"Cough... cough... how... how did this... happen?" My lungs burned, each breath a fiery agony. Rain lashed down, turning the asphalt into a slick mirror reflecting the crimson blooming on the pavement. The girl... her sobs were a distant melody, muffled by the downpour.
"Mommy! He's not moving!"
Her voice, small and trembling, pierced through the haze. My eyes, heavy as lead, struggled to focus on the blurry figures rushing towards me. The woman, her face a mask of terror, "Call 911! Someone call 911!"
Sirens wailed in the distance, a mournful counterpoint to the symphony of rain and my own fading heartbeat. The world was shrinking, the edges blurring into an indistinguishable gray. Voices, distant and echoing, faded into whispers, then silence.
And then... darkness.
I blinked, disoriented. Where... where was I? A void, endless and suffocating. And him. A creature of impossible beauty, a cat with eyes like molten gold, perched on a non-existent ledge.
"Such a shame," it purred, its voice a silken caress that chilled me to the bone. "So much potential, squandered."
"Who... who the hell are you?" I rasped, my voice a croak. "And what the fuck is going on? How... how are you talking?"
The cat tilted its head, a playful glint in its golden eyes. "Me? Oh, I'm just... a god. Well, not the God, you understand. Just... a god."
My mind, fractured and reeling, struggled to comprehend. A god? In this... this nothingness?
"This... this can't be real."
But the cat only smiled, a chilling, predatory smile. "Oh, but it is, dear boy. Believe me, it is."
And then, the void seemed to tighten around me, squeezing the last remnants of my sanity away.