Ace leaned against a pillar in an empty subway, he had always been a brave man, or at least that's what he thought about himself. He always prided in his legs and called them concrete structures that would never budge under any pressure, and the same legs were currently shaking like tree houses stuck in the epicentre of an unprecedented earthquake.

'What in the bloody hell!?'

But all in all he was commendable for not making a sound and holding his breath while bleeding out. He slowly peeked back at the stairs he fell down from while shaking like a leaf stuck in a tornado. 'I am going to meet grandpa today!', was what he thought after peeking at the thing that followed him down to the subway. Oh, I might have forgotten to mention that Ace's grandpa died quite a long time ago.

"KIIAAAKKK!!!!"

And so the hunt resumed.

*****

-- 1 hour before Ace realised his legs were not concrete structures but deflatable balloons --

"You are fired!"

A short oversized middle aged man yelled as he seethed in anger. In front of this human pile of anger was a young man in his early 20s. He should be around 175 cm tall with medium length black hair and sky blue eyes. He kept his head down while listening to his boss yell at him. This young man was Ace, and in this restaurant he held the record of breaking the highest number of plates in one day.

"How can you drop a plate when you were holding just one damn plate!?"

"In my defence, it was heavy!"

Ace was a man who would always try to turn things around to make his escape guilty-free. He would cook up a hundred comebacks just to make his way through and come out unscathed from the stuff he gets himself into.

"It was an empty plate Ace!"

But sometimes his comebacks are just not that good. The speed of comebacks don't always assure us of their quality, so it's understandable.

"Why are you yelling at me like this for one plate? It's one plate boss!"

"This is the sixth one, Ace. Sixth one, today! All this stress and anger is going to restart my hair loss, and that's going to be on you!"

"Boss, you are bald."

"I have hair in other places."

"..."

'I did not want to know that!'

Was the conclusion he came to after he involuntarily thought of the places his boss meant. Sometimes people think of things they don't want to.

"Get out Ace."

Ace didn't have any attachment to his job, he was a waiter who just wanted to stay home and become a couch potato. He didn't have anything to pack or clean up, so he just took off from the restaurant that was closing up. It was one of those 'open-till late' restaurants which closed at midnight. On this chilly winter night in New Jersey, oddly he wanted to take a slow walk home in this near subzero temperature.

'Hnnggg!'

'It's happening again!'

A painful bout of headache that started out of nowhere. This wasn't the first time he experienced this sudden pain, this had been going on for quite a few days. Sudden headaches, that made him feel like he was in a washing machine while also taking a jab to the head. The pain and vertigo was so sudden and violent that he would drop whatever he was holding just to get a grip on himself, and now you know why he holds the record for breaking 6 plates that day.

'It's worse than yesterday, should I go to the hospital?'

He thought about heading to the hospital but then immediately rejected the idea after realising he might have to sell out one of his kidneys to pay the medical bills. Just an X-ray in New Jersey would cost at least 400$, you don't need me to tell you how much a full check up would cost.

He gripped his head as he sat down in a dark alley between buildings. He could hear some vague sounds as if someone's going through a trash can, but he really didn't have the mental capacity to even look at the direction it's coming from. Long and continuous breaths helped him calm down, and the good thing about whatever he was going through was that these headaches always came out of nowhere but also disappeared just as fast.

He opened his sky blue eyes while his breathing returned to normal, and his heart beat slowed down. Stretching his body as if he just woke up from a nightmare, he got up to finally look at the source of the nuisance he kept hearing.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

'People really need to learn manners, can't go through a peaceful mental breakdown nowadays.'

This was probably going to be the last time he was ever going to make a snarky joke about a sound coming from an alleyway in the middle of the night. He couldn't see well in the dark, so he took a few steps forward to get a clear look. And so he stepped into a scenario where he finally learnt a classic case of 'People should just mind their own businesses sometimes'.

There it was, the source of his so called nuisance. It looked similar to us if we had no skin, it stood on two limbs which were similar to human feet with a couple of toes randomly missing. It had a physical body yet looked semi translucent, pitch black rotting muscles all over it's body which appear like they are dripping black coloured blood. And finally a bald head with reptilian yellow eyes and a mouth quite literally filled with tens of spiky long teeth.

"..."

Ace froze up. He could only see bits of the thing in front of him thanks to the darkness in the alley. It was a given that he would freeze up, but for the first time in his life no snarky comment popped in his brain. He woke up from the shock but his legs were still stuck to the ground like stone pillars, ironically he hated his never budging legs in this moment.

Ace was quite lucky his entire life but it seems his luck ran dry today, because whatever that thing in front of him was, it finally looked back at him. Eyes with no eyelids, that looked like they were staring right into his soul. Alarm bells went off in Ace's mind, and his legs seemed to have grown a brain of their own as they started running away.

"KIIIAAAAKKKK!"

An inhumane shriek that would give goosebumps to any living being and arguably even a few dead things. And Ace couldn't help but look back as he ran out of that alley.

'Is he! Is that thing smiling at me!?'

The creature's lips stretched wide as if it's smirking at Ace, mocking him for running away from it. One thing Ace missed to notice was that, it wasn't just smiling at him but was also drooling black blood from its mouth as if it just saw a full course meal after living on instant ramen for 3 years straight. And then Ace realised that his worst nightmare so far can run pretty fast even with those missing toes.

"Kikikikkikiki!"

'This piece of-'

Ace didn't have the liberty of wasting his remaining few brain cells on thinking about nonsense. He was chased by quite a few dogs in his lifetime, and back then he always ran like his life depended on it, because it did. But right now he just broke all his running speed records, good for him. He made two vows in that moment, one to workout and build his body, and two to never give a damn about things that didn't concern him.

He broke the second vow in less than 2 days.

The pitch black inside-out-human-like creature about 2 meters tall, finally got out of the alley and into the light. Its knees strangely bent at an angle, with legs that looked unusually long around 1.2 meters. It ran like a wild animal in heat, but despite it's heavy looking structure, there was no sound even when it ran like if it was competing for the Olympics 100m dash.

But for Ace who was running for his life right now, he couldn't give a shit if it made any sound or not. Desperately looking for any human presence he ran into the streets. All he wanted was to let someone else witness the abomination that was chasing him like a chihuahua in heat, so they could call the police or anyone as a matter of fact. But it was midnight on a work weekday, and he was the only living soul in the area, and if this continued any longer even his soul would probably fly away soon enough.

At this moment for once in his lifetime his brain gave him one solid getaway plan. He looked around to get a sense of where he was and then checked the time on his watch.

'One blocks away, there's a train leaving in 2 min. I just need to get in right when the doors are closing!'

Serotonin is the chemical produced in our brain that is responsible for making us feel happy. At this moment when he remembered there was a train in 2 min, his brain delivered him the biggest batch of Serotonin he ever had in his life. He ran through the streets like a mouse being chased by a cat. Gasping for air as beads of sweat condensed on him, his heart beat rate was already through the sealing after running just for 3 minutes. Fear of death really gives a man never seen energy, or else this couch potato would have become late night dinner in the alley he ran out of.

"Kiakiakiakia!"

"Kiakia your father! Leave me alone!"

He made it to the stairs leading to the subway station in just under 90 seconds. A ray of hope to get out of this alive, but life has a way of kicking people down when they are already so down that they dug themselves 5 ft into the ground.

'HHNNGG!'

A striking pain in his head, the most painful one he had felt in the past week. His legs went cold and he froze for a second or two.

"Kikikikiki!"

'Shiik~'

Ace finally came to his senses only to see a few dark bony sharp knife-like fingers poking through his shoulder. An assumption that has always been taken to be true is that people scream when they are stabbed. But that's not true, they in fact go into a shock and just gasp for air, just like Ace was doing in that moment.

The thing's facial features, at least the few features it had lit up as Ace's eyes sharpened and his face scrunched up. Ironically a person feels the most alive only when he is confronting his death. Ace put all the energy he could into his legs just to jump towards the stairs, pulling his impaled shoulder away from the thing that was under the assumption it's hunt was over.

Falling down the stairs he managed to look up at his confused hunter trying to find a way to go down the stairs. Who would have thought that it doesn't know how to work stairs out.

'Thank God for making it so dumb!'

But the happiness he felt was short lived, the train departed right in front of him. And now he is trapped in the subway with a hell dog trying to find it's way down to make him into a happy meal for itself.

Ace picked himself up and leaned against a pillar, the pain was starting to kick in from his impaled shoulder and his headache hadn't receded yet. He had nowhere to run and his legs have already turned into a jelly that flops whichever direction the wind blows towards.

'God!!!'

'Looking for god whenever we are in trouble is for weaklings', were the exact words that Ace said, and that's another one of his illusions broken along with his feet of concrete. Whatever that thing was that chased him here, it wasn't planning on letting him live past today, and Ace knew it.

And so we come back to where we started, he peeked out to look at the stairway to see if his reaper had figured the stairs out. And it stared back at him with its yellow eyes already on the bottom of the staircase.

"Fuck."

Fuck.