I wake up with a lingering pain on my right side. I pull up my shirt and sure enough, there’s a bruise. I just knew that would hurt in the morning—did monsters take karate classes or some shit? I get up, marching across my house to the washer and shifting my previously bloodied hoodie to the dryer. I’d have to go without it today, and simply settle for my usual work shirt on its own. My arms are still a little sore as well, but I fight it as I walk over to my laptop, check some posts, and coax whatever words of writing I could out of my hands and my mind, despite my body’s distractions. I then pause to think to myself about my own hunger—thankfully not a hunger for flesh brought on by that scratch on my cheek turning me into one of them, but a hunger for just about any food, really.

I go to the kitchen and set the oven to preheat before taking a moment to look out my windows, taking a perimeter sweep around the house and checking its windows to make sure nobody was conspicuously standing and watching me. Satisfied, I suddenly remember the gauze on my face and go to the bathroom to go check it out.

I peel the gauze off slowly, ripping off the tape that secured it, revealing bloodstains on the cloth. It seemed to have scabbed up well enough without causing an infection, so it looks like I’m mostly in the clear there. Is this going to scar over? It better not, I don’t want to ruin my face. My odds with girls are bad enough as it is. I wash it with water to get the dried blood tint off, and then apply disinfectant to a new gauze pad, securing it with tape, working awkwardly with both hands full. It would’ve taken a lot less time if I had someone else to help me, but I have to make do.

I return to the kitchen to see the oven’s done preheating, so I slip a frozen pizza in and set the timer. I then return to my laptop and pull up the local news. They found the body, alright, of a man with his skull caved in with a brick and a piece of wood through his lung. The silver linings are that there are no assumed suspects, and that the guy probably wasn’t a social worker—it’d be too relevant for the news to want to omit it were it true. Reading through the article I found a description that looked a little more like me than I’d care to admit, but all things considered it probably wouldn’t trace back to me.

Still, the possibility grates at me, despite the fact that it feels ridiculous in the face of having a much more lethal threat on my horizons. I go back to writing and then have an idea that feels a little silly; documenting the details on how to fight these bastards. I open a fresh document and write down a few observations, before staring at the clock in horror.

I scramble to the kitchen, quickly pulling out a pizza pan from the drawers and—with an oven mitt—slide the pizza onto the wooden pan, quickly setting it on the countertop and closing the oven. Looking closer at the pizza, it’s slightly burnt, but at least it wasn’t a burnt to black, inedible monstrosity like I’d seen before.

I eat pizza and finish up the rest of my morning routine before heading out.

It’s a decent walk to the grocery store. I clock in and get to work.

The day goes by mostly peacefully, despite a constant ebb and flow of spine chills. I keep looking over my shoulder expecting one of those things to appear again and harass me, but it never comes. Constant tension, and no release to be found, like I’m creeping through tall grass waiting to be bitten by a snake. I realize around 10 AM that constantly looking over my shoulder is probably gonna unnerve someone, so I stop looking altogether, settling for tensing up slightly as people walk by me.

I’m putting canned peas on a shelf as a woman walks in my direction, though I try to ignore the footsteps and my own spine chills at the same time. I could practically imagine her reaching over and killing me in one fell swoop of her claws, the scene playing in the back of my mind; a movie on mute.

“My, my, aren’t you looking quite tasty...” That same fucking voice, again, grating like nails against sandpaper. At this point I wasn’t just scared; I was pissed off.

“Bitch, let’s see you try and take a piece of me!”

Those were the words I wish I could say, but there’s one problem: I like working at this place too much. It was an upper-end local grocery store, and as far as workplace environments go, it was the best I’d ever been in, not to mention a shockingly decent pay even for mere shelf-stockers.

I snap my vision over to see a face familiarly distorted, with a tongue snaking out of its mouth, washing over its teeth, probably in anticipation of gobbling up some poor bastard’s flesh. Except, I think that poor bastard was me in particular. I shiver at the thought and return to stocking the shelves.

During break time, I thought about Suzie and the others working here. Sure, for now they were remaining subtle and refusing to attack when witnesses were around, but how long would it take before they decide to just kill the witnesses instead?

Probably not the right move rationally speaking, but I might have to leave them all behind for a while. I’ll probably try to make it the rest of the way through this week before I pull the trigger.

Break’s over, back to work. The same old tension remains, though it’s not as bad now, seeing as I typically don’t get taunted more than once a day even now.

Then, I get a call that completely changes things.