...It's been days since he started noticing something's with a corner of his eye, or when he was awakening, something white was moving at the periphery of his vision.
At first, he just thought that he has worked too much.
Tiredness was taking its toll.
Michael made a mental note to go find a doctor sometime soon, but as he was still doing nothing to fix the problem, the strange sightings have continued.
The blur was simply disappearing too fast to be identified.
But then, there were more alarming things. Besides the blur, that he has already started getting used to, his food started to disappear.
Michael could have sworn that yesterday he put a half-eaten sandwich on his working table. The next day there was nothing.
"Okay." - he thought. - "I just gotta find a doctor. Get some meds. I mean, I must be going damn insane."
A week passed, the blur and the disappearances of leftover food have continued. He continued to stay quiet about it.
...but for some reason, he didn't really want to come back home now. That thing, it was only happening when he was home. In his apartment.
One day, he managed to finally sit in his office and think straight about the thing. After several hours of deep thought, he managed to assure himself that this was just a play of his raving imagination. After all, ghosts don't exist, nothing supernatural exists, and his apartment doesn't have any pests or anything. He'd call pest control, but... meh. There was no proof that thing was real.
Door to his apartment creaked open.
There was a fresh pawprint on the dusty part of the floor, by the corner he never used and didn't really think of cleaning up.
That thing was HUGE.
Michael swore and smeared it with his shoe.
- You're a figment of my goddamn imagination. - he muttered. - And nothing but that.
However, after that, when he went for a morning coffe the next day, there were two alarming things at once. First, the cream he set aside for special instances was nearly gone.
- Ah, shit. - he threw an emptied carton into the trash, after only several drops came out. - Gotta add that shit to the shopping list. - he stretched his arm for the coffee cup. It was not there.
Something moved his coffe cup.
While he's alone.
Impossible.
He swore again, took a sip.
The silence was broken with loud coughing and even louder swearing. Michael cringed at the string of white hair-like substance he pulled out of his mouth, gagged again, and threw both the spit&coffe-covered hair and the cup into the sink. He doesn't want to see this. He'll deal with that crap later.
"I seriously gotta need a doctor soon." - the man thought, as he walked out. Stopping before crossing the road, he took a short glance at his windows.
...a white blur disappeared from the kitchen window.
- Whatever. - Michael turned back and proceeded with his day as usual, forgetting about the thing the moment he set foot on the pavement accross the road.
Coming back home at night, he hesitated for a moment. What if the thing was still... inside? What if he just didn't come home this day? Or thrown a piece of meat in and then waited? Or just dash in and shot the damn thing, or whatever it was?
Nah.
The apartment was dark and silent.
Peace and quiet, nothing that bad.
He looked around cautiously for the first few moments, but then calmed down. Pffft, he made himself believe that there was something else apart from him in his flat, what a stupid childish thing to do. He's not a kid anymore to believe in things like that. He outgrown these like... years ago.
Michael turned to flip the light switch, but something... perhaps a movement of air, perhaps a subtle sound, reminiscent of something like footsteps...Something caught his attention.
The man froze, alert, feeling the "fight or flight" response kicking in. He hadn't felt anything like that in years.
Slowly moving his head, the human caught a glance of this Something Else... Whirling to face it, he nearly fell to the floor.
This shit was vaguely animal-shaped, reminding him of a dog or something, but... this thing was definitely NOT a dog. It was too big to be one. It was standing there, by the window, quite literally solidifying as he watched, its long tendrill of a tail still partially nonexistent, present as a subtle mist, that was shaping into flesh and bone as Michael watched. Yet, what horrified him more wasn't the tail, nor the long, strong, muscular legs of the being, armed with claws so huge and sharp they could probably sever even metal, let alone human bones.
What horrified the human most was the being's face, if anyone could call it that.
No eyes. Well, sort of. The round eyeholes were staring at him, no light reflected there. The THING didn't blink. There was no eye movement. Nitch. Notch. Nada.
Secondly... the thing, almost invisible line of the wide mouth and the long snout. They were... separated. Like a human nose and mouth.
That thing was not right.
He doesn't know for how long was he standing there, observing the thing. Time stopped. Nothing blinked.
He could barely feel his own breath.
He could not move.
Even if he tried.
The thing didn't move either. Just stared at him. Not blinking. Just staring. Making eye contact, perhaps?
The man remembered that eye contact longer than six seconds means the desire to either have sex... or murder. He liked his life too much for it to end like this, mauled by some weird shit out of nowhere. He still hoped, that at some point it was still just a figment of his imagination, like sleep paralysis or something, but a car passed down the street below, and the THING
FLUFFING
MOVED
It rustled the bedsheets, as it was coming closer to the helpless prey. It interacted with the real world, its tail touching the window, moving the handle. It was real. As real as Michael.
The thing yawned, showing at least two rows of triangle-shaped teeth. The insides glowed slightly.
The man felt his scar of the leg tingling, remembering that horrifying dog attack that left him terrified of any animal for the rest of his life.
Before it could get too close, before the soft "click-clack" of its claws could get louder, Michael screamed, at last.
Something was moving on the moonlit roof of the building. A dark shadow was finishing its feast, chewing loudly on something that vaguely resembled a part of human figure. The things that were deemed to be "not tasty", such as metallic pins, buttons, shoelaces, were spit out and cast a small shadow themselves.
Something scraped up the roof, making the shadow turn its long neck to stare at the intruder.
A white...well, blue, shadow, an exact copy, except for the colors, of the one having a bloody feast in the middle of the night, crawled up to the same point and sat there, waiting.
- For how long are you gonna mess with the poor shit? - the black shadow asked, its white eyeholes and nose glowing in the darkness of its own shadow. - He's gonna have a heart attack sometime. - it spit another metallic button out and watched it roll down the roof and fall into the streets below.
- Nah. - the white being tried to snatch a part of the bloody feast, but its grabby hand was stopped by a similar black one.
- What you gonna do if he really -does- have a heart attack? - two rows of teeth dug deep into the last piece of the unfortunate human.
- Just the same as you did. - the thing crouched, watching its other self finishing the feast with such jealousy that Dante would be certainly amused. - Eat and move on.
- Don't forget to call me. - the thing wiped its bloodied mouth with the pieces of its most recent prey's necktie.
- You goddamn wish.
The two disappeared over the edge of the roof, leaving the remains to dissolve in the accidic spit, so nothing could be found there when the Sun rises the next morning.