Every time my foot hit the ground, I felt an ache run all the way through my leg and up my spine. I'd been injured before. It's inevitable when you play contact sports. But this was different. The place where that creature had touched me didn't feel sprained from pressure. The bone didn't feel broken. It hadn't even really grasped me hard enough for that to be possible. This felt more like an infection. Rotten flesh beneath the skin that burned with each twist of my muscles, deep inside my leg and spreading out to consume my body.

But that wasn't right either. This was too fast. Too benign. It hurt each time I took a step, but it was the kind of pain you would expect after a workout. Of growing muscle. Of strength gained. And I already knew how to keep moving through that kind of pain, bad as it would be for me in the long term.

Most alarmingly to me, though, was that the monster hadn't even pierced through my jeans. It never made direct contact with my skin.

And yet it's influence was in me now. I had to wonder if it was something as supernatural as itself. An infection? A curse? A taint? I didn't even know what to call it, but I could feel it inside of me. It had done something to me, and for some reason, I'd decided not to tell the one person who might have even the slightest clue what was happening to me. Then again, she probably didn't. She didn't know what she was doing, and she was angry and frustrated about it. She probably would have suggested I salvage an industrial cutter of some sort and sever the limb. Coraline was intimidating for such a small person. It was hard to imagine how that much bitterness could fit into such a tiny, frail package.

I really wanted to help her lighten up a bit. It was me who suggested to Scarlet that she drop the friend word on her first because Coraline seemed to like her more than me. I could tell she was a good person under all the anger. But how could I possibly have seen this coming when we arranged this? No one expects literal hell to break loose on them when they're just messing around.

As I rushed back toward what I could only assume was where Scarlet had fled to, holding just a bit too tightly to a fistful of cheap canteen salt packets, I couldn't help but wonder about my own state. Would this feeling wear off? Or was something terrible happening to me beneath my clothes? I was so tempted to stop and roll up my pant leg to take a look, but I'd already waited long enough making sure Coraline was safe. Scarlet could already be injured, or worse, at the other end of the industrial park. I had to hurry. I had no plan, but I had to help her somehow.

I'd been the one who brought the whole magic ritual idea to the girls. I thought it would just be a fun little outing where we scared ourselves a little, like pulling out a ouija board or hanging out in a graveyard. I just wanted Tara to open herself up a little. But that's not what happened. This wasn't a game anymore, and it was my responsibility to make sure my pushy decision didn't get my classmates killed, supernatural injury or not.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, quickly navigating to the group text between the three of us. We were still within the city limits, so cell signals were strong, but what if she was in hiding? What if her phone drew the monster's attention to her? I let out a frustrated grunt as I tabled that plan and opted for something much stupider.

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I stopped on my good leg when I reached what had once been a truck bay, and drew in a sharp breath before bellowing out as loud as I could. "Hey! Big scary shadow monster! Why don't you come back here and pick on someone your own size!?"

I felt like an idiot, yelling like that. I didn't even have anything good prepared to say. The whole overconfident, intimidating, loud jock stereotype was never really my thing beyond my physical presence, and I hated projecting it that way. Would this thing even understand I was trying to taunt it? Could it even hear me? I had no idea how otherworldly monsters sensed anything.

The area remained silent once the echo of my shout quieted down. I wasn't even sure what I was expecting to happen. Was it supposed to burst out of one of the nearby buildings like some sort of horror movie? I held my arms out and shrugged. I was terrible at this.

There was a loud crashing noise in the direction I'd been heading toward in the first place, followed by the same horrifying scream the creature had made earlier, far in the distance. It made me flinch, every instinct telling me to run the other way. I shook my head and took a breath before I faced toward the noise and took off at full sprint again. More running. More pain like when I pushed myself a little too hard in training the day before a big game and just had to deal with it and face the consequences later.

I mantled over a street barrier and shoulder checked my way through the fire door of a large building. "Scarlet! Are you in here!?" I called into the warehouse. The place was abandoned, but evidently not very thoroughly. There were several empty shipping containers still scattered across the open floor. I guess whoever used this place before just decided it wasn't worth the expense to take them away with them. And now that Scarlet wasn't shouting back, instead of a giant empty concrete box to search through, I had to scramble around a disorganized obstacle course. My shoulders slumped. "Come on Scarlet, don't be... eaten... or whatever that thing's trying to do with us." I mumbled to myself, trying to keep myself from having a panic attack.

What the hell was I even doing? I was not an action hero. This was more like a horror movie, and I was the stupid teenager throwing himself into danger like he stood any kind of chance against the monster. I was probably the next victim. I shook my head and grunted in disapproval of that thought. Genre savviness wasn't helping right now. I would run in, retrieve Scarlet, reconnect with Coraline, and we'd get the hell out of there. Then we'd call in... I don't know, the Ghostbusters. We'd figure out what the hell just happened and what we could do about it back at Coraline's place. For now, I had to get everyone out safely in the first place.

A quieter screeching sound came from a hall to the side of the building, and I took off running, wincing at my strange wound again, but determined to carry through. "Scarlet!" I called again, peeking around a corner through an open doorway. I wasn't entirely sure what to make of what I saw, though, taking a few cautious steps backward in silence.

The same black creature as before took up most of the hallway. At least I thought it was the same creature. It was a hunched over black blob with an elongated head and now also seemed to be covered in rows and rows of dark yellow eyes. The creature was like a hole in reality itself, and could very well have been a completely different creature from what we fled from in the first place for all I knew, but it had the same characteristics. The disarming thing was the noises it was making. It almost sounded like it was... purring. And on the ground beneath it was Scarlet, pinned to the ground beneath its mass and repeatedly running a hand across its... hide? She whispered to it, "Good... thing... Nice... thing," all the while gesturing at me with her head, wide-eyed with urgency.

I clenched my teeth and held my arms out, silently asking her in confused terror, what the fuck am I supposed to do about this?