By: Finalgamer

Prologue

The night was cold. That was well known to the body of the fox lying on the floor. It was really the ground, as he was outside. Glass fragments circled around him, like dead beautiful butterflies with frozen wings. They reflected the dirt-stricken moonlight, which cast its baleful eye towards the body. The body was clothed in a green T-shirt, a grey jacket, and blue jeans with a hole for the tail to poke through. The body twinged, almost like a coiled spring ready to fly out of a clock. He moved his left arm in a half arc across the tarmac, and pushed himself up with the other arm. He lay on his side, clutching his stomach now with the left arm. He couldn’t look at the moon. It was looking at him, with no remorse, it seemed. He groaned as his eyes began to blearily focus on the ground. He could still see the window of where the glass shards originated from. The window looked as if it was screaming. The wind that flowed through it certainly gave that effect.

The most reasonable action he could think of now, was to lie there and die. Just allow the blood to soak out of him like water from a burst irreparable dam. It was very logical. He had little strength left, and the glass shards that cut into his stomach were practically re-opening the scar he had on his stomach. Yet he wouldn’t die.

He couldn’t die.

Not when there was something left to do. Something he had to do before death took him. Revenge. He wanted revenge.

He knew it was wrong to commit actions in anger, but he didn’t give a fuck anymore about consequences. He was practically deemed dead anyway, after that. . .thing propelled him out of the window and down five stories. He was angry about this. He was curious about the thing he encountered. And he was also not willing to die, however much his body pleaded. His body pleaded to just give up now. You’re damaged beyond repair. Let’s just go quietly and let the afterlife deal with it.

But his mind was not sharing the same view. Why the fuck am I gonna leave my fate to the “afterlife”? Does it even exist? I’m gonna take a chance here, I know how probability works. And I know that I have better chances of going on and getting revenge, rather than die here like some pathetic coward. His body began to start bleeding a little less. Mind over body won once again. He got up, slowly, by shifting his arms in proportion to his weight, and allowed his legs to adjust to the weight of his wounded body. He crouched in the middle of the street, and looked at the moon, finally for the first time that night. He was a bit stronger, at least strong enough to look at the sky in defiance and confidence. `Now that I know I’m. . .ugh. . .alive,` said the fox, `I better go. When you’re dead, no one questions you about anything.` That was most certainly true. Some of the best witnesses to crimes were dead, and they couldn’t question the dead.

The fox was considered dead. He had witnessed a crime.

And he was not going to tell.

First things first, he needed to heal his wounds. That was important, considering the puddles of blood he left behind in his wake. He dragged half his body along like a corpse-thief stealing a freshly murdered body. The fox clutched his near-opened scar tightly, praying that it would hold.

He held against a dark wall, shadowed in the night, away from the moon’s white glare. He looked down at his feet and examined his condition. He wasn’t too bad off, but it would go critical without medical attention. He was about to look for a signpost that would lead to a hospital nearby, when he suddenly caught sight of a shadow, a shadow that was not his own. The fox sank himself against the wall, trying to be a chameleon and hide. The shadow was large, and certainly monstrous. Although whether the shadow truly reflected all of the beast that cast it remained questionable. The shadow had a large furry body, the ears were pointed and moth-bitten in appearance. The mouth was twisted and elongated, like an evil beard. The fox tried not to gasp, either in pain or from fearful shock of the shadow.

That shadow, he knew who it was.

It was the one he was searching for. The one who would taste his vengeance. The owner of the shadow was probably darker than the shadow itself, for the fox could not even see anything to tell of the thing’s anatomy. It had fur, yes, and it was tall and bulky. But that was all he could tell, apart from the ears, which were long and pointed. He was almost reminded of a rabbit’s ears, except these were somewhat different. They were sharper in point, but they had the same length of a rabbit’s ears. The thing walked onwards, down a nearby alleyway. The fox saw the thing become swallowed up in the darkness. He didn’t want to face the thing in the dark, but he knew he had to. He couldn’t have it any other way. He was wounded, he was alone at night time. He would be unfairly disadvantaged. But he had to try. This may be his only chance of retribution.

The fox staggered, trying to be light on his feet, as he approached the nearby alleyway. He steadied himself against the corner, and peeked in the dark alleyway. It wasn’t that dark, as there was a broken lamp flickering in a pile of cardboard boxes. The thing passed by the lamp, and yet the light seemed not to brighten it, as if it was forever wrapped in a shroud of darkness. It did however create a shadow on the wall. The alleyway was a dead end. At least the fox had one advantage. The thing couldn’t run anywhere. But then, he had the feeling it wasn’t going to run anyway.

He was about to step out of hiding and proclaim his challenge, when he noticed something odd. When the thing reached the end of the alleyway, right up against the red-brown brick wall, it stopped and placed its deformed paws on the wall. It looked as if it was going to be searched by a police officer or something. Then the air changed. It became cold at first, colder than usual. The fox tried not to shiver. The thing remained still, looking only left and right. It then began to push the wall, and the air changed to become warmer. A smell flew along the air, a smell of what would be fire, except that there was no fire or even smoke in sight. The fox thought that the lamp had overheated, but it was turned off, suddenly shorted out, as if in fear of the shadows that failed to be diminished by its lighting powers. A few of the streetlights outside the alley began to shorten out as well, leaving the fox in total darkness along with the thing at the end of the alleyway.

The wall began to ripple and glow blood-red around the shadowy figure, like a pool of disturbed dark bloody water. It didn’t seem solid anymore, but became slowly. . .liquid. The fox gasped silently. The thing pushed its hips forward, then the rest of the body followed, almost magnetically at will. The wall began to twist suddenly. It knotted and bent itself and the bricks that were part of the wall. Strange sounds began to be heard. Sounds like someone being tortured, and their screams being slowed down to at leat 1/5 of their speed. A slow, low moan that was unearthly. The wall began to melt at the touch of the thing’s paws. Then the wall opened up, as a jagged circular portal, the bricks disintegrating like sand. It walked through the portal, slowly and without hurry.

The fox was getting scared now. Scared for the first time since he was blasted out of the window and slammed down onto the cold hard gravel. Now he sees a shadowy, demonic creature enter through an unknown portal in a dead-end alley. He knew it was certainly a demon, but now the world began to twist its meaning inside his mind a little more. He had to decide what to do. Go home and forget it all ever happened? Or take a chance and go through that portal, find the demon and make it pay for what it caused?

His heart said yes, do it. You have to settle this matter. You decided not to die, so now you have to search. If you don’t, then it will gnaw at you forever, bit by bit of your mind and sanity, until the day you do die. His logic and his mind said no, let’s not do this. This is all a hallucination. Demons don’t exist, and neither do mysterious holes in alleyways. You probably took some LSD, fell out of the window, and are now recovering from the drug trip.

That would have been logical, were it not for the fact that there was no LSD or any kind of drug in that apartment. He never had drugs in his life, and there certainly was none in the apartment he fell out of.

No. He agreed with his heart. He had to settle the matter. He would not let something like this wear his mind down to nothing. He wouldn’t aggravate over it. And the only way to do that, is to go get that demon. That thing that caused pain.

`Oh, man.` he said to himself in a pained voice. `Today just gets weirder and weirder. And tonight as well.` He ran in a stagger towards the portal, which began to close at a steady pace, its jagged circle like a monstrous yawning mouth of teeth. The fox clutched his stomach tighter with his arm as if he was holding a baby, and jumped through the portal, trying not to worry about what he would find on the other side.

The portal closed, and the bricks reassembled into a solid wall. The lights came back on, and the lamp flickered happily to itself.

In the newspapers tomorrow, the fox’s face would appear in the missing section. He was presumed dead.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8


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