The World's Shell

The moon shone brightly above the crowded city skyline in the closing hours of a late summer day, betrayed by the sudden onset of a chilly cold air. Frederick could feel it biting his face and his hands, left uncovered by his short-sleeved blouse that he had thrown on while misjudging the weather. His partner, on the contrary, was dressed in an ill-fitted dark suit that seemed to be keeping him from shivering well enough.

“What, did you actually check the weather?”

“Of course not. This is just what I always wear. Sucks to suck, pretty boy!”

“And you can stay jealous, you bald freak!”

His partner, a bald and ill-aged man in his early 60s that had only introduced himself as Dain, never hid his disdain of Frederick from the start. After being forced to tag along with him for a short while, Frederick concluded that this embittered old fart was simply jealous of everyone and everything around him, to the point of extreme misanthropy. He was type of man to kick around stray cats and little children alike, and mutter some scathing criticism about every soul that passed him by on the street. Frederick hated that insufferable man’s guts, to put it lightly. The two of them were both foot soldiers of the Blue Bloods, the oldest and by far the most powerful crime syndicate in the city of Trevier. Even the second most powerful organization, the Scarlet Flame, was nothing more than a parasite picking up the scraps the Blue Bloods allowed them to have, a situation they seemed to take more of an issue with in recent times. And lately, a new group of bottom-feeders had started to raise their head high and cause trouble. Because of this, the two men were dispatched that night to reinforce the security detail of the organization’s most profitable casino, the Pearly Gates. It was a trivial job; the casino was already so tightly guarded that no one would even dream of trying anything. Frederick knew their boss’s real intention was for them to keep a vigilant eye on the casinos manager with whom he had recently had a falling out. In a way, they were sent there as guards, but against the casinos staff rather than outside assailants. The jobs that are on the table for a mafia foot soldier are countless, but few are as pleasant as getting to loiter around a casino. Frederick would never even dream of complaining; if it wasn’t for the partner they had chosen to send with him. He continued to fling venomous stares and silent curses at the old man’s back throughout their whole walk. It was when they were only a couple of minutes away from their destination that old Dain froze in place so suddenly that Frederick almost bumped into him.

“Why’d you stop now?”

“There was something there, in front of us.”

Frederick looked over the old man’s should with no small dose of alarm, but all that he saw was the same empty alleyway they’d been walking in, drowned in darkness. There was no hint of movement, and a heavy silence hung in the air, covering the distant muffled sounds of the city’s night life.

“There’s nothing here. What the hell did you-”

In that moment, Frederick froze too, and he felt his exploding in his chest. A pair of bright eyes locked onto his from the darkness ahead. They shone in the night like headlights, while leaving their owner completely shrouded in darkness. Only one thing was clear to Frederick.

“T-those aren’t human eyes, old man.”

“I’m inclined to agree. The height they’re sitting at is also odd. Too short for a person, and far too tall for a dog.”

“So what the hell should we do? I never learned what to do to escape wild beasts.”

“If it is that…” Old Dain paused there and drew a cross on his chest, as if he was praying for it to be so.

“If it is a wild animal, we might be able to escape by backing up slowly. Mimic what I do.”

Frederick did his best to copy the old man’s movements as he slowly distanced himself from those eyes while standing tall on his tiptoes to appear more menacing. After the first few steps, hope made its way back into Fredericks mind. It was then that the beast finally moved.

The eyes blinked, and the stomping sounds of a barreling truck combined with a repulsive snarling noise reverberated along the empty alleyway. A shape flew out of the darkness, but it was too quick for Frederick to make out anything specific. It was the size of a massive grizzly bear, and its body was covered in long dark fur, but it was clearly no average animal. One of its limbs was disproportionately large, covered in grotesque serpentine musculature and armed with claws long enough to paint a silver afterimage across his entire field of vision as they barreled past. The sloppy sounds of flesh tearing filled Fredericks ears. He realized he was suddenly on the ground, but he had no recollection of how he ended up there. The last thing he heard was that of desperate wailing, but whether it was old Dain’s or his own, he could not tell.

…

The following morning, the entire alleyway was blocked off by a police barrier. Amidst the blue uniforms swarming around like busy ants, two men in the extravagant white uniforms of the Military Police stood waiting just outside the barrier. While his deputy was fidgeting around, clearly nervous about stepping into the gruesome crime scene, captain Langley was more concerned about the man they were waiting for; in fact, the mere thought of it was enough to make him see red from anger. The idea that he should wait patiently for the lateness of a man who should’ve never been allowed to don that uniform in the first place made his blood boil. As he paced back and forth, the long cloak characteristic of a captain’s uniform, white on the outside and black inside, flew around behind him at the pace of the crispy morning wind. Finally, he spotted the man of the hour approaching.

“You deigned to show up, Sartori. What an honor!”

“The honor is all mine, Langley.”

Captain Eugen Sartori walked towards the barrier at a brisk pace, his woman deputy trailing behind him. He wore Langley’s same uniform, except the detailing and the cloaks interior were red rather than black; a gaudy way to distinguish it as the uniform of the new Special Division, which was in Langley’s eyes nothing but an excuse to elevate this young man to the rank of Captain before he’d even served four years in the agency.

“I hope we didn’t disrupt your beauty sleep by calling you in too early. This agency would sink in a day if a wrinkle showed itself around your precious eyes.”

“I’m grateful for your concern, but you should be careful not to say things that can be misunderstood so easily. You have a wife and two kids, what would they think if rumors were to spread?”

“My marriage is going swimmingly. There’s no need for anyone to comment or worry about it.”

“I’m delighted to hear that. Did you already see the bodies?”

“No, we were waiting for your expert opinion, of course. How could we ever go in without you?”

“You’re flatter me too much, Langley. You’re gonna make me blush.”

Both deputies sighed simultaneously as they accompanied the two captains making fools of themselves in front of a crowd of police. As soon as they stepped over the barrier however, the smell of gore assaulted their noses and quieted them down for the rest of the walk. In the alley, the scene of the crime revealed itself in all its gruesomeness.

Calling them bodies was highly inaccurate, because there was no piece complete enough to be immediately recognizable as a human being. Indistinct flesh chunks were scattered everywhere, and both their small size and the gaping holes in the largest parts, ostensibly the torso’s, suggested they had been devoured. There was nothing in that alley that resembled the victims heads. Langley and his deputy both distanced themselves so that their vomit wouldn’t contaminate the scene, and even the other deputy looked like she was barely holding herself back from doing the same. Only Eugen Sartori looked at the devastation in front of him without as much as a twitch of his expression. His sharp azure eyes were calm as a lake, and he even pulled out a pack of cigarettes and began casually smoking as he examined the different bits and pieces scattered around. Eventually, he walked up to the still struggling Langley and rested his hand on his shoulder.

“You did well to call me in. This perfectly matches another murder I’m working on.”

“Then… you’re one hundred percent certain?”

“Of course. What else could explain a scene like this?”

He gave the man a pat on the back and a friendly smile, as if to reassure him, but Langley wasn’t in a state to even get angry at the moment.

“This was done by a Dreamer.”

...

In an excessively luxurious bedroom, a totally out-of-place fragrance of vegetation and wilderness hung thick in the air, such that one could easily mistake themselves being in the middle of a forest in the aftermath of a tropical downpour of rain. Standing in front of a mirror, next to the gargantuan bed, I looked over the easel she would always use to paint, holding countless never-to-be-finished scribbles of still life and shabby self-portraits that would never see the light of day. From when our forms would overlap, I knew just how much she hated her boring painting classes, and the teacher that seemed insistent on the fact that painting must never be enjoyable. To its left, the ornate desk she spent innumerable hours studying on was in an even bigger disarray of books and stationery. Upon close inspection, both the desk and the papers were covered in faint little bloodstains from when she would nervously bite her lips and then wipe the blood with her hands. Directly across, an open door allowed for a look into the spacious closet, filled to the brim with clothes that were at once absurdly expensive and utterly worthless; their owner would never be able to wear them, after all. But then, was there really a point to a single object in this room?

There was nothing else in that barren space. In fact, what stood out the most about the room, more than its excessive luxury, was how empty it was proportionately to its cavernous size. As my wandering thoughts arrived at that, the yearning gaze with which I gazed at that world chilled; it quickly returned to the tall mirror. In there, a figure was trembling in excitement. Seeing that made me happy; there was no longer anything to hesitate about.

A barely audible murmur began pouring out, and the forest odor grew suffocatingly strong. The girl in the mirror beamed with a wide smile, as brilliant as the sun.

Ah, so be it.

Tonight, let us bask in the moonlight together once more, my dear.