Billy Gumballs

"Markie banged on the door, his eyes beginning to tear up as he called for help. He had gone into the equipment shed looking for answers, and what he had found scared him nearly to death. As he banged on the door, he could hear the creature pulling itself free of the wall behind him. The massive paws came to rest on the ground, the claws clittered on the pavement, and he could almost feel the rumble as the beast came for him."

I put a hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp, but Terrence didn't seem to have any such hesitation. He moaned like a trained mourner in a soap opera, and Ralphie slapped a hand over his gaping mouth as he leaned forward in expectation. Danny had all of us in the grip of his story, and he knew it. He continued to weave his tale as I tempered my excitement with the reminder to listen for the approach of Coach Tyson.

"The handle, which had been unlocked when Markie had come in, was as unyielding as the walls around him, and as the beast came closer and closer, Markie felt terror growing inside him, threatening to overtake him."

I perked up my ears, having heard a noise on this side of the veil. Was it Coach Tyson looking for four missing students? Was it Coach Lianna coming to get something from the equipment shed? Was it a monster like the one in Danny's story that was stalking us from amidst the dusty football pads? Who could say?

"The monster leaned down over him, its breath hot against his ear as it spoke. "I told you what would happen if I caught you in my lair again. Now, I am prepared to make good on that promise." Something wet fell on his shoulder, the spittle dribbling down as it prepared to rip his head off."

We were all leaning in, our heads close enough to be clonked together like the three stooges, just waiting for the thrust.

"When the door opened suddenly, Markie fell into the hallway. Coach Blaskawhit looked shocked, and Markie crawled behind his legs as he looked into the equipment room, the creature nowhere to be seen."

As if on cue, the door came open and Coach Tyson poked his head in with a dramatic "ah ha." He acted like he had caught four weasels in his hen house, but he couldn't have been that surprised to find us here. We met here in the equipment shed every chance we got, and we were constantly ditching gym class to tell spooky stories.

"I thought I'd find you four here. If you intend to finish your mile in the allotted time, you better hurry. There's twenty minutes left in class, and I think it's going to take every bit you've got to finish in that time."

I squinted owlishly as I came out, the sun very bright after being in the depths of the equipment shed, and rolled my eyes as I saw Justin and his friends, Ryan and Frank, sitting on the grass by the finish line. Coach Tyson probably hadn't even noticed we were missing until those three had finished their laps, and now we had less than twenty minutes to run a mile. Coach shouted for us to get a move on, so we got a move on and started beating feet.

As we ran, I asked Danny if he had meant for the Coach to burst in in his story.

"Absolutely. You didn't really think I would let the monster get Markie, did ya?"

I had, but I didn't say as much.

"Sucks he found us. I had a great story planned for today too."

Danny laughed, and it made me feel a little angry.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing personal, but your stories kinda blow."

I slowed a little, not quite wanting to understand him, before speeding up to catch up with the group.

"What do you mean? My stories are as good as yours."

They weren't, and I knew they weren't, but my pride was hurt, and I wanted to vent.

Danny looked like he was going to answer, but Terrence beat him to it.

"No way, dude. Danny's stories are the best. Your stories sound like something that wouldn't make it on a kids horror site."

It wasn't what Terrence said that got me, he was too stupid to chew gum and walk, but it was the little nod that Danny gave in return that really rankled me.

I was still thinking about it as Ralphie and I rode the bus on the way home, Ralphie trying to cheer me up.

"Come on, buck up. Danny isn't such hot crap."

"Stupid Danny," I groused, doodling on my pad as I sulked, "Thinks he's such hot crap just because he's in Mrs. Hurckamer's Creative Writing class, just because Mrs. Hurckamer invites him to the eight-grade writing club after school. I can write just as good as he can."

Raphie was watching me doodle over my shoulder, raising an eyebrow as the picture took shape.

"Who's this fella you're drawing here?"

I looked down, not paying attention to what I was doodling, and almost started. I had drawn a large, muscled man, his face bulbous and ugly. One eye bulged from his skull while the other seemed too deep in the socket. His cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk looking for nuts for winter. He had a hump, one shoulder higher than the other, and his arms ended not in hands, but in rounded tumors that had scabrous bulges on them that looked to be trickling puss or something. He had no fingers, no knuckles, just those big round bulges at the ends of his arms.

"Billy," I said, absentminded again though it was from the shock of this creature.

"Billy?" asked Ralphie, the bus jouncing him as it took off.

"Billy...Gumballs," I said, drawing a pair of overalls onto him. I added large, gum rubber boots without socks and a few more veins on his rounded not hands. I drew an undershirt but erased it. It didn't seem right, and it looked better without it, "He was bullied in high school for being different, and they called him Billy Gumballs because his cheeks bulged like he was chewing too much gum. When he was snubbed by his crush for the school dance, he murdered the kids at the dance and disappeared before the police arrived. The school was abandoned after that, and now the local kids think the place is haunted. They're right, because Billy still lives there he kills anyone who comes into his school."

Ralphie listened, nodding along as the story came together. As the bus rumbled away from the school and towards our street, I told him how four middle school kids had gone into the old school on a dare, and how each of them had run afoul of Billy Gumballs. Only the last kid had survived, and Billy had let him go so he could tell his story and people would be afraid of him. The kids died in the usual horror movie ways, but mostly they were crushed by the heavy tumor hands of Billy Gumballs. I illustrated some as I talked, and as the bus stopped at Ralphie's house, he smacked my arm and told me I had written a real great story there.

"What story?" I asked.

All I had been doing was doodling and talking.

"Your Billy Gumballs story. You should tell it tomorrow, I bet Danny wouldn't say it blowed."

I realized he was right, and what's more, I realized I could do one better than just telling it. As I got home, I lay on the couch and started drawing it out. I could make a horror comic out of it, something that even Danny couldn't do, and then I could impress him. That would show Danny whose stories blow.

I drew the last couple of panels as I lay in bed that night, and when I tucked it into my backpack,

I couldn't wait for school the next day.

I worked on the cover for it as I rode the bus to school the next morning, and when I stepped off, I was so excited to show it to Danny.

I was excited, right up until I ran into Justin, Ryan, and Frank.

"Whatcha got there, Nerd?" Justin said, seeing the hand-drawn comic under my arm.

"Nothin'," I said hastily, trying to get past the trio.

Justin and his friends, aside from being good at gym, were pretty big bullies in my grade, and when Ryan deftly took the comic from under my arm, I cawed and told him to give it back.

"Billy Gumballs?" he said, tossing it to Justin as they played keep away, "What the hell is this?"

"It's a school project," I lied, trying to get it back from them, "Come on, give it back before you wreck it!"

Justin opened it up, thumbing through the pages as he deftly avoided me, "Huh, not too bad, for a baby," he said, tearing one of the pages in half and letting it fall to the ground.

You can probably guess what happened after that.

By the time the bell rang, I was left on my knees in the hallway, trying not to cry as I salvaged the pages of my comic.

It was ruined, wrecked beyond repair, and as I sat in homeroom and seethed, I knew just what I would do.

I'd make another one, but instead of four friends going to find Billy, it would be four bullies.

I'm not sure why, there was no reason to do it, but as I remade the comic, Danny became the leader of the bullies. He hadn't done anything worse than offering honest criticism, but I couldn't help but think of him as responsible for this too. Without Danny, I would have never drawn the comic. Without Danny, it would never have existed to be destroyed in the first place. No one survived this time. They were all killed by Billy Gumballs, and as I finished the last page, I felt a weird surge course over the hairs on my arms.

It reminded me of something my Grandma had said.

It reminded me of having a goose walk over my grave.

When the bell rang, I found my friends by the stairwell, waiting for me before we went into English. Ralphie nudged Danny, who was standing off and looking guilty, and when he walked up he rubbed the back of his neck as he apologized. I was sure that Ralphie had put him up to it, but the longer it went on, the more genuine it seemed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know what I said affected you like that. I really didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Ralphie says you've been working on something cool. I'd love to see it if you want me to."

I wanted to say something, but I was dumbstruck.

Suddenly, the comic in my hand felt like an accusation and the last thing I wanted to do was hand it to Danny.

"It's not quite done yet," I said, pushing it behind my back, "I don't wanna show it to you until it's perfect."

Danny nodded, clearly wanting to see but still feeling guilty for what he had done yesterday.

"That's cool, I'd still be glad to look at it when you get it done. Ralphie has been talking about this Billy Gumballs all through homeroom. He sounds pretty cool."

I filled Danny in on some of the details, slipping the comic into my bag as we walked to class. I would redraw it later, I decided. I was a so-so storyteller, but I was good at drawing and I knew I could make another one before the end of the day. I'd just draw Justin and his friends getting smashed up by Billy. That would be fine. Danny had apologized, but I was still mad that those bullies had wrecked up my original comic. I doodled in English and then did some more in Math class. By social studies, I was getting close to completing it, and as the lunch bell rang, I put the finishing touches on it, yet again.

It was weird, though.

When I got done, I didn't get that same feeling I had gotten from the one I’d made earlier.

This time it just felt normal, like it always did when I completed a drawing.

I shook it off, figuring it was just nerves, and took it to the cafeteria to show my friends.

We spent the lunch period marveling at the intricate ways that Billy Gumballs smashed and bashed the three boys who had made our lives a living hell since kindergarten. Danny laughed more than he looked afraid, but when he tapped the comic with the back of his hand and declared it to be the best story I had ever written, I felt pretty proud of myself. The guilt I had for the one that was hidden in my backpack was gone, and I felt like maybe we could begin to get past this.

When a scream erupted from the hallway outside the cafeteria, we all ran to see what had happened.

It was Vanessa Franks, and she was pointing to the crumpled form of Justin's friend, Fred. He was leaning against one of the lockers, his head little more than a pulpy melon. We would learn later that his skull had been caved in, the bone shattered like an egg. Vanessa had been on her phone, not really paying attention to where she was going, and slipped in the pool of blood that was forming from beneath him. That was why she had screamed.

She had slipped and looked up into the ruined face of her classmate and nearly lost her mind.

They came and took the body away, but all of us were in the gymnasium by that point. They had moved all the students there and locked the school down while they searched for the killer. They felt pretty confident that they had to be somewhere in the building, and they would have to have a lot of blood on them after what they had done. Beating Fred to death would have left quite a lot of damage to them as well, and the teachers and police had interviewed most of the students to see if they could narrow down a suspect.

My friends might be chattering about the murder, but I was on pins and needles. They had forgotten about my comic, and thank God for that. The one they had seen, however, wasn't the one I was worried about. It was the comic in my bag that made me afraid. If the cops found that comic, I would have a lot of questions to answer, and they would probably be answered in a little room at the police station.

There was a picture in that comic of Fred with his head smashed against a locker, and it looked very similar to the scene upstairs.

Fred had been the first victim, and when Justine turned to Danny and asked what they were going to do now, Danny had told them they would find who had done this and put him down like a dog.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Ralphie said, bringing me out of my contemplation.

"What's weird?"

"You drew a comic about those bullies getting killed, and then one of them gets his head caved in."

I agreed that it was pretty weird, reflecting that I was glad the one I had shown them had featured Fred getting thrown down some stairs.

"You," Ralphie started, wetting his lips as if not sure how to begin, "You didn't have anything to do with that, did you?"

I wanted to deny it right away, but I was having trouble forming a good argument. Of course I didn't have anything to do with it. How could he even think such a thing? Just because I had drawn something similar, didn't mean I had anything to do with this.

"How could I, Ralphie? I was in the cafeteria with you guys when it happened, remember?"

Ralphie nodded, but the look he gave me was still pretty hard.

They put us all on buses and sent us home not long later. We were assured that school would be back in session tomorrow, but we weren't so sure. They still hadn't found the killer, not a trace of him, and Fred's parents were distraught. The bus Ralphie and I had been on had driven past his mother as we pulled off and she was shaking with tears as she sat on a bench outside the office.

Seeing that made me feel guilty all over again, but I wasn't sure why.

Ralphie didn't talk much on the ride home, and the goodbye he gave me when he climbed off was decidedly muted. I wondered if he really thought I had done this, and as my stop came up, I decided I wanted a nap instead of TV. I tossed my backpack down when I got home and went to lie down on the couch, but my nap wouldn't last long.

When the phone rang a little bit later, I got up and answered it groggily. It was Thursday, so Mom wouldn't get off till five, and Dad wouldn't be in till after bedtime. I had the house to myself till five thirty, but I wished they had been here. I needed to talk to someone about this, about the guilt I was feeling for some reason, and I just knew my parents would help me out.

I found Terrence on the other end of the phone, and he sounded hysterical.

"They found Ryan's body this afternoon at the school!"

I sat up straighter, not sure if I was awake or still dreaming.

"What do you mean?" I asked, "He was on a bus home, same as the rest of us."

"I know," Terrence said, "but my Dad called me about ten minutes ago all spazy. He said that one of the officers had been searching for the guy under the bleachers in the gym when he had found Ryan all crumpled up under there. He was beaten to a pulp, and he wanted to know if I had locked the doors and was being safe. I told him I was, and he told me to go upstairs and lock myself in my room until my mom got home. I'm scared, I don't know what's going on, but it sounds like kids at our school are getting killed."

No, I thought, as the phone slipped out of my hand.

Not just any kids from our school, kids that I had drawn in a comic dying in the ways they had been found dead.

In the comic, the one I had hid from my friends, Ryan had been dragged under the bleachers and the group had found him later beaten to a pulp. A literal pulp. In the comic, they only knew it was him by his sneakers since the rest of his body was a bloody pile of meat.

"Terrence, does your dad think they have any idea who's doing this?" I hedged, trying to find out if I was a suspect for some reason.

"Not a clue, but the police are really scratching their heads."

I hung up on Terrence and hovered over the number for Danny's house. I was hesitant to call him, wanting to worry him even less than I wanted to admit to having written this suddenly relevant comic. I dithered for a few before thumbing his name, listening to it ring before his mother grabbed it on the fourth one. She told me that Danny was at the pizzeria on Sherman and she supposed he had forgotten his phone. She asked if I wanted to leave a message, but I told her that was fine and I was going to meet him at the pizzeria anyway.

We hung up and I grabbed my backpack as I headed out.

My timing must have been impeccable because I caught him just as his pie arrived at the table.

"Hey, you feel like a slice too?" he asked, inviting me to sit.

"Na," I said, taking the comic out of the bag, "I need to come clean with you. I could overlook the first one as an accident, but after they found Ryan dead too, I don't think I can overlook it. This was the comic I did earlier today, something I wrote while I was mad at Justin and his friends."

Danny looked at the cover, opening it up and leafing through it. He raised an eyebrow when he saw himself leading the bullies. As he read, though, something strange happened. Far from being horrified, he began to laugh. When he came to Justin's death, the bully decapitated with a single punch, his head falling down the stairs and into the boiler room, Danny wiped an eye and looked at me in disbelief.

He seemed confused that I wasn't laughing.

"Oh, come on. Sure, it's scary, but it's also so over the top that it's almost cartoonish."

"Two people have died in exactly the way I drew this. I am only one, besides you, who knows it exists, and I can't help but think it's a little bit serious. They'll put me in jail for this. They'll use this to put me in the electric chair down at Stragview! They'll think I murdered those kids!"

Danny shook his head, "There's no way you killed Fred. Ralphie and Terrence and I will attest to that. You were with us all through lunch, and I can't imagine that anyone would believe that a shrimp like you did that to Fred or Ryan." he said, holding open the book to the pages in question.

I was stunned, unsure what to do, and when he laughed again, I found myself laughing right along with him. How had I not seen this? They could testify that I hadn't been anywhere near either of those boys. The GPS on my phone could tell the police I had been at home all afternoon. There was no way to link me to any of this. I was safe.

"Come on," Danny said, "Come hang out at my house till your mom gets home. Then I'll walk you home just to make sure that ole Billy Gumballs doesn't get you."

We laughed about it all the way to his house, cracking jokes as we talked about the character. Danny said he had some ideas for what Billy could do next, though we'd have to keep real people out of the story this time. We couldn't have the police trying to claim we were killing people through fiction, he said, and then both of us were laughing all over again.

As we came up the stairs to his room, I told him I was going to use the bathroom and I'd catch him up.

"Well, don't take too long. I'm gonna get some Dead By Daylight going so we can play co-op."

I said that sounded great, and we parted ways.

I was standing at the toilet when I suddenly remembered something. In the comic, Danny had gotten away in the end, but Billy had been waiting for him when he came home. He had come out of his closet, I reflected, and smashed his head after sneaking up on him from behind. I started to run to him, but I stopped as I zipped my pants, remembering what Danny had said. It was just a coincidence. Nothing like that happened. Heck, I thought as I flushed, I bet Justin was safe and sound at his house as I was thinking about this.

I shook my head as I let the water flow over my hands.

Such an idiot, I had gotten myself all worked up over nothing.

When I heard him scream from the room next door, I came tearing out of the bathroom as my flimsy hope fell apart.

I came running into the room, my hands still dripping water, and that's when I saw him.

Danny was sitting at his desk, the controller in his hand, with his head collapsed into his chest. Someone had driven his head in like a nail, and the perpetrator was still standing behind him, looking at me guiltily as he turned towards the door. I thought I was dreaming, that I was hallucinating, but as we stood looking at each other, I had to come to terms with his realness.

His head was bald, his skin was pale, and his cheeks looked like a squirrel preparing for winter. He wore overalls without a shirt under them, and gum rubber boots that were black as pitch. His hands were bloody, covered in old and new blood, but even so, no one would mistake them for real hands. They were rounded, a pair of bulbous tumors that sat at the end of each wrist, and when he turned to run, I yelled for him to wait.

Instead, he jumped out the window and was gone.

No one has found Billy yet, but I think the police have finally decided I didn't have anything to do with it. They didn't care that I had written the comic, they didn't care how much I tried to turn myself in, all they wanted was to bring the killer of four children to justice. You didn't misread, Billy had killed Justin before he got Danny. They found him in the school too, his head completely parted from his body.

I don't know what to do now.

Perhaps, if I am the one who created Billy Gumballs, there's some way that I can destroy him as well.