Spoopy Cruise

Chuckie rolled on to his right side and rubbed his eyes.  He thought he’d heard a gentle tapping on his bedroom window.  That would be impossible, however.  He slept on the second story of his parent’s rambler and--

Tap Tap Tap.

He sucked in a breath and silently counted to ten.

“It’s just the wind,”  He reasoned.  “The wind on the big oak tree outside my window.”

Yes, it was enough to make him laugh.  He let the long breath out was just about to go to sleep when a spring of memories bubbles into his consciousness.  A letter on the table -- daddy up on a ladder -- the sound of a chainsaw outside his window.  The association made Daddy remove the big oak tree for being too damn spoopy.  

Tap Tap Tap.

He shot up in bed.  

“It’s a bird,” Chuckie reasoned.  “Or - or a bee!”

That’s it.  According to Mommy, birds and bees were always getting up to all sorts of hyjinx.  They were probably having sex on his windowsill as he lay in bed.  It was a line of reason so perfectly obvious that it wasn’t even worth turning his head twenty degrees to verify it.

Tap Tap Tap.

But maybe it wasn’t a bird or a bee.  Maybe it was a man with really long legs, rapping on the window with long, snakey arms as his smooth, featureless face scanned the room.

Tap Tap Tap.

Maybe, without any eyes, it couldn’t see him properly, and it was waiting, waiting for Little Chuckie to uncover his face, uncover that first morsel of child-flesh so it could crash through the window and drag him back to its lair deep in the sewers.

Tap Tap Tap.

Or maybe the tapping was on the inside. Maybe it was a man in a bunny mask with a long butcher knife.  He’d drawn a smiley on the window with his parent’s blood and he was tapping on the window from the inside, just waiting for Chuckie to wake up so he could join the rest of his family.

Tap Tap Tap.

Bird and bee sex couldn’t last this long.  Mommy and Daddy could barely go ten minutes.  He had to know what was out there.  He had to take just one peek.  Open just one eye just so he could know how spooky it wasn’t.

Tap Tap Tap.

Chuckie opened his eye to see an old man in a leather jacket and sunglasses standing outside his window.  His smile was broad and his teeth were white in a way that only the supernatural - or gobs of Hollywood money- could explain.    “Oo Chuckie,” the man said as he bobbed spoopilly in the wind making woo woo noises, “I can take you to fantastic, marvelous places!  I’m Tom Cruise, and all you have to do is invite me in!”

“Uh -- who?”

“The star of Top Gun!”

“That British reality show daddy watches?”

“No.  Um, I was in Far and Away?”

“Could you be farther?”

“Mission Umpossible?  Eyes Wide Shut?”

“Hey, I know you!”  Chuckie said, his young eyes glittering.

Cruise’s smile widened.  “I knew you were a Kubrick fan!”

“You’re that guy on Youtube who jumped on Oprah’s couch!”

“That was that, uh, John Travolta.”  Tom sighed.  “Can you just let me in?”

“Are you going to jump on our couches?  Mommy hates it when I do that, and you are a little bigger than I am.”

“Look kid,”  Tom said, rubbing his temples.  “The couch thing?  Common misconception.  Every time people see Tom Cruise in movies, they don’t say ‘hey, there’s the cool dude who hung by a wire or threw a bomb into an alien vajayjay.’  No; they say ‘there’s Crazy Old Tom Cruise; the guy who jumps on couches and thinks he’s a superhero and sues people and makes weird, homophobic comments about ice cream while his cultists scour the world for his next bride.’  Tom Cruise is trying to step away from that.  He’s trying to rebrand himself.”

“It’s two in the morning,”  Chuckie said. “Also, I am eight and I have no idea what rebranding is.  What does Tom Cruise want from me?”

“Well, I was thinking that creepypastas are hip with the kids these days.”

Chuckie nodded. “If hip means cool, then yes.”

“Well, let’s say that, instead of Slenderman or whatever, they told Creepypastas about Tom Cruise!”

“That would be pretty dumb.”

“Tom Cruise would float outside kid’s houses at night and there would be creepy rules, like you have to sing nursery rhymes backwards to summon him, and you have to invite him in before he abducts you!”

“And why would they do that?”

“So people forget about him jumping on couches!”

“But they’d remember you abduct children.”

“Exactly!  It would be a huge boost to my career!”

“I’m going to bed, Tom.”

“Bad move kid,”  Tom growled, watching Tommy slip back under his Beyformer comforter.  He looked down to the cherry picker below.  “Let’s go, John!  This time try to find one of those dumpy fifty-something housewives I’m so popular with!”  He looked back as he rolled away.  “You better write about this, kid!  Write about it on creepypasta or I’ll suuuuuue!”

But Chuckie had already gone to sleep.  He was hoping that instead of tap tap tap, next time it would be fap fap fap.