005 – BEAUTIFUL BUT UNLUCKY.

🦋 CATALINA 🦋

“Two officers were found dead and dumped in a dumpster this morning. It’s currently mysterious to us how these lovely, hardworking officers died, so the FBI is currently trying to unravel the case, after they swore to get to the bottom of this. But we found some claw marks on their bodies and something that seems like an animal’s bite mark. Remember, if the police aren’t safe, no one is… be alarmed. Reporting life at Lion’s City News.”

My heart pounds as I stare at the television screen. I still am not able to get over the traumatic scene that happened yesterday.

Goosebumps mixed with electric shock swallows me as I stroke my neck. The beast, namely ‘Corvin’, tried strangling life out of me, and cut with a knife, lick, suck, and bite. The picture of him and the feeling of his warm tongue on my skin are not leaving the back of my mind. He not only cut me, but he licks off the blood, and the expression on his face as he stared at his hand-filled blood after killing the police officers still creeps me out to my bones. He was happy and satisfied. He had this ‘I won a lottery’ look on his face.

Crazy! So crazy! And scary!

I sigh as I look down at what I was doing and notice my hand has been trembling, no, my whole body is shaking so furiously that I have to put my other hand on the hand that holds the napkin soaked in the police’s blood I was struggling to wipe off my floor, my once innocently clean fucking floor was tainted last night… with blood.

The beast had left, carrying the two bodies on his shoulders like they were just two pieces of rags, and he left me to trauma bond with the blood… Crazy bastard!

I doubt I will be able to sleep in this house without having nightmares; it might even get as complicated as me seeing their ghosts demanding justice. I definitely contemplated turning myself in to the police to explain everything, but what do I say? “I hid the terrorist in my closet, but the police found out and they tried to arrest him, which obviously didn’t end well for either of us.”

That’s life imprisonment waving and smiling at me; it’d ruin my whole future, and I still have my mom to prove wrong about not doing great on my own.

I can’t move out of the house either… I’m dead broke.

🦋

It’s been a day after the traumatic confrontation with the devil, one I’m still unable to get over, and five days to resumption. I have just been accepted to study music and art at Skill Craft Academy, and I can only hope that things go smoothly from here on.

My stomach cries as I walk out of my house towards the gate to go grocery shopping. I cannot afford to eat out, so I can only continue experimenting in my kitchen to survive.

“Hi, Catalina,” a voice calls. I look up to find my neighbor gawking at me with a creepy smile on his face, “I was wondering if you want to have dinner with me tonight?”

“Thank you for the offer, Nevan, but I’ll pass,” I mutter and brush past him in an attempt to reach the gate quickly and escape from his shrinking watch.

Ever since Nevan rented the upstairs apartment of the house I live in, he’s always watching me closely, he figures out everything I do, knows my schedules and where I go, leaving me to wonder how he does that.

I once had to sign a restraining order against him to get him off my back, but after a few days, he was back to his usual self of stalking my entire existence on earth, which I just had to get used to, since he never hurt me.

I walk into the supermarket and as I pick up a basket, a voice echoes behind me, “Everybody down! Right now!”

Scratch that!

He didn’t shout it, yet the commanding tone was enough to make you shit yourself. I didn’t dare look back until a hand came on my shoulder, “I said, Down!”

I slowly turn around to find Asmodeus’s heirs, dressed in all red, covered in a red mask that leaves only a snippet of their eyes to the view, behind me, and lock eyes with the masked, fully red-clothed man in front of me, who seems like their squad leader.

I stand frozen in place as our eyes lock. I didn’t look away; he didn’t either. Instead, he leans in closer to whisper, “Get on the ground, girl!”

The Asmodeus’s heirs never kill people, well, of course, unless they have to. Their only interest is taking your money and things that are worth more than money; every other thing is your business.

But this stealing and killing have to stop in this city; someone has to stop them, and aside from SWATS, the FBIs, and other agents who try to stop them and end up killed, no one else stands up to them; they just play along, like it’s normal. And now, things have gotten super expensive in Lion City, because business owners are trying to make back what has been stolen from them, and that is really taking a toll on me because I have no money to waste on goods that have tripled in price because of them.

I am still standing, completely blanked out while everyone around me lies flat on the ground, their hands spread out and their heads facing the ground, weeping, as the whole of Asmodeus’s heir squad brushes past me towards the checkout clerks.

“You are not taking anything from this store, you son of a bitch,” I voice, loud enough for them to catch on. Right, either I die from a gunshot or I die from starvation… both are dying anyway because soon, I wouldn’t be able to afford the price range of things in this city.

“Did you just say, ‘Son of a bitch’?” the Asmodeus’s heir squad leader asked coldly.

I gulp down hard, slowly twisting my legs to face them. With shaky hands and tear-filled eyes, I reach for my pocket and drag out my phone, turning on the camera and turning it towards them. At this point, my heart is on the verge of jumping out of my chest.

Inhaling and exhaling sharply, I push down my fear, focusing on hiding the tremor in my voice, just enough to sound fearless and determined. “I said you aren’t taking anything from this store, you…” I froze, and he cocks his head to the side with a raised eyebrow in a daring and threatening way.

“Son of a bitch!” I complete, clutching my phone tightly in an attempt to video the whole scene to use as some sort of weapon against them, stupid idea!

My heart is pounding, my body is almost betraying me, and although I want to run to a corner and hide, I hang on.

“Okay,” his voice vibrates through the entire store, sending everyone goosebumps.

“O-kay?” I repeat. Is it that simple? He’s just going to accept and go away?

“But you’ll have to give me something in return,” he declares, taking a step towards me, then two, three, four, until he is standing in front of me, getting me completely buried by his huge, towering figure, his chest totally blinding my camera, leaving no space to capture anything else.

Everyone around us immediately ceases to exist, and every other sound becomes white noise, the world narrowing to just the two of us, staring at each other, with tension eating us up. No, tension is eating me up. I was fully intimidated. “W – wha – what?” I stammer, unintentionally holding my breath, too scared to breathe close to him.

“You become my plaything.”

You know what? Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut after all… too fucking late.

“And if I say no?” I ask, my sweaty palms gripping my pants tightly in hopes of calming my anxiety, but it didn’t work, not one bit.

He raises his gun and places it in front of my head, “I’ll kill you. For defying my orders and ruining my operation. You either die this minute or you become my plaything, so I can punish you for this mistake for the rest of your life.”

Panic surged through my body as I felt an icy chill run down my spine. My heart racing, I jerk back in a desperate attempt to create distance, but a searing pain shot through my scalp as a firm grip on my hair held me in place.

The fear intensifies, my breath caught in my throat, and my eyes widen in terror as I realize I am trapped. The grip tightens, and I wince, frozen in a mixture of pain and fear.

“You are bluffing – Asmodeus heirs don’t kill,” I struggle to speak; this time, I can’t stop my voice from trembling, I am frightened to the bone, and I’m unable to hide it in my voice, face, and body.

In a swift moment, he shifts the gun away from my head, and the loud bang sounds in the air. Just when I assume it is aimed at nothing, blood splashes all over the back of my head and body, for the second time in the space of a few freaking hours, and a lady who just walks in, oblivious to whatever terror was happening in the store, falls to the ground with blood pumping out of her forehead.

“Unless I have to!” he growls.

My phone slips from my grasp, plummeting to the ground with a sickening crunch as it shatters into a hundred pieces. A blood-curdling scream tore from my throat, echoing through the air as my body convulsed in distress. The grip on my hair remains unyielding, anchoring me in place while my limbs tremble uncontrollably.

Taking the opening, he slides the gun into my mouth and tilts his head to a side, with his gun filling my mouth, I whimper-cry against it as our eyes meet.

“So what’s it gonna be, sharp mouth? Give yourself or die?”

Standing right there, with a sick grip on my hair, gun in my mouth, a burning gaze, and a towering body, I am already dead. I could not feel my legs, or know if I’m even breathing, all my brain can circle around is… Danger! Danger! Danger! Ohh, I’m dead! I’m so screwed! Being face-to-face with death… I’m shattering into bits.

“If I ask again, you’ll be choking on my bullet!” he threatens, pushing the gun deeper into my mouth, and I gag.

Slowly, against his heartless grip on my hair, I try to nod, but fail… so I blink twice.

“Speak!” he growls, sending another bundle of panic down my spine.

“Mmmph… mmph… my…,” I mumble incoherently, struggling to form words with the gun’s muzzle lodged in my mouth. My speech came out muffled and distorted, like a garbled mess of sounds, but I managed to say what I chose between giving myself and dying.

“Death…”