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Fuck Kravitz. Fuck Sazed.
It was night, and Taako was driving. He wasn’t really keeping track of where he was going, he was just too angry. He just wanted to get away.
Get away from Kravitz, get away from the same fucking topic of conversation that Kravitz just wouldn’t fucking let go of. Fucking Kravitz, fucking Sazed. Fuck.
The car stuttered to a halt and Taako looked down to see that he had run out of gas.
“Fucking--!! Fucking Kravitz can’t make sure to have some fucking gas in his fucking car!” Taako yelled, slamming his hands on the wheel. “Fuck!”
Taako slumped against his seat with a huff, crossing his arms. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? And where was he anyway?
He looked around and recognized the area as Lark Street, where that creep Lucas had used to live. Great, fucking beautiful. He had driven a lot farther than he thought and had meant to.
Taako eyed the houses surrounding him when his eyes caught something out of place. The garage door of the house in front of him was half-open. That wasn’t weird in itself, but in the dim glow of the headlights, Taako could see four legs. Horse’s legs. There was a fucking horse, standing in someone's garage, in the middle of the night.
Taako stared, eyes wide and mouth agape as an unexplainable chill ran down his spine and his skin broke out in goosebumps. There was something seriously wrong here. The horse wasn’t moving. No living animal could be that still and as Taako watched, something dripped from the horse’s stomach area, into a puddle on the concrete floor of the garage. It looked like--
Taako hurriedly slammed on the button to lock the car’s doors even though he had the feeling that it wouldn’t make much of a difference. There was something seriously off about the whole situation. Everything felt wrong, not even counting the goddamn bleeding horse in some fuck’s garage. The air felt wrong. Still and cold.
Keeping his eyes on the creature, Taako reached over to the passenger seat and felt around for his phone, blindly tapping at it to make a call to his most recent contact, whoever it might be. Risking a glance at the screen just to make sure the call was connecting, he lifted the phone to his ear.
“Taako!” The voice of Magnus Burnsides boomed in his ear.
“Maggie--”
“What the hell is going on?!” Magnus interrupted him with a shout, “Where are you?! Kravitz called me saying you guys had a fight and you took off in his car!” Taako stared at the garage door and the horse’s legs, not really in the right mind to comprehend the words coming out of his friend's mouth. Was the door moving up?
“You don’t even have a license, Taako!”
Taako swallowed heavily. “There’s-- There’s something here, Mags.”
“What? What are you talking about? Where?”
“Lark Street.”
“Lark Street?! How are you all the way over there?”
“I don’t-- the-- the--”
The garage door started to slowly slide up, seemingly on its own accord and Taako gasped, jerking back and hitting his head on the seat.
“Taako?! Taako! What’s going on?” Magnus was yelling again, alarmed.
“It--- it--” Taako stuttered, eyes glued to the sight that was being revealed to him, bit by bit.
“The house, there’s-- there’s something--” It looked like a horse, and as the door was finally fully open, Taako realized that the animal looked familiar.
“Ga- Garyl?” Taako choked out, and it was the last thing Magnus heard before the line went dead.
***
“Taako?! TAAKO! Answer me!” Magnus yelled, and after he realized the call had ended he hit redial, but the call wouldn’t connect. Frustrated, Magnus tossed his phone to his bed an paced around, hands flying up into his hair.
“Fuck me, holy shit, fuck!”
He realized he needed to call someone, Lup or Kravitz or better yet the cops , and he dived for his phone again.
***
Kravitz woke up. He was laying on his sofa, still wearing his clothes from yesterday.
Yesterday when he found out his boyfriend had disappeared.
Light streamed through the blinds on the window of his living room. Kravitz found his phone lodged between the cushions and he pressed the button on the side to turn the screen on. It was 3:00 a.m.
“What the hell,” he muttered sleepily, still groggy from crying and worrying and hardly sleeping. He went over to the window to carefully peek through the blinds, bringing his phone with him in case it was someone suspicious and he needed to call the authorities.
It was his car, there on his driveway, with the headlights on.
“Impossible,” Kravitz whispered out loud because the cops had confiscated the car to investigate the traces of blood within. Traces was a mild way of putting it, the interior had been painted red--
All that disappeared from his mind in a second when he saw who was standing next to the car.
“Taako!”
Still half-asleep, Kravitz rushed to his front door, unlocking it, his hand already on the handle when he came to his senses somewhat and stopped to think.
How could Taako be here? And hadn’t he looked kind of strange? His eyes sort of pale instead of the usual dark brown, and a sickly sheen to his skin, instead of the caramel brown it was supposed to be?
“Kravitz.” A whisper. Taako was right on the other side of his door.
Kravitz had to make sure. “Goddammit!”
He ripped the door open.
***
“What do you mean Kravitz is gone too?!”
***
“Can we go over this one more time.”
Lup was sitting on the sofa, her face buried in her hands. Barry's hand was gently set on her back, supportive but not confining because Lup hates nothing more than being restrained.
“So...” Barry started, clearing his throat.
“So, Taako and Kravitz fought about Sazed again.”
“Taako should just report that asshole, I’m on Krav’s side here--”
“That doesn’t matter right now!” Lup screamed, slamming her fist on Magnus’ coffee table. “Anyway, Taako storms off, takes Kravitz’s car and drives away, somehow ending up in Lark Street, where we found the car.”
No one mentions the blood covered interior or the fact that the doors had been locked from the inside as if Taako had somehow disappeared into thin air. There’s no need, they all were there. They all saw it before the cops came and forbid them from entering the scene.
“Yeah, Taako called me around 3 a.m. Sounded really scared, he kept saying there was something.” Magnus said, rubbing his eyes. They were all tired. Tired and afraid.
“And the next night, Kravitz disappears. His door was open, his phone laying on the floor in the doorway. No signs of forced entry, nothing taken. Keys and wallet and all, left at the house. Just gone.” Barry summarized and hearing it all again made Lup sick to her stomach.
“What the fuck is going on?!”
“Wait, I just remembered something.” Magnus said, frowning in thought. Lup and Barry turned to look at him, caught off-guard by this new development.
“Right before the call cut off, I hear Taako say something. Sounded like a name, like… Garyl?”
“Do we know a Garyl?” Barry said, as Lup frowned.
“Garyl? But that doesn’t make any sense. Garyl was Taako’s horse back when we lived on the farm, Auntie had to sell him.”
***
Lup and Barry take to driving around Lark Street, even though they were told not to. But what else could they do, they couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t figure it out and they knew the police knew even less what was going on. Maybe they would find a clue.
Barry was at the wheel, driving slowly, fighting to keep his eyes open as Lup slept uncomfortably on the passenger seat, the exhaustion finally having caught up with her.
Barry stared blankly at the road in front of him, until he saw something in the headlights. Two people, walking hand in hand on the side of the road. Barry swallowed thickly and squeezed the steering wheel in a death grip as the car rolled forward slowly past the pair.
It was Taako, pale as a sheet, a stark contrast to the bright red, gaping wound on his neck. Like his throat had been ripped open, messily and by force. Beside him was Kravitz, who seemed outwardly unharmed, but he had the same hollow look in his white film-covered eyes as Taako. They were holding hands, and as Barry kept driving and staring at them, they moved their heads to follow the car, owl-like, in perfect, eerie synchronisation.
When Barry finally snapped out of it and looked into the rearview mirror, there was nothing.
He didn’t wake Lup up to tell her. The clock on the dashboard showed 3:00 a.m.
***
Magnus wasn’t sleeping, he was drinking coffee to stay awake when he heard a yelp from outside. It was followed by pained yips and howls and Magnus squeezed the mug on his hand. It sounded like an injured dog. He knew he shouldn’t go outside, but he had to check. He could never forgive himself otherwise.
He wandered outside into the backyard and followed the noise to its source.
It was a dog, half-eaten but somehow still alive.
“What the fuck,” Magnus said, bile rising to his throat. He heard movement in the darkness and too late he realized that he should’ve contacted Lup and Barry.
***
When Lup woke up and saw that Barry wasn’t lying next to her, she knew she was done for. She didn’t even look at the time, she just walked outside. In her pajamas, not bothering with shoes because it wasn’t going to matter anyway.
Her brother was there. Empty-eyed and bleeding, reaching a hand out to her, like he used to when they were little.
“Lup.”
It wasn’t him and she knew it, she wanted to run but what difference would it make. Everyone else was gone. She had nothing left.
“I know it’s not you, Taako.” She said, her hands tightening into fists but she wasn’t going to fight. There was no way to win, because she had already lost.
“Lulu,” Taako said, blood pouring from his mouth. Lup stared at his expressionless face, stared at her dead brother or whatever it was that had taken his shape and bit her lip, starting to cry because she hadn’t heard him use that nickname in years.
“Taako--”
“L̷̫̪̞̖̦͈̹̼͈͖̦̱̱͠u͟͟҉͉̰̞̼̟͔͍̹̗̳̺l̨̦̜͖̳̭̩͍̝̼̤͜͝͠ư̴̧̤̬̠̱̺̘͠͡.”