Kansas, USA—
2:00 AM
Rand suddenly opened his eyes in the darkness.
Like a fish out of water, he arched his back and bounced uncontrollably from the bed, breathing so quickly that he had to tilt his head back slightly to get air into his lungs, out of his throat There was a squeezing sound from the depths, and he wasn't even fully awake, his hands nervously tugging at the sheets while his body trembled.
The light from the yellowish street lamps came in from the window and hit the ceiling. Occasionally a car passed by, passing a moving halo.
Rand opened his eyes, his eyes trembling in the darkness.
The room was so quiet that the clock ticked faintly as it went.
He slowly realized that he was just having a nightmare.
It was a vague dream of nothing more than a child playing hide-and-seek—that child, of course, was Rand himself. In the dream, he returned to more than ten years ago and curled his body into a ball like an attacked hedgehog.
He was hiding in a cramped closet, the smell of vanilla lavender bags was too sweet and thick in the air, and he was panting violently, his throat sore and itchy from being too tight.
The temperature was so hot that he was going crazy. In his sweat-drenched vision, the wardrobe door opened a tiny gap, and a bright, almost dazzling light shot in from the gap.
There is no scary setting that a nightmare should have: monsters, demons, or ghosts.
Only the dark wardrobe still has gaps.
When a shadow obscures the light in the crevice—
Rand woke up just like that. He touched his pajamas and found that it was completely soaked with sweat, and until his emotions had calmed down, his heartbeat was still fast, hitting his chest like a hammer, bringing faint About the dull pain.
However, returning to the consciousness of reality did not make Rand any easier. He felt restless and restless, and the unexplainable emotions plagued him like a sewing needle that had been dropped on the bed and could no longer be found. Make him unable to sleep again after waking up.
He covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath.
Then he reached for the bedside table, and it was at this moment that he suddenly felt something was wrong.
The warm night wind was blowing the curtains... The bedroom window was opened, and he was pretty sure he did close it before going to sleep.
Rand's muscles tensed in that instant. He put on his clothes and approached the window alertly.
There was only a thin slit in the window, and the latch was intact. Rand watched his window carefully, his brows furrowed even more, everything seemed normal, and even he began to wonder if he remembered it wrong...
If anything was abnormal - just the slime that remained on the inside of the glass.
Rand stretched out his fingers and touched the small patch of mucus, which was still wet and had a smell that Rand had grown accustomed to.
It was a faint watery smell.
Realizing what it was, Rand's shoulders relaxed for a moment, he covered his forehead, and closed the window tightly.
oh damn...
He muttered silently in his heart and turned to turn on all the lights in the bedroom.
Bright lights illuminate the late-night bedroom, ordinary beds, ordinary furnishings, and everything looks so normal. However, Rand frowned. He hadn't noticed it before, but as long as he paid attention, he could smell the smell that could only belong to a certain creature.
He looked under the bed first, then checked the crevice in the cupboard, and finally, with a sigh, Rand lifted his quilt.
A slippery blue shadow had been camouflaging itself before this, but when the cover was lifted, it swayed its body nimbly, trying to burrow into the depths of the quilt.
And Rand instinctively grabbed its tail.
The figure of the little bastard was revealed.
Munster's head had burrowed into the gap between the quilt and the sheet, its claws clawing feebly at the innocent cloth, and its tail swayed gently in Rand's hands.
"Mung S. T! Damn, why are you here?!"
Rand stared at it in disbelief.
He never thought that this little monster would appear in his quilt at this time! And in the daytime, he just changed the bedroom door. If you guessed correctly, it even attempted to open the window (Rand never suspected it could, especially since it attempted to open the refrigerator several times to steal the venison).
Rand stared in shock at the wrought iron door that cost him a lot of money, and then he realized that the problem wasn't the door, but the door frame.
There was no trace of the flat and smooth wooden door frame in Rand's memory, and the wood of the door frame was completely hollowed out near the ground. That gap is a bit reluctant for the current Munster, but if it works hard enough, it can still stuff its body into Rand's room.
This damn little bastard...
Rand didn't know how long it had been on his bed, but in the area where it had been, all the fabrics had been soaked with that strangely scented slime.
Rand had never so devoutly prayed to God that he would not have to face this horrific scene. And Munster seemed to have sensed the black-haired man's displeasure. It reluctantly pulled its head out of the gap in the quilt and looked back at Rand carefully. There was a faint reflection in its eyes. After a while, it grinned. There was a series of quick, low-pitched mumbles—even a bit of a deliberate plea for mercy.
Rand licked his lips and staggered to his feet, went to the fridge to get a beer, and went back to the room like a sleepwalker, wrapping Munster around the smelly bedding and sheets. , rudely dragged off the bed and piled it on the floor, then he stepped back and sat on the soft bedroom chair beside the bed, staring at the obvious wet marks on the mattress and staring in a daze.
His brain refused to think about what to do with the pile of stuff.
"Chirp?"
Munster slowly crawled out of the pile of fabrics, watching Rand carefully from beginning to end.
Perhaps because Rand's quietness gave it some kind of wrong message, after staying in place for a short time, it began to tentatively approach Rand's direction, and then a little closer.
Finally it slumped over Rand's lap, and began happily burrowing down Rand's pajama bottoms into his arms.
Rand watched its series of movements with icy eyes. The damn little bastard finally came to Rand's shoulders, his wet claws held Rand's face, the flippers between his claws were against his skin, and he passed the test and tried to take his The slippery, cold fish face pressed against Rand's chin.
Rand's lips could almost touch its tentacles, which were stretched straight for unknown reasons, and he could even vaguely see the dark red marks left between its fine sharp teeth.
It must have been the remnants of the goddamn venison it had eaten before getting stuck between its teeth, Rand thought, reaching out like lightning and getting stuck under its pectoral fins.
"caught you."
He said coldly to Munster.
He pressed Munster to the sheets wet with its slime and issued a stern rebuke, pulling up a slipper with one hand and flicking the back of Munster's body as punishment (Lan De learned this method on a pet bbs, but not sure it will work on an amphibian).
Munster tried unsuccessfully to wrap his tail around Rand's wrist. Rand wasn't sure if it actually recognized its mistake, but it was observable that its tentacles drooped down, looking frustrated and sad.
Finally, Rand threw the little monster into the bathroom.
Munster started scratching at the door frantically, making a miserable cry—perhaps because of his childhood experiences, which made him loathe the place so much.
Rand rubbed his temples and picked up the phone amidst its cry.
He dialed Caroline's number, and he heard Caroline's phone message again. But for some reason, this time, when he listened to the gentle voice of that person, he instinctively felt a kind of disobedience.
Caroline seems to have become unfamiliar...
But soon he put that hesitation behind him, and he recorded his message with some unease.
"I'm Rand... I'm sorry, I thought I might have disturbed you, but... I'd still like to hear from Vincent, has he stabilized? If you have any information, you can call at any time. I… "
He managed to organize the language after a few recordings, and calling anyone late at night would not be a happy thing. However, even after Munster's interruption, Rand couldn't ignore the unease that swept his whole body and mind when he woke up from a nightmare.
He lay on the sofa for the next few hours, half-awake, waiting for Caroline's call back. But he never waited for that call. In the morning, he received a message from the animal shelter, who informed him that there was a good volunteer activity at the shelter today: a small book club.
There will be some children who go to the shelter with the organization of the school, they will play with the cats and puppies who are still not adopted, and they will read for a while...
Rand carefully browsed the attached event details, and he quickly decided to participate in this event - after all, if he stayed at home, I'm afraid he would be restless all day because of Vincent's affairs, as if he was about to be abandoned in love. Everyone craved someone's phone.
Rand swore he really didn't like it.
(Actually, there's a hidden reason: after a night of fighting Munster, Rand felt that he might need some comfort from a normal, fluffy, well-behaved pet, and of course, even Rand De didn't realize it himself.)
He knocked on Rogers' door through the hallway before heading to the animal shelter.
If he could, he'd like to have a buddy to go with him to the event (though it made him feel a bit like a middle school girl), but this time Rogers didn't plan to go.
He looked at Rand with a mysterious smile on the corner of his mouth.
"I still have some things to do today."
He said, but he didn't explain what he was going to do, and at the same time, he didn't show Rand the bloody hand he was hiding behind the door.
This is a weather that is not very suitable for outdoor activities.
Rand got off the bus and thought as he looked at the road, whitened by the sun. Before he even entered the animal shelter, he heard screams from the children, and he stopped and began to feel a little hesitant.
In fact, he hadn't slept well all night, and the high-pitched voice was starting to give him some headaches. When he actually came to the inside of that building, he completely regretted it. Those little animals are cute, but children are not. The shelter that Rand thought was quiet and exuded a warm atmosphere is now almost a mess, with ugly bunting on the walls, people running up and down the hallway, and the puppies inside the railing growl in horror— Almost all the staff were scrambling to maintain order.
"Oh my God, Rand Sivers right? It's great to have you here."
When Rand was about to flee, an old lady in a blue knitted jacket grabbed his wrist.
"Sorry, it's been a little hectic here - we didn't expect so many people to come..."
She babbled to Rand.
The strong mental pressure made Rand's stomach start to ache. Fifteen minutes later, he realized giddily that he had been forced to lead a group of community school ninth graders through the shelter. When he stood in front of the group of physically mature "children", the stomach pain began to intensify.
Even the blind could see that they didn't want to visit the place seriously at all, they were giggling, most of them had indecipherable Spanish accents, and Rand noticed that a few of them were scrawny and watery. , with obvious pinholes on the arms.
As he led them close to the frightened animals, a few people smirked and leaned over and puffed on them.
"Sorry, smoking is not allowed here!"
Rand told him.
The young man winked at him vaguely.
"Oh, don't be so cruel... I have to have something in my mouth to suck..."
The others roared with laughter.
Rand took a deep breath, smirked at the teenager, and snatched the cigarette from his hand.
"The animals here are very sensitive, and I just wanted to say that you may irritate them with these behaviors - and then you may hurt yourself because of it. I don't think you want that."
"Then they have to be killed, hahaha…"
Someone in the crowd laughed maliciously.
Their laughter was full of disdain.
His stomach cramps started to get stronger.
After that, when Rand found out that the organizers of the event had even asked him to take the chaotic group of students on a tour of Block D, he protested beyond control.
"The sign in the D area shows that there are some large dogs there, and they are not suitable to be visited. Also, these people are not suitable for contact with them... "
Rand motioned to the old lady to take a look at the group of people who were joking with impunity, none of them paying attention to the poor group of animals.
However, she did not listen to Rand.
"Oh, they're just a bunch of lost lads who are so indifferent to animals because of their lack of contact with them. That's what our campaign is about to correct..."
During the interval between Rand and the other party discussing this matter, the two teenagers looked at each other, and they giggled and pushed open the door of the D area.
Rand heard the roars of the large dogs almost at the same time - when he turned his head, he could just see a teenager pressing a lit cigarette butt on a Ronaville's bouncing against the iron railings. on the nose.
"Do not-"
He recognized the dog.
Rogers had spoken to him about it with tender sadness—they had been abused in an illegal dog-fighting ring to the point of being extremely brutal, and the police had brought it here after the dog-fighting ring was shut down. It's so aggressive that it doesn't even have any chance of adoption, and after going through the procedure, it will be euthanized at the end of the month.
When really bad things happen, you always have a hunch.
At this time, this premonition swept Rand.
He dropped the naive old lady and rushed towards Area D, but it was too late.
A ghostly growl erupted from the dog's body, and it charged furiously at the railing, which was already crumbling under the impact.
And the latch hanging on the railing finally made an overwhelmed cracking sound under countless violent impacts.
The metal railing flew up, and a dark brown shadow jumped up from the cage, and it instantly pressed the boy under his body.
It didn't take a second for its jaws with powerful bite to bite the fragile head of the teenager into pieces.
Like easily crushing an apple.
All watched in shock at this extremely horrific scene, they were motionless, holding their breaths because of the great horror and the impending tragedy.
Time seems to have been deliberately slowed down at this moment.
Ronaway's saliva gleamed in the air...
Someone closed their eyes.
"Do not-"
Rand stared at the dog in horror, and he let out a growl.
Then, a miracle happened.
The dog that had torn apart countless of its kind and even forced the police to use an anesthesia gun let out a whimper at that moment.
A stench of urine shot out from its crotch, and its four legs shivered.
When Rand came to it, it whimpered like crazy, then ran to the corner and curled up into a ball.