunk was a creepy nasty ghost! Heehee! Silly nutheads!"
"Hey, I was a little freaked out, but I actually didn't automatically assume the house was haunted." Frankie objected as she struggled to ignore the foul stench in the air.
"What did you expect? I woke up in the middle of the night and all I saw was the white stripe!" Mac protested with a hideous scowl. "Cut me some slack, I'm only eight years old! Besides, who's the one that forgot to lock the back door?"
"Oh, if you're looking to play the blame game little man, then-" The redhead shot back with a fierce glower.
"Coco co!" Coco scolded the two like a stern mother and glared them into a reluctant silence.
"Yeah, she's right!" Goo trilled as she continued to prance about. "Who cares how it first began anymore? So a skunk got in through the door, that's lame, lame, lame, lame! Now how you guys actually got rid of it, ooooooooh! Yeah, that's what I wanna know! So how'd you do it? Lure it out with food? Did Ed just take it out 'cuz he was already stinkified? Didya make a trap and…and…a-and…uh….wait, what'd I say?"
The hyperactive little girl had good cause to accuse herself of some wrongdoing, for no sooner had she crossed onto the new topic, everyone else went as still as stones as they all slowly arrived at the joint, unthinkably appalling realization.
"M-Mac?" Frankie managed to croak.
"Yeah?" he whimpered as he let his sponge fall limply from his hands.
"When I was taking care of Ed, did…d-did you and any of the others find a way to get that skunk back outside?"
"N-no…" the boy whispered truthfully. "D-did you?"
"No…" she whispered hoarsely as her eyes nearly bugged to the size of dinner plates in her shock. "Um…Guys?"
"I…I thought Coco was gonna take care of it…" Bloo whined.
"Coco co!"
"Me?" Wilt cried. "But I was busy helping Frankie!"
Once they all swiftly understood the terrible truth that acertain wild animal was completely unaccounted for, for about a good minute of agonizingly awkward silence, none of them could do much but pass each other painfully bemused glances as they desperately searched for an answer that wasn't there.
"Maybe…" Frankie finally suggested hopefully with a grin, "Maybe it just slipped out through the back door…I mean, no one's seen it this morning or anything, so-"
Alas, she spoke far too soon, for not a second later the entire band was nearly spooked half to death when a most hideous bellow suddenly exploded out from inside the house, and nearly deafened every single one of them on the spot.
"AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!" They could hear Mr. Herriman thundering so clearly from his office it was as if he was roaring right into their ears. "OH, MY BURNING NOSTRILS! GOOD LORD, WHAT BLACK-HEARTED CHILD ACTUALLY TOOK THE EFFORT TO CREATE YOU? MERCY, WHAT A HIDEOUSLY UNGODLY STENCH! WAIT, WAIT, NO, NO, NOT AGAIN-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The moment the hideous clamor assaulted her eardrums, Goo promptly decided the entire situation wasn't quite as funny as she originally thought, and hastily took cover behind Coco with a whimper. As the mortified little group could plainly hear every little bit of a certain imaginary rabbit's most unpleasant encounter with what he assumed was Foster's newest resident, a noticeably ashen-faced Mac glanced up at Frankie and stammered softly,
"Should...sh-should we fess up a-and tell him we...w-we forgot to..."
The horror-stricken redhead just shook her head slowly while she began gesturing towards all the others. "No one say another word…on my cue, everyone just start…moving… slowly... towards …the …bus…"
The End