"Kitty!" The creature cried in excitement, which quickly shifted to concern as it picked up your broken, exhausted body into its inhumanly long arms. "Let's go home, kitty." it says as it lifts you off of the ground and begins to shuffle with its unnaturally wide gate back up the road to the house. The house where they were. They remained, those awful men, those horrible, wretched men. Those men who felt entitled to break into your home and take whatever they wanted. It was your home. You didn't know when the shift from the old woman's home to your home happened in your mind, but somewhere along the lines, it did. You felt protective over the strange little home, and you were going to make them pay for tearing away the sanctity of it. For treating it so roughly, for breaking it. For tainting it with their presence. You feel angry. More than angry, you are nearly blind with rage. You have never felt such passionate hate in the entirety of your life. "Jack." you struggle to breathe. You can't seem to jam enough air in your lungs. You approach the gravel of the tiny house's driveway. You can hear the men ripping the picture frames off of the wall. Rummaging through the drawers and exclaiming in frustration when all they found was mountain after mountain of pinstripe candy. You point a shaking finger to the men, whose silhouettes you can now see clearly through the shattered window. "Get them."
That was all you said. That was also all you needed to say. Laughing, Jack laid you down gently on the ground at the side of the house. He laughed, patting your head, before he entered the home. You closed your eyes so you could not see what was happening inside the house, but you could hear, and that was enough. You could hear the men screaming in horror. In absolute terror. You could hear the snapping of bones and the heavy, wet sound you now knew to associate with headless bodies hitting the ground. Laughing Jack returned to the front yard, wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. He smiled brightly at you. "They're gone, kitty!" He giggled. Crouching beside you, so close that you can smell the blood of the men on his breath. You know it should bother you. Just hours before the death of a single man had racked your heart and mind with unimaginable guilt as you blamed yourself for what had, all things considered, been an honest mistake. Now look at you. Sicking your monster upon two men, knowing it would spell their death. You can't even tell yourself that it was an act of self-defense. It was murder. It was as cut and dry as anything could be; you murdered those two men, and you were glad. You were happy that they were dead. You laughed at the ridiculousness of it, the ridiculousness of everything that had happened in the last few hours. At the pain in your body, at the dead men in your house, at yourself. At the monster crouching patiently beside you.
You reach out and lightly rest your shaking hand against the side of his face. Your thumb gently stroked the side of his cheek, smearing the blood across his stalk white face paint. "Thank you, Jack." You say. "You're my best friend."
