Chapter 83: S#14. Pet Shop (3)
by fnovelpia
Nancy Strode lay on the living room sofa.
She had a book in her hand. Although she was reading, the words didn’t register.
She had been stuck on the same page for ten minutes.
She was worried about Pluto.
The black cat they had taken from the suspicious pet shop…
She had been happy that the dying creature had become healthy overnight, but last night, it suddenly disappeared.
Where could it have gone? If it didn’t return by today, she would have to put up flyers.
At that moment,
Ding-dong—
The doorbell rang.
As she opened the front door, she saw a familiar cage.
An eerie middle-aged man’s voice emanated from the cage.
“Hello.”
“You are…”
“I came to see the cat.”
It was Littleman, the pet shop owner.
He was caged just as he had been in the shop.
But there was no one to be seen who might have brought him here.
“How did you get here in that state…? And how do you know my home address?”
“It’s basic to know the location of the adoption and the customer’s address. Where is the cat?”
“Well… it disappeared.”
Nancy answered awkwardly.
It had been exactly a week since they brought the cat from the shop.
Littleman clicked his tongue and squinted one eye.
“Oh dear. We made a bet, didn’t we? If the cat lived for more than a week, I’d give you ten thousand dollars, and if it died, you’d give me the corpse.”
“It’s definitely alive. It just ran away for a while.”
“Poor cat… unable to even be buried.”
Littleman twisted his neck at a bizarre angle and looked into Nancy’s eyes.
“What should I bury now?”
“…”
“Shall I bury you instead?”
“…What?”
When Nancy was taken aback, Littleman began to smile silently, revealing his sharp teeth. He didn’t seem human.
“A poacher will come. Survive for a week.”
“What are you talking about…?”
“If you die within the week, I’ll bury you myself.”
Unable to bear the discomfort, she slammed the door shut.
Something shot out from the top of the closed front door and struck the threshold.
“What the…?”
It was an iron bar, the kind you might see in a prison.
Clang-clang-clang—
The sound of metal filled the house. Iron bars densely covered all the doors and windows.
All the entrances and exits were blocked.
The house had turned into a giant cage.
I searched around the Hyper Pharmacy.
I held on to the hope that I might miraculously reunite with a living Pluto.
But neither the parrot nor the cat was anywhere to be seen.
It was as if they had evaporated.
Littleman’s words from the cage came back to me.
‘…If the cat can’t survive the week… then I’d like to bury it myself.’
At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now, as I reconsidered, it felt ominous.
When I told the Hyper sisters, the pharmacy immediately went on hiatus.
I considered running to the pet shop to confront Littleman, but I went home first.
“Summer, wait a moment.”
Zelda Hyper, standing in front of her yard, called out to me.
“What is it, Zelda?”
“Something feels off. Is this really the front of our house?”
“Of course.”
Naturally, it was the Hyper sisters’ house.
But Zelda shook her head.
“No… something is different.”
Different? I didn’t understand what she meant.
It was the usual house next door. No meteor had fallen on the roof, no furry monster had clung to it.
But Hilda, standing behind Zelda, also seemed to sense something, furrowing her brow.
Given that the twins had sharper senses than ordinary people, there had to be something.
“Strange. It looks normal to me. Could it be a break-in?”
“I don’t know, Summer… it feels out of place. Is this really our house?”
Standing in front of their own home, they kept asking if it was really theirs.
At this point, even I was getting scared.
There was no other choice. It was axe time.
I took out the hand axe tucked into the back of my pants.
The Hyper sisters and I entered the house.
I opened the front door.
Inside the house, there was only cold silence and shadows. There was no sign of an intruder.
Just as I closed the door and was about to enter the hallway,
Ding-dong—
The doorbell rang.
It was strange.
The street in front of the house was empty. There was no one around except us.
It would have been impossible for someone to ring the doorbell the moment we entered unless they had the power of teleportation.
Realizing this, Zelda froze in place. Hilda looked at both of us with anxious eyes.
I gripped the axe handle tightly. Very slowly, I opened the front door.
There was a cage in front of the entrance.
“I came to see the parrot and the cat.”
Inside the cage was Littleman, dressed in a black suit.
Perfect timing.
“You took them, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. You took Pluto and the parrot’s corpses.”
I grabbed the cage.
It was obvious. The disappearance of the animal corpses was Littleman’s trick. He might have even killed them with his own hands.
Littleman squinted one eye nonchalantly.
“What should I bury now? Shall I bury you instead?”
Something came down from the doorframe.
Thud—
With a heavy metallic sound, thick iron bars plunged into the ground.
I was standing inside the threshold, but my left hand, gripping the cage, was outside.
My body reacted instinctively to the danger. I tried to pull my hand back, but I was a beat too late.
Long metal poles dividing the threshold pierced my left arm.
“Aah…!”
I let out a short scream.
Red blood flowed down the iron bar that had pierced my forearm.
“A poacher will come. Survive for a week.”
“You bastard…”
“If you die within the week, I’ll personally bury you.”
Littleman showed a fishy smile, wriggling his body to flip the cage.
As he repeated the movement quickly, the square cage rolled like a wheel. Was this how he moved around, in such a ridiculous way?
I couldn’t afford to care about the departing Littleman.
The front door was blocked. Two iron bars had pierced my left arm. I had no sensation past the elbow.
Shhh—
The sound of iron bars descending filled the house as they covered all the windows and doors.
The Hyper sisters’ intuition was right. The house had turned into a giant trap.
“Summer? What’s going on?!”
“It seems we’re in big trouble.”
“I smell blood… are you hurt…?”
Worry spread across Zelda’s face as she closed her eyes.
Hilda looked at my mangled left arm and seemed ready to faint.
Suddenly, I recalled the sight of the pet shop. Animals dying inside cages.
I hadn’t asked Littleman why it was happening.
We might be about to experience what those animals did.
Every part of the house was blocked.
The iron bars were so dense that even the slender bodies of the Hyper sisters couldn’t squeeze through.
The street outside was empty. We shouted loudly, but there was no response from anywhere.
The surroundings were eerily quiet.
I tried to pull out the bars with my right hand. I used all my strength but failed.
The metal seemed not of this earth. My pierced left arm hurt terribly.
“Summer… the phone is dead too.”
“Did you check all the passages?”
“Hilda checked, and everything leading outside is blocked by bars.”
It was a sealed room. We were no different from animals trapped in a cage.
Damn it.
Ever since I survived gutting a shark in Texas, I had become overconfident in my strength.
I arrogantly thought I could take down anything that came my way.
Blinded by a sense of omnipotence, I had been careless.
I thought I had received a protagonist’s buff.
But I was wrong.
I was not the protagonist.
I was a serial killer.
A serial killer in a crazy horror movie.
Lucky, incredibly strong, and tough, but in the end, I either died or was rendered incapacitated.
Death was an unavoidable fate.
I had overlooked that fact.
That’s why I had become dull, soft, and complacent.
Even with precious people beside me to protect.
“Summer, are you okay…? Your breathing is rough.”
The pain in my left arm made me dizzy, but my anger was clear.
I wanted to survive defiantly as an undying killer, to stubbornly endure, and blow up this movie.
I wanted to give the finger to whatever entity was watching this world.
First, I collected my thoughts calmly.
Littleman, the bet, the pet shop…
Which horror movie could this be related to? Stephen King’s <Pet Sematary>?
Now that I think about it, there was a character similar to Littleman. The mortician from the classic <Phantasm>.
The black suit and the squinting eye were identical.
Then, Hilda stepped back.
There was something at the end of the hallway. It was hidden in shadows, hard to see.
It had the silhouette of a person, but it didn’t feel human.
It was walking towards us, step by step.
Sensing a presence, Zelda asked,
“Is there someone else here besides us…?”
“I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t seem human.”
My left hand was pierced and immobile. I had no choice but to hand the hand axe in my right hand to Hilda.
Her small, trembling hand took the axe.
The figure at the end of the hallway came closer.
Finally, it was revealed.
Thunk—
Was her hand sweaty? Hilda dropped the axe.
“Pick it up…!!”
Ellen Strode shouted at her daughter.
Nancy picked up the double-barrel shotgun she had dropped, and Ellen started the chainsaw.
Vroom—
She thrust the chain blade into the shoulder of the approaching monster.
Just as she was about to cut through with force, the monster rammed into her.
Ellen flew back and hit the wall.
The monster charged. Ellen hurriedly tried to get up.
“Mom, don’t get up!”
Nancy shouted and pulled the shotgun’s trigger.
A blast from behind, the monster’s head exploded. Brain matter splattered on the wall like a decal.
The staggering monster sprayed a fountain of blood from its severed neck.
Nancy ran and smashed the creature’s chest with the shotgun’s buttstock.
Pant, pant…
She caught her breath and wiped the blood from her pale face.
She helped her fallen mother to her feet.
“What is that monster… Where did it come from…?”
“I don’t know.”
Less than an hour after the iron bars appeared on the windows and doors, the safest and most comfortable place had turned into a sea of blood.
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