Mr Mostly Mittens
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He said that his name was Mr. Mittens, just like my kitty who went away. But not all Mr. Mittens. Just mostly.

Mr. Mostly Mittens doesn't live here any more. He used to, he said, but not now. He used to be a person, too, but then he stopped - and now he lives in the clear, windy place where baby raccoons and street birds go after they die. Sometimes, he floats way up in the air in the clouds, and looks down at everyone and he whispers and calls out names and giggles, but teachers and preachers can't see him, or hear him, because he makes their brains bleed. And sometimes, he hides inside TVs and light bulbs and computer monitors, and he watches. Sometimes, he makes things turn on when they're supposed to be off, and we can see what he has for instead of a face, and he tells us what to do.

He told some kids that I heard about where to find candy, and it was there. All they had to do was make two phone calls. And once, he told a friend of mine where to go to find naked pictures in the woods, and BOOM, there they were. Right next to the parts of the body that we dragged away and threw in the culvert. And if you need to find cigarettes or a ten dollar bill or something, he knows where all of those things are - he just needs you to unlock a door, maybe, or take some Polaroids of your baby sister in the bathtub and put them in the mail.

But be real careful, because he told somebody I know that there was a toy gun in his dad's drawer.

And it turns out, it wasn't a toy, after all. That was a bad surprise. And his dad is dead, now. And they say that Mr. Mostly Mittens never stopped laughing. And then he blew away, to another town and other kids.

And I still see him when I try to sleep.

—-

Mr. Mostly Mittens is the monster in the closet. A ghost. A tree-branch rattling against the windows in the storm. The house settling. A trick of the light, sweetie … now go back to bed.

According to people supposedly in the know, like Callus Detier Drogovich, the thing called Mr. Mostly Mittens is a hatchet-man gifted with some kind of complete incorporeality; of course, there are a whole lot of conflicting theories about that, and folks including Azrael Scheiss have posited that he might actually be an angel - specifically a cherubim tetrad, from the few descriptions that have been collected. A mean one, sure, with a mad-on for pulling lethal pranks on crashers and the undamned … but who ever said that angels are supposed to be nice? And other theories suggest that Mr. Mostly Mittens is a demon who tricked the systems of the Nether: sure, his body boiled away into ash when his heels hit topside, but somehow his spirit lived on, haunting the eyes and ears of children.

Or, it could all be an elaborate joke. A hallucination. Symptoms of childhood schizophrenia coupled with mass delusion or something. Because for most crashers, the closest they'll ever come to knowing if there really is or isn't a Mr. Mostly Mittens is a phone call at 3 AM from a 12-year-old, telling them not to take the next job. Or a death-threat in the mail, written in crayon. Or, just maybe, police showing up at your apartment with a warrant, because sixteen kids at the local elementary school claim that you've been hiding in the bathrooms.

And when Mr. Mostly Mittens makes an offer, most crashers accept.

For whatever reason, kids can see and hear Mr. Mostly Mittens sometimes, especially through TVs and video monitors, and nobody else can. And he seems to know a lot about a lot, including plenty about Hell and the future. One recorded instance has him "appearing" to a severely retarded 17-year-old, but for the most part the age ranges of his 'friends' are about 5 to 13, equally dispersed between boys and girls. And the descriptions of the 'man' himself are vague, at best: clouds, dust, knives, stars, feathers, eyes, wheels, blackness, and a deep voice, often laughing.

As to what he wants, well … nobody knows. Sometimes he'll turn old enemies against each other, sometimes he'll reunite old friends, and sometimes his plans seem completely incomprehensible: setting a crew up to take a job, only to frame one member for murder at the last minute so that the job falls through; causing a fire alarm to be pulled at a museum so that a crasher can steal a painting, then having a kid phone-in an anonymous tip to the cops which forces the thief to destroy the piece. Mr. Mostly Mittens has been known to clean up messes through his juvenile intermediaries, going so far as to "disappear" mounds of evidence or even provide in-court testimony to clear crashers of crimes they actually committed; alternatively, he's framed some folks for deeply scandalous things, ruined at least four marriages, driven one crasher to suicide and is indirectly responsible for dozens of tire-slashings, shattered windows, harassing phone calls and, in one confirmed case, a set of brake lines being cut by two 3rd-graders.

But whatever it IS, there's no doubt that Mr. Mostly Mittens has an agenda, nor that he moves his tiny pieces with little regard for their well-being.

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