Shadow Crawler

Innocence

While his daughter lived in a wealthy, lakeside neighborhood with her mother and rich-for-nothing boyfriend, Todd Willard lived in a small, stuffy apartment complex a few miles away. After he and his ex-wife sold their house, he found something comforting about it being so close to everything he held dear to his heart, including his work, his daughter, and the sports bar with scandalously clothed waitresses, but far enough from his wife so he didn’t have to see her face, that had recently been carved into like a Christmas ham at the local cosmetic surgeons.

And also close to him, was Hitchford GenetiCorp, a local genetics research facility. Being a man wrapped up in his work much too tightly, he had failed to notice the odd on goings at the blandly white, indiscreet building a few blocks away. That is, until that fateful Friday night, when he came home from the office at around ten. He found it odd that when he came to his apartment, finding everything on the floor, torn to bits, or just missing.

Flipping the light switch on, he hesitantly shouted, “Is anyone here?”

When he received no answer he, stupidly, walked slowly through his small living area and to the tiny kitchen where he heard a slight rattling. His heart beat against his rib cage so hard it hurt and beads of icy sweat dripped from his forehead. A tall, dark figure stood in the small kitchenette, grunting in a way no human ever would.

Sensing his presence all too soon, the figure turned around, its body human, but face mangled into something that seemed extraterrestrial. Its eyes were wide and manic looking, pupils dilated to an unbelievable extent. Todd’s breath came in a shallow, gasping manner as the beasts teeth dripped a deep red substance. The floor was illuminated by the open refrigerator door, puddles of the same liquid were covering the floor and got larger as it came closer to…the body of Debbie Harmon laying on the ground.

In a whirlwind of fear, anger, and total brokenness, Todd shouted at the beast.

“How could you kill her like that!?” he exclaimed through tears. His voice cracking embarrassingly, but at that moment he could’ve cared less. “What are you anyway?!”

It laughed evilly, and Todd punched it right in the face. Unfortunately for Todd, he had no idea who, or what, he was dealing with. Being one of the many experiments to go wrong at Hitchford, he was inhumanly strong, fed off of human blood, and was one of the ‘HitchVamps’ gone horribly, horribly wrong. Meant to be a strong, brave warrior, he was indeed fearless and merciless, but for all the worst reasons.

Picking up the heavy man by the neck, the beast sunk his clawed hands into his esophagus. Writhing in pain and desperation, Todd couldn’t get a scream out of his throat. He could barely breathe. He could feel his life slipping away as deep red blood flowed from his throat and coated the hands (or paws he couldn’t decided) of the beast who would eventually kill him. His mind flashed to the lawsuit he had received merely a week ago, over the harm done to a woman’s son while being tested upon illegally at Hitchford GenetiCorp.

And then, his breaths stopped, his struggling subsided, and his heart no longer held a beat. Chuckling to himself, the monster got his fill from the blood spilled from the innocent man’s body before picking up the lawsuit file that he ransacked the apartment for. He hadn’t come in there expecting to kill anyone, but who was he kidding?

Killing full-blooded humans was the bane of his existence now.

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Sitting on her couch that same night was Harper. While the killing of her father was unknown to her, she was passing out candy to children and watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show repeatedly with Thalia and Lucy.

“You know, these is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Thalia said, wincing as they watched a dragged out Tim Curry strut around suggestively for the sixth time that night. Lucy watched, still entranced by the oddities that made this movie so strange, even though she had seen it well over a dozen times before the night.