This story is from I dream I dreamt a while ago.


My parents were gone. My sister was gone, and I was stuck with my cousins in their big creepy house in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't tell how long I'd been living with them, but long enough to be receiving mail at the house. And some how, I'd been signed up for a book club all about clowns.

And that's exactly what I'd received in the mail. A book about a clown named Stinky, and a doll of Stinky. He was creepy, with a with a white face and green thinning hair. He was perpetually smiling, but not in a happy way, like a fine, normal clown. And his nose wasn't the happy clown red, it was a dark red. A creepy red. A red normal people didn't want to look at.

But I was happy to be getting free dolls, since I was still only ten. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about it. My cousins and I had fun with the clown doll, and the book was completely discarded. Maybe if we had read the book, maybe we would have known.

We all went to sleep, Stinky sitting on the shelf proudly worn out from a whole day of play. Still, he was unnerving to look at as you slept. So I got up and threw a towel over his head. There, he was hidden, perfect.

I woke up the next morning, happy as can be to be able to play with Stinky again. But when I opened my eyes, everything was dark. Had I pulled the blanket up over my head in the middle of the night? No, it was a, a towel? Strange. I tossed it off my head to the ground and sat up.

Stinky wasn't on his shelf! I'd kill my cousins for not asking to play with him!

"JESSICA! MIKEY! Where's Stinky?!" I shouted, storming downstairs to the kitchen where they were eating. Their mother wasn't there, nor their father.

"We don't know, we thought you had him," Mikey said, shrugging and eating his wheaties.

"Jessica?"

"I swear I didn't take it!" she shouted defensively.

"Then where is he?"

We passed the whole day, forlorn and mourning the loss of Stinky, our playmate. It was bed time again, my aunt was still missing, and my uncle, and my cousins and I shared a bed, frightened alone.

We fell asleep fitfully, tossing and turning. It was a hard night; and it would only get harder.

"Ang...ang...ang..." I woke up to a scratchy, almost goofy sounding voice calling my much hated nickname. I lay still, thinking it was my cousins trying to play tricks on me. I was often the butt of many of their jokes.

"Ang! Ang! Ang!" the voice was louder, and I sat up.

"Shut up! I'm tired, guys!" I looked to my left and right, my cousins were IN the bed with me, it couldn't be them.

"Uncle Mike? Are you back?"

"ANG! ANG! ANG!" Louder still, and I was frightened. I shook my cousin Jessica awake.

"Jessica! Someone's in the house with us!" I whispered. She just grumbled and sat up, rubbing her eyes. She looked comical, her hair sticking up and her oversized nightgown falling off her shoulder. I would have laughed if I wasn't so frightened.

"Who?" she asked, still partially asleep.

"I don't know, he just keeps saying 'Ang.' It's weird," I murmured. She woke up Mikey and he laughed at us.

"You guys are stupid, it's nothing," he said, punching his sister in the arm. He was the oldest, he was the smartest, we believed him. We had to. "Go back to bed."

So we did, or tried.

"You guys ARE stupid!" the voice said, quieter, but ruder.

"Mikey, shut up," Jessica groaned.

"Not me," Mikey mumbled from my left.

"Then who?" Jessica asked.

"Maybe it's Stinky," Mikey joked.

"It's not funny, he's creepy looking," I said, crossing my arms. I had goosebumps. Whether it was from the cold or from the fear, I didn't quite know yet.

"Yesss," the voice hissed, "maybe it'sss Ssstinky..."

"Stinky!?" we all three shouted at once...

TBC