Work Text:
It was a relatively normal evening in their house, Apo sketching something out for a job, Cherri sewing beside her. Occasionally they said a word or two, small conversations when a thought occurred to them, but mostly it was comfortable silence between them.
After an hour or so of silence, Apo spoke up. “Hey, Cherri. How many types of monsters have you seen?”
Cherri hummed thoughtfully, putting her sewing aside to count off on her fingers. “Well, let’s see. I’ve seen a vampire obviously since you’re one, and I’m a werewolf so I’ve obviously seen a few of those, I’ve seen plenty of zombies and skeletons in the more untamed parts of the old forests, creepers too, I’m pretty sure I saw a wraith once but I’m not stupid enough to get close to one of those… and then there was the tailypo.”
“Wait, the what now?”
“The tailypo.”
“What’s that?”
Cherri shuddered. “It might go by a different name, that’s just what I call it. Nasty thing, one of the first really unexplainable things I saw out there, and definitely one of the most horrifying.”
“What does it do?”
Cherri hesitated. “I’m not actually completely sure. I only saw it once myself, I’ve told you how I worked with a group of raiders for a while, right?”
Apo nodded. Cherri had mentioned before that she’d been part of a small raiding group as a teenager, but she’d never explained why she left, saying something about how it was a ‘long story’ and changing the subject. Apo had never pressed her about it, figuring that if Cherri wanted to tell her about it, she would.
“Well, we usually followed a yearly schedule. Travel out in spring, do our raids in summer, travel back to base in fall, and hole up there through the winter. But one year we had a streak of bad raids. We didn’t have the money or resources to last the whole winter, so we stayed out later, but the bad luck just got worse. By the time winter rolled around, we had less stuff than when we started and we were still a month's journey from base. We were getting desperate, and desperate people do stupid things. One night, one of the guys came back with a long piece of meat, easily seven feet long and half a foot wide. He said it was the tail of some giant animal he’d seen in the woods. He'd tried to shoot it but the tail was all he could get. Still, it was better than nothing, and the guys were ecstatic. They cooked it in a stew and everyone took a bowl. It looked fine at first glance, but something just seemed… wrong about it. I gave my share to the guy next to me, said I wasn’t hungry.” Cherri shuddered. “I think… that instinct saved my life.”
“The next morning, we woke up to find the guy who’d been on watch was gone. He’d just disappeared without a trace, like he was never there. Obviously we were all kinda freaked out, but the captain got us all together and calmed us down. He decided to double watch the next night, and we went on with business as usual. The next night, both the guys on watch disappeared, same as the previous night. We tried moving camp, but the disappearances just kept coming, night after night after night until there were only three of us left. The captain took his gun and sat in front of the tent, promising he’d catch whatever was taking us and shoot it dead. We were woken up in the night by a scream and a gunshot, and just like the rest of them, he was gone. It was just me and the other kid of the group, I think his name was John. He was a couple years older than me, maybe seventeen or eighteen, and really serious about the job. We were never friends exactly, but going through shit like that brings people together. We decided to stay awake together. Whatever it was that took the rest of the guys, neither of us wanted to face it alone. It was all quiet for a long while, sitting across the tent from each other and looking out the exits, jumping at every little sound and shadow. Then we heard it, a voice whispering in the darkness. ‘Tailypo, tailypo, give me back my tailypo.’ Over and over again, getting louder and louder and louder until it was howling just outside our tent, ‘TAILYPO, TAILYPO, GIVE ME BACK MY TAILYPO!’ Then John screamed, and when I turned around it was there. Some huge, hairy beast towering over us both with long black fur and lamplight eyes. It had a gunshot wound in its neck and a dripping, bloody stump where a tail used to be. It had grabbed John in one of its claws, and it was holding him fast with his arms pinned. Well we were both scared out of our minds, but I told it I didn’t know what the hell a tailypo was, but we didn’t have it. It got its head real close and sniffed me, then looked at me for a long moment then it spoke again. ‘Not you, you don’t have it. But this one… Give it back. GIVE IT BACK!’ It gripped John tighter, and I could hear the crunching as his ribs broke. He was shaking, crying in pain and fear. I might have been too, I’m not sure. We both knew he was going to die. We didn’t have any weapons, there wasn’t anything we could do. It turned and vanished into the forest, and I never saw either of them again.”
“Jesus.” Apo wasn’t sure what else to say to that. Cherri nodded.
“Yeah. Seeing it that night was the most terrified I’ve ever been, and to this day I still don’t know what happened to it. I’m not exactly upset that the guys are gone, they obviously weren’t good people, and it’s not like they had anyone alive to miss them, but it just makes me wonder… What could have happened if it all went differently? What if those raids went well? We all would have just gone back to base and I would have stayed with them.” She shrugged, staring into the fireplace. “I guess I’ll never know.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Thank you for trusting me with your fear.
“Of course.” Cherri smiled softly, standing and taking Apo’s hand. “It’s late, let’s go to bed.”
Apo nodded, letting Cherri lead her upstairs. As Cherri curled into her chest, Apo let her awareness slip away as rest overtook her.