“𝙔𝙤𝙪’𝙧𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨𝙣’𝙩 𝙡𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙄’𝙢 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤.”
Summary → After a strange man is found alongside the outskirts of your small settlement, beaten, bloodied, and at the varied brink of death. He is quick to be taken in under the caring eyes of your community and is aided back to a speedy recovery.
However, he doesn’t leave, and soon livestock begins to disappear without a trace.
Everyone thinks it’s wolves,
But, you aren’t so easily swayed.
The night air was hot and sticky against your skin as you laid awake in your small bed, chest up and arms splayed about your mattress in a haphazard fashion, having gone through dozens of trials and errors to fall asleep, though always finding your eyes itching themselves back open and your mind stubbornly deviating along the scratchy corners of your walls and over the prickly canvas of your ceiling.
The cicadas were too loud that night.
It made the simple idea of sleep utterly impossible, but you had no means of stopping it even though you had tried similar nights like this prior.
And just like those other nights, you would have to suffice to wait yourself out until you would eventually doze off. It was hard but it was all you could really do in the moment.
You huffed under your breath and adjusted yourself, rocking against the canvas of your back in order to get somewhat comfortable before softly doming your eyes shut and breathing out your nose.
Something else was in the air aside from the sweltering humidity, you just couldn’t draw your finger over what it was exactly, and maybe that alone was what made your restlessness worthwhile.
Your eyes slowly drew towards your window, past your small oil lamp that was centered onto the veneer of your bedside next to a half-drunken glass of water, the beads of moisture at the top rim slowly drawing down the glossy screen and collecting with the pool below.
Your window casted out a silver moonlight that soaked your room’s old wooden floorboards, shining over every single beam and stretching over the drywall of your room.
Your eyes adjusted and situated themselves onto the sight of your wallpaper, ashen and pallid, the moonlight casting out a square of saturated cobalt.
And then a silhouette emerged, tall, stalky, and benevolent bringing.
You stared at it, long and hard until your eyes stung and the vessels in your eyes burnt.
Your head felt too heavy to move, to tilt it back within the general direction of the window—as if you were welded to your bed’s uncomfortable mattress.
The dark silhouette was seen, its left shoulder jutting up and down as if making the slightest gesture with his unseen arm before it came into image, shadowed shape of his hand coming to the window, index drawing back before an acute and unmistakable tap of glass against the blade end of a nail was heard.
Your eyes, within their own accord, drifted in shaky and jutting intervals and landed upon the glinting glass of your agape window.
A man was outside of your window.
The moonlight beamed into the back of his blonde head of hair, shadowing over his front side and making his face difficult to see.
However, by some odd means, you were able to see his eyes glinting into your direction, onto your quivering being, like red fireflies with baleful intent.
You couldn’t see his smile, only the glint of shine of his teeth, his head tilting to the side by an unnoticeable inch as his aforementioned index dragged lecherously across the glossy glass, as if taunting, teasing you,
Letting you know that he knew you were awake, only a thin and breakable sheet of glass stopped him from getting to you.
You felt like a trapped quail within a nearly bent open cage. A monstrous coyote wielding a salivating jaw of teeth inches from the pronged opening, with every intent to devour every last bit of you up until there was no more for anyone else to lay claim to, not even scavengers.
“I see you there, little girl…” his voice was muffled through the pane, but you could still hear how charming he sounded, including the oozing undertones of something that made your stomach churn sickly, as if his voice was prone to bringing nothing good into your life.
Your eyes widened, breathing stifling and locked into the base of your throat, just inches from your vocal folds.
You opened your mouth to speak, to decline No, to say anything, but only a mere grunt and a pop of your voice was heard sneaking its way past your lips, and you could almost see how his body quivered with an amused series of snickers.
“Oh, speechless, are we?” You could see his hand lower down to the bottom seal of the window’s frame.
An angled fang nipped at the metal prongs of your enclosure, chirping and squawking won’t seem to help.
“It’s okay, I’ll let myself in.” His digits were seen exhausting themselves at the bottom of the pane in an attempt in working it open,
You flinched below your quilt, succeeding the sound from the window granting access from outside,
You were now sitting within the jaws of the coyote, unsure when it would clamp down onto you, suffocating you, forking you in between its carnivorous fangs, and soaking you in it’s saliva.
Or maybe he would hold you in his tight and suffocating maw until he saw fit.
Within palm-walled hearsay’s and hushed whispers disseminated and spread throughout your small village like hungry wildfire, it didn’t take long for you to catch wind that a local farm hand and his young son had found a man near the outskirts, just along the choppy tree lining that walled your small settlement in. Seemingly, was the man, bloodied and beaten.
It was alarming, and as it struck everyone around you into a fit of concern within the small community that never truly had anything interesting going on, you remained indifferent to it all. At the time, it didn’t concern you, and if you were being completely honest, you had come to terms that death was likely in favor of the unnamed man’s fate.
However, fate in general, was anything but predictable in every sense, especially when it came to nimble little things like the life of the freshly wounded.
If you really knew of the events that would follow throughout the next few months, you would’ve been perched on the edge of your varied chair, hoping of word that the man’s heart gave at any second or you’d set yourself off to end his life on your own.
Throughout the time of his recovery, you would watch from afar as he would shuffle about under the acquaintance of the village’s physician or an acquainting volunteer.
The volunteers, in question, ranged from young girls your age that obviously seemed to find themselves enamored by the blonde man. Though, you never quite got close enough to see his face to understand, you were too careful—leery maybe? However the case, it was obvious there was something terribly wrong with the man.
It wasn’t just a mild curdle in the pit of your guts, nor was it a common habit of being withdrawn from any social opportunity like you normally were.
It was just the way he carried himself in his beaten state, stumbling and shambling about in broad daylight as if he were performing some kind of act, as if he were trying to pass himself off as injured when he couldn’t have been more healthier.
The Sunday he had begun to arrive at church services was when you had begun to fall under the impression that he wasn’t leaving. At least, not anytime soon.
He would always sit a few pews ahead of where you sat, letting the back of his slick pristine blonde hair be the object of your general direction throughout the entirety of the sermon, where your irritation begun to manifest for the unnamed man as a whole.
You didn’t want to assume that he was doing such minor mishap on purpose, but you just couldn’t help but to think otherwise.
That along came with the stolen glances that you would be slow by just a few seconds to only catch the shifting movements of his eyes quickly jotting in the other direction within public settings.
Sometimes, in passing, you could feel his shoulder graze yours.
You really didn’t want to assume that he did it all on purpose for your attention, because why would he want your attention?
Of all people, especially.
Was he validation driven? Could he not stand the fact that you were almost the only one that didn’t bend over backwards for his aid? Averting your gaze when he would smile at you? Avoiding proper introductions? Refused to say a word??
Was it the thrill of the “game”?
The game in question thriving off how much attention he could divulge himself under?
Or was it the fact that you had begun to actually loathe him overtime and he could sense as such?
A month had begun to drift past, and by then, the varied construct of your community’s social hierarchy was slowly deconstructing and rebuilding itself into something utterly bizarre,
Into something that just wasn’t quite right.
Even the church was bending under such ways that you had begun to notice your father becoming more quiet, more subdued, especially during church services where he was expected to owe the congregation nothing but a mouth full of words.
You didn’t like this unnamed man.
This blonde, handsome, eerily perfect stranger that had the entire village under his thumb.
You didn’t like what kind of place he was turning your your home into…
One day, you found yourself inside of your gutted church, reeking of aged timber, old varnish, and newborn mildew.
You knew you weren’t supposed to be there, especially at such a late hour, but your father had failed to return after sending one of your pigs off to be slaughtered for meat.
The wood church and wailed under your feet, and you nearly felt yourself unable to tread further under the shaky and harrowing visages of shadows flashing and jutting about, escaping from the shaky flame that casted out from your small gas-driven lamp, hiding behind the edges of the church’s wood beams and the solid oak pews.
You passed pew after row of pews, boots scuffing heavily up against the wooden floorboards, collecting particles of dirt that scraped and popped softly in between your feet and flooring.
The closer you got to the core of the church, a small lacquered bench at the reigning stoop of the rotten podium, you had begun to hear the muffled sounds of what you could’ve thought were pained grunts and echoed sputters of what were meant to be words echoing off of oak paneling.
“F…” you stifled, the rest of the word caged in your throat as the sound of a slurring moan rang out, making gasp and dithering in your trembling movements.
You stood there for a moment, questioning the obvious over whether your father was in need of help, perhaps he had gotten hurt or his underlying condition of gout had flared up again.
“Father?” You finally called, not loud enough but was audible if any possible ears were drawn close by.
You leveled up the small raised platform past the podium, and made a bee-line towards the wooden door that took you into the church’s foyer, barely utilized but only for certain holidays.
When you stood inches from the agape door, fingers curled around the bronze cold nob, you heard a voice that wasn’t your fathers.
In fact, it was a voice you’ve never even heard before. It was slick, smooth, calm, had every single capacity within the prongs of it’s vocal cords to be charming if so pleased.
Yet, the only feeling it plucked out of you was the gut quivering sense of unease.
And, it didn’t really take too many guesses to assume who the voice could’ve belonged to.
Your breath stifled through your teeth, the flesh of your hand stinging against the cold knob.
The sound of something slimy and unpleasant corresponding with another pent back grunt was heard.
You didn’t want to look, but you couldn’t just stand there, something irrevocably wrong was occurring on the other side of the door and you felt as if your feet were sinking and being eaten away by gritty sand, if you didn’t act then you would plunge and suffocate.
You didn’t throw the door back, no. Instead, you leaned to your nearest left, putting more pressure on your left foot and compressing down on it until you felt stinging static flood the ball of your toes.
“What did you do to me??—“
Your brows sunk together, creating a nasty crease in your forehead as your eyes strained through the small but manageable gap in between the oak door paneling and the timber framing, where, in dim lighting, the silhouette of what you would know now to be your father stooped onto his knees. Forehead sleek and shining against the dim lighting with sweat.
Your eyes would adjust to more details upon the scene that proceeded to perform in front your tardy impression all under the dim lighting of a suspended lamp, and what you saw was horrifying.
“Aren’t they exceptional?” You would hear that voice inquire.
You swallowed a hot slimy throat-full of saliva, feeling it go down your throat painfully as the profile of a tall, lean-set man walked into your small frame of viewing in small yet cocksure strides.
You’d watch as he ran his thumb against something he held out a few inches past his own self and sighed.
Your father had begun to writhe at this varied point, as if battling his own self, curling into himself and panting like an exhausted mutt. His body deemed his own enemy.
“The uroboros, I mean…” the man could barely be heard but snicker, and you stifled another pitiful excuse for a breath.
“What—“ your father let out a nasty, pain inducing cough, dragging his wrists across his wet mouth and panting more before hearing something that had the competence to emit an iron shrill was heard, and then something long and thin, resembling fine wire burst out from the bent open cavity of your father’s mouth, strangling any possible yelps or sounds of horror from the older man.
You wanted to scream, wanted to act upon whatever nightmare phenomena you were witnessing, but nothing came, a mere pop and rattle maybe, but aside from anything evident, you were paralyzed—muscles, nerves, flesh, everything was acting akin to chilling stone.
“Don’t struggle. Give it time to metabolize your DNA.” You could’ve sworn you heard the blonde stranger mutter something else, but you couldn’t tell. The disturbing macabre of what came out of your father’s esophagus and the sound that tried to escape took over every sense of your hearing.
For but, a moment, you could see your father, your sweet father, tried to do as he was told: still himself, let this morbid entity do as was mentioned and perhaps he would be well.
Though, of course, as if the sight alone was no better than what soon followed, you watched with a plunged heart as four more stringy vessels whirled their way past teeth and shot out of your father’s mouth, making him shudder and croak.
And then, without warning, the five harrowing organisms zipped back inside of him, sounds of visceral horror was heard from his insides, crackling, gushing, popping, and then squelching—your father tensing and whining throughout the way as he was consumed from the inside and obliterated.
And then he fell over with a heavy and bedraggled thump against the old wood floor.
Until the man, undoubtedly suspect to the harm that had fallen upon your father, took a curious step forward, his shoes churning under the wood as he then squatted over the body, fingers bridging across his bent lap.
“Ashame.” You could hear in feign pity, as if a body of cattle had performed terribly in lactation, destined to be slaughtered for its meat and organs.
You still wondered to this day if that’s what he saw you as, if that’s what he saw all of you as.
To be gambled on, to be tampered with, to be taken advantage of…
Just to turn out as a bunch of failed experiments.
Your right foot had, at some point, weighed itself down against the floor, purchasing weight that bent down on the flimsy floorboards and made them let out a faint weep.
You snuffed in a breath, looking down at your foot before lifting it back up as if to undo whatever damage that had been done, before looking back up into the room ahead of you.
Only to be met with a stained button-down tunic, first two buttons having been slovenly popped loose, making the wearer more disheveled than you had thought.
You looked up, staring back at a pair of glowing red fireflies.
A glinting toothy leer spread wide across the canvas below.
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