#pursuers

She switched it off and—in the darkened display of the device—she saw the reflection of a dark sedan on the road behind her. Its headlights were off, but it silently rolled along, following her at a low velocity. She put the phone back into her pocket book and shot a glance over her shoulder.

The windows of the car were tinted, but she saw a faint glimmer flare up behind them, of what must have been a cigarette’s glow as the driver took a drag from a cancer stick. The car itself looked like it was at least ten years old and a bit scuffed up. The only way it could have looked more unsettling was if it had been an unmarked white van.

Kim trained her eyes on the sidewalk ahead of her and sped her pace up a notch. She had moved to the city only half a year ago and had spent most of her life in different types of suburbia. Of course this car made her paranoid. A fear chilled her deeper than the cool wind flowing over her exposed hands and face—she was afraid of becoming part of a statistic. Although the dress suit she wore was not revealing at all, Kim was an attractive woman in her late twenties and wary of some of the men out there.

She wondered if it was that asshole from before. She was on her way home from a company mixer. It had been a good time, except for the uninvited brother of a guy in middle management, Steve. Steve the ghoul; a lanky, balding, middle-aged basement dweller. Steve carried the stench of stale smoke and too many cheap drinks on his breath even before he had showed up at the party, and he made no attempt at slowing down. He had eyed Kim and some of the other ladies there. After he had touched Michelle inappropriately, he took a slap and the contents of Michelle’s cup to his face. To everybody’s relief, probably even his own brother, Steve was escorted out of the building after that incident.

So it was either Steve or some random creep, Kim thought to herself. She wished that there were more signs of life around her, something else to cut through the deafening silence that lurked between her echoing footsteps and the quiet rolling noises of the lightless car that crept after her.

She barely noticed how her pace had gotten so fast that it neared the speed of breaking out into a jog. Her focus on the lack of noises around her started to make her paranoid. A streetlight flickered and went off as she neared and passed under it, draping the patch in shadows. Kim heard something scampering and scuttling between some trash cans on the other side of the narrow street. Something else sounded like a chorus of tiny screeches. Not like rats. Like something else.

That was it—her paranoia had gotten the best of her. Her mind was playing tricks. She crossed her arms, clutching herself. Kim took another furtive look over her shoulder, and the car continued to pursue her even though she had turned the corner and advanced down another street. Some grit and glass crunched under a wheel as it rolled on, like a one-ton steel beast reminding her that it did not want to be ignored.

Only a few more blocks till she would get back to the apartment she shared with her husband. That was when she spotted a tight alleyway. The car could not possibly fit through there. Kim took another turn—right into that alley. Producing her phone from her pocket book again, she used it like an improvised rear-view mirror to look behind her. Some part of her feared that she might just be embarrassing herself and the slow-moving car was not following her—its route no more than a coincidence. Maybe somebody looking for a specific building or place to park.

She shook her head and lost that thought. It is not paranoia when someone is actually out to get you.

In the reflection on her phone’s display, she saw the car roll by the mouth of the alley and then disappear out of her sight. As the illumination from the streetlights grew distant with each step, she found this place to be completely dark.

Kim stopped for a moment and thought she heard that scampering again. She took a left down the next alley, hoping to move parallel to the street and follow the shortest way back home. Still dark here, most lights in the building windows above were too far up to shed enough light where she walked. Her boots echoed louder in these alleys, like sharp little thunderclaps, and the last vestiges of nightly city traffic sounded farther away than ever before.

Whispers came from behind a stack of crates in front of her. Then a giggle. It frightened her because it sounded like a kid at first, but before the laugh ended, it transformed and sounded like a male adult distorted through a dysfunctional radio.

Kim shivered and instinctively took a step backwards. Jingling and crunching sounds erupted from inside her pocket book as she dug around in it and hastily fumbled her fingers through the objects—keys, purse, lipstick—and grabbed her mace.

Barely visible, a tiny hand grabbed the side of the crates and pulled itself out of its hiding place. Another tiny hand lurched forward, slapping against the ground like a wet bag of meat. The arm it was attached to was way too long and spindly and dark. This thing was only steps away. As small as a common housecat, but with too many legs that followed as it moved into full sight. Legs that ended in tiny, awkwardly slender hands, with pointy-looking claw-like fingertips.

Kim took another step backwards and into a puddle. The creature hissed, and the smell of vomit wafted over to her. Little slapping sounds pittered and pattered as it started moving in her direction. She instinctively used her phone as a flashlight, hoping to blind it or scare this critter away, but what happened was much worse.

She got a better look at it.

The thing did not have fur. The surface of its body consisted entirely of oily black skin and shiny eyes. Dozens—no, hundreds—of eyes, blinking and bulging and flitting around until they stared into the light, and a hundred pupils dilated in unison. Three mouth-like orifices opened, and the thing shrieked with such a cringe-inducingly high pitch that the display of Kim’s phone and the flashlight both shattered at the same time, bathing the small monstrosity in darkness once more.

Dropping her phone, she turned and ran back the way she came. The scampering moved quickly behind her, chasing her. Kim had no idea how to deal with this thing. Cutting the corner closely, she froze in her tracks like a deer in headlights. The black sedan that had been following her stood just outside the alleyway, and the driver switched the headlights on. She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the bright light.

Before she could snap out of it and run the other way, she felt something warm attach itself to her calf, followed by a searing, red-hot pain. A thousand needles pierced her flesh, and her eyes went wide as she looked down at the horrible creature that had latched onto her leg. She could see the dark gray fabric of her pants rapidly turning a darker shade of red. The hideous thing hissed at her with its three mouths, and she retaliated using her chemical mace—by spraying it directly in its eyes. All of them.

It shrieked again, mixed with inhuman giggles and tiger-like growls. The driver sitting in the sedan revved the car’s engine, and Kim panicked, feeling that the car would come for her and run her over. She lunged at the nearest building wall and slammed her leg with the creature into it. And again, and again, with the pain getting worse, and the sounds that it made becoming more blood-curdling with each hit.

The car’s engine roared, and she sprayed the creature one more time before kicking it away from herself. It let go of her and tumbled across the ground. Kim started to limp down the alley as fast as she could. She did not bother to watch how the monster might recover—she ran for her life. Steel screeched against concrete as the sedan barged into the alleyway and the creature giggled and shrieked and scampered and hissed. Tiny hand-feet slapped against asphalt as it chased her, and the car ground through the narrow alleyway after them, the cacophony provoking the creature’s shrieks to transform into a feverish howl.

The engine’s roar died down right after she heard a loud, thunderous thud behind her. Kim risked another look over her shoulder and saw the critter had stopped. One of the headlights was broken, and she could barely make out the silhouette of the creature—it rolled onto one side and several of its limbs flopped around as it tried to drag itself away after having been hit by the moving car.

The vehicle was now wedged into the alleyway behind it. A spiderweb-like pattern of cracks had formed on the windshield. The driver killed the engine, and the intact headlight went off.

The creature flailed around helplessly and left a trail of black slime behind it as it dragged itself along another inch. Thumping sounds came from the car’s front window when someone repeatedly kicked at it from the inside of the vehicle.

Kim set her jaw and channeled all her pent-up rage. She was going to take control of this situation now. She turned around and approached the injured creature. Its tiny clawed hands reached out to her, and she could not decide whether it was a pathetic attempt at pawing at her or a desperate plea for mercy. She let the heel of her boot do the talking and started stomping the life out of the thing.

Gurgling and squelching sounds exploded amid garbled howls of inhuman pain as she kept stomping it into the ground. The windshield of the car burst outwards and an androgynous figure pushed himself out from behind it, accompanied by a series of uttered expletives.

“Wait, Kim, fucking stop,” said a familiar voice.

A man dressed in black groaned and clambered out through the dislodged windshield of the car, pushing past the window and letting it fall sideways into the passenger seat where it crumpled and folded. She recognized his stupid fauxhawk hairdo, the pretentious black duster and combat boots, the excessive amount of eyeliner, even his black-painted fingernails. It was Kevin, the Criss-Angel-wannabe douchebag. Kim’s mentor in all things preternatural for the past few months.

“I want that thing alive,” Kevin said as he slid over the hood and landed in front of the car’s bumper next to her and the creature.

Kim saw a tiny hand paw at her boot, and she stomped it again before looking Kevin in the eyes.

“Fuck you, Kevin. Why didn’t you let me know this thing was following me? That you were following me? Asshole,” she said.

Kevin had no eyes for her. He shifted his weight back and forth and gawked at the thing under her boot with an air of wonder about him.

“I needed you to be afraid, otherwise it wouldn’t have stalked you,” he muttered. “Good thing I stole this car, too, my ass would bleed if I had to pay to get this thing towed back outta here—I hadn’t planned on you going off-script and off into some narrow-ass alley,” he added, thumbing over his shoulder to the car and alley behind him.

Kevin pulled a crumpled white plastic bag from his duster’s pocket. He shook it by the handles a few times until it assumed full shape, and Kim saw it was covered in strange symbols that he had drawn onto its outer surface with a black magic marker. Kim remembered Kevin’s emphasis in explaining that the marker he used for things like this was no regular marker—it was charged with the soul of a dead blues musician.

She gave a clipped nod to the thing under her boot and asked, “What is this thing?”

Kevin refused to answer and carefully positioned the bag in both his hands, readying to envelop the monster in it as he hunkered down. Then he asked, “Kick it again, please? Just for good measure.”

Kim stomped on it again, and it gurgled and screeched at the same time, emitting those sounds from two different mouths. Then she pulled her boot away, and Kevin slipped the bag over it until he had it all wrapped up and lifted it off the ground in one hand. The thing appeared to have little weight, but it started thrashing in the bag.

“I have no idea what to call it as of now, so let’s call it a psychic parasite, alley demon, or nasty little para-dimensional shit-lord,” Kevin said.

He held the bag up between them so they could look at it thrashing around.

“Last time you filled in for me on a job, I think an old, uh, rival of mine decided to sic a guy named Steve on you, and, well, I guess Steve was responsible for this thing,” he explained. Using his free hand, Kevin tapped on his own temple. “The dipshit doesn’t know I’m going to use this beastie to track them down now.”

Kim’s fury failed to subside. The pulsating pain in her left calf and the warm wet feeling of blood soaking her sock inside her boot reminded her with every burning throb. She glared at Kevin, and he just gave her the usual expression he always did whenever he confronted her with another reality-warping phenomenon: he smirked as he drank in her anger. Then he focused his stare on the bag instead.

“Athtaragnositharel,” Kevin uttered in an uncharacteristically commanding tone.

The thrashing stopped. A gust of wind let the bag flap weightlessly in Kevin’s hand; its captive now whisked away.

She snapped at him, “Does this finally cover my debt to you?”

Kevin chuckled. Then he pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. Kim frowned and looked at her injured leg.

“I’m afraid not, but you’re almost through with it now. I’ll need one last thing, and then you won’t have to deal with me ever again,” he said.

He winced when he got hit in the head by a flying shoe. A bald man in a pajama shirt leaned out of a window a few stories up and looked down at them, shaking a fist. Although difficult to discern his features at this distance with a light behind him, the man appeared to be red in the face with rage.

“Shut up down there, you hoodlums! I’m gonna call the cops!”

Kim started limping away, and Kevin gave the man in the window a middle finger. The man in the window ducked away, ranting as he closed the window behind him. Someone else must have beaten the man to his own threat, because police sirens already howled softly in the distance.

Kevin jogged a few steps to catch up to Kim and wordlessly offered her a shoulder to lean on as she limped on her way home. She shrugged him off and pushed him away.

“What’s in store for me next time? Asshole,” she muttered. “How am I going to explain these injuries to my husband,” she continued, interrupting Kevin’s attempt to answer.

He shrugged as he replied, “Can’t say for sure, but it might involve you biting off a corpse’s tongue. The corpse might be more lively than corpses normally are.”

Kim stared daggers at him. The death glare had such an intensity that Kevin grinned sheepishly, and he raised his hands with open palms, facing her in surrender.

Without wasting words on a goodbye, she continued on her way home. He tilted his head and looked after her for a moment, then turned and went down a different alleyway.

Encountering this little monster was not even the worst thing he had put Kim through so far. Her stomach knotted at the thought of what the next task entailed and what he had not told her about it.

Next time was going to be particularly awful.