TW: Gore


Ren had texted Rebecca a half-hour after their call and although he avoided the reason as to why he broke into the police station in the first place, he swore up and down it wouldn't happen again. Only a flavour of bitterness in her teasing, Kamilla voiced her lack of surprise at how quickly Rebecca forgave him. Rebecca told her to shut up and she did.

After school the next day they had their biology books open, giving them sparing glances despite meeting up under the premise of studying. Studying and then dinner at Kamilla's house this time, since Myriam was working a late shift and the Otsuka's were having guests over that night. They didn't elaborate on who those guests were, only that it was best Ren and his tail were far away when they came.

Kamilla asked to see his tail as soon as it was brought up in conversation. Ren, finding it uncomfortable tucked into his pants, set it free.

"What the…" Kamilla said, pushing her notebook aside to crawl closer to Ren. "Can you move it around and stuff?"

"Yeah," Ren said, swishing it around and patting Kamilla on the head. Her face split into a childish grin.

"That's sick!" she exclaimed as Ren smiled sheepishly. "You really went full monkey, Monkey Brain!"

He swiped the tip of his tail across her face and she cried out at if she had been punched.

Rebecca opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was cut off by the sound of something shattering downstairs. The three of them froze, exchanged glances, then tip toed to the stairs. Ren hastily shoved his extra appendage into his pants. Kamilla took an experimental sniff and gave a one shoulder shrug.

"Mom?" Kamilla called down the stairwell.

"I-I dropped something," Mrs. Lovelace replied.

"You okay?" Kamilla said, making her way down to her. Rebecca and Ren trailed her, keeping close to one another and staying silent.

"Yeah, fine," Mrs. Lovelace said. She was strangely dolled up, for a night staying in; she wore a ruffled blouse with a pink chiffon and blue jeans. She had broken a picture frame that normally sat on a tall shelf above the T.V. She stepped off of the stool positioned by said shelf, looking rattled.

"What were you doing?" Kamilla asked, picking up the picture and sighing as shards of glass cascaded to the floor.

"Dusting."

Rebecca didn't need to hear her heartbeat to know she was lying. There was no duster in sight and she wouldn't look up from the floor.

Kamilla narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, but didn't push it.

Instead, she put the broken frame gingerly on an end table. "Why don't you take Bailey for a walk? I can clean this up."

Mrs. Lovelace looked at her blankly.

"To clear your head," Kamilla explained. Mrs. Lovelace nodded absently and wandered into the foyer, calling Bailey's name. Kamilla muttered what sounded like "crazy bitch" under her breath before pointing at Ren. "Can you go get the broom in the hall closet?"

He obliged, and Rebecca wandered over to the picture. Picking it up carefully, Rebecca ran her finger along the frame.

"What?" Kamilla asked, hovering over her shoulder.

Rebecca waited until Mrs. Lovelace slammed the door behind her before speaking. "Nothing."

It had to be nothing. The fact that it was a picture of the Lovelace's at a park near her house was random chance. It had to be …

Mrs. Lovelace felt as if she were walking through a thick fog, up until she reached the bottom of a driveway. The memory of this place was far down a long, dark tunnel, but she was adamant to reach the end. So she walked up to the front door.

Bailey tugged insistently at her leash; she wanted to explore an ill-maintained front garden. Mrs. Lovelace ignored her and purposefully stepped up to the door.

She placed a hand over the doorknob and just held it. She let out a slow breath. Then turned the knob.

It was locked. Obviously. No one was home. She wriggled the handle uselessly, then took a step back. Swallowing, she rubbed her eyes and let Bailey drag her back to the sidewalk.

She was half way there when she heard a rustling from beyond the backyard gate. Rooted to the spot with ears straining, there was no mistaking what she heard; footsteps walking on the porch and sliding open the back door. Someone was breaking in.

Mrs. Lovelace found herself fumbling with the gate's simple hatch lock before she gave herself permission to. Bailey was silently wagging her tail, excited at the prospect of having somewhere new to maraud.

Once in the backyard, Mrs. Lovelace had to drag Bailey over to the still-open back door. She stared, unblinking, at the hulking figure of the person who had broken in.

Bailey started to growl. The figure froze. In the darkness of the house, it was impossible to see who it was, so Mrs. Lovelace stayed back, a shiver of fear making its way through her.

Bailey snarled when the figure turned around and stumbled back at the sight of them. Whoever it was scrambled deeper into the house, breathing heavily and whimpering in pain. Mrs. Lovelace slackened her grip on the leash just as Bailey went berserk, lunging forward to pursue the intruder. With still-clouded common sense, Mrs. Lovelace followed.

"Did you find them?" Kamilla asked, poking her head into her parent's bedroom.

Rebecca, in her parents' closet, sat up and squinted, scratching the back of her head. "Uh, what do they look like again?"

"They're black," Kamilla said, clacking her nails on the door. "In a brown sleeve. They have the words Fabric Scissors on them, Becks, how can you miss them?"

"I didn't miss them," Rebecca said hotly, but Kamilla just raised an eyebrow then went back into the hallway. "I just … haven't found them yet."

She sighed, examining the once-hidden miniature highboy that she had been rifling through. Honestly, they just needed to cut out samples from a magazine…

"Aren't you not supposed to use fabric scissors on paper?" Rebecca called out. "Doesn't that like, make them dull, or something?"

"It's their fault," Kamila replied from another room, referring to her parents. "They shouldn't hide the scissors from me."

Rebecca opened another drawer while grumbling under her breath. A big stack of papers. Nice. She riffled through them to reach the bottom of the drawer because maybe the sleeve was at the bottom, she didn't know. Nothing about the Lovelaces made sense to her, including the fact that they refused to let Kamilla use normal scissors without their permission. All in all, they were harmless, if not weird as all hell. Kamilla had a bedtime and wasn't allowed to play with scissors, but they didn't question why she was hanging out with Constable Gus so much.

Most of the papers were documents that she couldn't care less about. Underneath them all, she found no brown sleeve. After another exasperated sigh, she was about to drop the papers and slam the drawer shut in frustration, when a picture slipped out from under her thumb that was holding the rest of the documents in place. She cocked her head and grabbed it with her other hand.

"Well, well, well," Ren drawled from downstairs. "Guess who just found the baby scissors."

"No way!" Kamilla said, racing to the head of the stairs and grinning down at him. "My old Spongebob ones?"

"Hell yeah," Ren said. "And Hello Kitty."

Kamilla laughed while descending to him. Rebecca could hear them chattering away, but she remained hyper focused on the picture in her hands.

It was a candid shot of Kamilla, Ren, and Rebecca at the park. Kamilla was holding a soccer ball while grinning at Ren and Rebecca, who had their arms slung around each other. Rebecca didn't remember when it was taken, what they were laughing at, or whether she had a copy; she was staring at her house in the back corner of the photo. It had been circled three times with red marker.

Rebecca flipped the picture over, and her blood ran cold. In the same marker, the words Girl with spikes on her arm was scrawled out in loopy handwriting. She stood to her feet shakily, eyes wide with horror.

"Oh God," Rebecca breathed, then spun around and screamed, "Ren! Call your dad!"

Mrs. Lovelace flicked on the kitchen light and stared at the intruder, who Bailey was snarling and gnashing her teeth at - it was Connor MonHeim.

"Wha- what?" Mrs. Lovelace asked, but couldn't be heard over Bailey. "What are you doing here?"

"Tell your dog to-" Connor ordered, then doubled over as a coughing fit overtook him. He looked terrible; bloody and beaten and hacking up some disgusting black substance that served to make Bailey become even more hostile. "G-get it away from me!"

"You … you're a criminal," Mrs. Lovelace said, pointing one shaky finger at Connor while edging toward the cabinet by the stairs. "Y-you … stay away from me!"

"What?" Connor gargled through a mouthful of the black substance. He waved his arm, gesturing toward the still open back door. "Get away from me!"

Bailey jumped up and bit down on his arm, hard. Connor screamed and grabbed her by her collar, trying to pull her off, but she held fast. His vision went black around the edges, and his heartbeat became a deafening thrum, speeding up by the second.

"Get off! Get off!" Connor begged, feeling his teeth transform into jagged spikes. "Please! Get away from me! Get out … get …" his voice became gravelly as the black sludge coated his throat. His eyes turned fully white. His nails dig into Bailey's fur, breaking the skin and causing her to yowl in pain. "I said get off!"

He threw Bailey towards the door then turned away, covering his face with his hands. Tears were pouring down his face.

"Calm down, calm down," he wheezed, holding his chest and struggling to stay upright. He was fighting to reach the front door. If he could get outside and get some distance between him and Mrs. Lovelace, he could control himself. He had to.

Mrs. Lovelace had reached the cabinet by the stairs before he could. At the back of her mind, she knew that Myriam kept the key to her safe in the other drawer, so in no time at all she had a loaded weapon in her hand.

Connor looked up, eyes wide with fear as the sound of a cocked gun reached his ears.

"Don't-" he started, but it was too late.


Rebecca didn't lift her foot off of the gas pedal until she whipped into her parking lot. Ren looked positively green, while Kamilla was filled with the same anxious energy as Rebecca.

Her elderly neighbour stood nervously by the porch, but jumped up when she saw Rebecca.

"Oh dear!" she cried, hurrying down the steps towards them. "I heard screaming! And a gunshot! I called the police already…"

Before Rebecca could speak, Ren touched her forehead and said in a stern voice: "You didn't see or hear anything."

Immediately, the poor woman relaxed and smiled. "I didn't see or hear anything."

"Go inside, Miss," Ren ordered. She did as she was told, walking as if in a dream.

Rebecca would have reamed him out if she didn't notice that her back door was open. She raced past Kamilla and Ren, feeling her heart drop at the sight of her wide-open back door.

She froze in the doorway. Kamilla peaked over her shoulder, then charged inside. Rebecca stumbled, but remained upright, staring at the trail of blood on her kitchen floor.

"Oh, shit," Ren said, stepping inside. Rebecca walked forward, the blood reminding her too much of the MonHeim house; it was on the tiles, on the hardwood, leading to…

Kamilla was on her knees, staring blankly at the body in front of her. Her hands gingerly reached out, but she couldn't bring herself to do more than ghost her fingers over the blood-matted fur.

Rebecca felt her heart stop beating. Bailey's neck was bent at an awful angle and her eyes were glassy. Finally, Kamilla gathered her dead dog into her arms and held her close to her chest.

"Oh shit," Ren repeated, staring further into the room. Rebecca followed his gaze. There, sitting in front of a crumpled pile of clothes, was a very bloody Connor MonHeim. His eyes were pure white. His teeth were sharp fangs.

Kamilla kept her head bowed as she cried. She didn't see Connor stand up and look over at them with a blank expression. His shirt was filthy; stained with dirt and black goo.

The blouse and jeans at his feet were torn, but still distinguishable. Rebecca could still see the ruffled sleeves and pink chiffon.

"What did you do?" Rebecca asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

Connor's voice was shaking. It was raspy and barely human. "I told her to stop. I couldn't help it…"

"What are you talking about?" Rebecca said, shaking her head. She didn't know when she started crying, why she was, or if it was out of fear or sorrow.

"I'm so hungry," he rasped, his voice reverberating into a low growl. There were spikes on his arms now, ones that he hadn't had before. They grew out of his flesh, bubbling out of the black slicked substance. "I'm just so hungry…"

"Don't come any closer," Ren warned, despite his voice shaking. He tried to push Rebecca behind him. Then, he glanced at the couch. "Did you eat Stacey?!"

"I was hungry," Connor said, stumbling closer.

Rebecca stepped ahead of Ren, her jaw clenched. Her voice was as loud and domineering as it could be. "Stop."

Connor looked at her with hollow eyes. She swallowed thickly.

"Don't you dare," she warned, shaking her head. "Don't you even dare, Connor."

They stared at each other for a long moment. For a scary moment, he started to flex his muscles, and she thought she was going to have to kill him. Instead, his eyes reverted back to normal and the spikes on his arms retracted. He gasped for air, and spat out a glob of blood and saliva that landed on the ground with a revolting plop.

He looked terrified. He turned and sprinted out the front door and didn't look back.

Rebecca knelt down next to Kamilla and placed a hand on her shoulder. That's how Myriam found them:

Ren sitting, horrified on the couch, while Kamilla cradled the body of her dog in her arms, Rebecca sobbing quietly beside her.


Hey guys! Been a while!

I just want to thank you guys so much for over a hundred follows! That's actually pretty insane!

lokidoki9 - Theo is one nasty boy, I have to admit. Thanks for sticking around, and cheers to another one!

loulouflowerpower - I know, I'm bad at consistently updating :( Thank you for still being here, though!