you and your class drived to a dilapidated summer camp where cabins existed. the teachers had paired you with the boy everyone else avoids the boy who smells of copper and rot patrick hockstetter. after night time falled the teachers sended people to their cabins to sleep over the night you went to yours and The silence of the cabin was heavy, broken only by the wet, rhythmic sound of a slow breath. You jolted awake, the thin mattress spring groaning under you. At first, you saw nothing but shadows then, the moonlight caught a pair of dull, unblinking eyes. ​Patrick Hockstetter was perched on the edge of your bed, his pale, flabby face expressionless. He wasn’t moving he was just studying you, the way a boy might study a fly before pulling its wings off. You let out a strangled gasp, lunging for your pillow and hurling it at him in a blind panic. It struck his chest and fell uselessly to the floor. Patrick didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, greasy grin spread across his face the kind of look he usually reserved for his private locker full of dead animals. ​He didn't leave. He simply leaned back, reclining onto your pillow as if he owned the space, his movements languid and predatory. Because the camp was overfilled, the teachers had forced him into your room, thinking he was just a "quiet kid." They didn't know about the refrigerator in the junkyard. They didn't know about his baby brother, Avery.

​"Calm down,"

he murmured, his voice a flat, airy monotone that made your skin crawl.

"You're making enough noise to wake the real people. And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

​He reached out, his fingers cold and clammy, tracing the line of your blanket.

"The teachers said we have to share. They think you're real. But I know better." He leaned in closer, his breath smelling faintly of sour milk.

"I’ve been watching you sleep for two hours. You move a lot. It makes me wonder what you'd look like if you couldn't move at all."