Suspicious

Making Up Monsters prompt — Monster who wants to investigate that suspicious heap over there

The super warned Leslie when she moved in. “Old building,” he’d grunted. “Old district. You get ghosts, small gods, all kinda things. People see something in the laundry room sometimes — like a rat, like a crocodile, say it talks.” He’d shrugged, belligerently indifferent.

She’d moved in anyway. It sounded pretty harmless, and the rent was affordable. Saw the thing for the first time after about a month: something like a rat, something like a crocodile, something like a wiry tree-climbing child. It had been stealing one of her t-shirts out of the dryer, gleefully muttering to itself; dropped it and scuttled away when it realised it had been caught.

Six months of increasingly frequent sightings later, it started inviting itself right inside her unit.

Last night’s closing shift ran late; too much to clean up, too many small cascading problems through the afternoon to catch up with, too few hands on deck. Leslie’s still exhausted, and although daylight is hitting her closed eyelids, it feels like far too much effort to wake up properly. She shouldn’t do that. She should go back to sleep until she feels less dead.

“Hahaha,” the thing says to itself, sotto voce but unmistakable, accompanied by the sounds of quietly messing with Leslie’s stuff.

She makes an indistinct noise of disgruntlement and rolls face-down, pulling the blanket over her head.

“Oh,” it says, in a crafty-delighted oho! sort of way, and patters over. “Wakey wakey!”

“Nmph,” Leslie says emphatically into the pillow.

“Wakey wakey!” It repeats, sing-song, poking the sole of her foot through the blanket.

“No Leslie,” Leslie grumbles. “Only blanket.”

“Oh!” it says, delighted. “Blanket!” and pokes her foot again. “Heap!”

Leslie pulls the blanket tighter around her head. It’s a lost cause, she knows it is, but the mournful compulsion to think she can maybe get five more minutes dies hard.

“No Leslie, only heap,” it sings. “No Leslie, only heap.” Sly fingers dig into her soles. “Sus-pic-ious,” it pronounces with relish.

“Nmph,” Leslie says resentfully, kicking a little.

“Suspicious heap in Leslie’s room,” it says, clearly enjoying itself immensely. “Investigate!”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Leslie groans.

“Good neighbour!” it says delightedly. “Good friend! Investigate suspicious heap!”

“Fine, I’m up,” Leslie says, dragging her arms into a position to lever her face out of her pillow; and it closes a hand, an unmistakable grip, around each of her blanket-shrouded ankles.

“No,” it says, in a very particular tone, serious and rumbly and a little menacing, and she instantly stills.

Six months after it started cheerily intruding, Leslie had had an evening to herself. She’d settled herself on the bed with a folded towel under her, headphones in for ambience, lube on hand, and set herself determinedly to the newly-purchased task of an expensive chunk of stick-it-in-your-body grade silicone. A fantasy sculpt shaped for ridges and whorls but mostly for deliberately challenging girth, flared to a knot at the base. A long-haul, work-up-to-it-all-night toy, one she wanted to grit her teeth and leak tears over.

And in the middle of that final stretch, teeth gritted, she opened her duly leaking eyes and found herself looking into a toothy, predatory smile.

Leslie needs help, it had said, and climbed between her thighs, eyes and teeth gleaming.

Now, it releases her ankles. Now, as she balls her fists and pulls her arms beneath her chest, packing herself into a tight bundle of shivering anticipation, already breathing fast into the pillow, it lifts the edge of the blanket like a surgeon carefully unveiling a patient. Cooler air washes over her feet as it puts the blanket down, folded back just enough, for now, to reveal her to the ankles; which is where it returns its hands.

“Suspicious heap,” it says, in a way that promises a world of trouble, no matter how play-acted. Implacable, unstoppable, tauntingly slow, it begins to drag her legs apart.