The Wings of All Things

Chapter 1 Part 3

A man stirred awake. Head banging painfully in the rain. The last thing he remembered was hearing the wooden floor behind him creak and someone with an odd lisp apologizing a second afterwards when suddenly everything went dark. He got up from the wet grass, feeling cold from the rain that was not there before. The man stumbled up and looked around. He was in his backyard.

"But how...? A hole?" He whispered to himself as he looked in a hole that was never there before. "It must have taken hours to dig out." He thought. Hearing someone's panicked breathing get louder as he drew closer. He gasped at the sight inside. Two freaky looking creatures. A manikin with an axe. And a mutant with a dog face. Purple horns surrounded by dark brown curly hair, wearing a button covered backpack and a striped shirt. The man panicked when he saw the two odd looking creatures peer directly up at him. The one with the dog face did not scare him all that much. Even being a bit familiar when he saw her serpent tail and horns. It was the manikin that worried him. With nothing in its way to stop it, the sharp axe in the manikin's hand made him scream.

"Run!" He thought. Feet stumbling over one another to get up from the slippery ground. He ran as fast as he could into the forest. Screaming with no hope of savior. "How is this possible? How can it be real!?" He thought. Tales of the wooden beast should have been untrue yet before his eyes he could see it standing strong without dubious intentions.

"Those blasted Vultures must be behind this! They knew! They've finally found me! They've finally come to get-!" As he rambled, he heard something quick in the trees above him. Before he could think of what to do any further, he got tackled down from behind. Feeling his ribcage being squeezed, the heavy weight made it painful for his lungs  to breathe from. He felt a sharp tip of a blade at the back of his neck.

He turned his head as best as he could, the last thing he saw was the manikin standing on him, its axe high above its head. The man's screams were abruptly stopped by the blade. The blood washed away into the mud by the heavy rain. Gurgles and chokes for air were heard from the new hole in the man's throat as the manikin waited for them to cease. It straightened itself up. Getting off the man and lifting him up with ease over its shoulder. Heading its way back to the hole where it had left the other to be trapped behind in. When it got there, it peered inside. The chest it had been locked in for so long had been moved out of place. Now leaning against the side of the hole instead. It noted the tracings of claw marks along the wall and over the edge of the hole. It looked at the house. The body over its shoulder carelessly tossed into the hole.

A sickening crack could be heard from within, along with the sound of the chest falling over. The manikin walked up to the back door. The porch steps creaking under its weight only because it wanted to be heard approaching. Twisting the doorknob lightly, the knob refused to twist all the way. The manikin walked off the porch and looked up along the wall of the building. A perfectly opened window. The manikin took it as an invitation inside, jumping up the wall one foot at a time and through the window. It landed softly on the wooden floor. Not a creak escaping from underneath. The manikin held the old bloody axe tightly as it walked down the hallways.

Water was running somewhere ahead. The manikin looked down the hall and saw it overflowing from a room to the left. A backpack and two sweaters laid on the ground, wet from the steamy water that consumed it. The manikin pushed the door in to see a tub filled to the brim. It splashed its way through the water as it headed to the shower. It turned the knob and stopped anymore water from flowing. The manikin reached down into the stinging hot water, unclogging the tub from its plug. The burning water had no effect on its wooden arm. The manikin dipped the blood covered axe into the tub. Grabbing a nearby towel that was hanging on a hook. It sat on the toilet and started rubbing its axe clean for the next poor soul that comes across its cold blade.

After a while of hard scrubbing, the axe was shiny and new as ever. Some blood was stubborn but for the most part it was clean. It made the manikin relieved to see its axe shine. Being locked in that chest did not give it much to do, other than scratch down the years it had been in there with nothing but a dirty axe and lines to remind itself every day of why it was there in the first place. Blood had already been spilled on the axe before but the manikin never had time to wipe it off when the angry village people chased it down and threw it inside that tight chest. It looked into the reflection the axe was giving. It tilted its head slightly to the side.

"That wasn't there before." It thought. All that black fur on its head. For a split moment it thought that maybe there was a creature hugging the top of its scalp. The manikin tugged on it gingerly. It did not move or fall off, not ripping apart from its touch. It tugged a bit harder on the fur rooted to its head. Still, it stubbornly remains fused to its wooden cranium. The manikin sat there for a moment before getting up and looking into the bathroom's mirror to get a clearer look at itself. "So that's what I look like." It pondered. A tall, wooden, nude manikin holding a clean axe with hair that was not there before. But besides the hair and clean axe, nothing has changed after being stuck in that chest for a long time until-...

It suddenly remembered the creature that let it out in the first place. It had completely forgotten about her. For a moment, it thought she was just some human with a weird taste in fashion. The face of a dog was what made it hesitate. The horns looked real to their pointed tips. The fur on her face did not look false either. And even though she lacked breasts, buttocks, and hips, the high pitch of her voice told it that she was female.

"Maybe a demon?" It asked itself. "Perhaps. But where is she now?" The manikin pondered as it left the bathroom to go back into the hall again. Its foot bumped into the backpack from earlier. It looked over at the two sweaters beside it. A small red one and a giant purple one. The same items the creature from earlier had on. Except there were squashed insect bits everywhere. Grabbing the backpack, the manikin opened it and peered inside. The bag felt heavy but from looking at its contents, the heavy bag was completely empty of anything. The manikin turned it upside down and shook it a bit.

A muffled jingle was heard. When the manikin turned it right-side up and checked inside again, it was surprised to see yet again an empty bag. The manikin would have loved to spend the whole day trying to get whatever it was out of the bag, but it knew the demon dog would want her items back soon. Throwing both the sweaters inside, the manikin followed the wet water prints down the hall.

It figured maybe the demon dog had taken a bath. A weird one. One that involves many questions. As the manikin's garden of questions grew more and more about what happened, it noticed it had ran out of water prints to follow. The manikin looked up. There, staring right back at it, was the demon dog herself. She laid calmly on a couch in clothes caked in mud. The manikin got confused when the demon dog did not respond to its presence when it was standing right there in plain sight. And thinking about it now, the demon dog said "Fffuuu" loudly earlier when she first saw it. Maybe it is a thing for demon dogs to say to greet others.

Noticing the demon dog's eyes, the manikin saw that her eyes were a lot duller than before. Like a sun setting down for the night or candles dying out to the wind. But the demon is not dying. She was still breathing just fine. The manikin tapped on the demon dog's eyes. They held no pupils at all. They were too glossy to be normal orbs. Tap!Tap! Was the sound its wooden finger made on thedemon's eye. It was glass. "How does that work?" It asked itself. As the wooden figure thought more about the demon dog lying in front of it, it sat down in a recliner across the mysterious mutt. Lying its axe on its lap, it rested its chin on its palm as it stared at her. Softly, she breathed in and out. Every so often a purr escaped from the back of her throat. The manikin waited for the creature to do something. Anything. But the only thing she did interesting besides breathe was toss and turn.

"Guess this is going to take a while." It thought. It did not mind though. It learned to be patient down underground. It was just thankful to know that it did not have to wait years for the dog to wake up. At least it hoped it did not have to wait that long. Luckily, it was right. It only had to wait a few hours before she finally got up from her rest.