TeratoPhilia

Harmatophobia

Tom always thought going to the meetings was fun. All the people there were friendly and talked to him about whatever. His mom let him draw in coloring books while the brother did his talk, and he even commented a couple times during the Watchtower.

He liked it.

It was like a big family.

While walking to the Kingdom Hall, Tom noticed a weird purple misty thing in an alley. It looked like a snake-cloud-squid thingy.

He cautiously approached the purple snake-cloud-squid and reached a hand to touch it. It gently pushed against his hand, glowed very bright, and then went away.

Tom tilted his head, then went on his merry way to the hall. It probably was not anything bad, right?

~~~~~~~~

He had a really bad headache during the Watchtower, so Tom just laid his head on his mom's shoulder.

"Thomas? Are you okay?"

"Yeah... my head hurts a lil', that's all."

"You wanna head down to the lobby and listen there?"

Tom nodded and started to pick up his coloring book and crayons. His dad helped him and once everything had been collected, his mom took his hand and brought him to the lobby of the hall.

His headache didn't seem to get better, though, so he asked his mom if he could go back home. It wasn't very far, so he should've been able to walk by himself.

"No, Thomas. You might get hurt if you're not careful."

"Okay... but it really hurts..."

"We can go to the doctor when the meeting's over, okay?"

Tom nodded and leaned on his mom's shoulder again.

~~~~~~~~

"THOMAS!?"

Tom woke up to being shaken by his mom.

"Whuh?"

"Just get him home, we can worry about it when we get there." His father was getting huffy... but what did he do?

"Okay, okay..."

Tom was picked up by his mother, while his dad walked ahead. Was something wrong? Did he do something he didn't know about? Did he fall asleep in church and miss the prayer?

Whatever he did, his dad was mad at him. He didn't like when his dad was mad at him, or when he was mad at his mom. He was really scary when he was mad.

"Tommy, can you see?"

"Yeah..." Of course he could see! Why wouldn't he be able to?

"Okay, that's good."

It was all too weird for him. His mom was acting weird, his dad was acting weird, the people they walked past were giving him weird looks.

What did he do?

~~~~~~~~

Tom woke up, glad his headache was gone. He sat up and yawned real big. He reached out to grab his Tomee Bear, but stopped.

His hand...

Forgetting Tomee Bear in panic, he ran to the door of his bedroom and listened for his dad. He wouldn't like this, he'd be scared and he did things to whatever scared him.

Bad things.

He couldn't hear him, not even a little bit of a whisper. He always left early on Mondays to get his field ministry done.