Spaghetti Family part six, Leslie’s return

“H-Harry, Harry, we need to get the hell outta here!” Robin whispers to me frantically, lifting up Manny, but struggling to do so.

The air feels heavy and hangs above our heads like a black smog, and I can see our lights flickering. I am too much in shock to respond to Robin right now, even the fact that he cursed a bit, but it’s all too much and I can’t even move.

“Man-Manny, how much do you … ugh… weigh?” Robin complains, trying different angles and lifting him up from different heights as he bends his knees, “when did you get so big?!” I almost find it comical that Robin, who is such a small, tidy man, keeps attempting with all his might to lift our tall son up like a baby, and I would have laughed if it were any other situation— but my heart still is frozen in terror. Something about that name—Leslie—is making my nervous system run on overdrive. I feel frayed and ripped apart yet I’m still standing. Like a puppet, but still human.

“Dad can carry me!” Manny suggests, and I turn, frowning.

“No one is carrying anyone,” I whisper, “Let’s just go… to the…” I point outside and mouth out the word car. They both nod and Robin grabs the keys.

Suddenly, I hear a heinous, disembodied cackle coming from what sounds like behind the fridge, and I grab onto my family tightly.

“Wow…You’re… all so….” The whispery voice starts to say, and I grip onto my family even tighter, willing my feet to move. But I feel stuck.

“Funny,” the creepy female sounding whisper finishes off in my ear and I feel my blood drain down to my feet. It hits my ear like a willow tree leaf, fuzzy and trickling and wrong.

“Oh, my God, dad, papa… run!” Manny is sobbing. “It’s that horrible woman I met!”

Now our son is running now ahead of Robin and I, so I grab my boyfriend’s hand tightly, and start to run, but it feels like our feet our stuck in tar.

Robin looks paler than I have ever seen him, his light brown skin looking unhealthy and blanched.

“Robin, hurry, let’s go!” I start to cry in a bit of hysteria, but he stands still, looking like a figurine.

I stop moving, even as I feel like my feet are stuck in goop.

“Robby? Robin? Baby?” I sob out, shaking his shoulders gently.

Robin looks ahead, but says nothing.

“Oh, fuck all, what did you do to the love of my life you devil woman?!” I screamed, and collapsed on the floor.

“Love…” the glistening whispery voice suddenly gets louder with an echo, “of your life?” She laughs, and I hear it above Robin and I.

“You’re all just my little puppets… didn’t you know?”

The angry, pursuant voice steadies into a solid tone, a soft dulcet speech. Suddenly everything goes black and I reach for Robin, who suddenly is being pulled away from me.

“No… Robin!” I screech, trying to stand up, but I feel helplessly stuck on the floor like I was glued to it. I see my love being carried by some black looking cloud and I almost get out of whatever hold I’m in, but as he’s leaving, I see a white burst hit the air and I feel it. He’s gone.

“Robin died a long time ago, you fell in love with a corpse, my dear,” the voice bounced off the walls and hit my ears so hard I felt a pulsing pain in my head.

Suddenly, the lights go on and it’s brighter than usual. White lights.

And I’m met with a middle-aged, oddly dressed woman, eye to eye.

She grins at me, a terrible, funny grin. I growl at her and feel a wave of sobs hit my chest. I can’t hold it in, and cry uncontrollably, yelling at the crazy looking older woman.

“You’re wr-wrong.. my Robin… he’s not dead! Give him back! He’s definitely not dead! You liar!!!”

She only shakes her head in a faux pitying way and ignores my cries and pleas. “Why, Hello, there, Red Guy… or should I say, Harry. You made yourself quite a nest here, haven’t you? A father, a partner… a family man.. a businessman….a member of a community…” she mocks with a condescending grin as her tone spits fire at me.

“Gimme back my family, you witchy, uncreative toad!” I spit sourly at her. She only laughs in a way that immediately lets me know she’s the one in control here, not me.

“That’s pretty creative, Harry. Well, I might…” she leans in and her eyes burn into my own horrified, unwilling gaze.

“If you say please, first,” she says finally. Her pin striped suit looks childish and face looking more sad than morose, which somehow made me feel more terrified. I had to get back my son and my partner. No matter what.

I can’t live without you, Robin, my dearest love. I’d rather die.