Learning with Pibby (AU) “Patient Zero”.
It’s where an OC of mine, is completely untouchable by the entity that plagues the toon multiverse (or universe). In this piece here.
Pibby gets a first look at the one nicknamed; “Patient Zero”. (Which he does have a name, but not revealed to them at this moment. XD) In the strip here; She and a few other characters make their escape. After a task of finding medical supplies and items needed for the injured nearly failed. Their cover was then blown, and discovered by the entity, and eventually pursued. And as they escaped. Pibby saw, for like a quick few seconds, that a figure is standing in the frequency of the entity, as it seems to be not interested in chasing them.
It appeared that it tried to absorb him, but is not making any progress, or effort.
And with what she saw, she then had it hard to believe, but she saw what she saw.
Eventually when she speaks of the sighting to her friends, they had it hard to process it as well. They were quite baffled, but eventually dropped what she saw, since it’s quite impossible for a character to be standing in the void of that entity. Since anyone or anything, who comes into contact with it, become corrupted portrayals of their former selves.
What they don’t know is that the being that’s causing the apocalypse for the toon-multiverse, brought in more trouble.
[[My contribution to Horror Writers Community Prompts Week 2: The cat saw it first]]
Something had been coming into the house and eating the dog food. I suspected it was a raccoon coming in through the dog door. Or a rat. Or my cat had been dipping his greedy little snout into the bowl. Either way, whatever it was scared my dog enough into hiding in his crate instead of fighting back to scare it off, the little coward.
The easy response was to start locking the dog door at night but then my incontinent dog would piss all over the floor in the kitchen and I’d have to clean it up every morning. My knees are bad enough.
I could have poured the leftover dog food into the big Tupperware at night but then Harvey would scarf his food too fast in the mornings like I’d been starving him and end up throwing up right before I left for work. I refer you to my knees again in regards to cleaning up more mess.
So I decided to stay up one night and nail the little shit with my son’s bb gun the minute it tried crawling in through the dog door. Nothing like a little pain to make vermin think twice about coming into my home again. No free lunch in this house. No sir.
I put the dog away in his crate in another room. My wife’s cat, Alfred, lazed next to me as I watched from the kitchen doorway. The dog bowl sat right off to the side of the kitchen sink so it’ll have to walk by the fridge to reach it. Perfectly in line for me to hit him.
And so I waited.
The cat knew something was coming. He perked up, ears pricked forward as he stood. The hairs on his back standing up as he stared at the bowl. I raised the sights and aimed for the dog door but it didn’t budge. The cat saw it first and spat out a hiss.
Where the hell was he looking, I thought. There’s nothing at the bo--except there now there was and holy fuck how did I miss it?
Reaching out from under the sink and through the cracked cupboard door was a hand. A dark gnarled and ghastly thing. Skin as black and slick as oil with the sharpest of claws on fingers with far too many joints. And now I could hear...breathing. Raspy and guttural as it grasped a handful of dog food from the bowl and ate it.
I had no clue what it was or what to do. But Alfred lowered himself to the ground to pounce and made a jump for it. Before he could reach I took the shot. Nailed the hand as it reached down for another handful. It shrieked and pulled it’s hand back in, making all sorts of noise as it knocked over things under the sink in shocked pain.
I grabbed the cat and threw him in the spare bedroom before returning with a tee ball bat. I didn’t know what it was but hell if I was going to sleep with it alive and still in my home. Bat at the ready, I wrenched open the door and--
It was empty. And has been ever since. No more waking to find missing dog food and a cowering dog in his crate either. Whatever it was, was gone.
But you better believe I invested in some child safety locks for every cabinet in the kitchen.
Russian version of Voldemort. Has his heart/life force hidden and is very hard to kill. Likes to steal maidens but what for i have no idea, because he looks like a skeleton and has only one passion- gold. Oh, his life force by the way - if you want to kill him, you have to find the tree, than a chest on that tree, then when you open a chest, there will be a duck that you have to kill, once you kill a duck, a hare will spring out of it and try to run- you have to catch and kill it too. then, inside the hare, you will find an egg, and if you break an egg- a needle. Said needle is the last horcrux, so if you break it, he will die. He is a very powerful and mean wizard, likes to curse people or send plagues and disasters at his neighbors. Is perpetually at war with Baba Yaga (no idea why, may be they were married once)
At the time I worked in a store that sold discount bird supplies as well as birds. It was about mid May when it all happened really. A few weeks before all of this happened, a woman came into the shop, she told me her daughter dreamed of a red songbird. We didn't have any, the closest we had were canaries. She's come in a few times since, she's always hard to speak to, always a little bit off, I chalked it up to her not knowing a ton of English.
On that day she came in and bought a canary for her daughter and told me again she dreamed of song birds, and then she said "Canaries are very good messengers" or something along those lines and it struck me as really odd. She told me she ran a crystal shop and gave me her business card. It's weird but I kept thinking about how in the OA she ate a canary from another world to gain knowledge of how to travel between worlds. I thought it was a coincidence or just me thinking about the show-- season two did come out a few months ago after all. I let it go.
Then I went home and walked my dog, I was calling my childhood friend for most of it, and after a while she had to go-- she’s a RA someone's wallet got stolen and she had to call campus security. I'd hung up and me and my dog were walking home down the street. I saw something, like space was distorted, like there were wrinkles or waves in the air that passed by me, quickly, down the street in my peripherals. I knew immediately I wasn't supposed to have seen it-- I doubted that I really had for a second, that it must've been a trick of my eye, but in that moment I could feel it turn to look at me, like it knew I saw it when I wasn't supposed to be able to see it at all.
I put my personal wards up at as high of a power and as consistently held as I could manage on the spot.Then I walked home as quickly as I could, and when I went up the stairs to my door I felt it again and saw it for a second in my peripherals again. I closed the door. I burnt some sage, redid the wards, laid out the charged acorn I had, the selenite I had in a x by the door.
It had been hours since and I could swear I heard two soft knocks on the door, I tried to tell myself it was my cats, or maybe the dog. The next morning when I woke up my roommate’s hamster had died and the selenite had been knocked down to lay side by side. It could have been coincidence, the hamster was three and an animal could’ve knocked it over the selenite. I try not to think about it.
