Warlock

Interruption via Lycanthrope

Ring. Ring. RING......... RING RING!

Noise. Why was there noise? There shouldn't be noise. Was it time? It couldn't be time. His hand felt along the coffee table for an alarm clock. It was as he had thought; there was no alarm clock and there couldn't be one. Yet he was awake, and there had been a noise. The noise.

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ring ---

Recognition at last dawned and one of Loch's eyes opened. Someone was pressing the call button three floors down. He hadn't been aware that it still worked. He opened his other eye, blinking away the dust. As he slowly rose to his feet, the ringing noise began again. It was as if there were ten thousand painfully loud bees buzzing around inside his head. Loch shifted the curtain ever so slightly to the side and stared down through the tunnels of snowflakes at his unwanted guest. A man, a policeman by the look of it, stood at the door with his hands stuffed in his armpits for warmth. Loch's heat still worked. It would have broken long ago if it were normal, but it was powered by a powerful generator four stories down, buried beneath the two hundred square foot yard behind the collapsing building. Out of sight, out of mind.

Loch glanced at his sleeping place. A thick layer of dust coated everything, as if the window had been left open during a snow storm, except the snow had been replaced with a disgusting, gray, almost powdery substance. He did not imagine the cop would understand his strange habits; something would need to change.

The ringing began again with renewed vigor. It seemed this copper was not going to give up. The pale man flicked a hand at the room around him. In one swift motion, all of the dust lifted itself and flew through the opening window. It almost looked like a phantom, gathered in a dark, strange stream, but Loch knew better. Once all of the dark particles, even the ones buried in his white blonde hair and clothes, had left, the window shut itself and the curtains returned to their original place. The policeman never looked up. Even if he had, all he would have seen was a normal, closed window.

Loch took two steps to glance in the mirror of the small bathroom. Good enough.

He pressed the call button and spoke into the ancient speaker. Hopefully he was using it correctly; nobody had ever visited him in this location before. "Come in. It's unlocked."

The couch absorbed him as he fell back onto it. He glanced down at the newspapers he had received however many days, months, or years ago. The present date was an unknown detail at the moment. It would be safer to hide them. He piled the sets of newspapers on top of each other with one hand, moving as little as possible, and tucked the pile under one of the couch cushions. The couch creaked slightly in protest at the movement; it was much more movement than either of them were used to. By the looks of it, he needed to make a trip to a store to modernize the place once again.

As his eyes fell shut again from the exhaustion of movement, he could hear the poor policeman attempting to make his way up the staircase. Hopefully the unfortunate man wasn't afraid of heights. No, Loch hoped that he was afraid of heights. That would make up for the annoyance of waking him up when he would have much rather continued with his... he supposed it could be considered hibernation. A quiet cuss echoed off of the empty walls and made its way up to him. There was no sound of boards breaking yet, though.

When the door at last creaked open – after the cop had checked every other door to figure out which apartment was Loch's – Loch had rearranged himself so that his legs were stretched out on the couch and he faced the door. The couch wasn't very big, but he wasn't all that tall, either. He was just tall enough that people did not realize he was short, but just short enough that standing by anyone of average height made him appear small.