I walk down the street, my shoes on the sidewalk as I notice the same guy still somehow taking the same path I happen to be walking down. It’s been half an hour and four turns by my estimates. My spine chills are firing off like crazy, the same spine chills I usually had when I started seeing monsters. I’ve been off my medications for about a week now, so maybe I really am just going insane, but my intuition still heavily doubts it. I noticed an abandoned construction site on the sidewalk, and walk towards it, stepping around a concrete barrier and onto the lot. If he were a normal guy, he’d have no business here, but if he did walk in… My life would be getting a lot more interesting, and probably shorter. Much shorter.

I walk to roughly the middle of a lot, which has the beginnings of a concrete foundation and plenty of sand nearby. I keep sweeping my eyes between each of the possible exits, until out the corner of my view that guy that was following me walks in the same way I initially entered.

I turn to face him, and my heart rate rises. I tried desperately to rationalize it as something other than what I really thought it was while also trying to recall my training. Maybe this hobo just camps out on the exact abandoned lot I just walked into. Maybe he was begging for change (if so, why follow me so persistently?), maybe he wasn’t a hobo and he just wanted to hand me a business card for some shady shit, maybe I accidentally signaled a drug dealer over—

His face morphs, shifts into the same damn thing that haunted me for two years; unnaturally long chin, needle teeth, shrunken lips, shattering all my rationalizations in one fell swoop.

Then the panic came. The palpitations accelerated, I got jittery all over, my mind going a mile a minute yet getting almost nothing done. I remembered how one of these monsters killed James, and couldn’t help but fixate on how little of a chance I stand, unarmed, against this predator.

“Finally our time has come, little pig!” The voice was warped, raspy, but at the same time all too eager as he began to run at me.

I couldn’t think of any more advanced techniques(not that I wasn’t guaranteed to fuck them up as I am), so I settle for preparing for a front kick, getting into a fighting stance as if I was going to punch him. I acted tough, but all I could think was ‘oh shit oh shit I’mgonnadieohshitohfuck’ as I started to sweat my kick’s timing.

I bring my knee up and snap my shin forward, slamming my boot into his stomach and (to my surprise) actually getting a response out of him as I could hear the wind blow out of him a little bit. The problem is, he was running at me and my footwork was twitchy garbage, so I fall on my ass.

The beast lets out a hiss of pain and then a growl as he gets back up before I do, so I ineffectually reverse crawl backwards towards the edge of the concrete foundation while panicking, just like people in horror movies who are about to get killed do. Sure enough, he runs forward and jumps onto me, but not before I think to turn over and quickly grab a fistful of sand. As I rotate back to face him I keep my shins between my torso and him as he grabs both of my shoulders and lets out a leery growl, putting his wicked maw on full display. Jesus Christ, his grip strength—it feels like he could overpower me with brute force.

Seems that pissing him off bought me enough time to bring my arm around and throw the sand into his eyes, as he reflexively brings up one of his claws to his face. He lets out a sound between a growl and a snarl as I brace my right hand against my head, seizing the opportunity and—while using my other hand to pull his head in closer—rotated my entire upper body, ramming my elbow into the side of his head.

My elbow hurts like a bitch, but I feel his grip on me loosen enough for me to shove him off and get up. My eyes search clumsily for a weapon and find a wooden beam, small enough to be held in one hand but long enough to give me a reach advantage. I run over and fumble at first, but soon wrap my fingers around the wood and pull it up, turning around to see the monster rising to a stand, shaking his head violently as he turns to me.

I’m still jittery, but now wielding a weapon and having escaped a grapple, I find the confidence(or arrogance) to assume I can win for once. I rest the wood on my shoulder and wait.

He runs towards me again and I sidestep, swinging at his head and using my reach to keep clear… Except instead of just lunging for a grab he kicks my side at the same time—causing more pain than I’d have expected—and we both fall to the ground, though judging from the audible crack my attack left behind, I think he came out of it worse that time.

We both scramble to our feet, but this time he seems to get up slower than before… And I notice a little later than I should’ve that there’s a deep crack halfway along the wood that I was sure would fully break next swing. I strike the concrete, fully breaking the stick and leaving behind a break full of splinters, holding it in both hands as I prepared myself. I notice his eyes started to go red as he snarled before running at me again. I thrust the wood into his ribcage, putting my strength into the wood to hold him back, my arms straining against his sheer animalistic frenzy as he swipes wildly with both claws, knowing it would only take one cut to my throat to end me. Even as I saw him start to cough up blood—blood which did not look entirely right—he snarled and swung and drove forward, and with my arms trembling I was running out of energy. I press my chin down to protect my neck and let go, stepping to one side and closing my eyes as I feel his claws tear into my cheek and rip into my hoodie on the way down before he falls down, onto the length of wood stuck in his chest as it drives even deeper, leaving him sputtering and choking alongside his snarls and growls.

My mind races like thunder once again, thinking of what to do. I can’t let him get back up. I dart around, looking for anything to use, when I happen across a loose brick. I pick it up, feeling its weight. Heavy. Unwieldy. Clumsy. Just what I needed.

As I run back over the monster’s still coughing up blood as it slowly rises to one knee, pulling at the wood embedded in itself. It seems too dazed to notice me, as it gives no reaction to my boots pounding the concrete foundation. I hold up the brick, my arm still trembling and exhausted, and strike the beast over the head as it crumples over, rolling over onto its back, its eyes dazed and vacant but open, its teeth covered with its own blood.

I thought about what had happened to James, and what this abomination tried to do to me. Then, I raised the brick, and swung it into his skull….

Again,

and again,

and again,

and again,

and again.

On the last two strikes, I hear sickening cracks, and at this point his skull is even more distorted and disfigured than before. I suck in a deep breath as I slowly stand, dropping the brick limply, my arm feeling like one giant wet, painful and sore noodle, my hand reddened by abrasions caused by the brick’s sandpaper-like texturing. Then I watch his face revert to that of a normal human.

It’s only then that the true horror hits me: They’re gonna think that this man was murdered, rather than being the one doing the murdering. Well, that and my previous doubts of my own mental condition are reignited, with the possibility that I just murdered a social worker with a brick.

‘Shit, shit, shit’ is all that I can think to myself at that moment. Okay, I’m not going to mess around with trying to hide the body or anything like that. I take a look at myself and realize I got some of his blood on me. That’ll have to go too… plus the scratch on my cheek. I can worry about this later, for now I just need to get home without drawing attention.

For now, I draw a gauze pad from my bag and press it against my cheek with my off-hand, as my other arm was far too exhausted from bricking the monster earlier. I make a point of throwing my hood back up as I walk away.