I make a right onto the following street and slip beneath the shadows of several apartment buildings before happening upon a large intersection. The street lights were flickering rapidly between red and blue. I look in all four directions before making my way through the diagonal crossing, noticing a clock tower shaped Koban nested between the sidewalk and the entrance to a subway station.

I approach the box before gazing up at the enormous clock, which seems to be in working condition. It's 4:19 in the morning. I've been awake for one hour and nineteen minutes. The police bikes parked outside of the station have been shredded apart, presumably by thieves or vagrants, and the windows on the side are so fogged up, they appear as a sheet of ice on a frozen lake; I hug the side until I reach the entryway, peering inside. The glow from the street lights render the inside barely visible, and there are but a few police items: a couple of batons and an officer's uniform hanging from a rack by the small bathroom, clean though, as if they had just been used the day before.

I grip the handle to the door and the hinges squeak as if they're about to give way, but I manage to swing it open without issue; as I duck and crawl below the counter, I see a police scanner beneath the desk; I figure I might get an inkling of what's going on in the city if I listen to chatter. Where the hell am I? How long was I out for? As I panic in silence, the door suddenly slams behind me, but there appears to be nobody there.

"Probably just the wind." I say as I grit my teeth and tighten the grip on my gun.

Upon grabbing the police scanner beneath the desk, I keep my eyes glued to the door as I switch it on and tune to an active frequency, but as the squealing from the radio waves becomes louder, my eardrums are rattled by an intolerable noise from somewhere above me. I dare to look up and an older model landline telephone—roughly early 2000s in design—is ringing at the desk; it's rectangular pads display an odd arrangement of digital numbers:

"2718281828459045"

Upon seeing this, I'm paralyzed. The persistent feeling of being watched is the strongest that it's been all night. Passivity won't save me; somebody knows I'm here. In a split second, I have to decide whether to bolt for the door or pick up the phone. I rip the phone from the slot and hold it to my ear, listening quietly before saying anything. The first thing I hear sounds like AM radio static, but when I listen closer for any discernible noise in the sea of scrambled waves, something pops out that sounds like a person rasping for air. Then, in the corner of my eye, I notice something strange.

Through the window, across from the police station and a little further down the street, there is an ominous figure shaped like a woman standing outside of an old phone booth; the cord is being stretched and curled around the box. She appears to be facing my direction, but it's not exactly clear from a distance. When I pay closer attention I notice that she's making strange, waving movements with her body; they seem to be the source of the weird sounds that are being emitted across the line. She stands there silently as the wind whirs across the rooftops; she suddenly adjusts herself and leans in closer to the phone. A strange noise is coming through the speaker, like someone trying to mimic the cadence of human language with random chirps and warbles. In my mind, images appear that vary between irregular shapes and broken geometric patterns. She suddenly pulls her head away from the phone and drops it, causing it to swing around the open door before jerking back inside; she turns away and crosses the street towards the opposite sidewalk. As I watch her, the howl of the wind collapses into dead silence.

After a few seconds a muffled high pitched wailing erupts from the line, and I watch with dread as the woman's figure barely has time to assume a posture of intense panic before a pack of giant, black figures pounce on her, shrouding her body in the outline of some kind of reflective or transparent camouflage. Portions of her skin and clothes fly across the cement as she is torn to pieces; her strange rabbit-like screeches are silenced in a matter seconds, and when the shadows withdraw from the scene, a pile of scattered bones and picked flesh is left unattended until one of the beasts comes and drags the lower half of her torso into the darkness, painting a red trail from the sidewalk across the gravel. I stand, startled and feeling ill. I cover my mouth, thinking I'm about to vomit again, but I gag instead. My muscles are tense, my skin is shivering and I break out into a sweat. When I peer over the counter, my nose catches a putrid odor as it begins floating into the room. A giant four-legged creature is standing beneath the street light directly across from the koban, uncamoflauged.

I bring myself closer to the window to get a better view, but it's head suddenly flicks in my direction, forcing me to drop to the floor. While lying on the ground, I can hear a loud snorting accompanied by light padded feet pattering against the sidewalk.  A fog forms around the surface of the window, condensing through the glass. After a brief moment, the mist begins to fade, and when the footsteps grow distant, I climb back onto the table and see that the strange moisture had mangled the glass, causing it to melt slightly before twisting back into it's solid form.

I crawl back towards the door and glance outside to gauge the distance between the koban and the subway entrance. It's only a few meters away. If I remain here, I might have to linger for hours, or even days, and that's just if I manage not to get sniffed out. My best option at the moment may just be to run for it. Or, maybe, I'm screwed either way. Whatever choice I make, I'll be betting on it with my life.

While on my knees, I lean over to get a good view of what's going on beyond the sidewalk. I could see the lot of them dispersing in the distance; they seem to have lost their interest in the area, which makes me feel a bit more confident about trying to make it out quietly.

When I reach to turn the door handle, a rasp escapes into the air from somewhere behind me. Suddenly, a loud hiss reverberates through the walls, and a large black body crashes through the window; at nearly the same time my legs spring upward like a car jack being hit with a sledgehammer. I'm struck by a few stray shards of glass as I rush through the door, slamming it behind me before covering the distance to the stairwell. I nearly trip as I hear a bloodcurdling howl as I turn the corner, and rush down the dimly lit corridor.

The sound of crunching metal explodes as the door gets ejected from the wall and strikes the side of the entrance tunnel. Once I reach the 2nd set of stairs, I  and slide the rail all the way to the bottom. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I see the light hovering around a large, faint silhouette at the top of the stairs and duck around the corner towards the turnstiles. I hop over and dash towards the information booth where I find a fire axe trapped behind a pane of glass that's glued to the wall. I pull my gun from the holster and bash through it with the barrel, taking the axe and dropping out of sight. I grip the pistol in my right hand and hold the axe between my knees, leaving my left hand, my dominant hand, open.

I can hear the beast fuming and drooling, snarling and searching frantically for me. A panel above the desk begins to beep and glow bright blue, indicating that a train was fast approaching. I can hear the screeching stop of the brakes echo from inside the tunnel, and the train reaches the platform a few moments later. When the train comes to a halt, the growling stops, and the creature's attention seems to turn away from me momentarily. The silver end of the axe's cutting edge has a reflective surface, so I hold the tip above my head and use it as a mirror. I can see the contours of the monster as it approaches the train, but as the car door opens, I hear a loud bang, and all hell breaks loose. A man with shaggy shoulder-length hair and a five-o-clock shadow emerges from one of the train cars wielding an automatic pistol and what looks like a sawn-off shotgun.

"Thought you could get the drop on me, motherfucker?!?"

The fiend darts between the columns as he shoots in bursts of gunfire, dodging all of the bullets with ease. In a matter of seconds it covers two-thirds of the quickest path between them, all the while predicting where he would shoot. It's towards his three-o'clock position, and it's about two columns away from a pounce-and-kill. The man's face remains focused and impassive, as if he has been through this same scenario before; nevertheless, things aren't looking good for him. I jump up for a moment, and I have a clear shot at the creature. I swing the axe over my head, and with both arms, I hurl the thing with all my might and the silver tip gleams in the fluorescent lights as it descends. The beast seems to sense the incoming danger and tries to dodge, but it's too late. The axe hits its mark, slicing clean through the creatures tail, causing it to lose it's balance and fall.  As the beast howls and squirms around, the man approaches and tries to kill it execution style, but is forced to jump out of the way as it wags it's head and flails it's body, spraying corroding spit everywhere which eats through the columns and the floor. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, the beast rises to it's feet and turns it's attention towards me. I aim the gun with both hands, but when I try to fire, the gun clicks.

"Huh?"

"The safety!" he shouts; I fiddle with the gun in those few seconds, and when I look again, the creature is about to leap for my neck.

"Duck!" I hear the man shout; when I drop to the floor, the beast lunges over the counter, striking the wall at the back-end of the booth, being shot several times in the midst of it's flight. The man runs and slides over the counter, planting his boot on the creatures torso as he places the shotgun against it's temple. There's a loud bang, and when I turn my head, the creatures head looks like a charcuterie tray, and we're both drenched in blood. The man slaps his face with his bloody hand and drags it from his forehead to his chin.

His dull expression resigns, and assumes a wry smile; he extends his hand towards me, but when I try to reach for his hand, he takes my wrist instead. 

"So you're the one who dragged that stalker in here! You know how much ammo I just wasted trying to kill that thing!?!"

My eyes drift towards my gun as it lies on the floor next to me, and he suddenly kicks it away, chuckling slightly.

"If you were planning on dying today then you're shit out of luck, because now you owe me more than your life!"