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Gerry exhaled unsteadily, trying to quiet his heavy panting where he had hidden behind a conveniently placed stack of crates. He couldn't quite remember what he had done to most recently irritate the People's Church, but whatever it was caused them to lead him on a merry chase as he tried to avoid both their parishioners and the numerous pitch black alleyways they seemed intent on cornering him in.
He thought he had found some peace when a trickle of awareness pricked his spine, a sick sense of wrong tilting the world as it did when the Eye felt the need to let him Know. He glanced to the warehouse behind him, noting with a detached sort of calm that the windows probably shouldn't be able to hold that many panes, never mind how trying to focus on them too hard made a migraine radiate from his temples. The building wavered, almost like a sickly filter was snapping in and out of focus in front of it before it was very and abruptly the most normal warehouse Gerry had ever seen.
Great, he thought with a silent scoff, what I really needed tonight was two creeps.
His breathing had finally settled, but it wasn't nearly long enough before he heard the telltale pause of feet too close to his hiding space. The light above him exploded and he was off before the grotesque sucking sound he heard could resolve itself into one of the cult's pet creatures.
Gerry ground his teeth where his path backwards branched to a barbed fence or the warehouse. He dashed straight for the warehouse before consciously deciding to, cursing his ill luck as the skitter of clawed limbs raked against the bricked wall behind him, not needing to turn to know the lithe shadow was bounding ever closer. He slammed through the door, thanking something that it was unlocked before pushing it closed and bolting it over and flipping on the lights. A fluorescent hum filled the hollow of the building, the flood of light revealing a decrepit interior.
The slam of claws and hands against the door was drowned out by a winding sound that Gerry could only barely identify as a laugh. He brandished his knife, whirling to face the sound, though he could not see it's source.
"Well, well. It seems the Eye's newest soldier has found himself caught in quite the sticky spot." That echoing laugh again, bouncing between Gerry's left and right.
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather keep my quarrel to the singular tonight. We can part ways and these blokes and their pets would be none the wiser."
"Bargaining, already? I'd been sure the Archivist would have taught you better than that. But I'm intrigued. What do you think you can offer me to deter me from such an easy meal?"
Gerry cursed again, of course he'd wander straight into the claws of something that wanted to play a game. (He didn't have bloody time for this.)
"Well I figure you could eat little old me, sickly, a little worn down," a looming awareness prickled his senses from the shoulders down, as though he was dangling into a great maw of something far larger than he could comfortably comprehend, "or," he added with growing haste, "you could let me out of here and let the 4 churchgoers who have been following me be your dinner for the evening. Surely 4 disciples of the Dark are more filling than one unaligned man."
A giggle grew from his left, "A very interesting counteroffer, sickly, worn-down soldier. An even more interesting introduction. I suppose we shall see, won't we?"
Gerry couldn't respond before he was thrown forward as the door behind him unlatched and bounced open, muffling a grunt as he fell to his elbows.
The lights around the warehouse sputtered and died, darkness spreading like ink so Gerry could hardly breathe through it's oppression. And then he was sinking into a puddle of muck that seemed to open up around him and he couldn't breathe, precious air fighting a losing war through the dark slide of slime that seemed intent to fill his lungs.
It seemed that just as he had come to the realisation that he would die here, sightless and blind and strangled, an iron grip of a hand, no- the things that he thought were fingers coiled once, twice- around his wrist and pulled and then he was free and coughing and retching, and the sounds of rough, human laughter devolved into screams and then there was sudden silence, broken only by Gerry's own heaving.
A few lights flickered back on, sparking in some places where bulbs had broken in the presence of the Dark. The light was dim, dimmer even than Gerry thought it should be, leaving the puddle he kneeled on lit in sharp contrast, impossibly black against the dirty cement.
He shuddered as his stomach heaved once again, and stood only when he was sure he could hold his own weight. He grabbed his knife on the way up, absently flicking as much of the brack off of it before resheathing it and stumbling towards the way he came.
He paused for a moment on his way out of the building, holding his breath as though whatever had been watching before would speak again.
The warehouse creaked, a bulb sparked, but no spiralling laughter assaulted his senses, and no itch beyond that caused by his shirt drying against his skin prickled his shoulders. He pushed open the door and-
Caught himself as he stepped into and against a soft surface that he soon realised was his sofa.
The ghost of a giggle brought a fresh wave of nauseous vertigo, followed by the creak of a door and a snap. He didn't need to turn to see that whatever door had brought him home wasn't there anymore, if it ever had been, but he did anyway. That ghost of the need to see and know grabbing him in a way he couldn't identify as entity driven or not.
Gerry let himself fall onto the sofa, flopping so his head and one arm dangled.
"Fuck that. Fuck all of that."
He let the swirling in his stomach and head slow before he got up again, lurching directly to his bathroom and waiting to strip until he was under the warm spray of the shower. He rinsed himself until the water ran clear, and then shampooed and conditioned his hair one more time, just for safety's sake. If his previous tangles with the dark and its water was anything to go off of, his hair was going to need all the help that it could get.
He rinsed his clothes as best he could, chalking his boots and jacket up as a loss. He piled them into a thick trash liner along with the rug that he'd tripped over on his way in. His sofa appeared to have avoided absorbing any of the slime, but he carried it out to the bins along with the rubbish bag of clothes anyway. The last thing he needed was to wake up to his furniture growing claws and trying to chase him around his flat just because he hadn't noticed he had drenched it while he was wallowing.
Gerry leaned back against his door after locking up, staring at the empty space left by the abrupt eviction of the main focus of his living room. He pushed his hair back, making a note to keep an eye out for cheap sofas on his next charity shop run, and turned on every light in his flat on the way to his bedroom.
Better safe than sorry, he reminded himself glibly as he settled into bed, struggling to not think about his most recent brush with drowning, that awful laughter, or the looping coil of not-quite-fingers that he could still faintly feel the tingle of around his wrist. He fell asleep in near-blinding light, hand looped loosely around wrist in a pale imitation.