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 Posted: Mon May 02, 2016 8:49 am
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prompt response.
Tap. Tap t-tap. Tap. TAP. TAPTAPTAP.
Rylan let out a load grumble from under his pillow, where he'd buried his head in a desperate attempt to escape the increasingly insistent tapping at his window. Some humorless bird, raccoon, or prankster child had decided in the last week that his bedroom window was the perfect place to leave small dead critters. He'd dusted off the outside ledge more times than he could count and yet, every morning, there was something.
And it always woke him up.
"I GET IT," he growled, finally flinging back his covers to swing his legs out of bed. The space between the bed and the window took about three steps. As always, by the time he got there, the window was clear. No prankster to be seen.
Today, there was a dead mouse, tiny and deceptively peaceful-looking in death. It lay there silently while Rylan eyed it with displeasure and peered around one more time in search of the perpetrator he knew he would not find.
"You know, Fidget, this is the kind of thing people keep dogs to scare off," he said to the Dalmatian sprawled inelegantly across the floor at the foot of his bed. The spotted dog lifted his head at the sound of his name and thumped his tail against the floorboards, blissfully unaware that anything untoward had transpired on the other side of the glass. Didn't so much as notice it, even.
Rylan eyed the dog curiously. "So you'll get all excited when the neighbors pass on the stairs, but the annoying raccoon, you're okay with," he said wryly. "Your mind works in strange and mysterious ways, Fidge."
Maybe tomorrow, he'd buy himself a motion-capture camera and see what exactly was so keen on cutting short his nightly sleep.
For now, though, it was time to wake up. He strolled into the kitchen and set a kettle of water on the stove for coffee, fished under the sink for one of Fidget's poop baggies and returned to his room to dispose of the sad, dead mouse.
"Poor guy," he said as he picked the body up delicately off the window ledge. "You were gone too young."
Twisting the bag and tying it off in a knot, Rylan studied the mouse for a second, debating how much he wanted the pitiful corpse to decompose in his trash can for the next few days. Not much, he decided.
"You can come with me when I leave for the station," he said, plopping the bag onto a chair at the dining table.
The kettle started to keen. At the sound, Fidget bounced to his feet and came trotting out of the bedroom, tail wagging, ears pricked.
"It's not for you," Rylan told him with a laugh. He ruffled the dog's ears as he passed, switching off the flame and scooping coffee grounds into the french press. "And don't touch the baggie. You don't know where that mouse has been."
Which was, of course, a whole other concern. Diseases and all.
But at least it was bagged and ready to be tossed. With the evidence of the prank removed from his window ledge, Rylan was ready to all but forget it had happened.
After all, there was plenty more he'd have to deal with once he got to work.
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Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 1:12 am
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Posted: Tue May 10, 2016 5:02 pm
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prompt response.
He spluttered awake in the night, jerking out of sleep like a man possessed, spraying blood and hot flesh all over the comforter.
Fidget jolted awake. His claws clicked on the wooden floors as he scurried to the bedside, sniffing the blanket, a quiet whine rising from his chest. A look of concern adorned his face while he watched his human do his best not to gag on the taste of raw, unidentified meat.
"This is not okay," Rylan groaned. He lowered his head into his hands, feeling overwhelmed by the flood of information he'd gotten from Lara Lupin. And now, the evidence to suggest she might not have been as batty as she'd seemed.
A chilling dread held his entire body when he glanced at the window – the window, where all the dead critters had wound up, day after day. It couldn't be. There couldn't be something there.
He didn't want to check, for fear of seeing exactly what he didn't want to – something dead and bloody on his window like he'd put it there somehow in his sleep. That would be proof that he was wrong, that there was not actually a reasonable explanation for all of the strange things that had been happening in Ashdown lately. The things that had been happening to him. Rylan wasn't sure he was ready to admit that his straightforward, safe sense of the world may no longer serve him as it had in the past.
It was admitting that there were things out there that couldn't be explained by science or logic, that were not bound by any natural laws and existed completely outside his ability to control or rationalize them. He wasn't ready to feel that kind of helplessness.
And yet, he knew. There was no running. He had to check.
With an audible gulp, Rylan threw back the comforter and swung his legs out of bed. He almost tiptoed over to the window, so afraid was he of what he knew, deep down, he would see. And as he pulled back the curtain he felt his heart sink even before he saw the dead mouse lying bloody and chewed to bits on his windowsill.
The bitter taste of bile stung at the back of his throat, but he kept it down – barely. A wave of despair washed over him. It was real. It was all real, and he was battling something he could see and couldn't understand.
"Fidget, I can't..." A low growl of frustration escaped him. He was so unused to fear, so unused to feeling out of his element. "I can't win a battle I don't know how to fight." He let himself lean against the wall and sink to the ground, wanting to be small, wanting to be close to the earth.
Upon hearing his name, the dog let out a quiet huff and nosed his way to Rylan, resting his head on the man’s knee. He could feel the tension radiating off his human, but why he would never know.
Rylan laid a hand on Fidget’s head, staring at the dog, wondering…
“What if I hurt an actual human being?” He wondered aloud. Was that possible? He didn’t know, but in the morning… In the morning, he would find answers.
For now he sat, hunched in the company of his spotted friend. Sleep was not in his cards tonight.
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Posted: Thu May 12, 2016 8:13 am
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