A Monster in the Dark

Adam Javier would have the same dream again... the same dream as always, again on the plain... between a pocket of bushes, all the engines stopped... I hear again the order to dismount and start digging...

Source

The starless night, the cold wind that becomes biting after a hot day, the tiredness...
The sounds of the crickets and night birds, which almost mask the sound of the small propellers...

The panting of men toiling with shovels digging trenches.

And a distant explosion, again he vividly felt his hair stand on end, and panic spread like a wave through the whole platoon....

This time he heard the buzzing more intensely.

A small red light descended from the black sky, and half a second before hearing the explosion, he could hear the shrapnel shredding skin, flesh and bones... that particular sound still gave him chills...

A flash and a vision that made him forget all his training, everything his sergeant taught him, all the logic of his life, his chest covered with blood, and pieces of flesh, he thought he was already dead...

That's when he saw it... that face...

-The blood is not yours! You only have a small bruise! Keep digging!

The man with the dark-eyed face... with dark circles under his eyes almost as dark, and with many small scars was looking at him intently. Waiting for his reaction. He looked around and saw Carlos Martinez next to him, the shrapnel from the gun had ripped out almost his entire jaw and pierced his chest... with luck he would have died almost instantly.

-If we don't dig, we're dead! Either the drones kill us! Or we get killed by the Reds' armor! Or we are killed by our own artillery! So whoever doesn't dig, I'll save him the suffering and kill him myself!

"From the forensic report; the victim, Augusto Meleanni, 72 years old, 1.85 meters tall. He was shot 3 times in the chest and once in the head, with a 9mm caliber weapon at close range. It is presumed homicide. In addition, almost the entire left leg is missing, as well as the heart and liver, which were extracted through an opening in the stomach. While the leg was apparently torn off with a kind of pressure cutter, such wounds were produced Post Morten."

Upon awakening, startled, and frightened Adam's first instinct was to reach under the bed and reach for his block, after that he began to feel sweat as it ran down his body...the fan was spinning at full power...it was a cold sweat...nightmares about those hellish nights would haunt him for a lifetime.

He got up to get water... pee... and wait for the anxiety to pass... if that didn't work he would violate one of his own rules and smoke a joint....

In the end... the solution was the joint, which was followed by a heavy sleep without nightmares of events that happened 6 years ago...

In the morning, almost midday, he woke up. And in the light of day you could see the classic bachelor apartment, small, dirty, and with only the basics, TV, console, armchair and many containers of Chinese food ...

A product of his time, he was dragged by poverty to participate in a civil war in the country of his parents... there in the coalition he met great men... other vile ones... terrible things that he would like to forget... and others that he can't even explain, Rivers of blood, Mountains of money, Piles of bodies, and even bigger piles of drugs...

Anyone would be surprised to know how important narcotics are in the modern conflict, as a CIA agent told the Brown brothers years ago "drug trafficking is an asset we cannot leave entirely in the hands of our enemies".

After the war Adam. With all that knowledge of the drug world, military training, and several scars to show off, he wanted at some point to have a normal life, but like all veterans throughout history... after being used by the politicians of the day, they are discarded and forgotten, and if they dare to cross even a little bit the line in some form of protest... criminalized.

With all this Adam decided to opt for contacting some dealers who due to his experience and references gave him a job as an independent dealer... a real treasure. He didn't answer to any mafia, and as long as he respected the territorial limits he would be at ease. His clients were very varied... but he usually sold to young people from wealthy families, his discretion, good manners, and appearance made him go unnoticed most of the time.

The matter in question was the neighbor who lived diagonally across the street from the building. Old Mr. Augustus... for days now Adam has noticed that Mr. Augustus has a penchant for pets... every week he arrives with a couple of cages loaded with hamsters or rabbits....
But strangely enough... whenever he goes out the cages are empty....

This has been going on for several weeks... between Thursdays and Fridays... Augusto's relationship with his neighbors was not the same...

-Besides?

-They say that sometimes strange smells come out of your house... but please don't mention that I said that to anyone else.

After he left... the matter left her mind for the time being. But when he returned home with the package... He could see a man in priest-like garb leaving Mr. Augusto's house.

-I guess those are the strange visitors.

He said to himself...

And with such thoughts his mind Adam went to his apartment to divide up his
merchandise...already the orders were starting to pile up on his cell phone. He had work to do.
After preparing the 2 gram and 5 gram portions. He went out on his motorcycle to dispatch his customers... but as he drove through the city streets, he went to the suburbs where the children of those who benefited from all the blood spilled by him in the past would destroy their bodies and minds with the merchandise he was selling. ... but there were also among his customers middle-aged men, wage earners and a couple of single mothers... after the war, the drug problem became more apparent at all levels of society, as if we were going through another era of obscurantism. While he was doing all that... the curious mystery remained in his mind. What was old Augustus doing with the animals?

When he returned to his apartment, 4 am the next day... he was exhausted... and thanking God for the 24/7 restaurants that still existed in the city, the street was silent. And along with the tiredness, everything promised a peaceful and undisturbed sleep, but it was not so, tonight he also dreamed... he dreamed of the fear produced by the buzzing of the small propellers, he dreamed of the civilians massacred by the shrapnel, and he dreamed of the scarred face....
When he got out of bed, almost as tired as he went to bed, it was almost noon... and there wasn't much to do,So to overcome the tedium he decided to observe the house of Mr.

Augustus... but after an hour and a half of that without anything happening... he made the decision of a more direct approach, he would solve the mystery, either to kill the boredom or out of genuine curiosity.

That trivial decision would mark Adam's life... and take it on a course of terror he would never have dreamed possible.

48 hours later, at a police station on the outskirts of the city, he was asked to repeat his statement;

-I can't believe this shit happened to me! I told you it was self-defense! I'm a veteran! I've done more for this country than any of you pigs! I served with the Red Eagle! I was wounded at the battle of santa barbara! I was in the valley of the blood stars!

To which a tall and somewhat fat policeman replied;

-ja ! Your dear sergeant is dead! So you're not scaring anyone with that.

At that point the sheriff stepped in and asked Adam to repeat his statement.

-Well... well... well... as I told you, I thought it was kind of strange what was going on with the old man and the animals, so I went to see his house up close, I'll confess that! I know I broke into his backyard, it's just that I noticed a strange smell... like rottenness, and it was true! After walking around the yard a bit I got half a rabbit, it had been split in two, like by some big dog or something, but not where I found it, there was no trace of blood there....

So I looked out the kitchen window....

And I didn't see anything special, except for several pet crates stacked in a corner.
The old man had gone out so I took my knife and...

Yes, yes, that's right! That too I confess, I forced the lock on the window! I understand it's a crime...

When I entered I went to the room, dusty and dark... but with many books, rare books that I had never seen, and in rare languages. And more empty cages... so I went to one of the rooms... which was a normal bedroom... with very old furniture... when I went to the other one... I noticed it was more like a study... there were more books, more rare, and I saw loose pages that I went through... and that I wish I had never seen again...

There was a trap door in the floor... so I thought; that must be it, must have some exotic animal downstairs, an alligator or maybe a feline, you old fool.

It was a bar bolt, simple and keyless, but pretty solid... when I opened it, I could hear the front door of the house open... then I understood the magnitude of the stupid thing I was doing....
Not hiding, or running away... the most viable option was to sink into the fetid darkness of the trap door...

And that's what I did, after 10 moldy steps... I arrived to a humid and dark room, I decided to use the cell phone to see the surroundings... since I heard a sound like chains dragging...

Then I saw it... something I thought would never be real... the slimy, greenish skin, dog-like snout, in a body with humanoid characteristics, without eyes, and with strange ears, with bat-like wings coming out of its back, but intensely atrophied... to the point of looking ridiculously useless...

I thought; the stories are true! I thought they were ravings! And I immediately ran upstairs, the beast was chained, then I would come back for it. I pulled the gun from my waist and as I passed the trap door and headed for the exit of the room, I met the old man;

-You're crazy! What kind of thing is that thing you have there?

-What are you doing here? You should never have seen it! They are the future of mankind, the only solution to our problems!

-That's an abomination! It must be destroyed!

-No! You will be destroyed... and serve as food for the creature.

I thought he would throw himself on me, but I was armed, so he dropped the boxes and ran for the door but I quickly followed him and prevented him from locking me in, so he went with a faster pace than expected for a man of his age to the kitchen, and took a long knife, when he turned to me, I already had a clear target, and I remembered my training, having a gun, I would not get into a hand to hand fight with anyone... not even an old man with a knife... and I shot him.

Then I went for the papers in the room, threw them in a wastebasket and set them on fire... that's when you guys came.... an unusually quick response.

The commissioner responded;

You were already being watched, we are aware of your illegal activities Mr. Adam...
Now... tell me something, what was in those papers that was so important to burn them?
-I don't know...

-You said you had seen them before...

-Yes, during the siege of santa barbara... in those days the sergeant discovered some similar documents and said they should be burned, my colleagues who had been working with him the longest told stories of strange creatures and monsters associated with that strange writing, but I thought they were the ravings of minds that have lived the nightmare of war for a long time....

-Mr. Adam... we checked the house there are no monsters in the basement... and now tell us, what did you do with Mr. Augustus' leg?

• How? Which leg?

-Mr. Augustus' corpse was missing a leg... and other organs...

It was then that a terror equal to the half-death he had felt before seized Adam... because he remembered... to go out after the old man... he had not closed the trap door with the bolt... he thought that maybe that's why the policemen did not find the beast... maybe he escaped, to look for food... and maybe, he prefers human flesh.