There I was, in a public bathroom, regretting the shitty takeout I had earlier, when I heard someone come in. They slowly walked past the other stalls until they reached mine. Looking down, I saw their shadow move under the door as they turned towards it.
“I know you’re in there, Fell.”
God fucking damn it.
“I’ve come here on behalf of the faceless one to make an offer,” the freak continued “something that will make all our lives easier.”
“Are you fucking serious? I’m on the fucking toilet!” I snapped “Besides, after the last ‘offer’ your boss made, I’d hate to see what it’s going to be this time!”
“Well, you haven’t given me much choice,” she responded. “You don’t leave your car very often these days and I didn’t want you to just drive off the second I tried to talk to you. Now that you know I’m here, I’ll let you finish up, and we’ll have our discussion once you come out.”
“Fucking wonderful” I muttered.
She stepped away from the stall but didn’t leave the room.
Once I was done, I slowly opened the stall door. I had my knife out of its sheath, expecting to be attacked, but she just stood there between me and the exit.
She looked like a normal person, apart from a cut on her lip and a coat that was way too heavy for the muggy weather. She kept her hands stuffed in its pockets.
“Aren’t you going to wash your hands?” she said with a smirk. “I’m not going to do anything unless you give me reason to.”
“Not with your creepy ass here,” I replied. “Now, what the fuck do you want?”
“Gross” said the fucker who had just been standing there, listening to me shit for several minutes. “Anyway, like I said, I have a proposition for you. Attempting to bring you back into the fold via your hunger didn’t work, to put it mildly-”
“No fucking shit” I snapped.
“…So another approach is necessary” she continued. “You want to kill the Wolf, right? We do too. Our goal is the same, so why waste our time and resources fighting each other? If you come with me, come back to the family, even just temporarily, we could give you a stable, safe place to stay. You wouldn’t have to keep looking over your shoulder or endlessly, aimlessly driving while exhausting yourself more and more each day. You could fully focus on your preparations and thus be able to face the Wolf in the best possible condition.”
I laughed in fucking disbelief at the shit I was hearing. After everything the Tailor put me through, NOW he wanted to fucking negotiate.
“Your boss is the one who ordered the Wolf to torture me until I fucking broke and you think I’m going to trust anything you’re offering?! Fuck off! If I go with you, I’ll either be taken as a hostage to make the Wolf give up, or he’ll kill me as soon as I kill her. Fuck him and fuck you too!”
Her expression darkened, but her smirk remained.
“I understand, however, I think there’s something you should take into consideration” she said. “If you come with me willingly, you’ll be given what has been promised. If you don’t, I will have to take you back as a pri-”
I didn’t let her finish, hoping to catch her ass off guard. I slashed at her with my knife, but she dodged and fucking disappeared, only to reappear next to me.
I had to duck out of the way of an expandable baton. Then I had to do it again and again as she kept disappearing and reappearing.
Finally, I caught a break. After avoiding another swing, I was able to drive my knife into her side while her arm was across her body. She screamed and tried to pull away, but I locked my free arm around the back of her neck to keep her in place. She managed to tear herself away from me, but I hooked her leg with my foot, knocking her off balance. The second she hit the ground, I moved in and stomped on her head, knocking her ass out. I wanted to keep stomping on her so bad, but I forced myself to stop. Instead, I took her baton and tucked it into my hoodie’s pocket, then headed out the door.
Of course, shit couldn’t be that easy though. Leaving the bathroom, I saw someone standing between me and my car. I fucking froze at the sight of a stitched face under a red hood. The last nightmare I had flashed through my mind as I stood there.
“Come home, Fell.”
I realized then that I wasn’t looking at a face, but a stitched mask. This was a shithead proxy dressed up like the Wolf.
Suddenly, a rope was thrown over my head and pulled tight around my throat. Apparently, the fucker in the bathroom had been playing possum only to take advantage of my shock.
“It doesn’t have to be like this” she hissed in my ear as she strangled me “We can give you the strength you need to face her.”
“Come home, Fell,” the fake Wolf said again, closing the distance between us. “Come home.”
She was obviously trying to fuck with my head to make me give up, but it had the opposite effect, causing me to snap. Twisting my body, I slammed my knife into the bathroom bitch’s stomach. She gasped and loosened her grip enough for me to get free, tearing the knife back out of her.
I felt something sharp dig into me. The fake Wolf had tried to stab me while my attention was on her friend. It would have been worse, but the knife glanced off my tomahawk, which I had strapped to my back and hidden under my hoodie. Pulling it out while I turned, I caught the fake Wolf with the spike. She cried out in pain as I used it to spin her ass around before chopping into her back. She screamed and lurched forward, pulling herself off the blade. She tried to turn herself back around, but I hit her again before she could do anything else. She collapsed to the ground. I could have left her like that and ran for the car, but I didn’t. Instead, I brought the tomahawk down on her again and again. By the time I was done, her head was a gory mess of brain and skull fragments.
I stood there, covered in blood and shaking as I looked back and forth between what was left of the fake Wolf and the other proxy. Both were dead. My streak was broken. The hunger had been fed.
That’s when I noticed the Tailor, standing under the light of a streetlamp, watching me.
“FUCK YOU” I screamed, pissed that he and his followers had forced me to lose control like that and get even more blood on my hands. Having enough of this shit, I stomped towards his skinny ass. I knew I couldn’t do diddlydick to him, but I was tired and angry and frustrated enough to try anyway. I only made it a few steps before he disappeared, only to reappear right in front of me.
The next thing I knew, I was knocked flat on my ass. I tried to scramble back as he reached one of his spindly hands towards me. In desperation, I swung my tomahawk at his arm, only for a tentacle to catch it. I guess he was through fucking around and had decided to capture or kill me himself. Before he could, a loud crack rang out, causing him to stop. He stood back up, letting my tomahawk go in the process. I rolled over and got to my feet, almost falling over again from the sudden wave of feverish dizziness I felt. That’s when a beak came out of the shadows, and I saw what had stopped the Tailor.
The fucking Plague Doctor.
The Tailor gave out an ear-splitting roar at the interruption, while the disease bird let out a screech of his own. The noise along with the sudden pressure coming off them made the dizziness a lot worse. In desperation, I bolted towards my car. My ears ringing, and my head spinning, I managed to start the engine before flooring it out of there. Thankfully, they were too busy with their supernatural dick waving to stop me. Not that I got away completely unharmed since I now have a fucking flu along with some gross fucking blisters that I didn’t before.
I guess I should have expected the disease bird to swoop in at some point. He wants the Wolf, so it makes sense that he’d come after my ass to use as fucking bait or some shit.
Great. This is all I fucking need.
