AVERY
He didn’t answer my calls.
In all our history of going out, I had never actually called him. We texted, sure, but he had never actually called me, and I hadn’t called him either. Mostly because there hadn’t really been anything to say. And now that there was actually reason for a call, he wasn’t picking up.
I called him again three more times and then gave up when he still didn’t pick up. My thoughts were all over the place. Why wasn’t he picking my calls?
He didn’t seem like the sort of guy that would just ghost me like that. I did tell him to stay away from me, but I had also said that I needed time to process everything. That meant that there was a possibility that we weren’t done. He should have been expecting me to reach out to him, even though I had asked him not to.
Plus, there was absolutely no reason for him to see my calls and ignore them. He didn’t know if I had something important to tell him-just like I did now, and he didn’t know if there was an emergency.
A huge part of me felt like Cyrus would never intentionally ignore my calls. Deep down, I knew it. He wouldn’t see my calls and not pick up. Not with the way he was with me. He had real feelings for me, I could tell. The look of utter helplessness in his eyes that day when I walked away from him, gutted me.
My stomach roiled. What had I been thinking? To leave him like that?
I needed to see him, no matter what. My eyes darted to the clock on the wall of our room. A few minutes after 5. There was still a lot of time to go to him and even come back. Hell, I didn’t even mind, if I couldn’t come back, I would spend the night at his place.
I turned to Mariah, who was curled up on her bed busy on her phone. “Mariah?”
“Yeah? Whats up?” She looked at me immediately, probably hearing the urgency in my voice.
“I’m going to see Cyrus.”
She sat up, abandoning her phone, “Why? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head as I walked over to the little table beside my bed to grab my key. I stretched to grab my key, then paused and decided I didn’t need to. All I had to take with me was my key and phone.
“He’s not picking my calls and that’s not like Cyrus at all.” I explained to him, “I need to check up on him. I need to know whats going on.”
“Do you think something happened to him?”
I froze, remembering the attack that night. Oh my God. Coming up with all the possible reasons he wasn’t picking my calls, I had never once thought that something could have happened to him.
The attack. What if those people had attacked him again?
They were just four that day and the battle had been almost too much for him to fight. I still remember how I came down and saw those mean dealing blows on him while they held him down.
What if they had come to attack him again and this time, they were too much for him to fight?
No. I couldn’t think like this. I had to be positive. If I kept thinking that something had happened to him, I might go crazy.
“No. I just want to check up on him.” I told her.
She nodded. “Okay, Avery. Be safe, and if you’re not going to come back tonight, please call to let me know.”
“I will, thanks.” I walked over to her bed to give her a hug which she returned, before I walked out the door.
I ordered a cab and decided to stop at an eatery to get fast food since there was a possibility that I wouldn’t be coming back today. Inside, waiting for my order to be brought up, my eyes became drawn to the TV. Everyone was watching it like something interesting was happening, so I turned to see what it was that had them hooked like that.
On the Tv, was a footage of a man walking along a not-very-lit path. Due to the fact that the lighting wasn’t good, everything he wore looked black, but I could tell that he was wearing a jacket and pants. He walked slowly, and from the looks of it, he was staggering. He was drunk.
Something about it intrigued me, had me forgetting completely about my order to focus on the tall man on the screen. Three other men appeared on the screen, not far from him, but it was obvious that he was their target. As I was watching the video, four other men appeared in front of him and that caused him to stop walking and stare at them.
I could easily read his body language. He was drunk, yes, and not strong on his feet, but he also knew that these men coming towards him obviously wanted something from him. He was wary.
One of the men seemed to be saying something to him. The footage had no sound, so I couldn’t hear what he said, but from the man’s stern posture, I could guess that he wasn’t being friendly. The drunk man, the one they were surrounding, didn’t react. He just stared at them.
For some reason, that simple act reminded me of someone that I knew. Cyrus. Almost everything reminded me of him now.
“This is where they attack him, and he turns into a monster.” One girl in the line told another one, the both of them, watching the screen avidly, along with everyone in the line, to be honest.
So they had watched this thing before. And what did they mean, ‘turn into a monster’?
I guess I was going to find out soon.
The man, who had spoken to the drunk man before, threw something at the man and the man immediately stepped back from it before it could touch him. Smoke evaporated from the item that the man had thrown, and I wondered if it could be a gas. They all had masks on anyway.
The drunk man flew at the man who had thrown the gas at him, and it all seemed to happen in slow motion as all the men pulled their guns up and started firing at the man. That didn’t deter him. He grabbed the man, cut his head off and then, the drunk man fell to the ground.
Uh… What the hell did I just see? The man had obviously been shot at, and not just by one person or a single bullet. A ton of people had fired at him, yet he still found the strength to kill the man that had thrown the gas at him.
How was that even possible? And how had he managed to separate the man’s head from his body with his bare hands?
The part where the drunk man flew at the other man came on again, and this time, it was slowed, and the camera zoomed in on his face, turning a full 360 degrees as the video started.
Just before the drunk man had attacked the other men, his face had changed, becoming longer and sprouting new hairs. Turning lupine.
Oh fuck. I would recognise that man anywhere, even in my sleep.
It was Cyrus. Cyrus was the drunk man that had been shot at by a ton of different men. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The video showed clearly as he beheaded the man with his claws, and then his eyes rolled back in his head as he slumped to the ground, probably unable to bear the pain from the numerous bullets.
My stomach roiled so hard that I gripped the counter in front of me hard. I was going to be sick. I was going to throw up all over the counter and on top of everyones shoes.
Cyrus was the man in the video. Cyrus had been attacked.
The video came on again and even though I wanted to turn away, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t look away. I stared helplessly at the screen as the video started all over again. As the men surrounded him, talked to him, threw the gas at him, and fired at him when he attacked. My heart galloped in my chest as I watched his body fly back several times from the impact of the bullets.
When the footage ended, the screen didn’t go blank like I had expected it to. Instead, another footage came on of the men carrying his limp body into their vehicle. They deposited him at the back of the car, then four of them piled into the vehicle while the others left the vicinity of the camera.
I didn’t care about them anyway. My focus was on the car carrying Cyrus.
As the car made to drive off, I caught the name on the side.
Dascher’s.
I memorised the name before the screen went off and then quickly typed it in the notepad of my phone to save it just incase I forgot.
Someone shoved my hand. I turned and saw that the girl was pushing my food to me. I had already paid before buying, so I collected it from her, muttered a ‘thanks’ that I wasn’t even sure she heard, then dashed out of the restaurant.
People looked at me crazy as I passed them. I probably looked like I had seen a ghost, but I didn’t care.
I had to find the men that had taken Cyrus.