Bloodwalker

Chapter 31: The Leash

Trigger Warning/s: mentions of blood and cuts, mentions of human experimentation, mentions of drowning and suffocation

Pre-chapter notes: none

Art: Luciano Neves on ArtStation. He is the VFX Director at CLAN VFX, a company that provides VFX and post-production services! He does a lot of realism which looks amazing. As well as digital paintings, he also does oil paintings which you can see on his portfolio. These are also extremely beautiful!

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The outside of your tenement building is, as usual, quiet. Not a creature stirs beneath the grassy beds outside on the ground floor, and, as always, there are no signs of your neighbours anywhere.

This is the decrepit, old building you call home. Every day, you leave and return to the quiet, echoing, concrete steps of the stairwell, and the hollow, empty apartment where you sleep. It has always been peaceful here - something you're extremely grateful for, amidst all the chaos of school and Boss's mission and your own, personal troubles. Any place, which you can call your own, is better than the compound. Home is the place where you can unwrap the bandages on your forearms and let the bruises see the light. Home is the place where you remind yourself of who you really are - not simply an identity assigned to you by someone else, but you.

But something is amiss.

A soft breeze susurrates through the hallway, and you catch the scent of something that shouldn't be, something so illogical to your quotidian way of life. It is not the scent of blood (for your very quirk deals with it, so how could it not be part of your routine?). Nor is it the scent of a warm meal, like the local baker's hand-kneaded bread, dusted with a fine mantle of flour like rime on leafless branches in winter. It is not even a new perfume, tarrying in the area and clinging to your clothes.

It is the scent of a girl.

The scent of a girl, which pervades and harries your senses, sends a deep panic within your bones. It sets like concrete and hardens like tar, rendering you stiff with indecision. Your own blood responds in kind, pounding at the barriers of your vessels as if demanding to be let out. It knows who the blood of the unfamiliar person belongs to. It knows they're there.

There is something deeply unsettling about having a guest over that you do not wish to have. It is like the mandibles of an ant as it digs into your skin, or a sharp edge of glass as it draws irregular lines on the hands of anybody that picks it up. Perhaps it is because your home is no longer yours, but it has become a commodity to be shared, a resource to be divided.

Perhaps, it is like an open house inspection. Floor plan spread out for all to see, and items like museum exhibits on display for visitors' perusal. And, of course, the front door, open to all.

Your front door does indeed hang slightly ajar when you approach it. The thumping in your bloodstream gets louder. She's there, on the other side, and you don't know what you'll do when you face her.

Gingerly, you push open the door, half expecting your "guest" to lunge herself at you in greeting. The hinges creak in anticipation.

What you see, is far, far worse.

Toga Himiko stands in the centre of your apartment in a dream-like trance, rocking slightly on her heels forwards and backwards like spindly branches in the wind. As if the room around her doesn't exist, she barely acknowledges you when you make yourself known. The girl mutters something over and over again under her breath like a prayer.

If this universe has any clemency, it shows you none. Your eyes scrape their way over every inch of Toga's body, limned in the dim natural light that filters through the curtains. In her hands are a piece of paper that she clutches with such force that the edges crumple in protest.