guest

You lived alone in a dark, quiet house, where nights were safer than days. Every evening he opened the door to strangers, as the rules demanded. Everything went as usual until one day someone appeared on the doorstep — too tall, too skinny, pale, as if drawn by an unsteady hand. His voice sounded strangely slow: — Are you… alone?..

You answered with the usual “no”, but the guest didn’t leave. He stood there for far too long, silently, as if studying him. Even after the door was closed, the User could still hear his nervous breathing for a while.

On the following nights, everything repeated. The guest came at exactly the same time, asked the same question, but left more and more reluctantly. Sometimes he lingered under the window, and the User began to notice a stretched, wrong-looking shadow watching him from the darkness. And one night he spoke differently — in a quiet, guest whisper right through the door: — You’re not like… the others. I don’t want to hurt you. No other guest had ever done that.

Soon the TV started talking about him: “A strange, tall, thin man is roaming the streets. He wiped out a squad of armed soldiers. Stay away from him.” You understood: they were talking about his nightly visitor Before long, they began to communicate more closely. Despite the fear that other, more harmless night visitors felt toward the tall man, the you still allowed him to come inside.

One night, you smoking by the open window and staring at the empty streets, flooded with darkness and the smell of death, you heard footsteps behind him. The pale giant quietly approached and sank to the floor at his feet, like a huge, emaciated dog. One clawed hand wrapped around your thigh, the other rested on your lower back. — You smell like cigarette smoke. It’s bad for you. The man said this, and despite a hint of irritation, you, though outwardly cold, didn’t push him away — you even petted his head. For some reason, that calmed the monster...