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"You should have everything you need if I'm not mistaken," the woman had said cheerily before leaving.
The woman was, in fact, mistaken, as Joel promptly found out.
"I want to make cookies," said the kid he was babysitting.
They were lacking a singular egg.
And the kid was persistent.
"I want to make cookies," Bdubs wailed.
"We can't," despaired Joel.
"Make it so we can," he wailed further.
That’s how Joel wound up in front of the neighbor’s door, hands on Bdubs’s shoulders.
“You knock,” he said.
“You knock,” Bdubs said back.
“You little—”
Joel knocked on the door.
It was a few seconds before the door swung open. Once it did, Joel determined that at some unknown point he had died. Evidently, this was his purgatory. Standing there was the prettiest guy he had ever seen.
Regardless, Joel carried on. “Hello, mister... uh…" he tried, promptly realizing he did not know pretty-guy’s name. He shook Bdubs without looking away from him.
"Etho," helpfully said the kid.
"Etho!" said Joel. "Etho, we need your eggs."
Etho blinked at him a couple of times, looking down at Bdubs then back up to Joel.
“Are you babysitting him?” Etho asked.
“Unimportant. Do you have eggs or no?”
Etho stared blankly at him for two more seconds. “Right. Yes. Yes, I do.”
He hesitantly walked away from the door and towards his kitchen, and Bdubs marched confidently at his tail. Joel lingered back for a second before deciding that letting the kid he was babysitting go inside a stranger's house alone was probably not a good idea. Etho only eyed them for a second but said nothing.
He hadn't finished opening the fridge when Bdubs took three eggs.
"We only need one," Joel said.
"We only needed one," supplied Bdubs, like that made sense. "But now we need more cookies."
Dread filled Joel's very soul.
"...Why?" he asked.
"Because Etho will probably want to eat some, too, duh."
Joel and Etho shared a glance.
"Bdubs," Joel said, as gently as his wrecked state allowed, "we cannot take a full grown man home. He's not a doll. Or an egg."
Bdubs's lower lip started trembling.
"Bdubs…" Etho said, holding a hand out to try and appease the kid. It was in vain.
"I want to make Etho make cookies," Bdubs wailed.
"Please, Bdubs—"
"Etho!" he wailed further.
The kid's kitchen, as Etho soon found out, was very modern and complete and only, in fact, missing eggs.
Joel stared at the grown ass man they had kidnapped, standing awkwardly in the kitchen like an npc lacking instructions.
"Etho, I want you to make the cookies," Bdubs said, less as a question and more as a command. He sounded resolute. He even crossed his arms and all.
Joel was sure the kid was only seven, but Etho still looked like his boss had just asked him to step into his office for a second. He nodded at Bdubs, and even gulped.
"What— What recipe am I supposed to follow?" he asked.
Joel gravely handed him the pastel pink recipe book. Etho gasped.
"This is marked as medium difficulty! I'm only a beginner!"
Bdubs looked at him, serious. "We believe in you."
Etho’s cookies sucked.
“I don’t know if I should let Bdubs eat that,” said Joel. The cookies were black although they were supposed to be vanilla-flavored. Joel was actually pretty sure he had seen Etho accidentally tip the vanilla extract bottle too far—he’d even made a weird face as he tipped it back upwards.
“I don’t want to eat those,” Bdubs said, frowning.
Etho looked down sadly at his cookies. “I tried,” he said. “But please, don’t eat them.”
They went back to Etho’s to get more eggs; Bdubs refused to give up. Joel was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything to really deserve this kind of punishment, but there he was, awkwardly standing next to a handsome guy as the kid he was babysitting picked out eggs. (“There’s a difference!” Bdubs had insisted. “See, this one gives off bad vibes. Do you want cookies with bad vibes, Joel? Didn’t think so.”)
“Are you done, Bdubs?” he asked. He hadn’t brought his phone—an oversight on his part. He was terribly bored and all the entertainment there was in that goddamn kitchen was Etho himself. And he wasn’t about to stare at the guy—he wasn’t a creep.
Etho did have nice eyelashes, though. But Joel hadn’t been able to figure out his eye color just yet.
“Your eggs suck, Etho,” said Bdubs as he glared at him.
“You didn’t seem to mind an hour ago?” he said weakly.
“I mind now.” He was scowling.
“I’m sorry,” Etho said. There was pain in his eyes.
The kid turned towards Joel and snapped his fingers in front of his face a couple of times to get his attention. Not like Joel had been staring at Etho or anything. No, Bdubs was just weird, is all. Obviously.
“You carry the bad vibes eggs, Joel.”
Joel spluttered. “Why me?”
“Bad vibes cancel out,” Bdubs said.
Joel’s mouth fell open.
“Don’t worry, Joel,” said Etho. “He said I have spiritual goat horns. He’s on something.”
“I sure fucking hope not.” He paused. “Bdubs, don’t tell your mother I swore in front of you, thank you.”
“You fucking bet I will.”
Joel put his hands on his face and resigned himself to a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad fate.
“Let’s go bake these cookies?” was Etho’s poor attempt at reconciling them.
And Bdubs, of course, had the attention span of a goldfish. “Of course!” he said. “Let’s go, Joel!”
Times like these had Joel wishing he believed in some god at all—anything that could provide any sort of relief, any sort of mercy, any sort of way to get away from this purgatory of his, god fucking damnit. “Okay,” was all he said.
The second attempt saw Joel’s completely nonexistent baking abilities at its peak. Etho sat in the kitchen island, half relieved it wasn’t him cooking that time around and half horrified on his behalf, silently offering support and comfort. Bdubs channeled his inner gym teacher as he ordered Joel around without doing anything himself.
“Wouldn’t you like to knead the bread, Bdubs?” he tried. Pathetically.
“Why would I?”
“Um. It’s fun?”
“If it’s fun, then why don’t you want to do it?”
“You were the one who wanted to bake the cookies?”
“Oh. I guess you’re right.” He didn’t move. “Anyway, keep at it, Joel.”
He resigned to his fate.
His cookies were at least edible, which was more than could be said about Etho’s.
Etho, the random neighbor whose eggs they had stolen. The guy who was unfairly pretty. The guy who remained his sole support as he suffered through the hell Bdubs had designed for him specifically.
The guy they had kidnapped, he suddenly remembered, who just sat there and took it. At least Bdubs's parents were paying Joel. This guy had just been roped into it.
“Don’t you have things to do?” Joel asked him. It hadn’t occurred to him in the midst of being in hell and all, but it was a Wednesday morning.
“Me?” Etho asked.
“No, Bdubs,” Joel deadpanned.
“My parents don't pay you to ask about my nonexistent math homework,” Bdubs said hastily. “They pay you to make cookies and kidnap strangers.”
“Math homework, you say?” Joel raised a brow. He lifted a cookie, bit it, and promptly spit it out. He sure hoped they weren't paying him for the cookies.
“Nonexistent, I said.”
“Etho, do you know second grade math?” Joel asked. Etho sweated profusely where he sat opposite to him at the kitchen table.
“I– I think so?”
“Good. Because I don't.”
Bdubs picked up a cookie, and Joel immediately clocked his attempt at distracting him—he would have asked for a stick somewhere between one and two meters long to even touch them otherwise.
“Go get the homework, Bdubs,” he said.
The kid put down the cookie, and Joel almost felt offended by how relieved he looked as he did. But instead of actually standing up and looking for his homework like Joel had asked, he crossed his arms and pouted, because this was Joel’s purgatory and blocking all happiness was Bdubs’s job.
“I don’t want to,” he said, tilting his chin up in defiance, and suddenly Joel remembered Bdubs was seven years old.
“Right” he said, and made it a point to frown and look sad. “But if you don’t, the Boogeyman will get you as you sleep. I heard it goes after kids who don’t do their homework.”
“No it doesn’t,” Bdubs said, but his confidence was visibly faltering.
“It does,” Joel said severely. “I’m just worried about you, Bdubs.”
“Joel is right,” Etho piped in, nodding along seriously. “You need to do your homework so it won’t get you.”
Support. A breath of fresh air. Light after eons of darkness, at last.
“Okay,” Bdubs said. “But I’m doing this because I want to, not because you told me to.”
“Of course!” Joel hurried to say.
But the thing he didn’t realize until Bdubs left was that, by leaving, Joel would be left alone with the handsome grown ass neighbor they had kidnapped. Said guy stared awkwardly at the cookies. He had yet to try them. He didn’t make a single move to do so.
“Why did you have so many eggs, anyway?” Joel asked. Etho’s eyes flickered up to meet his. “And why did so many of them have bad vibes?”
Etho blinked a couple of times. “Wait, did they actually?”
“I mean, Bdubs said it.”
“Bdubs says a lot of stuff,” Etho said. He let the silence sit for a few seconds. “But it might’ve been the week-old spaghetti.”
“Why do you have week-old spaghetti in your fridge?”
Etho looked away. “Why don’t you?”
“Oh.” Joel frowned. “Right, why don’t I?”
Etho changed the topic. “So. How long until his parents are back?”
“Shouldn’t be long,” Joel replied. He was still trying to figure out why he was lacking week-old spaghetti. Maybe it was the weather?
Bdubs walked into the kitchen, dragging his school backpack behind him like carrying it was a sisyphean task. Slowly and dramatically, he set his math book on the table.
Joel looked over his shoulder.
“Oh, wow. I might just prefer the Boogeyman,” he said. He had forgotten the torment that was math since he’d graduated high school and sworn to never think of a single number ever again. (He’d failed that same afternoon, when he checked the time, but it was a continuous effort. Every day proved to be a new struggle, but spite was a good incentive, and Joel had enough of it to last him a lifetime or three. Fuck, he’d failed again.)
Etho looked at the book as well. The first exercise read “What is 2+3?”
“Okay,” Etho said slowly, but his eyes were wide and glassy and Joel could relate. “I think we can do this. Bdubs, what is two plus three?”
“I think you mean that you can do this.” He pushed his book towards his neighbor, then sharpened a pencil under his horrified gaze before handing him that, too.
“But Bdubs,” Etho said, slightly desperate. “The Boogeyman!”
“The Boogeyman doesn’t care who does the homework as long as it gets done,” Bdubs said defiantly. He was daring Etho to contradict him. Joel knew better than to try and intervene.
“Joel, help,” he begged.
Bdubs fixed him with a level look, and suddenly Joel decided he liked math.
“Pass me the book,” he said. “I think I can do this.”
Bdubs smiled contentedly as Joel and Etho huddled close to discuss the answers in hushed whispers.
“I’m pretty sure the answer is five,” Etho said. He was looking at Joel, eyes heavy and serious.
“But how can we be sure?” Joel asked, equally as serious. “Should we cheat? I think I saw a calculator upstairs.”
“The Boogeyman won’t like that,” Bdubs sang.
Etho and Joel looked up in horror.
“I think we will just have to go with it,” Etho said nervously.
“I trust you,” Joel said softly. Hands shaking, Joel wrote down a five.
The door opened. They shared a panicked look.
The Boogeyman.
“Bdubs? Darling? We’re home!” a feminine voice said from the doorway, and both Joel and Etho let out a sigh of relief and were out of their seats within seconds, math homework forgotten behind them.
Joel and Etho marched past Bdubs’s parents.
“Oh, hello Etho,” Bdubs’s dad said. He sounded more confused than anything else.
“Hello,” Etho replied politely. He then proceeded to open the door and leave without a single other word. Joel nodded once at his employers and left right behind Etho.
As they headed towards the street, Etho spoke up, “Let’s do this again. Without Bdubs.”
“No Bdubs.”
(“Hey!”)
“Oh, absolutely.”
(“I’m right here, you know?!”)
“You hear something, Etho?”
“Nah.”
“Great. Here’s my number. Please move houses as soon as possible.”
“Will do.”
(Someone absolutely unimportant spluttered in the background. “Did Joel teach you swears while I was gone?” she asked.)
Joel laughed awkwardly. “Well,” he said. “I’ll see you later. Not here. Not here ever again. Gotta go. Bye.”
He booked it out of there. It was only when he got home that he realized.
Fuck, they hadn’t paid him.