Chapter 1

“Rectangles!” Patrick said.

“Not just any rectangles,” Spongebob said.

Michael had to make sure the bottle of liquor in his right hand was steady as he sat it on the arm of his couch. As Spongebob held the chocolate bars out, he took another sip of the Jack Daniels as it was grasped tightly in his fingers. He sighed as he watched the television blare in front of him, the noise canceling out any background static in his mind. It was the only light on in the otherwise dark house as it was past eight o’clock.

The depression’s still there. Michael thought. But not the buzzing in my head that sounds like chainsaw roaring.

“Candy bars,” Spongebob said.

Why he chose this to watch was a bit of mystery to Michael. He hadn’t watched Spongebob in nearly ten years. He sort of put the show away like a teenager would hide their toys from when they were a toddler. They might have still had a fondness for them but didn’t want to show how immature they were. But Michael needed something immature. He needed something childish to distract him from the pain.

I just want to drown out the agony of existing right now. He recognized. I don’t want to be alive…I want to forget I exist for a moment and not remember my ex-wife…

He winced in pain upon Jennifer piercing his consciousness yet again.

Dang it! Michael thought. I just wanted to-! To-!

“Oooh!” the cartoon starfish said.

He slammed his drink down on the couch, spilling some of the liquor on himself and the brown piece of furniture. The cartoon was now distracting him from his more helpful thoughts than forgetting his pain. Getting angry about how he wanted to forget Jennifer was what gave Michael the energy to push her out of his head.

Anger. Anger was the key to forgetting. And whenever something else entered his mind in the middle of that spell of anger, it was interfering with his ability to forget her. He leaned his head against the back of the couch.

“Gosh, I just wanted to forget,” Michael said. “I want to forget…what do I want to forget?”

The question really had two answers: one that was very simple and one that was very long. Michael wanted to forget everything. Simple as that. But it was only to do with his divorce was the reason he wanted to forget everything.

But it was so hard to forget everything. It was nearly two decades he had to forget. He married Jennifer at the tail end of high school, when she was nineteen and he was eighteen. They’d been married for seventeen years and had a divorce that took nearly two years.

Their son, Kevin, who was a senior in high school now had to endure the pain of coming from a broken home. It was something that shook Kevin so hard he had to drop out of high school due to mental health issues. That was certainly an event that Michael never thought would happen.

How did I let that happen? He thought. I thought only losers got divorced. I thought only losers were the cause of their divorce.

“You don’t have to forget your entire life,” his therapist, Brenda, would say. “It’s okay to forget the painful memories of your divorce but your entire life doesn’t need to be thrown out the window.”

But it did. It did need to go out the window. Everything did. If his marriage failed, then Michael himself failed.

It’s something only married people could understand. When young people who never tied the knot hear that someone went through a divorce, they think of it like breaking up with someone. They brush it off like a casual occurrence. Casual. Casual was the word to describe a bachelor’s relationships.

But a marriage falling apart wasn’t like hitting a snag like breaking up with your girlfriend or boyfriend was. It wasn’t just messy either. You’d intertwined your life to another person and they, to some extent or another, became you. A spouse’s personality and life story were so tangled within one another that getting out of it was like a woman untangling her long hair from a brier patch she dove headfirst into. When your wife felt pain, you did as well. When you worried, your husband worried. Simple as that and there was no getting around it.

It wasn’t even the financial loss or the split custody of their youngest child, Susan, a twelve year old girl with slight dyslexia since Kevin was an adult. The loss of money and the disruption of Susan’s already difficult education wasn’t what bothered him. It was the feeling of failure.

“Personal loss is not the sign of moral reprehensibility,” Brenda told him. “It’s not that sign of a lack of maturity or character flaws.”

But it certainly seemed like that. If you thought of a person’s life as a tower they were constantly building upon with each action or inaction, something like a divorce was a collapse of the entire tower. Something that earth-shattering to a person’s life didn’t just affect the topmost layer as the shaking of that person’s reached to the very foundation of the tower.

It was why Michael was okay with watching Spongebob at that moment. He felt embarrassed to watch, embarrassed to lower himself to this level of seeking comfort in a cartoon. But at that moment, it felt better at staving off the depression and suicidal tendencies than therapy or even the liquor. A few episodes had lulled him into a nice, soothing state of compliance and forgetting. And then Michael remembered what he was trying to forget.

Stupid cartoon. He thought. Didn’t even do what it was supposed to do.

“All we have to do is make them last for the rest of our lives,” Spongebob said.

And then anger rose back in Michael. But not anger that he could use to push his problems out of his mind. Anger at his basic surroundings. Frustration at what he could see, feel and touch in that moment. It was a different anger than at experiences he had in the past, of memories Michael couldn’t change in that moment.

It was like being mad at one of his children throwing a tantrum rather than something that occurred years and years ago. The source of the anger was in the present and could only be directed at a present object of whatever was bothering him. He glared at the pink starfish and yellow sponge on the television screen, clenching his jaw tight with fury.

“You know what Spongebob,” he said, his words slurred slightly with some amount of drunkenness. “Those candy bars aren’t going to last probably a single day. So why don’t you shut up and go home, because you can’t live off one trinket or luxury your entire life. If I could, I would have.”

He then stood up and picked the remote up from where it lay on the couch beside him. Michael threw the remote control at the screen with all the force he could muster, the object bouncing off and ricocheting into the table between the television and the couch. He continued to glare at the cartoon.

“So why don’t you just shut up?!” Michael said.

“Why don’t you just shut up?” Spongebob asked.

Michael stepped back and blinked twice.

“What?”

“You need to shut up, Michael,” Spongebob said.

“Yeah, Michael,” Patrick said. “You need to shut your mouth and listen to what we have to say.”

Michael’s jaw dropped open, hanging like a dead branch. He staggered backward as the bottle fell out of his hands and crashed to the floor. Liquor spilled on Michael’s shoes as he stumbled back. The back of his legs ran into the couch, the rest of his body falling into the back of the furniture’s head cover.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The couch fell back with Michael as he crashed along with it, a thud sounding throughout his house. He couldn’t breath, the air in his lungs paralyzed with shock. He stared up at the ceiling, afraid at the very shadows.

A familiar, yet forgotten terror flooded into Michael’s mind. The fear of the dark. The certainty the behind the dark cloak of the night was hidden some terrible fright, equipped with teeth and claws that made it impossible for a child to escape its clutches. All around him, the unknown thing behind that black blanket curled and pressed against Michael’s skin as its fangs placed just behind sank into him.

I’m…He thought. I’ve seen the boogeyman. I’m…I’m afraid of the dark…again. How…How am I becoming…becoming a frightened child again? Was…Was it the fact I put on a cartoon?!

“Get up you bum,” Spongebob’s voice said.

Michael continued staring up at the ceiling, not daring to take his eyes off the featureless black surface. If he drifted his eyes anywhere near the direction of the cartoon character’s voice, knowing if he acknowledged it, that would give the television power. Michael dreaded the thought of giving whatever was speaking to him influence over his being. He shut his eyes and tried to ignore the high-pitched sponge’s voice before it said something that forced Michael to pay attention.

“This is just like Jennifer said about you,” Spongebob said. “You would rather avoid an obvious problem, even if it meant hiding from it.”

Anger flowed through Michael.

“Yeah,” Patrick said. “I even recall her saying you’d run away from a difficulty even if it meant heading into an dead end alley. Like, when you were figuring out how to save money for Susan’s new tutor-”

“Shut up, okay?!” Michael shouted.

He stood up from where he’d fallen and dived down to scoop up the remote in his hand.

“You don’t know nothin’ about my life, okay?!” he shouted. “So be quiet, die and never talk to me again! You hear me?!”

After snatching it from the floor, Michael tossed it at the television with even greater force than the first time. But this time it didn’t bounce off the screen. It sank into it. With a splash.

The end of the remote made a ripple in the liquid screen upon being tossed into the television set. Water consumed the small device, a small spurt of it ejected out of the screen’s surface upon entry. Michael’s eye twitched at the sight of the blue water on the television screen somehow materializing into tangible reality.

Boy HD is no joke. Was his immediate thought.

Once inside, the remote shrank to fit in with the aspect ratio of the television screen. It minimized in size until it looked exactly like a television remote he saw in a previous episode of Spongebob. A small, simple device with very few buttons and reduced in mass until one of the cartoon characters could hold it. The remote began sinking until it reached the sandy bottom the characters stood on.

“No…” Michael thought. “No…”

He walked toward the television and knelt down to the screen. At first, Michael tried to turn it off by pressing the power button. Nothing happened. The pink starfish and yellow sponge continued staring at him.

He then faced their grinning faces, the two cartoon characters pausing. It dawned on Michael that they were stopping the episode just to communicate with him. Just to stare at him.

“Are…?” he stumbled over his words.

Michael used the hand he had been pressing the power button with and…dipped it into the screen. Just as he touched the screen he could feel the seawater from the television show wet his fingers. All Michael could do was sink his arm further and further in until everything up to his right shoulder was submerged.

And the strangest part was the remote was not even transferred into the cartoon like his remote had been. He could feel his right arm soaking wet, the gentle current of cold seawater washing across the limb. And yet it did not make an appearance in the cartoon like his remote had been.

“Are you done piddling around?” Spongebob asked.

Michael clenched his teeth at those words. It was the same thing that Jennifer told him when she wanted to get his attention. He always had such a visceral response to it because it sounded so demeaning. As if whatever Michael was doing in that moment before she said it was a vain, frivolous venture that was depriving their family of needed, fatherly attention. The cartoon saying it stung even worse somehow.

“I ain’t piddling!” Michael shouted. “I haven’t been piddling since…since I don’t even know when…”

He jerked his arm out of the television screen filled with water and stumbled backward. However, as he tried to stand up, his legs were still shaking with fear. Michael backed into the table behind him on his unsteady legs and fell onto the piece of furniture. It knocked the wind out of him before he stood up.

They got me now. He thought. They got me with that one phrase that Jennifer always knew she could get me with.

“Well, if you’re not piddling,” Patrick the starfish said. “Get to it.”

“G-G-Get-t…” Michael said in-between breaths. “To what?”

Spongebob held up the candy bars in his hand.

“You see this, right?” the cartoon character said.

Michael nodded like a simpering fool.

“Go get one,” the sponge said.

“What?” Michael asked.

“Go get a candy bar,” Spongebob said. “Now…before it's too late.”

“Before what’s too late?!” Michael shouted. “Am…Am I going to die?!”

“You just need to go get a candy bar,” Patrick said. “That’s all you need to worry about.”

“Why?!” the man in his late-thirties shouted. “What happens if I don’t?! Please–Please tell me!”

“You heard us,” Spongebob said. “Go…go get a candy bar. You’re an antibody. You need to go do it or we…we’ll have problems.”

“Problems?!” Michael asked. “I already have enough problems! How’s a sponge fish thing telling me I need to go get a candy bar anymore problems than a divorce?! My daughter’s crying all the time asking why mommy and daddy are never going to be under the same roof again! I had a son who could have gotten a scholarship drop out of school because of mental agony and now working minimum wage! You think a Nickelodeon show is going to be able to tell me something worse and more stressful than that?!”

“Oh you little human,” Spongebob said.

The way he said the last word with such disdain and malice that it no longer sounded like the character’s voice. It sounded more…grainy. More dark, like rocks smashing into one another and consonants made out of that. Michael’s rage was squashed by that one word, like a mosquito swatted by an annoyed child.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Spongebob said. “You’re an ant. A petty insect. I rule here. Even an antibody is insignificantly small in comparison to its host. And if you refuse to do what I say, perform the role I give you…”

The television suddenly changed. The television set’s dark blue suddenly began glowing bright red. Fire erupted from the television set, the heat strong enough for Michael to feel along the entire front of his body.

He screamed and stumbled backward again as the flames reached to the ceiling above. The stream of fire held a horrible laugh that made Michael’s very screams catch in his throat. He couldn’t emit a sound as he was overwhelmed with two sensation.

The only thing he senses told him were he was very hot and the laugh was wreaking havoc on his eardrums. Every bit of the sound made him wreathe in agony and for what reason he couldn’t explain. The closest Michael could approximate was that it made him feel small.

Every roar of the laughter made Michael shrink further and further into himself until he was curling on the table in a fetal position. It wasn’t just loud, it was so boisterous that it shook his insides. He clapped his palms against his ears, wishing more than anything it’d stop. It was at that moment Michael would trade his own life for the laughter to stop.

“Then you will suffer in the deepest part of hell,” he said. “Until your soul and bones burn to ashes.”

The laughter died down and the heat no longer plagued Michael. He slowly took his hands away from his head and sighed in relief. He looked to find his television was blackened, the screen shattered and the borders of it steaming with white smoke.

However, just as Michael sighed and relaxed his body, he turned over to see something equally horrifying. Staring down at him was a face, plastered to his ceiling. It stared down, its entire composition made of the shadow forming the night.

The expression was as sharp as something carved out of ice. Every feature looked chiseled by a sharp point. It smiled down at him with glee, the expression causing Michael to scream.

“Now,” the face said. “Get up and go get a candy bar. Because if you don’t, you’ll discover what death truly is.”

Michael stared up, stunned at the face. It’s voice was nothing like the cartoon character’s. It was clear and crisp, almost elegant. As opposed to the fiery wrath he heard warn him, this one was like a cool wind blowing gently into one’s face. Like a bit of ice cream caught in the wind and thrown onto one’s skin.

“You always want to lie down and let life pass you by because you don’t have the guts to face problems as they truly are,” the face said. “Your wife left you because you lie around when you know what you have to do and shake in fear like a little girl trapped in a closet.”

Michael then felt something biting him on his right elbow. He looked down to see a pair of dog’s fangs sinking into him. He’d call them disembodied but the back of the teeth were attached to the darkness like latex, the black substance stretched out to hold them.

Michael then began feeling the biting sensation on his chin, left hand and right knee. He caught the sight of the different dog jaws trying to gnaw him to the bone before he jumped up from the table. He ran out of the living room and into the hallway, screaming like a little girl as he heard dogs bark behind him.

“I’ll get my keys!” he said. “Just let me get my keys!”

“That’s a good boy,” the voice said.