Mad Alex

A fifteen year old Jack Barakat ran in circles around his older sister, May. They were in their back porch, trying to relive their childhood years. It was summer, and Jack was about to go into sophomore year of high school, May was going into her senior year.

They're still trying to hold onto that one strand of immaturity that always nestled deep inside of them, letting out their childishness in the privacy of their home. Jack's boyfriend, Alex, insisted that the younger and his sister spend time together, since already, the two boys were attached at the hip. They needed a break sometimes.

"Jack, come here." May's soft voice rang out, making Jack almost stumble and fall on his face when he stopped. He walked up to his sister when she held her arms out, silently asking for a hug. He happily accepted it.

The younger was a bit taller than his sister by this point, but that was the least of their worries. When May pecked his forehead and whispered "May you be smiled upon..." Jack's face was set in a confused expression, but he didn't really care. May was his older sister and he loved her, if she wanted to kiss his forehead and say a cheesy line, she could do that, plus it made Jack feel important and just made him smile wider as they kept hugging.

But everything was kind of cut short when he heard a low giggle come from his side. With sleepy eyes he looked over, falling off the side of the bed with a shriek as he locked eyes with a small girl who was completely bandaged from the neck down. Jack was getting kind of tired of running into these type of creatures, but most of them were completely intact and nothing seemed wrong with them, they were just a little bit creepy to look at. A lot of them though, were kind to him completely, Jack guesses that's why he hasn't almost pissed himself from all the creatures that kept popping up.

When he sat up a little further, he saw she was holding something, but when he looked he saw his sister's perfume. Now that made him angry, who the fuck did this undead chick think she is anyways? Stealing shit from the living.

So Jack did what he thought was reasonable, he jumped up and tackled her to the ground. Fighting for the bottle for a few minutes, but he guessed this wasn't a good idea, because he was an 'adult' now, and fighting a little girl for a bottle of perfume really wasn't the smartest thing he's ever thought of. Plus, being dead must have it's perks because this girl was strong as fuck against Jack's lanky frame and was able to kick him away as she giggled and ran out of the door.

Now that he thinks about it, wasn't he in a hallway right by some stairs? He only remembers finally collapsing as exhaustion finally caught up to him and a white face in his blurry vision. But now that he's awake and fully aware of his surroundings, he's in a room that was decorated like a log cabin. However, there was a stuffed dog on the far left side of the room, it kind of creeped Jack out, so he promptly got up and left the room.

When he looked around to try and see if he knew where he was, he found out that he was literally in the same exact spot, just moved inside a room to a bed. He was kind of glad he didn't just stay on the ground for however long he was passed out, somebody moved him and he had no idea who they were, so he just opted to silently thank them as he searched around for the little girl that took the only thing that reminded him of home.

Turns out, it was hidden behind a wall in the next room over. Jack had to use the minimal strength he had to push a shelf out of the way, then crawl through the small opening. When he grab the perfume bottle though, he wasn't expecting a creature to just jump out of him out of seemingly nowhere, but Alex's house was beyond huge so he probably has fucking paper walls just because he can. What an asshole.

But the problem was, this creature was fast as fuck. Jack just scrambled out of the small room and out the hole in the wall, to be honest, even though he was so fucking done with these monsters, he was still terrified of them. He always felt tears in his eyes when any of them chase him, because it just feels like he's going to die without finding his boyfriend and he'll just die alone, without his lover.

Jack was so fucking scared, but he needed to have a brave face, he needed to show that he could deal with this, because if he didn't find Alex and he was freaking out as much as he wanted to, he would just not exist at all. To summarize how he felt; without Alex he would just want to die. With the added fact that he went through so much to find the love of his life either dead or missing, would just rip his heart in two. He has high hopes for this, so he tried to console his own racing heart and screaming mind with memories of May and Alex.

He eventually got out of the room with the creature, shutting the door firmly behind him as he slumped against it. The creature was still pounding on the door, but it wasn't anything Jack couldn't handle. He just stayed there slumped against the door with his knees pulled to his chest as his left cheek rested on his knee, staring into nothing as his mind wandered off. His mind was a big jumbled mess, full of questions that were left unanswered, full of worries, doubt, just... everything negative.

The boy sometimes wondered why he was throwing himself into this, but that thought was immediately crushed, because he knew he was doing this for Alex. He loved him with every fiber in his being, it almost hurt how much he did. There was no doubt in his mind that Alex didn't feel the same, it was obvious he did or they wouldn't have lasted, and here they are, living together and planning their lives out. Together.

Sure they were pretty young, but they were so sure of each other, they fit so perfectly together, so it just made sense to them. But this, what was happening right now, what Jack was going through, was never suppose to happen. Sure turning a blind eye to the animistic things his lover did to other people wasn't the smartest thing he's done, but he did it to keep Alex safe. However it has now dawned on Jack that he just made it worse.

He didn't know how long he just sat there, thinking about Alex and the cliche heart around him in his mind, but he decided to just get up and continue along. He needed to find Alex and goddammit he was going to find him no matter what.

---

It turns out, rats and other small animals hated the smell of May's perfume. When Jack walked down a long hallway, he saw rats scurrying around in every corner of the room, there were so many and he felt sick just by the amount. But since he accidentally sprayed some on himself when a rat bit at his ankle, they seemed to stay away from him. Plus a key was in the middle of the room, just sitting on the floor, so he picked it up and kept on walking.

Coming into a corridor which was shaped like a L and then seeing a mannequin of a nun when he turned in a corner just resulted in him screaming because it looked so fucking real, but then he realized there was a door right next to the statue. When his hand turned the handle he heard a splatter, turning towards the nun he noticed that blood was dripping from her nose down her dress.

With a choked out gasp he quickly opened the door and slammed it shut behind him. Now that really scared him, religious figures turning to be demonic and fucking with your head, they were just a big nope to him.

He was breathing heavily, gasping out breaths because this just sucked, but once again, he needed Alex so he was going to have to deal with this. When he opened his eyes, he saw five doors in front of him, well, more like rooms since one of the doors was torn off and all of them contained beds. Two were open, the rest were firmly shut and upon further exception, the three were locked.

Further down the small hall, he saw the fifth door at the end of a corridor, when he got closer he heard a low growl and a figure sprinting extremely fast, straight at him. He gasped in shock before running to one of the rooms that had the door open, before swiftly closing it behind him, blocking off the creature that wanted him dead. It continued to pound on it, which resulted in the door giving into the weight being forced upon it.

When Jack looked around for some fucking way to escape, he saw a large hole behind the bed in the room. Heaving the bed away from the hole, he quickly climbed in. It was a small passageway, a large metal box was blocking an opening, so of course Jack moved that to the side too before entering the small opening.

He ended up in the room right next to the other, when he approached the door, he found it was locked from the inside, so he unlocked it and was met with the creature still pounding into the other door. The creature heard him though, and sprinted into that room as well, which resulted in Jack scrambling back into the hole and pulling the box to block that exit.

Swiftly, Jack ran out of the room and out into the hall, he had to close the door for the room in which the monster was settled in. He ended up slamming the door so hard it broke the monsters fingers, which still moved around the floor. The boy wanted to be sick.

Moving on to the room the monster came out of in the first place, he saw a chair and in that chair sat a terrifyingly creepy doll. It had long blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and a maroon and white dress with small black flats on. If her eyes weren't so big, the doll would have been cute, but with the wide eyes it seemed like she wanted to stab you in the throat as you slept which resulted in a shiver going down Jack's spine.

It also didn't help that there was blood covering the whole entire room, staining the large red carpet that led to a door behind the doll.

Jack kept an eye on the doll as he walked towards the door, it opened easily and he slightly smiled, but before he could go further into the room, he was pushed back by an unknown force, knocking him onto the floor and knocking the breath out of him.

A low, deep growl passed through the air that made Jack loudly swallow.

"You won't pass."

Jack swiftly stood up, facing the doll, well really the back of the doll before striding over to stand in front of the doll. Looking down on it with a terrified expression, he hated dolls anyways and this was just making it worse for him.

"E-excuse me?" He stuttered out.

The doll just repeated "You won't pass." to him. Jack felt his anger flare up, he was pissed he didn't want to deal with this stupid fucking doll's shit, he just wanted his boyfriend, was that really too hard to ask for?

"Okay, why the fuck are you getting in my way?" Jack's hands are curled into fists by his side, he felt stupid, yelling at a doll. But it wouldn't let him save his boyfriend, so of course he was angry.

But with a loud screech of continuous words of "You won't pass." he slowly backed away from the doll, suddenly aware of who he might be fucking with. A figure appeared to his left and he snapped his head to see what it was, the figure was the girl who stole May's perfume.

"You'll going to have to destroy that doll if you want to go further. Burn it up real good and the spirit inside of it will burn up too, and then bam! goes the invisible barrier around the door," The girl advanced towards Jack as she spoke until she was right in front of him, looking up at him with a twisted smirk. He hoped she was telling the truth, because that's exactly what he was going to do.

The doll exclaimed a loud "Stop!" before the girl shrugged and quickly left the room. Jack just smirked at the doll, striding towards it, and picking it up.

---

Jack somehow ended up in an underground portion, there were rocks surrounding him as walls and the ground was pure dirt. When he first walked in, he found a dead cat laying on the ground, which resulted in him throwing up in the water that was right next to it. As he advanced through the caverns, he heard something walking, when he peeked around a corner, he saw it was one of the many dolls Alex kept, somewhat patrolling a certain area at a certain time. There were many of them walking around.

He snuck past them, entering another part of the cavern, but this time, walls were built into this side and there was even a door at the end. But when he rounded a corner, he saw the monster from earlier, the one that he had to lock in a room. He completely locked eyes with it but the creature just walked away.

"Maybe he has bad eyes?" Jack whispered to himself as he walked towards the door. He was about to open it, when he heard voices from the other end.

"W-what are you doing?!" A voice gasped out, which made Jack's throat swell up.

"Why do you wanna save him so bad? Save him and we won't be able to go back to normal!"

Normal Jack thought, what normal?

"Why not drag everybody here? That's way more fun!" The boy heard a cheer of agreement and a soft whimper from something else in the room until the whimper turned into full blown screaming.

He swiftly opened the door, it was just like any other room he's been in, covered in blood. Only, the girl that told him to burn the doll was on the ground, knife in her chest and dolls surrounding her. They were completely still. Jack's eyes widened, he didn't know they could do that, but he pulled out the object, finding out it was scalpel instead of a knife. When he backed away, the girl's eyes opened, locking with Jack's and a sad expression on her face.

"... I just wanted to be apart of your ... family..." Her hoarse voice whispered out as her body faded before completely disappearing.

Now that really broke Jack's heart, so he did what he thought was logical, he broke down and cried. Falling to the floor, full out sobbing by now as he slowly crawled to the door, slumping against it. He couldn't believe all the terrible shit happened to him, what did he do wrong? Why did the world hate him?

But most of all, why did Alex do this? This was all Alex's fault, if he was actually normal, Jack's life would be so much easier and they could have a happy, healthy relationship, fall more and more in love each day, get married, adopt kids, until they finally grew old together as they reminisced on the life they spent. Together.

But that idea was completely thrown out, he loved Alex just the way he was. Mentally stable or not, he was still the boy he fell in love with, and he couldn't stop the way his heart felt. He loved the blond boy until the ends of the Earth, even beyond that. Jack would do anything for him, and he knew that. They both did and it was no denying the pure love they felt for each other, it was almost sickeningly deadly, Jack just always felt choked up with love whenever he saw the elder and he knew the blond felt the exact same.

As the skunk haired boy stayed slumped against the door, still sobbing, gripping harshly at his hair, he remembered all the lovable memories he had of Alex. It felt to him like it was yesterday when they first met and he let a small smile play at his lips as tears continued to roll down his face and dripping off his jaw.

A coffee shop was never anything Jack went to, but it was cold outside and he didn't want to go home. May wasn't home, which meant that if he went back to that house, his parents would just refuse to acknowledge his existence. It really sucked for him, he tried so hard for his parents to like him, or even bat an eyelash in his direction, but they just turned their heads as he wondered what was wrong with him.

He started making a mental checklist, a note of what was wrong with him.

1. His nose was too big for his long face.
2. He never really got along with the kids in his school, which resulted in him being labeled a loner.
3. He wasn't any good in school or academically.
4. He tripped up on words.
5. He got too attached to people.

That really seemed like everything, which everything was pretty reasonable to hate. Hell, Jack hated himself anyways, although May yelled at him when he confessed that. She told him how perfect he really was, their parents didn't matter and nobody else mattered. All that mattered was Jack's opinion of himself, but to be honest, that was Jack's opinion.

As he stared down at his coffee, he heard the bell chime. It didn't catch his attention at first, but he heard the person's voice and he had to see who was talking. It was a boy, about the same age of Jack, he seemed to be a bit shorter than himself. The boy had brunet colored hair, and a lopsided smile from what he could see. The boy's hair was also styled somewhat similar to Jack's, obviously straightened, and messed up in a way that made Jack want to drool.

But of course, he knew he was staring, so he just quickly drank the rest of his coffee and leaving the shop, not wanting to embarrass himself even further.

Jack was still slumped against the door with his eyes shut tightly, still a sobbing mess on the floor as he remembered the very first time he saw Alex. After that they just seemed to keep meeting each other. Alex started going to his high school, he was in Jack's English class, sat right next to him, and that's how they started talking.

After a few months of shameless flirting, Jack discovered that he was gay. He always felt weird when he heard other guys talking about great girls were, when he wasn't even interested them at all, but once he became friends with Alex, he started to realize why.

Alex was the first one to make a move, it was four months after they became friends and both the boys had enough of it. The elder was the one to kiss Jack first, when the younger didn't respond, the brunet boy just spewed out apologies and then Jack was leaning back in to plant a firm kiss on the other boy's lips, silencing from all the apologies falling out of his mouth.

After that, they decided they were dating. And it took another two years for them to tell each other that they loved the other, which resulted in a night full of passion, love, and lust. It was seriously one of Jack's favorite memories and he hoped it was the same for Alex.

The tears were slowing down and a smile was stuck onto his face as he thought of his lover. He shakily stood up and walked out of the door, determined to save Alex.