Levy Lucas pulled his key to the room from the weathered wooden railing of the deck. Routine in what he did, but with a greater degree of expectation tonight. Not before he went out into the evening's chill was a practiced act of deception carried out. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, he locked the door from the inside, hoping to deceive his parents into thinking he was securely in his room. With the actual key secure in his pocket, he made his exit, traveling out of the house with a trained, almost spectral silence.
His small teaser, a little gadget he'd been tinkering with for weeks, wasn't a minor annoyance. It was capable of delivering a serious blow, enough to knock someone out for a solid fifteen minutes. A useful tool, he considered, for his particular… hobby.
Although the inhabitants of his quite uninteresting town were so used to the noises of everyday life that they'd hardly even notice the sharp report of a gunshot, Levy still liked complete silence. He walked in perfect silence, every step carefully taken so that no inquisitive ears would be alerted to his presence. The black shape of the old derelict house loomed up out of the night after a short walk, a silhouette against the star-filled night sky.
"Dirty inside, old outside – not my problem, really," he muttered to himself, adjusting the strap of his backpack. He had more important things to think about.
My only regret, a constant source of anger, is that I sent my drone to that bastard's filthy location in the first place. Lesson learned. I will never leave it in such a dubious location again," he went on, a frown contorting his face. He moved towards the house, his eyes scouring it for an entry point. He noticed an open second-story window, a beacon in the blackness, and knew at once it would be his entry. Most people, he realized, would be frightened off by mere height, afraid to climb. Not Levy. He had the instinct of a climber. He had, frequently enough, scaled the heights of his two-unit apartment building, easily making the roof.
He had even climbed his school's ten-story tall building, a feat which had been met with amazement and horror, both without ropes or specialized gear. His parents and his grim-faced principal had warned him repeatedly of the risks of this kind of reckless endeavor, but his unwavering resolve and his insatiable appetite for the challenge made their well-meaning worries completely moot.
Levy thrived on challenges, gaining a perverse kind of enjoyment from surmounting them. Whether the intellectual challenge of producing a faultlessly written 3,000-word essay, researched to the faultless accuracy, or the physical and mental challenge of sneaking into school undetected, haunting the corridors with furtive ease, he approached each one with the same fierce focus. He did it for the thrill, for the adrenaline rush that coursed through his veins.
He began, his actions smooth and fluid. He climbed the building with ease and slid silently through the open window, landing noiselessly on the grimy floor. Within, he pulled out his teaser, the cold metal a reassuring presence in his palm, and began to search around. The atmosphere was thick and dank, reeking of decay, and an air of tension settled over him.
He walked farther into the home, his footsteps ringing in the artificial quiet. He made his way through the trash-filled halls, his flashlight slicing through the gloom. At last, he saw his drone in a room on the second floor, its distinctive form immediately recognizable. A surge of relief swept through him, relaxing the strain that had been tightening in his chest. He picked it up swiftly, holding it close, anxious to get out of this ominous location.
Then he heard it. A sound that gave him the chills down his spine.
A gurgling, liquid noise, clearly someone sucking on something liquid with a terrifying enthusiasm. It was on his left, a source of primal and instant terror. He jerked his head to the side, his heart racing in his chest, and flashed his flashlight in the area of the terrifying noise.
A gaunt-faced man stood, thin to the point of emaciation, his clothes dirty and in shreds. His face was smeared with a dark, sticky substance – blood. He leaned over a corpse, completely immersed in his grim ritual, sucking from it with the ferocity of an deadbody of an human.
Levy responded reflexively, shooting his Taser point-blank at the man. But to his absolute astonishment, the man did not flinch. He did not jump, he did not shout, he did not even acknowledge the electric shock. He merely went on with his gruesome feast.
Shock, raw and paralyzing, filled him. The teaser had always succeeded before. It was his trusted instrument, his insurance of control. Now, it was nothing.
The man, feeling his presence, moved with abrupt haste, his hands twisted into jagged, claw-like tips. Levy narrowly avoided the assault, evading the man's grip by a hair's breadth. He fired once, twice, firing the teaser's charge in quick succession, but nothing appeared to have any effect on the creature. The man was oblivious to the electricity, impervious to the successive shocks.
Why the hell isn't this working?" he shouted in frustration and mounting panic, his voice echoing through the silent house.
The man, with some undetermined hunger, seized Levy's legs, trying to drag him to the ground. Levy struggled with wild energy, hitting him again and again with his other hand, blow upon blow. He wildly looked around for a means of escape, his mind frantic, seeking some way to end this nightmare. And then his gaze fell upon a window.
Without a second thought, driven by pure survival instinct, he leaped through it. He landed with a sickening thud, pain exploding in his legs.
"Damn… that hurts," he growled, grinding his teeth on the burning pain.
Bruised but powered by an unbending determination, he walked home with his drone firmly clutched in his fist. He opened his room, tired and shaken to the core, and fell onto his bed. He reached for his phone, his hands trembling uncontrollably, and dialed a familiar number. He needed to tell someone what he had witnessed, to share the burden of the terrifying experience. Now.