Hello. My name is, Pleasant. Skulduggery Pleasant. Bit of a pun there, and a James Bond reference as well, I hoped you liked it. I'm talking to you right now, well whoever you are, because I'm so intensely bored.

The torture was enough to stave off the boredom at first, but after months and months, pain stopped surprising me and any traces of masochism wore off. I'm lucky, in some ways. Being a skeleton, it isn't like they can peel my skin back, or pull out individual organs, fill them with sand, and put them back in. They do have magic though, so they never run out of ideas on how to torture my old bones.

They, being the producers of reality television. I'm just kidding.

They, being these creatures I've never even heard of. They're capable of becoming shadows, materializing in and out of the darkness in a room. Here, in the dimly lit bunker they have me prisoner, I am in their element. Sometimes I won't even know they're in the room. A few weeks after I arrived here, I tried to saw my way out with a knife hidden in the sole of my shoes.

They were with me the whole time, hiding in the shadow of my cold, metal chair.

The second time I tried to escape, they pulled the same trick, only they were hiding in the shadow of my hat-brim. The third time, I got all the way outside, and realized something.

If they could hide in any shadow, even the shadow of my hat, what's to stop them from following me back to her?

Back to Valkyrie, the one they were after.

I promptly turned around, and returned to my cold cell, where (as I suspected) one of them materialized from the shadow under my tie. The torture was more severe than ever that night.

So I've remained here, studying them, planning my eventual escape. I can't count on being rescued you see, I don't want to be rescued. I don't want Valkyrie anywhere near these creeps until we figure out how to destroy them.

Not stop, capture, or scare away, but utterly destroy. I've had more than enough of defeating someone, only to have them rise back up and strike again. No one get's away with that anymore, no one harms my Valkyrie.

Especially not these freaks.

My mind is clearer than ever, now that I've learned how to drown out the pain. I've noticed a thing or two about my, 'shady' friends. For starters, the less light in the room, the harder they find it to control themselves, to give themselves shape. I thought of creating so much light that they would be purely solid, solid enough for a bullet to rip through, but not only is my trusty revolver in the hands of the young lady I am trying to protect, but this whole building is bound, and I have no way of creating a strong enough light source.

They never made any attempt to search me for 'contraband', and I still have the file in my necktie and the razor hidden on the inverse side of my tie-bar. Plus many other well hidden weapons that I won't reveal to you at the moment, in case you ever capture me and tie me up.

So, I'm thinking maybe the opposite approach might serve me. This time, when I cut through my ropes, I shove the tie bar into the overhead lamp. Right before all light leaves the room, I see the shadows phase out, almost melt into the darkness, and I realize what has occurred.

Light gives them form, so surely they are formless in darkness. Things without form, can't move on their own.

I take not my momentary freedom for granted, and leave the room quickly. I come into a long tunnel, with four windows spaced throughout, in runs from left to right before me, making a t-shape with my cell. I peer into the hallway, and see a single shadow, in his humanoid form, patrolling the hall.

I sprint before I can think and dive through the nearest window, shattering the glass and soaring upward, away from the den of torture, and shade.

I'm high, above the clouds, and I know I'm home free, but I don't revel in it. The clouds look like foamy pillows below me and the moon shines brightly above me, and I realize how incredibly it is to be free.

And I holler, and I yell, and I whoop into the open night sky.

It is so good to be free.

I stop at an old storehouse that very few people know about, and grab a new suit, a spare revolver and a new pair of shoes. I change my socks too. There's an old car parked in the storehouse, a BMW from the late eighties. I hop in, and start the engine.

As the engine roars to life, I try to calculate how long I've been gone. To my surprise, I can't. I have no clue how long I've been away for, how long my friends have been without me.

I know that I have at least three hours of driving to do, so I turn on the radio and and my headlights and hit the road, just as the sun starts to rise.

Well, I don't really hit the road, the car does. The car doesn't really hit the road either. It's just an expression.

I've never really needed a GPS, after being alive for so many centuries you find that there are days where you just want to drive around, listen to music, and see what there is to see. Of course carriages never had radios, the music part of my drives showed up in the latter part of my life to date.

An hour passes by to the rhythmic droll of unidentifiable pop music, that seems to blend into one long song as the time passes. It helps that all the singers sound the same, no matter their gender. The music sounds like it was all made on a computer, an inexpensive one at that, but I take joy in hearing the modern incarnation of disco. Not that I liked disco all that much when it came out.

I flip the station as the hour long block of commercial free tunes ends, and wind up listening to some well preformed classical music.

Ludwig Van Bethoven fills my ears. Um, the holes in my skull.

I'm sorry, but after being, you know, anatomically correct for so long, you don't discard all the old conventions.

"I spy with my little eye... socket."

"The hair on my neck is standing on in."

"I've got goosebumps."

"By the skin of my teeth." Wait, teeth never have skin. Who the hell came up with that one?

Another hour passes as Bethoven switches to Mozart, to Bach, to Wagner, and then to a commercial. I would change the station, but I'm pulling in now, and my mind races.

Valkyrie is at least 21 by now, close to my age when I stopped, well, "aging". Tanith and Ghastly could have kids by now, for all I know. Valkyrie could be married... or at least in a relationship. I hope not. I mean, it would be most-well I would-to see her with another foolish boy would...

I love her. Ok?

You could tell, couldn't you?

I've spent enough time just sitting in the beemer with the engine still roaring, so I shut it off and step outside. It's a short walk to the hidden entrance, and even though it's been months, or maybe years, I still remember which rockface to use the password in front of. I put on an overcoat before leaving the car, mainly because it's thirty-three degrees out and most people would consider that freezing. I want to look normal. I want to surprise my friends.

My facade goes up with a light touching of the collarbones, and I peer into the car mirror to assess my reflection. I resemble a cross between Tom Cruise and a pit bull terrier.

Handsome, but someone to be reckoned with. I start walking, and in a few minutes I'm at a familiar rock face. I clear my throat, for no particular reason other than habit.

"Gordon's funeral." I utter, the excitement rising up into my voice. The rocks slide open, and I enter a hallway lit by torches that never go out. The walk to our sanctum itself, is a bit longer than the walk from the car to the entrance, but in what seems like no time at all, I'm in a vast open field, with a large house situated in the open, between two trees.

There's a tire swing hanging down from one of the trees, and a small child is swinging on it, a grown man leans against the tree, watching him.

Have I really been gone so long?

I don't know when I fell to my knees, to me it seemed like the world just rose up to meet me. I think I whimper, but I'm unsure, and I know that if I had real tear ducts, my eyes would be watering right now. I look straight ahead, and notice the child point at me, drawing Ghastly's attention.

He leaves his son, or daughter, and rushes over to me, clearly ready to fight.

But as he approaches, he falters. Then he determined march becomes a staggering gait, and his eyes widen in shock.

"Sku-skulduggery?" He asks me, and I realize how foolish of me it was to keep the facade up. I touch my collarbones and the skin slides away. He's on me and hugging me faster than I can blink. Oh wait, no eyelids. Anyway, faster than a normal person could blink.

"I'm back."

"I know. It's good to have you back old friend."

"Brother." I say, almost under my breath. He nods into my shoulder and exhales.

"Yeah, it's good to have you back brother." He hoists me to his feet with that great strength of his, and together we walk to the tire swing, where the young boy is staring, "Skulduggery? This is Skulduggery. My son."

Again, I'm sure I would be crying by now. I'm almost depressed that I can't weep.

"We call him Skully, so you two don't get confused." Skully... I like that. It has a childish ring to it. An innocent take on a dark title.

"Hey there." I say, kneeling to his height.

"Are you the Skeleton Detective?" He asks, beaming. Unafraid of me. Unafraid of his namesake.

"That's me."

"Daddy says, that you're my godfather. Daddy says you're the greatest detective who ever lived. Mommy says, that you never stopped talking."

"Did they now?" Godfather? Me? "How old are you, Skulduggery?"

"Six and one half." He answers proudly, and I know that if I had skin the color would drain from my face.

Six and a half years. Tanith wasn't even showing when I left. Then Ghastly took me by the arm, and led me away from my godchild.

"We adopted him when he was three." He whispers to me, and I breathe a sigh of momentary relief. Three years is nowhere near as bad as seven, "I was going to ask you about being his godfather when you came back-"

"Of course I'll be his godfather. Are you crazy?" I grab his arm, and can feel the bond of affection pass between us, "You didn't have to ask."

My mind quickly wanders away, and I turn back around to wave at Skully before changing the subject.

"Where are the girls?"

"Tanith and Valkyrie went back to Haggard to visit the 'folks', but don't worry, I made sure they were both properly disguised."

"It doesn't matter anymore, I know how to beat the shadows!" I say, maybe too excitedly. Ghastly grins back at me through his scars, and I cock my hat to the left. Frank Sinatra once said the position of one's hat should show there mood. Well right now, I'm beaming.

I'm sitting now, in the most comfortable arm chair ever made, manufactured by GHASTLY furniture, a division of BESPOKE Design, one of the elite clothing companies in the world. It also, secretly, housed the Sanctuary some distance below it's division headquarters. I found all this news quite charming.

Seriously though, this chair does the old bones good.

"How is everything? I mean, in the world I guess?"

"Oh, fine I suppose." Ghastly is unusually happy, I'm sure in no small part because of my return. Skully reads a book in the corner of the living room.

"Good, good. And you guys like this town? It isn't too boring?"

"Oh, far from it." Ghastly says, in a way that almost makes me nervous. Have they been senselessly been putting their lives in danger without me?

"And how is the sanctum holding up?"

"Best house ever built Skulduggery, shame it took you three hundred years to finish it."

"It'll never really be finished, you know, with technology always changing."

"Magic stays the same though."

"Maybe." I hear the door creak open, and I feel my invisible heart tighten as a voice fills my 'ears', "Hey, do you ever think I sound like Sir Anthony Hopkins?" I ask loudly, knowing my voice will carry into the foyer.

"Skulduggery?" I hear her ask, almost as if she's questioning her own question. Then, before I can answer, I hear my padawan's feet move quickly through the hallway, into the living room.

But I don't see my student, I see a young lady who shares her face. She's crying.

"Hey there." I say, but my voice betrays me and cracks. She leaps at me, and hugs me tenderly. With gloved hands I run my fingers through her dark hair, I look up and see Tanith.

"Hi, Tanith." She's crying too. I think the tears are starting to bug me, "Hey, Valkyrie?"

She lifts her head up and stares at me, her face twisted between sobbing and smiling.

"I have this friend right? Well he knows this girl he likes. Well, he loves her actually. But, she's like, a thousand or so years younger than him. He isn't quite sure if she loves him back. I guess, well I mean, what my frien-"

I'm interrupted by her lips pressing against my teeth, and holding my jaw shut. For the first time, I'm speechless in front of Tanith. I hope that doesn't change her opinion of me.

Hope you liked it.