2:36 AM.
In the middle of the night, a man heard his window shatter.
Sitting up in his bed, the man was startled awake. He got out of bed, lifted up the mattress, and grabbed the glock he had stored away.
In such a situation, the age-old tactic of camping in a corner and waiting for the thief to make their way into the room was likely the best option. It provided a layer of safety, and the only flaw would be if they didn't go into the room, which was the ideal.
However, in spite of that, the corner of the man's lips shifted upwards ever so slightly, as he left his room in search. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, he made his way around his house until he came face to face with the person—
Without a moment of hesitation, once he identified the person in his home, he waved his gun and emptied the entire magazine into them. The incessant blaring of fired gunshots rang through the house and neighborhood, eliciting screams of agony.
They sounded inhuman in nature, as if the wailing of the wendigo on a cold, wet night.
In spite of the array of bullets being launched forward, and the remaining silence from the gun as proof of the lethal intention, the person who had broken in did not fall.
In the darkness, where the only things that could be made out were lighter and darker shades of black, the man was effortlessly brought down to the ground, his body lifted and thrown down onto the wooden flooring.
The figure continued screeching, to which the man rolled to get up, rushing to the wall and turning on the lights. The brightness blinded both man and intruder, but the man recovered faster.
There, what he saw was neither man nor woman, human being nor animal.
Ugly and decrepit, the face of an elderly man with sagging, pale-brown skin, yet with the lower half of a horse, arms of a lion and bloated torso of a pregnant dog.
The creature kicked off the ground, colliding with the man's body, slamming him against the kitchen counter, knocking into the knife-stand and scattering them on the ground. Once more, the man was picked up and slammed down to the floor, creating a loud thud and a gasp of pain, as his back reflexively took up a lowercase n shape.
His eyes remained closed, closed because they did not want to see, closed because having to put in the effort to open them was simply impossible for his weakened self.
The lion's paws bared their claws, slowly dragging across his neck and slicing him open. Blood gushed from the wound, his carotid having been cut open leading to a sure-to-be lethal slice.
Helplessly, he flailed around, his pain accentuated by his fear, the threat of "death" hanging over each individual second.
His eyes shot open, not because he found the effort to open them, but because his body would not let him die so easily. In this entanglement of weakness, the bunching of fear and panic, desperation and despair, his body was the singular driving force which drove him forward.
His vision flashed, and he saw the knives on the ground. With no other option, he clung to the knife, and jammed it through the neck of the intruder.
Oh.
That manifestation of confusion was the one thought that popped into his mind. The bloody knife was removed, as the blood ran down the neck, down to the floor. But, with the creature on top of him, the blood poured onto his face.
His mouth.
The blood seeped into his mouth, and the man gasped for air, having consumed that outpour of strangely sweet, yet repugnant crimson red. Pain seared him, as the creature let out one final wail in the confusing deathmatch, before collapsing on top of the man's body.
Helpless to move, the sensation of blood in his throat instilled a traumatic fear into him. Yet, on the inside, accompanying the fear, was a strange excitement.
The creature collapsed in on itself, as if being sucked into a black hole from the center of its stomach. With that, the corpse of the nonhuman was removed in its entirety. Not even the trace of blood remained, with the man left gasping for air, coughing and choking on nothing.
—Yet, as his body remained still, only the faintest twitches acting as movement, the man felt something deeply inherent to his flesh metamorphosize.
…
"Hey Aubrey, you feeling alright, man?"
Sitting in a car on the way to a restaurant, a young man—the aforementioned "Aubrey" was asked.
Aubrey was an oddly pale young man, with dark, thin eyebags just barely visible underneath his dark black hair which obscured his eyes, preventing everyone from seeing what he actually looked like. Normally, he would not have such a thing; he lived a decently healthy lifestyle. Occasionally going for runs, making sure to sleep 7 hours every night, and trying to get a good amount of sun daily.
But now was not his "normal" and as a result, the question was asked. It didn't help that he was unusually quiet, being a moderate talker most of the time who chipped in occasionally in conversations when he felt like it.
"Oh, nah, I'm good, I'm fine."
He flashed a smile as he typically did, and everyone bought it.
Aubrey was not a man who suffered from depression. He was not suicidal, nor was he mentally ill. The only real problem with him, mentally speaking, was that he was too normal, something he recognized himself.
So, when the other night, a very clear "monster" broke into his home and nearly killed him, he was surprised to say the least. After coming out of his half-asleep daze, the police were called by concerned neighbors and he testified that he was attacked by a monster.
But, due to the circumstances, it was concluded that a human being broke into his home, and managed to escape after Aubrey shot at him, missing due to the darkness and being only halfway conscious.
Aubrey, not wanting to go to a psych ward for insisting a skinwalker of some kind attacked him, was made to agree with them.
Even still, in his heart, he knew what he saw. And, even worse, he was terrified of it.
I got the blood in my mouth, drank it, and now… and now I feel weird. I can't even describe it. It's like being sick, but… not, somehow? It doesn't make sense. I feel fine, but I also don't.
A weird feeling.
"Not so much a pain, but… a weird feeling," as one might put it.
Getting back on track, it felt visceral, yet intangible. Something that could be felt with the body, but trusting merely the flesh would only give notice to a change. If it were instead felt with the mind, and looked at by the mind, only then would its dread be made fully present.
Like the fear of going into surgery—the mind would picture all kinds of horrors which could go wrong, while the body would merely feel the aches that accompanied looming terror.
My skin's gotten pale, I can't fall asleep, and I feel hungry almost all the time. But even if I eat, and eat, and eat, it's not enough. I want more, something more satisfying, yet nothing I find is ever enough.
Wrapping his arms around his stomach, Aubrey looked down.
What's going on with me? I killed someone—no, something. I killed something just a while ago, and yet life goes on. I haven't even told anyone just because they'll think I'm crazy too. I'm not crazy. I can't be.
I don't believe in the supernatural. I don't believe in the paranormal. Ghosts, demons, monsters—those things aren't real. But I really, really don't have any kind of explanation for what happened.
Something is innately wrong with my body, but I don't know what it is, nor do I know how to fix it.
He ruled out the obvious explanation for why he felt different after drinking blood. He didn't show any of the symptoms; he never felt tired, didn't have any fevers or headaches, nor aches or any bathroom troubles.
And, more importantly,
Why didn't I bleed out? After drinking the blood, my neck stopped hurting. The blood on the ground clearly showed I was cut—I felt it, too. But when I looked into the mirror, I seemed… fine. Perfectly fine.
Am I even still human?
Arriving at the restaurant, Aubrey paid for his own food. He was well off for a college student, luckily having extremely great parents who provided for him and helped him out, so he paid for his own food—and a sizable amount at that.
He ate burgers, fries, chicken nuggets, and yet even after eating two triple cheeseburgers, two large fries, and a 20 piece chicken nugget, he was not satisfied.
This gluttony was incredibly out of character, considering he was a light young man without much mass to him. Neither muscle nor fat was apparent on his body, so it was purely illogical.
His friends laughed at the sheer amount he was eating, and even moreso how quickly he scarfed it all down.
"Oh yeah, eat all that thick meat down your throat," one of his friends, Davis, said.
Aubrey couldn't even respond as he was too busy chewing on his fries and nuggets. His ravenous appetite was not sated.
After the group of friends all finished their food, they went back to the Kyo University campus, where they continued their classes for the next few hours.
His hunger not satiated, he had no choice but to keep eating. He drove down to his parent's house, as he lived off campus, and went into his room.
With his parents gone for the week, he was alone during the attack. Naturally, he was alone now as well.
Holed up in his room, he studied to get his mind off of his hunger. This appetite was neither growing nor decreasing; it remained stuck to him constantly, gnawing at him.
And, as fate would have it,
Knocking. The door was knocked on thrice, with Aubrey getting up from his desk and going to the front door.
Oddly, there was another feeling from behind the door. It was not the "weird feeling" from before. Rather, it was an instinctive fear.
Something, whatever it was, beyond the door was not good.
It was a very literal, physical reaction, his heart racing faster and aching slightly in his chest. Hardly mental at all.
"Aubrey!" Someone yelled from beyond the door. "It's me, Davis! C'mon man, open up!"
Hearing that voice, Aubrey assumed it was him. It had to be him. To which, Aubrey sighed, calming himself down before he opened the door.
"Davis, what're you yelling—"
The sinking of his heart. It was an immediate reaction, thrust upon him by his senses.
He wasn't quite sure of what he was looking at. He couldn't even process what it was before his vision was made blurry.
Huh? The ceiling…
His eyes ran up to the ceiling, his mind unable to figure out—
Pain registered on his chin, and he was launched down to the ground. Fast, far too fast.
"Ughh!"
Pain spread across his torso, and his mind put the pieces together.
Punched. I had to have been punched.
His chest hurt nigh unbearably, his sternum having a hard, disgusting creaking. He gasped slightly, and immediately retracted that breath.
He did not want to breathe because even breathing caused suffering.
His eyes swam towards the genesis of his suffering. In his field of view, he came across yet another abhorrent sight; a true, bonafide monster, as it closed the door and shapeshifted into a bear.
—Once more, Aubrey's life was on the line.