Red eyes glowed underneath long, matted black hair, hanging over the creature's dead face. Its black lips curled back into a snarl, revealing lines of long, spiny, yellowed teeth. Black rags covered its tall, sinewy figure, tattered around its clawed hands. Those giant hands, hanging near its knees on too-long arms, flexed, long fingers curling and uncurling like a spider's legs.
I flattened against the boarded window, unable to move, unable to breathe. It was Skurdulka. The legend, the ghoul, the local campfire cryptid—it was real, it was alive, and it was about to kill me.
Skurdulka advanced with slow steps, those red eyes gripping me, just like the dog's had. When it stood in front of me, looming a foot over me, the growl stopped but the teeth-baring snarl remained.
"Skurdulka." The word escaped me in a breathy whisper.
The snarl faded, black lips covering its gruesome teeth. It reached out a hand and I could only stand and shake. Rational thought had flown out the window. I was toe-to-toe with a shapeshifting monster and completely frozen.
Image by Jane Spaulding from Pixabay
With two long, clawed fingers, Skurdulka plucked my smartphone out of my shaking hand. The blue light swiveled, then tumbled, and went black when Skurdulka dropped the phone—crack—to the floor. The creature was a looming shape in the darkness, a disembodied face holding red eyes.
Cold fingers snapped around my neck. I choked, flailing, as the monster held me by the neck up to its height.
"Any last words?" It was a dry snarl, the voice a snake would've had.
"Fu—ack!" My attempt at a reply turned into a choking cough as I struggled against the monster's steel fingers. The backs of my tennis shoes kicked uselessly against the boards and I fought the one-handed steel grip around my neck. "Let—me—go!" I croaked.
Its oily black lips peeled back into a smirk filled with layers of needle teeth. "Is that all?"
Choking in Skurdulka's hand, one thought pierced my terror. I'd actually managed to catch a glimpse of a real goddamn cryptid. And it was going to kill me before I ever got to tell anyone.
Without warning, it dropped me in a heap on the floor. Scrambling to my feet, I kept my back against the boarded window. "Are you gonna eat me?" My voice shook.
Its shoulders fell, releasing a growling sigh. Its deep-set red eyes narrowed.
It took a step.
"Wait." I held out a hand, then raised my fists. My heart still pounded and my tight fists shook, but somehow, through the terror, something hit me. I wasn't going to die like some kind of cringing princess. If this thing was going to kill me, I was going to fucking fight it. "Let me fight you."
The monster's red eyes narrowed further and its head tilted. "Fight me?"
"Yeah." Somehow, I didn't stutter. "If you're gonna..." I swallowed. "I'm at least going down fighting like a man."
Underneath the creature's streaks of greasy hair, I glimpsed one eyebrow curve up. "You're not a man."
My teeth clenched. Anger burned through my fear. "I'll fight like a man."
With a snarl, the monster was on me again, one hand snapping around my neck and the other squeezing my crotch, hard. For once, I was glad for my particular anatomy. If I'd had a dick, Skurdulka's steel hand would've just crushed it.
"You're not a man," Skurdulka hissed.
Glaring down into its red eyes, I spit into the thing's face. It winced and I flung my leg out wildly, hitting something that might've been bone underneath the monster's thick black rags. The dry hiss through its teeth told me I definitely hit something.
It dropped me again, but this time I managed a shaky stand. With a feral shout, I flung out a fist. This time, my strike sailed through empty air. Then something hit me, so hard I thought my face exploded. The hit spun me completely around and I fell to the floor.
Skurdulka cackled.
With one hand against the wall, the other holding the stream of blood pouring from my nose, I staggered to my feet. My vision blurred and every beat of my pulse felt like a spike through my face, but I stood up and faced the thing. Spitting blood on the mold-slick carpet, I wiped one sleeve over my mouth and nose. "Is that the best you can do?"
Image by Maret Hosemann from Pixabay
I couldn't see its face, but I saw it straighten. Taking a deep breath, I swallowed what tasted like sand and metal, and raised my fists.
The monster raised a bony, clawed hand sharply. Sucking blood through my nose, I raised my fists protectively over my head, but kept my blurring eyes on Skurdulka. Its hand slowly fell.
"Come on!" I shouted. "Fight me like a man!" Fury—fury at Skurdulka, fury at Stevie, fury at Ash and my parents and everyone who thought I was a freak—surged up my spine and I spit at Skurdulka. "Come on!"
With hands faster than a snake's strike, Skurdulka snatched up the collar of my t-shirt. With its face inches from mine, I felt its breath on my cheek. As its red eyes looked me up and down, the rictus contorting its face relaxed. "I am not a man."
Fast, shallow breaths shook my chest. Rage and fear fought in my trembling veins. "You're a..." Staring into the shapeshifter's face, inches from mine, something odd struck me; it had eyelashes. It even had thin eyebrows, and tiny veins stealing into the whites of its eyes. There was a bit of pink under that dead-looking pallor. Skurdulka looked sick, but still looked human. Beneath the scraggly black hair, behind the red eyes, they looked sad.
My voice got soft. "You're a person."
The narrow-eyed anger turned to confusion. Slowly, Skurdulka's grip on my shirt loosened. They released me, and stepped back.
"It's true. You're not really a monster," I said slowly. "You're a person. But something..." I looked them up and down, all six feet of corpse-like skin, claws, and red eyes "...happened."
They just looked at me, silent, just like the big black dog had. It struck me then, suddenly obvious—Skurdulka was the big black dog.
"Why are you here?" they demanded. "Why did you come here?"
"I thought the dog—um, you, I guess—was after me."
"No!" Skurdulka cut a clawed hand through the air and I raised a hand defensively over my bleeding face. "Here! Why did you come?"
"I... um..."
"Come to film the monster? Capture me with your cameras and," they swiped my phone off the floor, "your little computer box?"
"No, no, I swear!"
Skurdulka threw the phone furiously to the floor, snapping it into pieces. They stepped close to me again, glaring. "Then—why?"
"I..." I swallowed blood and took a breath. "I didn't know where else to go."
Skurdulka was silent a moment. I wondered if they were still considering skinning and eating me. Maybe Skurdulka was still—somehow—human, but that didn't mean killing me was off the table, and it didn't take my flesh off it either.
Reaching into their tattered black rags, Skurdulka held something up. "What is this?"
It took me a moment to realize they held my red-eyed white mask and black wig. Which, I now realized, looking at each side-by-side, my costume was a pretty flimsy imitation of Skurdulka themself. Hopefully they took imitation as flattery—not insult.
"It's you. It's, it's supposed to be you," I stammered. "Skurdulka. I wanted to be Skurdulka for Halloween."
The confusion returned, three swift blinks and a moment of silence. "Why?"
"Because" I shrugged weakly "you're a shapeshifter. You can be anything you want to be." My gaze fell. "I wanted that. For a day."
Skurdulka was silent, until I looked back up at them. Then, "why can't you go home?"
I looked away again, holding my bleeding nose with my sleeve. "I just can't face them. Not after..." I shook my head.
In the back of my mind, or maybe in the bottom of my soul, I felt the pit. It was back again, as deep and dark as ever. Sometimes I could cover it up, I could cover it up for a while, even—but it was always there. Now it felt deeper, darker, without Ash. It was a gaping hole of nothing, of being nothing—of being wrong.
The pit spit out a thought just then—let Skurdulka kill you. You'll do it yourself anyway.
"You can't leave."
Skurdulka brought me out of my thoughts. "What?"
"You've seen me. You can't leave."
Maybe they'll kill me after all. Maybe the pit's right. Maybe I should let them. I looked up at them. "Are you gonna kill me?"
They glared at me for what felt like a full minute. Then, "Not tonight."
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Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Come back for Part III next Sunday Nov 25th!