The boy stood trembling in the closet. What had begun as a childish game of hide-and-seek was delving into a realm of utter terror as he listened to his mother. She was a floor below, in the kitchen, and there was someone there. Someone that shouldn’t have been there. Her voice that had just moments ago called out for him in her ever playful manner, now sent shivers down the boy’s spine. She spoke with fear, a level of fear the boy had never heard before. With each panicked word that reverberated through the house, the fur on the boy’s body stood further and further on end.

His mother threatened to call the police, only to be met with a deep, growling voice. The boy couldn’t make out the stranger’s words, but he could hear his mother moving, bumping into tables and cabinets, desperately trying to put some distance between her and them. She began offering their possessions to the stranger, but she was met with the growling voice, growing angrier and louder. They were demanding something, but his mother pleaded with them. The stranger spoke again, but his mother remained silent. Each second of silence that passed caused the boy to tremble more and more.

Then, the monster emerged.

With the roar of machinery coming to life, the boy listened as his family’s kitchen was destroyed. The echo of splintering wood. The clatter of metal pots and pans crashing to the floor. Dishes and glasses smashing and scattering across the tile. Various foodstuffs splattering and tumbling from now broken shelves. But above all of it, the boy heard his mother’s screams, carving their way through his ears, past the eardrums, straight to the amygdala, paralyzing him. 

All the boy could do was listen as his mother tried to escape, but instead of fleeing out the front door, he listened as she began running up the stairs. The boy didn’t understand why until he heard her call for him. She was looking for him, even as the stranger chased her. He tried to move, but his legs refused. He tried to scream, but his throat wouldn’t open. The boy heard the machines roar again and what sounded like a wall being utterly annihilated. His mother screamed for him again. He thought to use his arms to push the closet doors open, but they refused to move, as if some primal instinct restrained him, wagering on hiding being the only way to survive. He felt the tears pouring from his eyes as he heard his mother continue running up the stairs to find him.

No! No! No! Momma, no! Momma, please run!

But it was too late. He heard her reach the top landing, immediately slamming open the door to his room, screaming for him. The boy listened as she turned for the room he was in, but something began flying through the air from the bottom of the steps and crashed into the top landing. He listened to wood and drywall snapped as metal crashed into them. Then the boy began hearing the sickening impact of metal against flesh and bone. His mother screamed and yelped with each pop, thud and crack, her pain seeping into each noise she made. He heard her beg, her voice cracking. She was crying. Fluids splattered.

With a growl from the stranger, the machines whirred and the boy watched through the slats of the closet doors as his mother was thrown to the floor before him. The boy’s eyes darted across her body, memorizing each gruesome detail. Her face had been pummeled, with her shout broken. Bloody drool and mucus began pouring from her fresh gashes, staining the freshly installed pink carpet. The harsh chemical smell of it was being infused with the copper scent of fresh blood. There were cuts in parallel patterns across different parts of her face and her right eye was mostly red from the ruptured vessels. Her right forearm was clearly snapped and her left foot was twisted to an unnatural angle.

As much as the boy wanted to look away, he couldn’t. He heard the machines whir again as someone moved into the room, just out of sight of the closet. His mother whimpered, trying to drag herself away, but the boy watched as from beyond the edge of the closet, a skeletal machine hand stretched out, grabbing his mother by the ears. With another whir, the hand lifted his mother by her head. She tried futilely to free herself with her remaining good hand.

“Ple-please… please don’t do this…” The boy watched as the stranger finally came into view.

Their clothes were ragged, but they all seemed to be cleaned to the point of being bleached. They wore a hooded cloak that obscured most of their face, and what little the boy could see was encased by a mask or helmet. Beneath the cloak was a set of plain clothes, reminiscent of the medical scrubs worn by his mother’s doctor, although the fabric seemed much coarser. Their physique was thin and tall, but he moved as if under great encumbrance. The boy noticed the stranger wore no shoes, but their human feet were split open to reveal the graft machinery within. Wretched claws protruded from their machine feet, like the dinosaurs and extinct predatory birds the boy had seen in his school books. Although the human facade of the machine arm holding his mother was absent, the other arm maintained it, even if the mismatched skin shell pattern betrayed it was a graft as well. All the machinery looked well taken care of, but the clean appearance of the stranger was now stained with his mother’s blood, with small pieces of bone or teeth embedded in the fake skin of the graft. With a flick of the long machine arm, the stranger let go of the mother’s ears only to immediately clasp the back of her head in its palm; the hydraulic tendons of the fingers firming holding her in place.

“You chose this.” There was a vibration coming from the stranger’s throat as they spoke, making them sound as if they were simultaneously whispering and talking through a broken speaker that's volume was set too high. “I gave you… the chance for peace.” The words of the stranger hissed as they corroded the air, leaving an acidic taste in the back of the boy’s throat. “I gave you a chance to remove wickedness from your home and deliver your husband and his brother to me. Instead, you protect him!? While he and his brother interfere in my divine mission!?” The stranger’s body shook violently with rage as they uttered each sentence. They brought the mother to be closer. “Although those two were motivated by selfishness, our goals seemed aligned, so I let the wild dogs roam with the flock…but now…” The stranger brought the mother face-to-face with them. “...Now they reveal themselves! Wolves! Come to slay the shepherd! And! I! Will! Not! Let them win.” The mother was trembling. “I cannot fall to evil. I must not fall! I am the only one! The only one! I was chosen. Chosen! I saw the goddess! I heard her speak from her decaying lips! I heed her humble request! To deliver these lands from evil.” The stranger paused, taking slow, deep breaths. Their back and shoulders arched horrendously, as if they were violently expunging the fury from their body. 

When the stranger seemed to finally calm down, they gently lowered the mother to the ground, releasing their grip while kneeling down beside her. “I know why you do this. It is not your fault, child. You do this out of love and devotion. To keep your family whole, and I recognize these traits are admirable, but your husband is too tainted. His brother more so.” They slowly raised their more human-looking graft, as if to caress the mother’s cheek, but all she did was recoil away as it drew closer to her face. “I know I need to cull the tree. To remove the taint and filth, but I wish to be merciful, not cruel. To be deliberate in what I remove.” The back of their hand gently touched the mother’s cheek, making her flinch. The boy couldn’t tell if it was from fear or pain. “So, help me. Aid me in this battle against evil. Bring your husband and his brother to me, and I will redeem you.”

The boy’s eyes were fixated on his mother. He could see the terror in her eyes as she remained transfixed on the stranger. The boy didn’t know what he wanted her to do. He didn’t want her to help this person hurt his dad, but if she didn’t, the boy wondered what the stranger would do. Had his dad done something bad? Dad said he had only hurt bad people. This guy seemed really bad, so why were they acting like they weren’t? The boy squeezed his shirt tightly, still unable to make himself do anything. He closed his eyes, hoping this was a bad dream, but the crushing truth confronted him as he reopened them. The stranger was still there, his mother was still battered, and they were in grave danger. 

After a distressing amount of time passed, the mother finally responded by shaking her head no. The stranger remained silent and unmoving.

“You…you do not understand, dear.”

“I do.” The mother, even as she trembled, stared back with defiance in her eyes. The stranger grew tenser; their back arched more.

“You don’t...”

“Don’t patronize me! I’m not some naive little girl, you religious psycho!” The stranger slowly stood up.

“I’m not a psycho…” The stranger paced back and forth. The floor creaked beneath them with each steps. 

“I read into you after my husband said he was going to bring you in. You’re a psycho and a murderer!”

“The slander of sinners and devils complicit with the rot and corruption!” Their mechanical talons dug into the carpet, leaving gashes in the fabric.

“Did they lie about how many people you’ve killed?” The stranger stopped. “Did they lie about how you killed them?” The stranger remained silent. “My husband has blood on his hands, his brother too, but you… you make their slates look pretty damn clean in comparison!”

“Shut up.”

“I can think of plenty of scum cleaner than you!” The boy watched the stranger’s fists curl.

“Shut up!”

“And what about me?! What sin did I commit?! What sin are you gonna tell yourself to justify killing me!?”

“I said shut up!” The stranger pulled back their more human arm as if to throw a punch, but the boy watched as the panels of skin split apart to reveal a mechanical arm with a blade extending from its sheath. 

It was then that the boy made a sound for the first time since the stranger had arrived. A tiny gasp, barely audible over the sound of lubricated metal sliding against each other, but just loud enough that it caught the attention of his mother and the stranger. The boy’s eyes met his mother’s, hers widened far beyond anything he had seen before. In that fraction of a second, the boy turned toward the stranger, watching in slow motion as the blade extended forward, slicing through the closet door with little resistance. In a few milliseconds, the blade had finished extending, embedding itself in the back wall of the closet. 

The boy stood motionless, feeling a stinging, cold sensation in his cheek and muzzle. Then came the viscous warmth, slowly pouring down his face. He felt a wet warmth spread throughout his pants. Having seemingly regained motor control, the boy raised his trembling hands and gently felt around his face. His fingertips became warm and sticky as they touched his fur. Occasionally, his nails tapped against the metal cleaving through his face. He wanted to turn to look at it, but found his head seemed adhered to the blade. With a jolt, the blade pulled out of the wall, retracting back toward the stranger. The ease of it sliding through his body sickened the boy. He watched it slither back toward its wielder with a slight sucking noise as it left his flesh behind. As the bloody part of the weapon emerged from the closet’s shadows, his mother let out a horrified wail. The stranger stood motionless, looking down upon the weapon. When his mother moved toward the closet, the stranger immediately struck her with the large mechanical hand. She laid motionless on the floor. The stranger’s breathing had become erratic, panicked even. The boy felt the left side of his shirt become hot and sticky. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something fall from his left shoulder. Looking around, he didn’t see anything, but as his eyes lowered to the floor, a dark mass lay by his feet. It was oddly shaped and seemed rather hairy. Before his brain had even formed the thought, he reached up to his ear and found the tip had been completely severed.

Am…Am I dead…did he…kill me?

A shadow fell over the closet door as the stranger approached. The boy didn’t make a noise, the primal instinct to freeze had taken over again. Slowly, the figure of the stranger lowered so their face could peer through the hole they had just made. The boy watched the stranger’s eye wildly scan the closet until their eyes met. The mask worn by the stranger had been damaged, but the strange crescent marking that went over it remained intact. It reminded the boy of the odd sticks carried by the humans in the windows of old buildings he sometimes visited with his grandparents. One of the stranger’s eyes was exposed by a crack in the mask; their skin a ghostly pale and their large eye had an abnormally small, dark iris. They stared at each other for what felt like eternity; the boy worried any move would invite the blade to try again. Then the stranger chuckled and his eye became soft, like when his parents smiled.

“Oh, you poor little thing. I didn’t mean to scare you.” They stood up and gently opened the closet door. Returning the human graft arm to its regular state, the stranger reached out to the boy. “You have nothing to fear, little one. I’m not here to hurt you.”