Scribbles and Drabbles

Notebook Drabble 45 - Changeling 1

Opening his curtains to find the thing talking his nightmares would make it hard for anyone not to lose the contents of their stomach. Barnett managed more from luck than skill. The vomit burned the back of his throat as he fell back on his bed, barely a step away from the window. 

The creature clicked, twisted its too-long limbs and stretched over the entire glass. It was humanoid in shape, but all its features were distorted and out of place. Bones jutted from its joints, and its tongue flicked in the air, tasting, searching. It grinned at him, sharp teeth blackened and pointed. His thigh ached where the scar of being bitten sat. He got lucky. He survived. 

The soft mattress helped. There had been concrete back in the cage, pen thing, that he'd been trapped inside. There was no smell of decay or mould either. Instead, the air freshener his roommate used grounded him in reality. 

He was home, not in Underhill. And it would not (could not?) enter without invitation. 

It tapped on the window, the window that opened. Barnett locked eyes on the handle. It wanted him to open it. The creature screeched as he stayed frozen. Another tap on the window, firmer, making the glass shake, threatening to break. 

"Blue eyes," Barnett said, noticing the feature as it glared at him. Most of them had black eyes in this form. Some could take on colour, but black eyes became the first clue that something else crept around them. Blue fooled them all for the longest time because his eyes looked human. And then he bit down.  

Blue Eyes tilted its head impossibly far and nodded. 

Barnett knew this one. It wasn't a random creature. It tried to eat him, like all the others, but it wasn't a random beast. That somehow made this better. Another demanding tap battered against the window frame. A touch softer this time and against the plastic, not the glass, as if Blue realised that the glass could break if he wasn't careful. It wanted Barnet to open the window; it wanted the invitation. 

This was a stupid idea on so many levels. Blue tried to eat him, he had the scar to show it, but something tugged. A whisper that he could trust Blue Eyes. 

He opened the window and let it sliver inside. It shut the window behind itself and shivered as the warmth of the house sunk into it. It settled on top of the cupboard in the corner. Mud smeared on the walls as it passed, bones popping with every stretch. It moved its jaw into place and licked its lips. 

"It's cold on the surface. All those layers are starting to make more sense," Blue groaned, voice echoing on itself early but low enough that no one outside the room would hear.

"Underhill's hot," agreed Barnett, unsure what to do. "I'd lend you some clothes, but none will fit."

"Not yet," Blue said, eyeing up the blankets on the bed hungrily. 

"No!" Barnett moved, blocking the bed from the creature that could tear him apart and had eaten his flesh once before. "You need to clean first."

Blue Eyes followed his glance to the mud on the wall and cupboard doors. They searched the room and noticed the lack of dirt in it. The distorted features twisted further but nodded. "Show me to your bathroom, and I will clean."

"First, why are you here?" Barnett demanded with more confidence than in his chest. This was over. He'd escaped, he left, he'd won the game and was free of the monsters, except the one that climbed out of the burrow to find him. Everything rang warning bells, and yet Barnett continued to indulge in it. "What happened to Underhill stays in Underhill?"

A snort answered that. "You and your friends are not special. We play with many mortals. Normally, people don't escape the traps we lay." Blue Eyes shrugged, one long finger opening the cupboard door to peek inside. Blue Eyes was one of those damn traps. Was that why they'd left? They'd failed to trick Barnett, or rather, Barnett clocked the truth a second too late for both of them. "We take the place of some to monitor your kind and its progress. I have been assigned to take the place of a lost soul."