Behind closed doors

Chapter 2

"I'm not doing it."

Jeffery...

"No."

Prey tell why not...

"He's an idiot and I'll end up killing him!"

No you won't...

"Do you really want to take that risk, Slendy?"

Toby head clicked from one side to the other as he watched the disagreement bounce back and fore. After a while, he folded his arms and glared pointedly as Jeff, "You don't like me very much, do you?"

For a moment, Jeff eyed him dejectedly before turning back to Slender, "You see? It's taken him this fucking long to realise a blatantly obvious fact!"

This particular disagreement boiled down to the fact that Ticci-Toby was meant to be accompanying Jeff on his trip to the outside. Slender had been watching the people of the outside, and a particular group had caught his attention. There were many, they were immoral, they were cruel; and their time was due to run out in a matter of hours. But due to the amount of future victims and knowing that they would no doubt put up a fight, Slender concluded that it would be more effective to send two. And as Jeff was still in need of practice to control his mentality switch from public to private and Toby not being outside for almost a fortnight, they seemed the best choices.

But personality-wise, they couldn't have been more ill-matched. Jeff clenched his fist and took a shuddery breath, anger twitching behind his eyes, "I work alone. You know that..."

"So do I." Toby nodded, "So we'll work alone like normal, just on the same job in the same place at the same time."

Jeff growled irritably and aimed his blade at his unfortunate partners face, "Look at what you're pairing me with, Slender! Just look! If we go outside then only one of us is coming back alive and I'm telling you right now I don't plan in dying tonight!"

"Good plan..." Toby muttered with a hint of sarcasm, only infuriating Jeff further.

Enough of this... The silky voice of their mentor demanded, his towering form looming over them menacingly, You either obey, or face the consequences...

The pair glanced at one another quizzically, "Such as?" Jeff urged.

Slender tilted his marble-like head to the side, Do you really want to find out...?

"No thanks, Slendy." Toby answered for them, despite his mask putting on the widest grin of innocence he could muster up and holding out a hand eagerly, "Address please!"

Shad wafted through the woodwork and into the room beyond it, sitting on the sofa beside the morose figure of Jack. A sense of pride swelled within him as he had overheard that Jeff was forced into taking another sudden job. Serves him right really for pushing his luck. No one went outside without Slender's say so. And Slender never said so unless there was a job to be done. When outside, the world was yours for a night, as long as the job was done by the end of it. And Jeff needed to learn that. That's more or less the reason why Shad grew so irritable with Alice's procrastination. Why wait to finish the job right at the end of the night? Wouldn't it make much more sense to get it over with, and then spend your freedom doing something to move on from it before being called back once again? But then again, everyone to their own.

And besides, it wasn't as if the nightlife of his... what should he call them? After all this time he'd never found a word for them. Not friends for definite, colleagues seemed too official, housemates seemed so infantile; so he just went with 'others'. So as he was internally monologing; it wasn't as if the nightlife of the others was of any interest to him. He was a tracker. He observed those he was ordered to from the shadows, and reported back to Slender. Without him, Slender wouldn't have half of the jobs he does. And Shad felt proud of that.