Foster's

Chad 1

She came home to her armchair having clearly gone through her window and lying on the lawn. She could hear the sound of some sort of commotion going on inside but she couldn't see anything.

That was not good.

She got the door open and found that the whole living room had been turned upside down.

Kyle was standing in the middle of it, her coffee table in one hand, her sofa in the other. Both pieces of furniture were tilted up like he was looking underneath them.

"What the hell are you doing?!" she thundered and he tipped the couch over fully. It fell to her hardwood floors so hard that she literally felt it vibrate through her shoes, and she knew he did damage to the floor. They were original to the house and she was certain the final selling price had been at least two grand higher because of them.

He stared at her with those empty eyes of his as she glared up at him.

"What is this? Monster Fung-shui?"

The TV flickered to life and said: Intruder.

Angelica looked around, immediately worried. She moved through the chaos that used to be her living room to press closer to Kyle's side. Being with him would be what made her safe, after all. Her eyes scanned around the shadows of her house looking for regular people movement but saw nothing at all.

"Like a burglar?"

He paused no doubt searching the TV channels for an appropriate explanation. Angelica continued to glance around, hoping that nothing was going to jump out at her from the shadows, and if it did that Kyle would deal with it.

The TV crackled half of the word Monster when the thing grabbed her ankle.

Right away it had her off her feet and crashing painfully down to the floor. She landed on her back with a terrible whufmp and for half a second she just lay there trying to get the air back in her lungs. And then the next second, right after she hit the ground it started dragging her... towards the armchair.

She yelped for Kyle and luckily for her he reached out right away.

He got a hold of one of her arms and yanked her back, pulling her up and off of the ground. The thing with the hold on her ankle had not let go and that was to it's own detriment.

Once Kyle had her in the air and the monster was revealed he reached out with his other massive hand.

And the second he had a hold of it he just dropped her.

Angelica plummeted to the ground, hitting with another whufmp and a yelp. When she managed to prop herself up her monster was dueling another one.

She couldn't quite see what it was, but she could see purple octopus looking tentacles and a snapping black mass that was filled with sharp teeth. The tentacles were wrapping around Kyle, his torso, his face and his arms, the black mass that was mostly mouth was trying to snap but he was holding it down and keeping it from hurting him.

Angelica got up and carefully approached the wrestling pair.

"What... what is that?"

Kyle glanced to her and the distraction was enough. An tentacle wrapped around his neck and his grip on the black mouth slipped.

She watched it's teeth sink in Kyle's arm and for the first time she heard her shadow monster make a sort of sound of pain. Here she had thought he was impervious to pain, but he clearly had felt that.

He reared back, dropping his hold on this monster. It scuttled away, disappearing into the shadows under the armchair. Kyle was regarding his arm, ripped and leaking and then he roared in anger. He flipped the armchair but the creature wasn't there.

"Where is it?" Angelica asked jumping up onto her upturned couch. "Where did it go?"

But Kyle didn't answer.

Instead, there was a knock at her door and Kyle just blinked out of existence.

Oh god damn it.

She turned around and found that she had left the door open and a pair of cops were walking in towards her.

"Oh... uh... hello..."

The first cop, clearly the more senior of the partners, was an average looking man with brown hair who filled out that blue uniform very nicely. Beside him a woman already had her notepad out. She too was filling out that blue uniform nicely, she had her dark brown hair pulled back and just like her partner she had a hand by her gun on her hip.

They turned to where she was sitting and was clearly surprised by what they saw.

"We were called about a disturbance, some yelling and uh..." he looked around and her destroyed living room and she guessed exactly what that cop saw. A chair that went through the window and now her living room was a mess.

"Oh uh... someone broke in and uh... turned everything upside down. I'm not sure why, I have nothing of value," she said. "But uh... I guess I should fill out a police report?"

The cop blinked his eyes. "Ma'am... why are you on that upside down sofa?"

"Oh uh..." she looked around trying to figure out how exactly to explain with. Her cop took a step forward no doubt to help her down, but she didn't know where the new monster in her house had gone and she could not loose two cops in this house. She just couldn't.

"No, no," she said, pivoting and slipping off the back of the couch and then scampered towards the two cops before whatever was under it grabbed her. "Do uhm... do you want me to come to the station or something..."

"There's a hole in your house ma'am, anything or anyone could get in," the cop said and she turned to her broken window. Most people would be concerned about leaving that open for exactly that reason. But she had a shadow monster and normally he didn't let things get into their house, not that she could tell him that.

That and Kyle had gotten a nasty bite and she wasn't sure what that meant for him. She didn't know if that was a severe injury to him.

"Right," she said and she realized that she was acting super weird.

Like call more cops for back up kind of weird. Like investigate further kind of weird.

She had to do something.

So she started crying.

Immediately the cops had her out by their car trying to calm her down, treating her for shock and telling her that it would be okay.

This was all normal. It was just the shock, they kept saying. It must have numbed her and just wore off. Perfect, excuse and she jumped on it.

Just so long as they didn't think she was crazy.