How Could You Forget The Sun

XXI

ANA’S POV

I was sitting calmly with Laughing Jack as the sun rose. I was thankful for the light, as I had not quite mastered the ability to see in the darkness. I was actually surprised that he was sitting rather than out befriending and scheming against kids. For all he really did to help, I still did not think too highly of the way he targeted helpless kids.

His black-and-white socks were annoying me and how they ran into his clownish grey shoes. It was the small things that were annoying me nowadays. Forget the murderers and urban legends trying to kill me and my friends. I did not like Laughing Jack’s sock-and-shoe combination.

After a minute of me watching his socks and shoes, he became annoyed. “What?” he snapped.

He sighed and pulled off his shoes. I crinkled my nose, waiting for the awful stench of his feet, but it did not come. I sniffed the air to find it clean. He snorted in triumph and flexed his toes inside his socks. I rolled my eyes and shoved him with my shoulder.

“So, what do you think?” he asked, vaguely. But I knew what he was saying.

“I think that I’m still not her,” I responded. “I think partners in crime might work, though.” I outstretched my hand.

He took it with his black, clawed hand. We shook hands and when we withdrew, he exploded into circus-like excitement.

“Now you have to get your outfit!” he squealed, and my mouth dropped to hang open as if my hinges stopped working. What just happened?

“What?” I asked dumbly, too shocked to react when he took my hand and dragged me inside.

He sat me down on one of the steps at the staircase and he turned around. When he turned back around, he was holding a pair of black-and-white striped socks. He wriggled his eyebrows and grinned widely with his sharp set of teeth. He glanced down to his socks and compared the two pairs.

“No.”

He scowled. “Yes,” he ordered, flinging them at me. “You’re my partner in crime, so you wear my socks. It’s not like I’m turning you Goth; which you are, by the way.”

“I am not Goth!” I protested. “I just like black. And I am not wearing these infernal things. You’re my partner in crime, but I’m not making you dye your hair golden to match mine! I’ll wear what I want!”

“Fine,” he spat, disgusted. ‘What will you wear, then?”

I thought for a moment. I really had no idea. I opened my mouth to respond, but no words left my lips. He cackled a bit and dragged me upstairs and into a bedroom, leaving the door open. He tapped the wardrobe with one of his claws and stood back.

I approached the wardrobe and opened it. It was full of monochrome clothes. I turned to Laughing Jack and shot him a ‘really?’ look. I turned back and flipped through it. I did not like the clothes, so I pulled out a pair of heeled combat boots and set them on the floor.

“There you go,” I answered.

His scowl stretched into a perverted smirk. “You’re going to run around in nothing but heeled boots?” he laughed. “Kinky,” he winked, letting his gaze molest me.

“Shut up,” I snapped and stomped back over the wardrobe, surprised to find a completely different batch of clothes inside.

Reluctantly, I took out a leather top cut out to look like mesh and flung it at Laughing Jack face. Then, I burst out in hysterics when it got caught on his nose. He scowled at me and threw it on the bed after he had detangled it from himself. Crossing his arms, he waited for me to go on.