You had an idea that you already knew this part. Dread creeped up your throat in acid. Images flashed in your mind. An alley filled with feces. An alley of obscenities of hobos and squatters alike, creating an abhorrent display of forgotten souls, abandoned by society.
Your belt buckle was still clicking as you walked, and so the mysterious clicking from before grew louder as the pit in your stomach grew deeper and deeper. You braced yourself for whatever prankster came to jump out.
But it was no trickster.
You peek your head around the corner only to draw yourself back.
Four, maybe five metres tall. Slender, muscular and bony. It was crouched down, vulnerable, with its back turned. Every once and a while it would lift its hanging head to growl at the moon. It was covered in lesions and scars, old and new. With a hanging maw that reached the floor. The monster’s jaw looked fractured, unhinged out of its skull, and it was covered in rows and rows of needle-sharp teeth. So sharp that the moonlight could shine off its covered rows.
The true horror was its diet. Or what you assumed was its diet.
It seemed as though there was already a hobo when it arrived, but they were reduced into an awful pile of flesh and bones. This creature was feeding, its teeth were covered in a deep red, viscous fluid that coated the walls of the alley. The corpse was horribly mutilated, their limbs ripped apart, the head completely crushed under the weight of this behemoth. But the monster’s actions were not random. The limbs were neatly stacked behind it, like it was performing a search.
You watch in horror as the blood-coated claws of the monstrosity puncture the chest of the corpse. The eyes of the creature glazed over, as if it were no novice. Like an excited child, opening a gift on Christmas Eve, it tore open the chest. A lone, mutant hand reached into the open cavity and yanked a crimson mass out of the chest.
A precious moment, a moment of longing now cured, it hurled its hand to the sky. Victorious, it opened the cage of talons. A single liver, crimson and wet, a meaty meal that would pleasure the stomach of the behemoth. It rushed to shovel its prize into its maw. Hurriedly chewing as if something would steal its kill.
You could feel the vomit burn your tongue as you gagged in disgust.
You knew you were in danger, and that thing could very well be your bane.