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Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

The ticking of a clock reverberates throughout the house. Occasionally, a subtle sound like meat being tenderized comes out from dark corner of the house. It seems like nothing would ever come to end this ambiance.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

A key slide into the door lock.

"I'm home, dad"

Click.

The door shut echoes. The silence returns and ticking settles in.

Hikaru stands frozen, waiting for a response.

'He's gone off again' he thought.

Soon enough, he sees a letter written by his dad stuck to the fridge. It is held by a little fork and knife magnets on the top corners.

'Will be back late. Don't worry about me! I got you dinner! You're favourite

He opens the fridge. Sure enough, there's a take-away box sitting in the centre. It looks like a miniature farmhouse with white fences around it.

He closes the fridge and as if on cue,

"MeowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWW!"

A cat eerily calls out.

'Neko?'

That was his cat Neko.

'That's strange…' he thought.

He thought that cats don't normally yell one meow for so long.

'Sounded like he's in the bedroom'

The stairs he was familiar with suddenly looked ominous with all the shadows. The shadow themselves being an ordinary thing. It was just that he suddenly had a different impression of the stairs.

Hikaru has a strange feeling that he's never felt before, but he shook it off as wariness born from irrational fear caused by a creepy cat sound.

He never heard the cat call out again while he was walking up the stairs.

'Maybe Neko is being squashed underneath something he tipped over'

He is surprised when he opens the door. Neko can't be seen and nothing seems out of place. A bizarre feeling assaulted his chest.

Bang!

Something smacked against the wardrobe door from the inside. Unable to imagine why Neko would do that, his adrenaline levels skyrocket.

He went over the wardrobe and slid it open.

His eyes snapped open as wide as saucers. His cat looked mangled as if it were run over by a car. The skin on its face was falling off like a piece of skinned ham. The skin around the eyes hanged down revealing a pink flap. It looked like a corpse.

"HISSSSS"

Swoosh

He ducked just in time to avoid the lunge. It smacked into the wall and he ran towards the stairs.

He looked backwards and saw the mangled cat standing at the door in pounce position. Its hair stood up like spikes.

He pulls onto the handrail on his right and leaps over the stairs.

The rabid feline soars through the air and smashes into the wall at the bottom of the stairs but like a zombie, the impact didn't bother it.

Seeing this, he knew that he wouldn't be able to outrun it. There was only one thing he could do. Kill it.

He made a dash towards the kitchen. At the end of his dash, he catches a knife from a wooden block on the kitchen bench and while sliding on kitchen tiles, he did a 180 spin.

By the end of his spin, he had entered a lower-level Kendo posture called Gedan. He had his left foot slightly behind the right. Instead of a practice sword, he held the knife in front of the waist and pointing downwards.

His dead cat walks up to him warily noticing that the prey isn't trying to flee but is in battle mode. It pauses a few meters from his feet and enters its lunge mode.

'It can reach me from there without doing a run up!?'

Hikaru knows he isn't as fast as the cat so he wouldn't survive a long battle. His only shot is to end it in one move. Thinking that he'll probably be mauled to death by his abomination of a cat if he misses, he swallowed loudly.

His knife is held steady at 20 cm above the floor. Gedan leaves his whole upper body exposed, making the lunge attack the most enticing. He had effectively made himself bait like flesh dangling on a cotton string.

Sure enough, it lunged at him. Before the cat connected with him at the height of its jump, he simply pointed the knife at the centre of the cat's chest. The cat's momentum delivered the knife into its chest cavity, piercing through the heart like butter. The cat hanged limp at the end of the knife. Now, it truly looked like roadkill.

'Now, what caused this...' Hikaru thought as he looked for an injection site or portal of entry in which a drug or microorganism could have entered.

"Meoooooooooow!'

The mangled corpse came back to life as if a jolt of electricity went through it and it started thrashing.

'What! It's still alive!?'

He quickly recovered as he had anticipated that stabbing in the heart might not kill it. It was not an ordinary cat after all.

There are two sure kill methods, the heart, and the brain. A dark look came over his eyes. He let go of the knife and the cat started falling in mid-air. He pulled out another knife from the block in one hand and caught the cat's head with another. He swung in one smooth motion across its neckline. It was decapitated.

In the instant he cleaved its head, he saw something bulging from its stomach. It retracted before it burst out and flew towards his face. He tried to make a swipe at the grey squid-like creature but it was too late, his knife arm was still recoiling.

'Checkmate'.

He knew this feeling too well because he always won in chess. Now he's at the receiving end. the tentacles pointing at him like a single blade opened like an umbrella.

'Is it going to hurt!?' the thought struck him.

Before he could think anything else, it clasped over his head like a gas mask. Small grey tendrils spread out from the tentacles wrapped around his head and snaked underneath his eyeballs. It crawled on the optic nerve to the brain. The roots grew all over the brain, disabling his body.

Like a lifeless dummy, he dropped his knife and fell backwards. Tendrils slithered into his nostrils, mouth and ears. Its body began to shrink as it entered his body like snakes.