On the 7th day since the encounter with the creature, John had almost entirely forgotten it having finished the last book, he lay in his bed and looked at his watch, which read noon.
As he leant upwards, his back cracking slightly as he assessed himself. He was wearing the same clothes for 4 days, having forgotten entirely to tend to himself. He promptly undressed and had a thorough dry shower, using up the rest of the wipes, and brushed his stale mouth. His hair was a shaggy mess, partly thanks to the lack of real showers, which he couldn't do much about now unless he sacrificed a bottle or two of water.
He donned a fresh pair of fishing attire, unpackaged an equally pristine pair of socks that were covered with cartoonish depictions of tunas, and stretched fully. "Today I should go out and get some supplies, get some more stuff from the fuel station, and more books. But maybe not get so involved next time I read, I need to care for myself still." He quietly remarked as he stood up, bending down to touch his toes, wincing at his lack of flexibility.
John neatly piled the books together in the corner, he frowned at the dank smell of his pillow and a makeshift bed. "This will certainly not do for another night, maybe I can use a shirt as a pillow case, and just cycle the clothes top to bottom so I have a fresh layer. Goodness I certainly need to find a way to clean this stuff, it is slowly becoming an issue, especially for my nose."
With that, he stripped the pillow case and tossed it into the corner in front of his bed, then reshuffled the clothes around so a fresh layer was on top. He somewhat successfully used a shirt as a pillow case, even though it didn't fully fit, he reminded himself it would be temporary as he would secure proper bed linen, maybe even a real bed for that matter.
With one final stretch, John scooped up his backpack, slipped it on and made his way outside. He winced a bit from his foot, the injury still had not healed as much as it should be, but he pushed on.
John made it out the front of the store, took a right, and then another, before making it down the main road, en route to the fuel station. John daydreamed for most of the walk, thinking over a few plot points of the books he just read, as well as sequels he wanted to read.
He was brought back to reality once he approached the entrance of the petrol station, the smashed window brought back unpleasant memories of the previous Tuesday when this all happened, but he shook them out of his head and rounded the corner to the backdoor.
It was still closed, which was a reassuring sight for John, he went down into a cautious stance as he slowly opened the door, peering inside to see if there was any otherly presence to be found, but sighed in relief when there wasn't.
Once inside he immediately set off to pick a fresh box of cleaning wipes, a few bottles of water and some shirts for sound dampening, this time nothing stood out as important in particular, as he had most of the essentials already and just needed restocking.
However as he passed the shelves in the backroom, to go to the front of the store, he stopped in his tracks, he saw bloodied tracks coming from the fridge room, with a definite non-human impression in the now fully dried blood puddle. Shit it came back, oh fuck oh fuck it was, no maybe still is looking for me.
John felt every hair on his body stand on end at this realisation, the creature wasn't just mindless and coming to any source of noise, it explicitly came back here, in search of him. His good mood plummeted hard, this was not something he wanted to find out.
He was getting ready to make his way back hastily, but he stopped himself. "No calm down and take breaths, John. Easy. As long as you don't make any noise, or go into any unknown buildings, you will be ok. He/she/whatever the hell that thing is, can't see, hopefully, can't smell, only can hear. You can do all three, you have the advantage." John gently rubbed his arms and took a few long and slow breaths, calming down.
"Just grab this stuff, go to the library and grab a few more books, or whatnot. Then continue to lay low." John further reassured himself, he decided not to overstay his welcome in the petrol station and quietly zipped up his backpack before setting off. However, he stopped, having an idea.
He quickly dashed back inside, grabbing a bottle of tomato sauce, before pouring it at the entrance to the window, door leading to the backroom, and backroom exit, leaving a small gap to the side for him to step past.
"Now if he revisits, I will know. That can tell me how safe I am in this town, no steps, no monster."
John let this lul around his head for a moment. "No wait, I am an utter moron. I just put sauce all over the floor for no reason, the monster has equally no reason to come here unless I made noise, which I would prefer not to actually." John rolled back his head and made an exasperated 'F YOU' with his mouth. However, an idea came to mind.
"Although maybe I don't have to be here to make noise, maybe I could get a little radio, or something, play it on extremely low volume, just barely above a whisper. No monster could conceivebly hear that, unless within the town, and I would know thanks to my uh 'pressence detector'. Ok ok, small radio alarm clock, set alarm for some time in the morning, low volume, then come back here a full 24 hours later to be safe. Bingo, then I will know if he left and if it is safe to explore, or to hide away and somehow lure him away from town." He let out a relieved sigh, he was still unsure if it was a good plan, but it was something.
John set off with purpose, ideas swam in his mind about how to source a clock radio. "Ugh I really don't want to go to the residential area, maybe once I know there is no monster residing with me. Too many dark, buildings with no visibility inside, bodies too..." John shook the mental image. "I have no clue where an alarm clock would be outside of a department store or something." He said slumping his shoulders as he soon approached the T in the road, left being to the library, straight forward being home.
"Wait... Library, library, LIBRARY. Chess clocks. Holy crap, the chess clocks. I also saw a CD walkmen in the audiobook section. Maybe, just, maybe I could rig up something. I saw an electronics magazine, that could help. I totally broke apart stuff as a kid, how hard can it be to make something?" John took a sharp left and swiftly crept on with purpose to the library
"The Chess Clocks at this library have wires coming from it to power on a light, to indicate who's turn it is. Maybe that will work to power a CD walkmen? Idk voltage or Amps, but if it lights up stuff, maybe it should be enough?" He mouthed to himself, running things over in his head.
John's musings were paused once he arrived at the doors of the library, he quietly pulled them open and stepped into the dark, paper-glue-smelling building.
He set his backpack by the door, before turning around and making his way through. He walked through several small rows of study desks, before reaching the far wall, where the wooden flooring turned to carpeting. Two distinct tables stood by the right wall, with chess pieces on the floor. Bingo...Or well CheckMate, Monster.
He approached the closest table, a clock set was haphazardly placed, the main unit a yellowing plastic rectangle with two buttons on either side and two sets of clocks. A wire tangled around it, leading to an opaque rectangle of equal size, this time red and blue, with obvious mounting points for a stand that is nowhere to be seen.
"Right, so this clock normally sits on the side, the players take turns, and the lights either glow blue or red, for the 'viewers' to see. Not sure this is necessary since it is a small town heh." He said, carefully untangling the wires to get a closer look at the unit.
John tilted the whole unit sideways, there was a battery cover on the bottom, and next to it was a switch. He promptly flicked it and immediately heard one of the clocks quietly tick, while the light panel slowly illuminated red. "Perfect, still works and is battery powered."
He switched it off and wrapped the wires back around it and carefully carried it back to his backpack, sliding it between the clothes, before heading back to the same section, but this time over to the right where the audio entertainment was. There he spotted shelves of books and music CDs, along with a small early-2000s-looking round player that sat on the shelf, earpieces dangling, half tangled. John went over and picked it up, automatically sliding the volume dial to zero. Not taking any chances. He then popped open the unit, exposing a CD reading: "Starving Games: CD 1"
Heh, wicked movie. He closed it before flipping it over to the battery compartment, popping it open he saw three AAA batteries sitting snuggly inside. "Er, I think each battery is 1.5V, but I didn't check what the chess clock had. Though the compartment looked much much bigger, goodness I hope it will be the right voltage."
John was sitting back in his small room, three devices in front of him, two partly in pieces, the chess clock and one of the CD players. He had managed to find another one, as a spare if things didn't turn out so great with his inexperience with electronics.
He had removed the batteries from the CD player, and instead had the two wires from the chess clock going in, he had twisted the exposed copper ends around what he guessed was Plus and Minus. "Here goes nothing." John whispered to himself as he flicked on the clock's power, the remaining blue light came on and the black player's clock started ticking over, with a deep breath, he pressed the 'next turn' button. The CD player's lights came on and he felt the CD inside quickly spin up. John was about to celebrate, but that's when he noticed the screen looked a bit too bright, suddenly the screen fizzled out and the CD stopped, a thin wisp of blue smoke started coming out along with a soft crackle sound of now-fried electronics.
"Shit, back to the drawing board, too much voltage." John sighed and quickly switched off the clock, the line of smoke from the CD player stopped, and he fanned the remaining bit away.
"I need to sleep on this, my brain is becoming a lot like this player, cooked." With that John sagged in bed and turned away from his hodge-podge of a plan, closing his eyes and hoping tomorrow would bring more luck.
Several blocks down, the creature sat in the same house, resting its head against the glass in the master bedroom, almost like it was looking outside, waiting for someone. In the time it had spent trying to wait out the human, it had grown quite uncomfortable in the position it was in against the wall and on the bare tiled floor.
Currently, it sat on top of a mess of blankets and pillows, which it deemed more pleasant than without, even if it is of human use or origin.
It mused itself of the idea that its fellow kind saw him, relaxing on human items, lazing around all day, from the outside it looked quite bad on his part. But he assured himself it was necessary to entrap the human, a small sacrifice of dignity, to reap the rewards of his prey, his first prey.
The creature believed humans were loud and fumbling creatures, so surely this one was just in hiding, mere moments away from making its location known. Unpredictable especially. The creature added internally, bringing one of its digits over its left face plate, it ran along a section that was severely scarred and damaged, intact, but it left a gap, his mouth partly exposed beneath.
Very...