I pull my hand back with all my force, resulting in my flesh being torn.

The blood streams down from my wound and drips to the ground. I stare at my hand and the blood on his sharp teeth.

Teeth like sharks.

He breathes hard like a man who has just run an entire marathon. His tongue moves along his teeth, taking in the blood.

Once again, he says, “I am hungry…”

What the hell is going on?

I put my injured hand behind my back, wetting my shirt with blood.

He turns towards me, his eyes are unsteady and threatening. “I am…”

“Ulah, stop!” Like that’s going to work. Whatever is happening isn’t normal and I don’t understand why.

The only thing I can think of is a monster used a body skill on him to alter his biology.

While thinking, Ulah charges at me. I jump to the side, evading him.

“I will break your jaw if you don’t stop!” I shout, but my words aren’t getting through to him.

Is the bread somehow connected to it? But I am normal. I was in a lot of pain but I didn’t have any body changes or extreme hunger.

Ulah moves like a sick raging goat, but he trips on a chair at the dinner table and falls on the ground with a thud.

Even the frail wooden floor shakes a little.

I hope that didn’t hurt him too much.

Natasha has a puzzled expression. She mutters under her breath. “Just what the hell is going on?”

“He’s trying to eat me!”

“…” She then says, “Hold him.”

I do as she says and quickly. He manages to get on his knees, but that’s the highest he reaches before I grab his neck and hold him in a neck lock.

Natasha approaches us and goes on her knees to be at eye level with him. Ulah is ‘clawing’ away at my arms, trying his best to escape restraint.

Natasha sees his teeth and the blood.

“Ulah, do you recognize my voice?”

He groans in response.

“Pink-terra love bird?” She tries the nickname Caren gave him.

He groans again.

I gulp and say, “I think… it’s something related to that bread I gave him when I came home. Maybe eating it made him a target of a monster with a body attribute?”

“He would be dead or in a monster’s stomach if a monster— Wait. Bread?” She looks at me as if to say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

“Yes… I put a bread roll in your hand too, when you were asleep.”

“Ah. I thought it was from your father.” She answers. “Where did you get it?”

That’s the hard part to answer.

Ulah groans and hits my chin with the back of his head. I endure it.

I say, “A… Balash temple…”

Her face doesn’t change at all. “Why were you near one?”

“I didn’t go inside of it. You said not to go in it and I thought—”

“You thought what? Don’t go inside, don’t go near, don’t have anything to do with it. Why did you try to play semantics with my words when you knew what I meant?”

“I know I know. I just thought it would be a different case if I didn’t go into it. And I also wanted to get something to eat. I didn’t think it would lead to something like this.”

She bites her lips and shakes her head in disappointment.

“Whatever. How about you?” She arches an eyebrow, preparing a sarcastic question. “You want to start eating people?”

“No…”

“How do you feel?”

“I woke up with a lot of pain.” I used my chin to point at my hand and then at my stomach. “And it made the pain stop for the most part.”

“I see. What about your father? Did he eat any?”

Shit.

I nod. “Yeah. I completely forgot about him.” I was focused on helping Ulah.

“I see… It’s weird, he has just been sleeping.” She stands up and looks at the corner of the room, where the mattress is. “You think he is just holding in the pain?”

She looks at me.

So it was a literal question.

“Probably? But I doubt it. He never had a high pain tolerance.”

She leans on her left leg like she often does. “He probably thinks it’s the usual gas pain.”

“Then wouldn’t he be chewing down on some Kuger herbs?” Unlike Hulas, it tastes like normal spice. And you can always almost find him having one in his mouth at night and in the morning.

“Who knows what that man thinks.”

Ulah is still trying to break free. He even tried to stand up a couple of times.

I hope whatever he has can be reversed.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Natasha sighs and I start hearing heavy movements.

She quickly grabs the table runner and pulls it off the table, sending the baskets of fruits to the ground.

“Your father is up. Get to the door,” she says before balling the table runner, gagging Ulah, gesturing for me to release him then taking hold of him.

“I need something to drink. Fuck…” Caren’s broken glass-like voice sounds worse.

He is holding his throat with both hands like he is stabbed there and hunched forward, each movement of his is reflecting exhaustion.

I get up, take the nearby bottle of grated dried hulas, and backpedal to the door so I can watch all his movements.

I ask Natasha, “If we give him water, would he—”

He dashes at us like a very big angry zombie.

Shit!

Natasha grabs the back of my shirt with her free hand and runs to the door at full speed.

We reach on the outside steps quickly, since the house is elevated. In the next second, Caren along with his massive thuds come chasing after us.

Natasha throws me ahead. I land on the dirt ground and fall. I get up quickly.

“I am dying of thirst!” he runs down the step, but he suddenly groans on the step before the last one and falls to the ground head first.

That back injury must have hit him like a truck.

I ask Natasha, anxious, “Do you think they are different enough to survive it?”

“It?”

“Healing.”

Her eyes are still on Caren, but she replies, “What do you think?”

Tch.

It is not.

Caren moves once again. His movement is slow, but it's picking up pace. He pulls his bloodied forehead up. The blood is tinkling down his chin.

His forearms are bruised but he ignores it and forces himself up. However, he quickly loses his balance and staggers backward and finds himself falling towards the stairs, and unfortunately for him, his back hits the edge of a step pretty hard.

He screams, but that’s all. Lucky for us.

Natasha tells me, “Get Marvin.” She pauses, then asks. “You remember his house? Where it is?”

“Yeah, but I can barely see anything.”

It’s not pitch black like in the house but the only thing I can make out are the big objects.

“I will go for him then.”

“Oh wow. You can see in the darkness now?” I ask sarcastically.

“I have good memory.” She hands me Ulah. “Keep an eye on them. If you have to hit your father in the head with a stone to keep him down, do it.”

“What if I accidentally kill him?” I ask, adjusting my arms around Ulah, who’s trying to get leverage so he can chew on my flesh like a little zombie.

“Then you would be a father killer. My little psycho.” Natasha replies while walking down a grassy slope.

“Nice.” So in other words, I would be like the Queen of the Holvious Queendom.

I always wanted to be part of royalty and not peasantry.

**

POV: Natasha.

While walking, I turn back a couple of times to see if Vernisha is safe.

Her grip on Ulah is tight and I hear her trying to soothe him with songs he often sang with the neighbors.

’Right now, the sky is clear. I want to fly through the sky like a bird. I want freedom. I want…’

Of course, it’s not working.

I reach down the short slope and walk towards the decent size wooden house that has a garden to the right of it. A failed garden. There are supposed to be red cabbages growing in it to sell, but they are partially eaten down.

Well, that’s how it was earlier. Who knows, perhaps a miracle happened and the garden is back to normal.

The fool should have taken my advice and used rotten pink-terra sauce to keep away those pests.

I climb up Marvin’s narrow and steep stairs, and once in front of the door, I knock on it.

There is a stupid talisman on it.

It belongs to his wife. She believes it will bring good luck and repel Darsean cultists. I can say with certainty, it’s a load of bullshit.

I knock on the door again, and finally, I hear a sound.

“What the hell… Who the hell?” It’s Palia. She sounds extremely tired. “Mervin.”

“Mervin.”

“Mervin!” I think I heard a shove.

“Wh— what? What the hell are you waking me up for?”

“Someone’s at the door, go check who.”

I chose to say something. “It’s me. Natasha. I have an emergency. My son and husband are terribly sick.”

“Natasha?” She is surprised. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

Thought I would wait until you got your bearings.

“Good question.”

I hear Palia footsteps. She must have got off her bed and is making her way to the door.

The door handle shakes, but the door doesn’t open. “Shit. Give me a second.”

She tried to open the door without the key…?

Finally, Marvin says something, “What did you say? I just woke up so my brain’s tired and whatever.”

Palia shouts like a teacher that has to explain a topic for the thousandth time, “Get your lazy ass up. Her family is sick!”

“Oh give me a damn break!”

Then I hear light footsteps dragging on the floor towards the door. “You found the fucking key?”

“It’s hard to find anything when you have to move in darkness.”

“I’m not buying any more blu-dust. Shit’s too damn expensive. I swear, when I meet ‘Light for all’ boss, they are going to hear a piece of my— Oh. Palia, you dropped the key on the damn floor!”

“Huh?”

“I stepped on it. I think I did.”

I ask, “Can you please make haste?”

“Aight aight. Give an old man a break.” The door lock makes a clicking sound.

I go down the steps for the door to open in an arc. Marvin is partially naked but has a bed sheet to cover his privates.

He looks out into the darkness before finding me. “Where is your lamp? Are you trying to trip and fall?”

“Didn’t have the time. Anyway, let’s hurry.”

“Put this pants on.” His wife throws a brown pant and a big bag at him, which lands on his face.

“Dang face…” he puts the pants on quickly and asks me, “So, what’s the issue with them?”

“They ate something that made them grow fangs and attack both me and my daughter,” I add. “They could target you next.”

He is tiptoeing, trying to adjust the way the pants fits around him before suddenly stopping.

He doesn’t say anything, but Palia comes running outside, pushes him aside, almost making him trip(of course he panics), and asks, “Did you just say fangs?”

I nod. “They want to eat flesh and drink blood.”

Marvin blinks a couple of times, his expression refusing to change. He asks, “Ha… drink? Drink what? Drink blood…?”

“Yes.”

“Oh for fucks sake. I want you to know, if you weren’t Palia’s good friend and Caren’s wife, I would have shut my dang door."

He mutters, “Fucking scary shit. Did you piss off one of those gum skins—”

Palia elbows him. “Stop being so disrespectful.”

“I am not. Didn’t you just hear what she just said? Gum skin shit.”

“I did.” she walks down the step, nudges me, and tells him, “Hurry up.”

We reach back(I had to listen to him talk about Caren and Ulah being cursed by an angry Gum skin priest the entire time), and the first thing I hear is Vernisha singing another song for Ulah while rolling a fist-size stone around with her foot.

It almost sounds like a shitty version of one she shouldn’t know.

Palia holds a lamp, one she borrowed from Mary a month ago.

Marvin takes a deep breath and gestures at Caren. He is groaning and making weird groping movements like a dying patient trying his best to squeeze a ball.

Marvin asks, “Why is he bleeding in his head and acting like that?”

You are the doctor. You are the one that’s supposed to be telling me that.

Of course, I don’t say that. Instead, I tell him, “I told Vernisha to use stones if he threatens her.”

“Hell… How hard did she hit him?”

I ask Vernisha. “How hard?”

She’s practically rocking Ulah from side to side as she answers, “Really hard. The first time he gained strength out of nowhere, so I went for a chest shot. The second time… I thought he made a movement, but it was sharkcrow.”

I sigh. “And it hit him in the head?”

She avoids eye contact with me, perhaps worried about punishment. “Head. But that was by accident. It’s dark! I had to rely on my ears.”

“Yeah, I know. I am not angry.”

Marvin takes out a bowl, spoon, and different colored herbs from his bag. “Looks like you did more than make him sit down. He’s probably brain dead.”

“Don’t be so negative,” Palia says.

“Look at the man!” He points at Caren in frustration. He can’t even look at him for two seconds before shaking his head.

It’s funny, I didn’t expect him to be this affected since they stopped being friends a long time ago. Perhaps they hung out in private? I never cared to check.

He mutters, “Poor bastard now acts like Sonza.”

“Don’t you fucking dare talk about my brother like that!”

Before the two can cut at each other throats, I say, “Please try to make haste.”

“Okay okay… What’s their weight? I don’t want to go back inside for the scale."

… Okay then.

I say, “378 and 90 pounds.”

Palia nudges me. “You got a better memory than me.”

I chuckle.

Her smile turns serious. “Don’t worry, Nash. Marvin is going to fix them up, somehow.”

She nods as if she wants to convince herself. “Yeah… I am sure.”

I smile at her. “Certainty.”

“You are stronger than me. If it was my son in that state, I would be on the ground crying.”

She looks at Marvin. “Him though, I would be having a good laugh.”

Marvin grumbles.

He begins to mash herbs in a bowl. “We will have to put them to sleep before I can try to do anything.”