"Sorry, Sensei. Not much time for physical training these days..."
"Hey, hey. How many times do I have to tell you? After school, I'm not a teacher. I'm your aunt."
"Got it..." Clint wheezed, finally dropping the bags in front of his door and fumbling for his keys.
The door clicked open, and the apartment greeted them with a blast of cool air. Compared to the sultry evening heat outside, the AC made the place feel fresh. Enega marched straight into the living room and face-planted onto the sofa.
"Ugh... Bliss..." she sighed, melting into the cushions like jelly.
"We eating now or later?" Clint called from the kitchen.
"Later..."
"You're just going to leave in the middle of the night again, aren't you?" Clint asked skeptically, peeking into the living room.
"Or maybe I won't?.." She arched her back in a suggestive stretch, popping her hip out and looking at Clint with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Clint didn't dignity that with a verbal response. He just ducked back into the kitchen, flashing her a middle finger as he went.
"Oh come on, am I too old for you?" Enega teased.
"Unfortunately, the subscriber you are trying to reach is unavailable due to a complete lack of interest in incest," Clint deadpanned, mimicking an automated voicemail.
"Who said anything about sex?" Enega chuckled. "What kind of dirty thoughts are running through that head of yours?"
"Only the wettest and most heartbreaking ones."
Clint unpacked the groceries and went to fetch the small folding table from the utility closet.
"You're impossible to figure out..." Enega murmured lazily.
"Why's that?" Clint asked, walking back in with the table.
"I can't even tease you properly."
"Hmm... Defense mechanism, probably," Clint said, setting the table up right in front of the sofa.
"A virgin's defense mechanism. That's new. Does it work on high school bullies too?"
"Ha ha. Very funny," Clint spat.
He was used to her teasing. It never felt malicious; it was just her weird way of trying to toughen him up.
"Therapy through mockery." It was a terrible way to work through trauma, sure, but then again, Enega was a terrible psychologist.
And honestly... she wasn't exactly the best role model either. (To put it as mildly as humanly possible).
Just as Clint was taking out the yakitori, a loud crash echoed from the living room, followed by a sharp scream. He rushed back in to find Enega breathing heavily, staring wide-eyed at the wardrobe.
"Shelf fell again..." Clint grumbled, pulling the doors open.
And there, sitting innocently inside, was the doll. The same one that had been on the dresser earlier.
"What the hell... Did you put this in here?"
"Of course not!" Enega snapped, trying to catch her breath. "Do you have ghosts or something? See? I told you living like a hermit attracts bad vibes!"
"Didn't know you were such a scaredy-cat..." Clint hid a smirk behind his hand, ignoring her jab, but his focus snapped back to the doll instantly.
It was weird. He distinctly remembered leaving it on the dresser. There was no way it could have moved to the closet on its own.
The longer he stared at the damn thing, a gift from Enega herself, ironically, the tighter the knot of anxiety became in his stomach.
"You gonna stare at that doll all night?" Enega asked, watching him.
"Ah... I'll get the food." Clint shook himself out of it and headed to the kitchen, making sure to shove the doll far out of sight first.
The rest of the evening passed normally, except for the creeping sensation of danger that refused to leave Clint alone.
It felt close. Personal.
That damn doll wouldn't leave his thoughts.
He kept trying to rationalize how it moved, maybe he blacked out? Memory loss?
But he dismissed those ideas immediately. His memory of putting it on the dresser was too sharp, too clear.
Something was wrong.
Once Enega finally drove off, grumbling one last time about the damn shelf collapsing, Clint finally worked up the nerve to approach his laptop. He opened the cloud storage where his security feed backed up every two hours.
Gulping hard, he double-clicked the file covering the time frame when he'd found the doll. The loading circle spun for a second, and then the video began to play.
The moment the image clarified, Clint felt a spike of primal terror unlike anything he had ever experienced.
On the screen, there was Clint, holding the doll. And standing directly behind him was... something.
It had four limbs and a vaguely humanoid build, easy to mistake for a person if you ignored the fact that it was pitch black and its proportions were all wrong. The limbs were unnaturally long. Its fingers were longer than his entire hand.
Suddenly, the figure on the screen turned its head toward the camera lens, revealing a face. Or what passed for one.
A massive mouth, looking as if it had been pasted onto the void, ran vertically from where a nose should be all the way down to the middle of its chest. No eyes, just two hollow, sunken pits.
Clint's chest constricted. On the screen, the creature stared right through the camera, looking at the past version of Clint, and slowly raised an impossibly long hand to wave.
Tears instantly welled up in Clint's eyes, a mix of sheer horror and crushing frustration. He had prepared for every possible danger.
Burglars, Villains, psychos. But this? How the hell do you defend against a monster that stands behind you without making a sound?
For all he knew, it was behind him right now.
Hands shaking uncontrollably, he grabbed his phone and started shoving essentials into his pockets. Laptop. Keys. Headphones.
He dialed Enega's number as he bolted for the door, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"You... are you far away?" Clint asked, his voice trembling, already flying out of the apartment and sprinting down the hallway.
He didn't know the range of this thing's influence, so he had to get out of the building. Fast. He even forced himself to lock the door with only one lock, a painful violation of his habits, but necessary.
"What? Well... not really? Did something happen?" Enega's voice came through the speaker, lazy and unbothered.
"I'm sleeping at your place tonight," Clint stated as he burst out onto the street.
"Excuse me?"
"No time to explain. Pick me up."
"Ugh... how important is this?" she asked. He could hear the faint sound of her turn signal as she swung the car around.
"Fucking critical. Hurry up!"
"On my way." Enega hung up immediately, and he heard the engine roar.
Clint rarely swore in front of Enega, and never directly at her. She knew that if he was cursing, the world was probably ending.