Disclaimer: I don't own Pitch

Scaring the children of the planet was a very thorough job to do: Pitch had to see their fears, and call them out in their dreams, thus creating nightmares. Of course, his helpers scared most of the kids, but the true quality scares came from the Boogeyman himself: every night, he chose just a few "lucky" kids, to whom he would come in personally.

So here was this little boy. He was eight, he was small, his name was Adrian, and he was an arachnophobic.

"How delightful," Pitch said, while hiding within the shadow, creeping into little boy's closet, "But spiders are not your biggest fear, my friend. You are most afraid that your mother will stay in the hospital forever. You are most afraid to be left alone by your two best friends. And you love your big brother so much!"

Pitch's imagination was creating a deliciously frightening nightmare that had all the potential to make Adrian damaged for the rest of his childhood. The dream sand above the child's head blackened and the boy's face took on a worried expression; very soon, he started tossing in his bed. In a few minutes, he will wake up, covered in cold sweat, realizing that it was just a bad dream…

… and that will be the cue for Pitch to jump out of the closet, the shadow behind him taking a form of a giant spider.

"Mwa-ha-ha," the nightmare legend could barely contain the pleasure he took in this. He flew into the closet, staying in the shadows, and peeked through a small crack of the slightly opened door.

Everything was going as planned. As Adrian finally woke up, gasping in cold sweat, Pitch took on a more physical form and prepared to jump out. However, the Boogeyman, preoccupied with the anticipation of Adrian's reaction, did not notice a pair of jeans, carelessly tossed onto the closet floor. The jeans also were a part of a pile of tangled clothes, a long-legged toy alien and shoe-laces, carefully tied, serving as a safety rope for a toy robot.

And that was only one of many other piles, shoved in a hurry to one place in the room that could hide the mess behind a closed door. If there was a competition for the messiest closet, this one would surely win world championship.

The door opened, as Pitch lost his balance and literally fell out. Losing his concentration, he couldn't make the shadows take any form at all; instead, the whole mess of toys, clothes, various papers and all sorts of sport equipment followed the Boogeyman.

Furious that his sweet plan failed in such an ungraceful manner, Pitch jumped up and looked at the boy with pure anger on his face.

"YOU!" he shouted at Adrian, who was so shocked, he couldn't even blink. The boy looked frightened and vulnerable enough to assume that no nightmare could ever create such fear.

But Pitch didn't care. He had only one thing to say:

"Clean. Up. Your. CLOSET!" in his angry and frustrated exit, the Boogeyman didn't even pay attention to the little boy anymore. He kept muttering with anger how his delightful scare was ruined; he quickly blended into a shadow and went out of the window.

However, Adrian did not see that – he passed out right after Pitch turned away.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Helen wanted to be done with all the laundry. She was grateful every time that her elder son, Nick, learned to put all of his dirty clothes in a basket, so that she'd be spared from having to pick them up from all over the floor of his room. Now, if only her younger one would do the same - then she won't have to shudder every time she opened his messy closet.

Sighing deeply, she entered his room. It was in its usual state of relative cleanliness. Adrian seemed to have dozed off on his bed – he sure made some noise earlier in the morning, probably playing one of his vividly imagined games. She was a bit concerned, since he didn't have more than a glass of milk for breakfast, and she would question him about it later. If he got sick, it'd be better to leave him to his rest for now.

As she opened his closet, she couldn't contain a loud gasp: it was neatness at its finest.

"Adrian!"

The boy woke, jumping up and sitting in his bed, eyes frightened; he immediately yelled, "I cleaned it!" A second later, though, he realized that it was his mother, looking at him with amusement. He was so relieved that he almost started crying. He rushed from his bed and hugged his mom:

"I promise, I'll keep it clean!"

"Goodness, sweetie, what happened?"

And he told her, about the nightmare, where she got so sick, that this time she had to stay in the hospital forever; that he visited her so often, he didn't have time to hang out with his friends, and they left him; that in one of his visits, he and Nick went into the wrong room, and it was full of spiders; that Nick wanted to protect him, but the spiders won.

"Oh, honey, it was all a bad dream…"

"No! Then I woke up, and the Boogeyman came out of the closet and yelled at me to clean it up!"

Helen couldn't hold her laughter.

When she's done comforting her younger son, she should also take the advantage of the situation. 'Am I a terrible mother, for using the Boogeyman myth to scare my son into cleaning the closet?' She laughed at the thought. Well, it will make her life a bit easier. Surely, the Boogeyman won't mind – after all, he is just a myth. Later in the day, Helen wondered if that myth was created for the sole purpose of keeping kids from leaving a mess in their closets and under their beds.

So, this is just a little something I though of and wanted to write. I'm sure the idea is not original.

Please, review; it will be greatly appreciated!