The first thing I did when I got back into my apartment was throw up. I’m surprised no one called the cops on the clearly insane woman rushing down streets clutching a rock, looking like she had just seen a ghost. Maybe Londoners consider that a normal sight. I could feel the adrenaline lulling for a moment then, just long enough for the bile to rise out of my throat. I’m glad the walls were thick because I did not need Mrs Miller next door to bring me yet another bowl of chicken soup. After tonight I was seriously considering vegetarianism.

I must have stayed wrenching over the toilet for a while because I could hear the birds chirping outside. It's usually past midnight when I finish my shifts, even more so as I’m usually the one who locks up after crazy nights… Fuck, the door. I tore myself away from the mixture in my loo and scrambled to the doorway. Stupid stupid stupid, the door was swinging ajar from when I burst in. I paused before touching the handle, listening. What if it had followed me home? What if it was already in the building? In my flat? Holding my breath I waited, and listened. The guitarist across the street who never bothered to buy soundproofing. The couple making love upstairs. Taxis taking home drunk early morning party goers.

I needed an escape route if it decided to scale the building, but an unlocked door would bring me no piece of mind. I closed my grip around the doorknob, inching it closed on its hinges. Windows next. Either I was locking myself in my own tomb or it isn't here yet. I double checked up and down the street, lamps glowing in the night. Could it go invisible? See me right now? No, it can’t just be everywhere at once, either it likes to taste fear on its victims or it has some degree of limitations. I stood still until I felt my heart rate lower to just below a hummingbirds. I was still panicking out of my mind but if I was being allowed a moment to calm down then I was being allowed a moment to think, and it's inadvisable to let your prey think.

I closed the blinds, turning off the lights too. My windows didn't come with damn locks cause my landlord was too cheap to put them in. In a moment of what I assumed was brilliance I put some books I thought were heavy on the shutters as if that would keep it down. I even considered hanging garlic from the blinds. Clearly I was reaching the end of my rope on what was practical, or even reasonable. I had run, I had thrown up, I had locked everything including the tiny bathroom light. I was standing alone in the centre of a tiny one room apartment hyperventilating at an oncoming and impending doom that seemed to be taking its sweet time.

I used the clock like a metronome to keep myself grounded, and sane. My father had said the faster you think the more time slows down. A critical decision could last a lifetime. Think now Vicky. And I would, as soon as I got back from another trip to the bathroom.

What if I was hallucinating? Schizophrenia had an early onset, I remembered my uncle’s degeneration when I was younger. I needed physical evidence, to know I wasn't just losing my mind. I didn't have a drug test on hand, but I knew I wasn't the sort to take whatever my co-workers did in the alley out back on breaks or after work, and I knew the club’s checks were good enough to stop them from getting in from the outside. Maybe the fact of the matter was that I was finally losing it. Sleepless nights working with blasting music taking its toll on my mind.

I realised my eyes had rested down at my shoes. My right shoe, the toe, was flecked with red. It was converse so it was entirely black except for the very tip, and that was most certainly the crimson look of blood. At that I flung my shoes off, letting them thud against the wall. Did I just leave a trail of bloody footprints for anyone to follow me home?

This didn't make any sense. It couldn't make any sense. But was I more scared of losing my mind? Or of that thing being real. Let's say it was. It was feeding, like an animal. I knew it was enjoying it, there was no room for guilt in that thing. Why the scarred man though? I was sure more people came into that club who no one would miss if they disappeared.

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No, I had to stay grounded in some sense of reality. That thing was no more than a beast that hunted people, masquerading as a human. It was just, really, really good at it. Something evil made that thing, but it had to work like any of us natural things, otherwise thinking about it was useless, it would just do whatever it wanted.

How many had it killed? How many more would be next? What would happen if it turned its teeth on me? Club “Piece of Mind” was a sickening name now, compared to the chuckle I had when my sister had told me about it. It was a farm for humans. How many more clubs were just that? How many people who go missing in the night, and assaults in alleyways, are really monsters? Specifically the blood sucking kind.

I thought over what I had seen one more time, maybe it's just a really well put together cannibal. I had watched Hannibal and the scenes of a man casually cooking up a human’s liver had made my blood curdle. But no, I had heard bone crunching, I saw skin moving apart like a knife to a bloody steak. If I had gone back there right then and there with a lighter and a pointy stick I'm sure I’d have found the ground licked clean and not a speck of the scarred man having existed.

Just a speck. That's all I needed. The blood on my shoes was one thing but my hand. I looked at what I was holding in my left hand. The stone was still there, dropped by the scarred man. The last piece of a dead man. I started turning it around in my hand. Somehow I had managed to turn my apartment into a locked fortress over the course of an hour and it had not once left my iron grip. It took a few seconds of concentration for me to uncurl my fingers from it, placing it on the coffee table.

I sat on the sofa, staring at it as I slowly clenched and unclenched my cramped hand. It was hard to focus on it, being dull as a piece of gravel on the floor but at the same time almost blinding to look at directly. I started by making myself look at the corner of it, slowly letting my eyes circle it like a spiral until I rested directly on it. It had something carved into it. No, actually, more like sticking out of it. It was like the rock had been carved itself from a larger one, with some strange symbols left protruding upwards. Looking down at my hand again I saw how it had dug into my flesh, leaving bright red marks that were now slowly fading.

It looked like a capital M, with one line going from left to right, and three lines coming down off it at equal distances. It made me calmer to look at, I was functioning far better than I ought to. Looking away made the reality of the situation fall over me like a blanket. I could feel its cold breath falling over me, its teeth opening at my throat.

I had broken my collarbone falling off my sister’s bike when I was younger, I remember my dad picking me up to take me to the hospital and his hand had brushed against the wound. It felt like my bones were leaking lava, every moment caused taggers to piece my eyes and I couldn't even open my mouth wide enough to get the pain out through how debilitating it was.

I don't know what I had gotten myself into. It felt as if a maw of darkness had opened up beneath me and I was on the precipice of a kind of evil I had never considered before. What else existed in this world? What other stories whispered to children to scare them before sleep were real, and hungry for blood and fear and bones and flesh.

The room felt like it was closing in on me and spinning all at the same time. I was aware of every bug and spider in the room. They felt like invaders in my home, even the cracks in the windows and door seemed to leak shadows, the rings in the wood of my table created eyes and peered at me, watching my suffering.

I tried to stand up, I’m not usually the sort to sit still, but I had to sit down immediately. How long had I been up? My hand instinctively went to my pocket but of course my phone had been left at the club. The clock on my mantle said 10am. Was I conscious that whole time? 7 hours of throwing up and hyperventilating? What else was I supposed to do? When you know monsters exist, potentially everywhere, there's only three ways you can go. Run away, wait to be killed, or kill them first.

That’s what had to be done. That thing had to die.

Creaking outside made me freeze my second attempt at standing up. A shadow or two were visible under the door. Then a knock. Of course there was, of course It saw me. My address is on my employment forms, anyone with a degree of intelligence could come and find me here, if they knew what draws to open. It most certainly would.

Maybe it didn't know I was home, the lights were off and the door was succinctly locked. The door rattled again under the force of someone knocking. I had just wasted 30 seconds staring at it. I was about to be placed squarely in the “be killed” camp, and any weapon worth a damn was nowhere near me. I held my breath in case it could hear that, could it hear heartbeats too?

And that's when the key I kept hidden under my post holder went into the door, the rush of wind entering my apartment like a cork taken off a bottle.