ΓΈ. Haunted
A woman stood in the darkness.
All around her, everything was a swirling mass of black and grey.
But slowly, as she watched, it resolved, becoming more solid.
More real.
She realized she was just in a dark room, not some abyss.
The floor was concrete, and the darkness was just from a lack of lights.
Her heart started racing.
It was a familiar room.
A bad, bad room.
Her stomach sank as something clicked behind her, echoing on the concrete.
The brunette tried bracing herself, just like always.
And just like always, the sharp crack of a bullet, and the flash of the muzzle flaring to life, made her jump.
In her panic, the awareness faded, and she really was back in that place.
No defenses from the hundreds of other times she’d been forced to visit.
Turning, the terrified woman faced the source of the sound just in time to watch the man fall.
He landed limply on the floor, a dull thump sounding from the weighty impact.
A river of red quickly spread from under his skull, seeming almost alive as it moved right for her.
Even through the thick padding of her boots, she felt the blood.
Her stomach twisted, and she forced herself to look away.
Look at the other man in the room.
He had dull, mud brown eyes, and they were staring right at her.
Through her.
They were completely soulless, the eyes of a demon somehow trapped in a human body.
The imagery wasn’t helped by the waves of gun smoke curling from his Sig Sauer, still aimed down at the other man.
But when he realized she’d looked at him, the man turned his weapon on her, instead.
Even in the dark, surrounded in the shadows and black haze from her hyperventilation, she could swear she saw the golden glint of the brass within, ready to make her join the other man.
And then, before her eyes, the man was gone.
The gun was gone.
Most of the room was gone.
In their place was the monster she imagined lurking inside those eyes, a horrific brown beast of spikes and sharp angles.
Smoke spewed from its mouth, so much like the gun the man had been holding, curling around sharp fangs.
Its eyes were still the same.
Two small, slightly slanted brown dots.
Under the weight of their stare, it felt like she would be ripped apart, right down to her very soul.
She wasn’t even aware of her body backing away until she suddenly jerked to a harsh halt against a wall.
It was cold, the concrete seeping easily through her thin shirt and leeching every bit of heat from her being.
“Whatcha’ think I’m gonna’ do ta’ you?”
The monster’s grating hiss was surprisingly nasally, but the whininess didn’t make the sound any less terrifying.
Pressing closer to the wall, she forced herself to hide the tremors.
“Kill me.”
Her voice was small, barely a whisper in the massive box of silent air they were in.
Its maw cracked and split apart until it had a Cheshire smile.
“Option one,” it laughed.
The sound rumbled against her bones, making her feel like she would fall apart under the force.
“But then ya’ wouldn’t learn anythin’. This is a lesson, after all. So ya’ can leave the city with the bimbo, forever. If I ever see ya’ runnin’ a game in my city again, it’ll be a slow death fer both a’ ya’.”
Her own words were lost in the ether, mind too burdened by the terrible beast to process what she said.
Whatever it was, the beast seemed amused by it.
Another horrible laugh rattled her bones.
The monster told her something that made her feel like her very soul had been changed with ice, but whatever it was seemed to vanish from her mind even as she tried focusing on it.
It felt as though her mind was trying to protect itself from some horror.
“Ya’ know what? I don’t think ya’ can, so I’d love ta’ see it,” it laughed.
Before she could respond, even if she could think, it reared back.
Like a cobra, it lunged forward, sinking its fangs into her shoulder.
There was an explosion and a burst of fire into her skin.
Its teeth felt like burning, spinning metal, burrowing horrifically through skin and bone.
Her vision flashed white, an inhuman scream ripped from her as she dropped.
On the floor, she clutched her bleeding shoulder and whimpered.
Staring up at the monster through tears, she found the man in its place again.
The gun smoked, something metal tinking sharply off the concrete.
His grin was no less terrifying than the beast’s had been.
It was a feral look of complete madness and bloodlust, and she wondered if her blood would actually freeze right in her wound at the sight.
Another laugh, this one more human but no less chilling, escaped his lips.
“Ya’ can let yourself out,” he mocked.
Turning on his heel, he started walking over her fallen body.
“Fer your sake, I hope we don’t see each other again,” the man tossed over his shoulder.
And then, he was fading away, boots clicking sharply on the ground as he walked away.
The steps hadn’t even fully faded before her mind was wrapped in cotton, the darkness returning to take her once again.
Her last sensation was the burning agony rippling from the hole in her shoulder, before everything turned black...
