You And I (Expanded Edition)

Epilogue

Requested by our very own @Daddy_Stolas431 !!!!!!

------

The human world.

The first vomit hit the floor ninety-two seconds after the cleanup crew entered the house, and as she examined the gory scene before them, Nix quietly betted that it wouldn't be the last.

The moment they opened the door, the scent of decaying flesh hit the crew like a brick wall.

In the entryway, one of Nix's coworkers, Jamie, was hunched over, still heaving. The new puddle of vomit under him only added to the stench of the house. Another coworker, Aidan, gently patted Jamie on the back and told him to let it all out.

Jill was the first to speak. "Jesus Christ."

Nix looked at the corpses. One had his head completely caved in, another one was eviscerated while tied to a chair, one had his throat sliced open, and the last one had a chunk slashed out of his throat.

In her years working in a crime scene cleanup crew, Nix had seen some genuinely gruesome sights, but this one was one of the worst that she had seen.

Nix cleared her throat. "Looks like we'll need four body bags and another smaller bag for... that." She motioned to the caved-in head.

The other members of the crew nodded grimly and got to work.

------

"Hey, I just realized where I recognize this guy from."

Nix turned to the sound of Aidan's voice. He was currently zipping up the body bag that held the man who had gotten his stomach sliced open. Turns out they had needed extra bags for his intestines.

"Where?" Jill prompted, scooping brains and bone bits into another bag.

"This is Lucas Wilkes," Aidan continued, "he was in the news a year back. He and his wife got attacked on their honeymoon and his wife got killed."

Jamie paused his own work and thought. "Yeah, I remember that. There were a lot of people speculating online that he killed her himself and made up the whole story about the robbers."

"Her name was Maxine. I knew her." Nix spoke up. Everyone turned to her.

Suddenly flustered by all the eyes on her, Nix continued. "I was dating her best friend for a little while in high school. I talked to her a few times. She was my friend. I know that no matter who did it, she didn't deserve it. She was always nice to everyone."

Nix looked down. She thought back to high school. When she met and fell for a brave, confident girl named Jade, and met and became friends with Maxine Thomas. She thought back to just a day or two before when she got the news that Jade had died and she remembered how she cried and mourned the girl that she might have loved once upon a time.

Nix snapped out of her thoughts and looked back up at her coworkers. "Alright. Let's get this shit done and get out of here."

------

Hell.

"Goodnight, daddy!"

"Night, Jem."

The adult cat demon closed his son's bedroom door. The tiny house suddenly felt quiet without the sound of his son playing in the living room with his toys.

The father went into the living room and sat down on a couch, closing his eyes. It had been two years now since his wife had passed away, and it had been difficult to juggle his guilt and his responsibility to take care of their son.

It was hard, but he tried every single day to be strong for Jem and to give him the father that he needed.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, the doorbell rang. Confused, the father stood up. He wasn't expecting any visitors. He crossed over to the front door and opened it to see who it was.

Just a moment later, a knife was stabbed into his throat.

Gagging, he clutched at the blood spewing from his throat as Lucas Wilkes, now a hyena demon, wiped the blood off of the knife and stepped into the home to begin searching for the poor man's wallet.

Lucas rummaged through drawers before finally finding the wallet. He flipped through it and grinned. "This should be enough for a week." Lucas pocketed the wallet and walked back toward the entrance of the house, where Jem's father lay bleeding out.

Lucas kneeled down and raised the knife above the father's head. Before he could bring it down, he heard a door open from behind him.

Lucas whirled around, seeing a terrified young cat demon boy who looked about seven years old. Little Jeremy Taylor looked down to where his father was bleeding to death.

"Daddy?" the little boy whispered.

His father gritted his blood-stained teeth and managed to say one last thing to his son.

"Jem, run."

End.