Chapter Text
“Funny how YOU feel nothing at all.”
“Don’t worry, we can help.”
—-
“Have you considered… that you were chosen?”
“They send me for a reason.”
—-
“Still can’t take matters into your own hands?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
—-
The homeowner was rudely awakened by the all too familiar sound of a fist driving mercilessly into the solid oak wood of his front door.
He jolted violently on impact as he plummeted back into awareness with a hiss, a slight grimace twisting his gentle lips at the unwanted vertigo.
“Ughh…” He groaned, pinching the ache at the bridge of his nose between two fingers. As if in response, the insistent pounding started back up again.
First one of the night already, huh?
Whoever it was, they’d certainly come early. The dying twilight could still be seen bleeding out between the blinds when the man hauled himself up to shuffle down the hall, and even from the safety of his abode he could feel the lingering remains of the day’s fatal heat.
Really though, he should be grateful; his last two guests had been taken by FEMA just before he’d turned in for the night previous, and he did NOT want to be alone with that pale fucker lurking about. He took some small comfort in the fact that the being had never darkened his doorstep this early before, so he was probably safe.
Well. Safety was just a myth now, but this was something that could at least help him pretend.
The homeowner yawned and scrubbed the sleep from his drowsy eyes as he unhurriedly checked that his shotgun was loaded and ready to fire, idly wondering if those suits would at least have some way of making the last guest they took feel a little bit warmer. Poor guy had seemed miserable.
But then… who isn’t, these days?
The banging started up again in earnest, and he rolled his eyes dramatically, already done with this night’s bullshit. “Yeah, yeah, I’m comin’. Gimme a sec…” Honestly, what kind of maniac wanders around this close to daylight in the first place?
The homeowner leaned forward on his toes to see out the peephole properly… and promptly felt ice shoot down to his bones.
“Howdy again, buddy. How are we doing here tonight, hmm?”
Shit.
That damned grin split even wider. “Assuming, of course, that there is a ‘we’ to speak of… and not just the lonesome ‘you’.”
SHIT.
The man opened his mouth to lie, closed it again when the shrill ringing silence of panic robbed him of words. He tried again, failed again, resembling a fish freshly ripped from the river by the jaws of a grizzly.
The visitor snickered from behind the door, and the owner distantly registered he’d stumbled a step back and could no longer see the threat. “Ohh, I can hear your precious little heart racing… and not much else in that big, empty house of yours~!” The monster crooned. The homeowner could feel the smug certainty shaping that awful face. Could hear it in the giddy anticipation of that awful voice.
He knows. He knows. He knows.
The man’s thoughts ran in chaotic loops and circled back to crash into one another like a pair of frantic hares in a killing pen. Instinct froze him in place like a startled fawn.
Meanwhile, the intruder seemed unbothered by his lack of response.
“Well then, let’s not bother with the preamble, hmm? I’ll let myself in.”
The homeowner heard his own ragged gasp as if from far away. Adrenaline finally yanked him two steps back like a hook in his navel, and he clumsily braced to fire through the chaos of raw panic.
The solid oak door bulged inwards, and everything happened too fast for him to follow after that.
The explosive force of a premature shot jarred his bones, deafened his ears, blinded his eyes. He could only faintly register the floor shaking at the stomp, stomp, stomp of the intruder charging him before a fleshy cold noose was wrapped tight round his neck and lifting him clear off his feet.
His spotty vision cleared just before the burning in his lungs overcame him, and the last thing the homeowner knew was a hungry pair of manic eyes peering directly into his own, unnervingly close.
They were literally eye to eye. The Pale One’s bottomless gaze was soaking in the dying light of his awareness with reverence and an almost childlike joy, like a starved dog witnessing the miracle of rain in a cracked dry desert.
The human’s eyes fluttered as he slipped away, and murky darkness swallowed him whole.
——-
The homeowner clawed his way back to awareness with the strength and clarity of a runty newborn mole. Reality came at him in bits and pieces; a strange sense of swaying and pressure on his stomach, a piercing pain at the back of his throat that left a rattling little gurgle in his throat with each breath.
He tried to move, and found his limbs impossibly heavy and unresponsive despite burning with effort, like he’d been sealed in a jar of syrup overnight in the winter. “Wuh…?”
It was a jerky struggle to lift his head from where it had been dangling, fighting gravity and about a thousand pounds of weight, and what swam into view made no sense. That was… his house. Way off in the distance. Moving away…?
No, of course not, he was the one moving away from it. Bouncing and rocking slightly, and that weight on his stomach was because he was slumped forward over something solid. Something moving, backwards from where he was facing. His neck reluctantly bowed as his failing muscles wilted like scorched dandelions, and he saw dark jeans with pale bare feet padding through the smited grass with inhuman speed.
He was… being carried. By one of them.
…Oh. Right. By HIM.
F-FUCK…!
The chilling realization wasn’t enough to wake him fully from the fog he was trapped in. Every thought was saturated in tar, simple concepts stuck out of reach in the cookie jar above the fridge when he was five. Was he- drunk? No… no, this felt worse. Heavier. This was- had he been drugged?!
That bastard had drugged him!
Drugged him, was now- now taking him away, to-? Instead of just-!
Anxiety threatened to capitulate him as his impaired lungs heaved, so when indignant anger swelled alongside it he feverishly clung to it like a shield.
“Wherrre- where are yuh-“ His furious demands were interrupted by a wet gasp, a painful cough, he could hear his own voice slurring and sputtering, why couldn’t he feel it? His tongue was a dead slug in his mouth- “-t-taking m-mme?!”
And… why am I still alive? He didn’t dare to add on.
“Welcome baaack.” The Pale Visitor responded to his pathetic, angry croak with a smug laziness that was rank with victory. “So sensitive to the venom, and yet you bounced back so very quick!”
The human choked. Venom?! From what?!
“Oh and, as for where we’re going… don’t you worry your adorable little head over that. You’ll soon seeee…” The monster sing-songed giddily.
The creature’s deep voice resonated up through a broad bony back and into his gut, and the homeowner realized with a flush of mortification that he was slung across the thing’s shoulder like a damned spoil of war.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when a large hand delivered a ‘reassuring’ pat to the homeowner’s bottom, as if to comfort a pet. The monster was… mocking him...
He tried to ignore how the intimate touch lingered longer than it needed to before slithering away.
“Really, you should be thaaanking me,” the thing murmured, nuzzling its face affectionately into his shuddering flank, “You’re about to move up in this world. Or rather, hehe, down.”
And just what the fuck does THAT mean?
The human’s rage shriveled into a sinking pit of despair as the true implications of his situation began to dawn on him.
The monster had said it himself: dogs rule the world now. Dogs like HIM. And, if dogs rule the world…
He had been so preoccupied with fearing his death at the hands of this creature, he hadn’t considered that what it had in store for him may just be far, far worse.