Chapter Text
He had been warned about them throughout his youth.
The things that stereotypically went bump in the night. Whether it was a slithering mass shrouded in shadow beneath a bed frame or a single long hand containing skeletal phalanges stretching beyond a shield of clothing within a closet he was informed of it seriously and severely, gifted the methods of subduing those that threatened him harm.
They were all things that, admittedly, sounded almost far-fetched even to his naive mind. His imagination could only take him a certain distance with the idea, his expression hesitantly placating as he pretended to absorb what his parents said with rapt attention. They weren’t the type of people to lie right to someone’s face, never seeking out a thick streak of untruth, but their seriousness seemed ridiculous to him, their insistence on preparation taken to an extent he viewed as absolutely paranoid.
His father claimed that his ancestors had hunted them at first, striking them with a vicious ferocity that didn’t care if the inhuman was able to appear as the opposite. They had been meek prey before, weakly defending against the bite of fangs, the snap of a jaw, the catch of arms too many to count. Something had changed eventually, shifting out of place as the order of events were reversed. His family had taken offense rather than defense, taking what they knew on how to protect themselves and using it in the heat of a merciless attack against the beasts.
Of course, his father had mused, twirling delicately through a corner of his newly minted handlebar mustache, we don’t do that anymore. Civilized folks and all that. Can’t go round stabbing random people just because you just so happen to suspect them of being a vampire.
His father’s hand had joined with his mother’s as they both smiled at him, beaming somewhat exhaustively but mostly with pride, the light assurance leaving his mother in a whispered, We prefer to just keep an ear to the ground and an eye in the sky. Wait, watch and listen, if you will.
She had once confided that it seemed a bit silly to her at first, nonsense that seemed to be complete drivel shoveled forth from a dullard’s drunken mouth. She’d nearly sent her new husband to the looney bin when she’d heard it, doused him with antipsychotics and kept him sedated until someday they found some way to make him sane once more.
She hadn’t believed it until the point where an oddly twitchy man suddenly began to glow gold right in front of her, miraculously unseen as he collapsed right into the middle of the street, falling into a patch of sand as a form created from electricity dashed right by her. She had sounded incredulous even as she recounted the events, lending credibility to her story, but he was a bright sort of child, one much to stick into the ways of logistics to even entertain the idea that it might be true.
A man turning to dust and becoming a bolt of lightning sprung into the air? Utter poppycock, he had thought, mulling over the whimsical term in his mind as it had been a recent find at the time, sticking his nose into the air in a show of condescension.
He wasn’t cruel with his disbelief, but he did profess it loudly, admitting it often. There was no reason that they could provide as an explanation for the stories they told, nothing they could say to force him into building a faith. Their tales were indeed tall, massively hanging over him in a fictitious display of great stature.
Not a single one of their supposed experiences were repeated, however, each one new and inexperienced in his ears. They certainly were good at weaving a narrative, plucking it from thin air and crocheting a soft coat of astonishment with each one.
A vampire who simply wished to stare at photographs of the sun, painting pictures of delicate horizons with a long forgotten sense of recognition, wailing in a shrill shriek as they fluffed white clouds upon the canvas, unable to truly witness them with their own eyes.
A werewolf who was a yoga instructor of all things, calming herself to the gentle swirl of a taped recording of ocean’s waves, honing the bloodthirsty urges into something tranquil, her weapon now assigned her reassuring word rather than crimson claws and ivory teeth.
A man possessed by a demon who only wanted to be a librarian, fully equipped with first hand knowledge of the events held within the withered pages, compromising their own strange sense of fashion into an amalgamation of punk and proper, the former arriving strictly from the human half while the latter was carried with the hellish.
Every one that reached his ears had been rebuffed with an unheard scoff, a wordless refusal to allow the fib a chance to take root. They were lying directly to him without guilt, hissing into his mind with drawn deception that tried to sink into him with each one that greeted the empty air.
They were sympathetically drawn to those who were apparently designed to be beastly, taking pity upon creatures who were born to devour them whole with no remorse. They confessed that they had never found a truly malicious heart beneath a mound of mottled fur, nor a cruel one behind a crystalline coat of crackling scales. Misunderstood was all they were, just a simple deviance from the norm that was seen as unacceptable, their problems dismissed as the actions of a rapid animal rather than one contrasting humanity.
It is only as he stares down at the slick pavement, their blood intermingling upon it in a thickly set puddle stretching towards him, that he realizes that there may have been a fraction of truth etched within their stories.
The gun lay discarded, tossed carelessly next to his parents’ rapidly cooling corpses, soaked with dark loss of life, his mother’s pearl necklace draped right beside it.
A man.
A normal, unassuming, unexpected man.
The owner of the weapon had been human, entirely so, the flare of dim light within breakable bones evident, though he didn’t quite understand it.
They had watched the unexplained, the things that growled and scratched, scales shielding skin and wings decorated with plumage.
They should have been watching in the opposite direction, turning their careful vigilance to a more unthinkable culprit, one that did not bark and howl or croon and whistle, but instead spoke with a softened tone, a whisper that danced on the edge of him even now, clicking determinedly into place.
Red and blue bathes his vision, the chiming intonation of sirens blossoming from before him. He doesn’t react to it, allowing the thread of certainty to weave directly into him, sewing into a makeshift cloak of decision.
He thinks fuzzily, his eyes glued back to his fallen family, blinking back a rightful round of tears.
If it had been a lycanthropic affliction it may have been considered an accident, a compromised state of mentality that had unfortunately ended in untimely death, their flesh sucked within a stomach in torn patches as a mind akin to a human’s screamed in nauseated horror.
A vampiric entity may have been unfortunately sated by the blood oozing down their throat, but it would have allowed them to go without hunger as it dribbled in a steady stream down a famished gullet, serving a clear cut purpose even as they were unintentionally drained of their last bit of life.
A demonic presence may have stolen their souls, their essence dissipating as their husks were inhabited, but they would still have pretended, allowing him to give a price for his own and selling it willingly to the first one to offer, determinedly shaking a steaming hand, looking confidently upon a satisfied, shark toothed smirk.
An ordinary man had been the one who hunted his parents, slaughtering them with an animalistic simplicity, preying upon them without mercy.
He would not lie in wait, searching out the unnatural beings that hid within plain sight, rather endeavoring to remain ignorant to their presence. The real danger is tied directly to the mundane, terrifying reality he settled within.
It feels morbid as the sickly amusement curls, the memory of a pair of united tracks of laughter turning into a distorted shrivel of sound.
The revelation tucks into a deepened tick of warning darting across the edge of his mind, a sprinkling assumption made within his thoughts, winking in weary mimicry of the lights of passing cars through a fogged window.
People-watching had always been a habit of his, a guilty pleasure of a sort that he had frequently dabbled in, an itch pulling tautly to him as he maintained a sense of vigilance.
Perhaps he had already been made keenly aware of who exactly was truly trying to disguise their monstrosity.