“Try harder!” Apollo yelled in frustration.


    “I’m trying hard as I can!” Ally shouted back as she tugged and pulled with all her weight, but the door didn’t budge. Apollo took his mangled hands and wrapped them as hard as he could bear around the handle and tugged with her. She repressed the urge to gag as blood spurt from his wounds and his sticky hands, slick with blood, touched hers. She could be sick later. Right now, they needed the door to open.


    Neither dared look behind them to see how little time they had left, and the only indicator of how truly doomed they were came when Apollo screamed out when the barbwire sunk into his throat as he was pulled away. Ally whirled around and flattened herself to the door as the monster threw Apollo down and kicked him in the ribs with a deafening crack, sliding him several feet across the floor and causing him to spit up blood.


    Apollo’s eyes bulged, but no sound came out of his mouth before sucking gasps as the hogs fell upon, digging into their third feast of the evening. There was no scream, he hadn’t the air, and in just a few seconds the pigs spread away from his now still body, a bloody puddle spreading out from where his head at once been.


    Sinew and skin erupted from the hog farmer’s neck, creeping, and consuming his head as it covered up exposed skull, and as it completed its transformation, he grabbed his head as if in pain, though no sound came out as it stumbled back a few feet in recoil. Ally watched in horror as he dropped his hands, revealing a young man in his twenties, his face pale, and ever so slightly transparent, as if not truly there, breathed heavily, fear and horror in his eyes.


    “No… No… No, no, no! Not again!” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been screaming for hours, and his eyes were puffy.


    Ally relaxed a little, but remained ready to run at the slightest provocation, “Are you… Philip Conway?”


    He jolted at his name and stared at her, “You… You know my name?” She nodded. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I wasn’t in control… I didn’t mean to… You have to believe me!”


    Ally looked him over, and realized the man was more scared than her. “What happened to you?”


    The man froze, fear overwhelming him for a second as he shook his head, “I… There are conditions… I can’t say… It’ll…”


    Ally recognized his reference to conditions, similar to what Rebecca had said before her death, and how talking had summoned the headless hog farmer. She put two and two together, and said, “One of your conditions of the blessing is you can’t say.”


    He nodded slowly, and then spat, “Blessing? This is a curse! Just to be revived it forces me to kill! But I won’t let it! I won’t let it have what it wants! I’m not a bad man, you have to believe me!” Ally inched away on the wall to try and get distance as he seemed to be getting more and more upset.


    “I-if you aren’t evil, then help me get out of here,” Ally pleaded.


    Philip looked at her, and then nodded, “What do you need me to do?”


    “Open the door… please?” Ally tacked on courtesy, feeling like treating him with some dignity would help him stay in control, if even for just a moment. Whether it worked or not was irrelevant as the large man walked up to the door and grabbed the handle. He was about to tug when a motor within the door sounded, and it unlocked. Ally watched in shock as he glanced at her, and then pulled. The door slid open effortlessly.


    The smell of smoke powder followed the sudden explosion that sent the headless hog farmer soaring towards the center of the room, and Ally dived to the side in shock. She looked up and saw the gaping mouth of a pig charging at her, desperately seeking its final meal and causing her to scream before there was the sound of gunshots and the pig fell over and morphed back into a dog.


    Ally tried to scramble back to her feet but was pinned down and handcuffed as a unit of a dozen armored men poured into the room. The first carried some large handheld cannon, with smoke still billowing from its barrel where it had shot a massive beanbag at Philip as soon as he opened the door.


    Each of them had pistols, which were drawn, and they swiftly exterminated the pigs as they squealed and attempted to run away before contorting noisily to their original form. They then swapped to the weapon strapped on their chest, what appeared to be rifles except for them having drums for magazines and a sharp, barbed harpoon glistening from their barrels.


    Philip picked himself in time to have a harpoon penetrate his shoulder, and the special ops then turned and shot the wall, sending an anchor to embed in the wall and pull the cord on the harpoon taut. Philip strained under the force of the cable reeling him in, when another struck his thigh, then his side, hand, so on and so forth. He was strung up and soon unable to move as more people walked into the room, armed with large heavy-duty restraints as they approached Philip, his head already losing its skin as it shriveled up and he regressed back into his monstrous form.


    “Take test sample three to medical,” one of the special ops ordered and Ally was hauled back to her feet and had a syringe placed into her neck before her vision blurred and she slipped towards unconsciousness.


    Ally woke up and scrambled to her feet to look around in alarm. She was in an office, with candles lit around the room with blue flames flickering in the darkness, providing minimum illumination. On the desk were a couple green plants, and behind it was a man in a shirt and slim tie, with white hair and goatee who looked intrigued and surprised to see her.


    “Allison Thomas? Now this is a surprise.”


    Ally looked around in alarm, and then back to the man as slow recognition came to her. She had seen this man on the news several times. “Aren’t you Randy J?” she queried.


    “Randolph is fine. Only the media calls me that.” He leaned forward on his desk and folded his hands before asking, “So tell me, Allison, what are you doing here?”


    Ally looked at him in confusion, “You’re the one who kidnapped me! Why the hell am I in some office?”This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    “Kidnapped? That is grossly misinformed. No, you and your mother signed a release placing you in my custody. As for why you’re here, I can assume then you don’t know where here is?”


    Ally looked around again and noticed the blue flames of the candles. “We’re back in the realm of the masked beast, aren’t we?”


    “Well, well, aren’t you informed. I’m curious how you got here, you’re supposed to be unconscious in an ambulance, on the way to a hospital as we speak.”


    “I don’t know, I’m always sleeping when I wind up here.”


    “So, you’ve been here before? And without the ritual?”


    “What ritual?”


    “To enter the realm of the majesty, capture a bestial avatar and place one part burning coal, one part of one’s own blood into the still beating chest. That’s what’s the text I found said and is how I’ve been able to enter in the past.”


    “… No, never heard of doing anything like that.”


    “Interesting. Well, since I have you here, I can debrief you now.”


    “What do you mean?”


    “We just used you as bait to stop the headless hog farmer of Hazelwood and succeeded. While our intentions may have been noble, our methods were something that many may consider as… dubious.”


    “You had three of us killed just to capture him?”


    “You could characterize it as such, yes.”


    “Characterize it as such!? You straight up sent us like lambs to the slaughter!”


    “And who said you were out of the slaughterhouse?”


    Ally felt a chill run down her spine, “What do you mean?”


    “What do you think the plan was for the survivor? We lied and faked a hospital just to have you sacrificed to a supernatural monster. Did you really think we planned on releasing you?”


    “… You’re still going to kill me…!?”


    Randolph unfolded his hands and smiled in what appeared to be kindly, but the threat he held over her life made it feel condescending, “Initially, yes, that was the plan. However, I have found you to be… Well to be frank you are an enigma to me. I was specifically asked to use you for this experiment, and in the process, you revealed you knew things no one has any right knowing, right down to the fact that you knew about Philip Conway. You even managed to survive to the end, and somehow, I suspect that was not by mistake. So instead, I would like to offer you an opportunity.”


    “What opportunity?”


    “I’ll permit you to go on living, and in exchange you won’t say a word of what happened tonight. In addition, I will be offering you an internship when you graduate, regardless of your academic success, with Lamb. I’m quite curious to see what makes you so special.”


    “… That seems like a terrible plan, if you ask me.”


    “And why is that?”


    “What’s stopping me from going to the media with what you did here?”


    “Well, for one, what we did was stop a headless monster that died several years ago from running rampant in a small town. What do you think they’ll say, when you tell them we have captured a monster and are keeping it in our basement? No, you talking is a risk I’m willing to take, not to mention the fact you are asking the question knowing full well I still have you in my custody tells me you were already planning on keeping your mouth shut.”


    Ally nodded slowly, and then a thought dawned on her, “So you must be the trespasser, then.”


    “Excuse me?”


    “The masked beast, the one that appears in this realm. It said that there was a trespasser who had been entering. That must be you.”


    “… You can speak it?”


    “Yes?”


    “And you aren’t… breaking some sort of condition by doing so?”


    “No.”


    “Fascinating. Truly fascinating.”


    “… You can’t talk about it, can you?” Ally waited for a response, but Randolph just stared at her, and she realized that was her answer, “Why? Why am I the only one who can see it and talk about it?”


    Randolph considered the question for a second, and then asked, “If you can talk about it to others, why haven’t you then?”


    Ally paused for a second, thinking at first it was because no one believed her, but then realized that wasn’t why at all. It was a dream, who cared if they believed it or not? Why hadn’t she talked to anyone about it, even when Rebecca had died, she had kept her mouth shut about it to everyone she knew. She should have gone to the authorities, shouldn’t she have? So why? That was the thing, she knew the answer. It was simple. “Because she can’t see, child.”


    “… What!?” Finally, Randolph looked surprised, and slightly unsettled. His tone was shaken, but he maintained a steady volume despite it.


    Ally smiled, pressing her advantage. “But she sees you, doesn’t she. That’s why I can talk to you.”


    Confusion languished on his face, and then he broke into a broad smile, “You really are fascinating!”


    Randolph woke up in his office and stared down at the dead cat on the medical pan and scratched his chin. That had been the first time he had done the ritual, entered the realm, and the mask had not appeared. The fact that he had to be allowed in told him that the entity knew he had come but had instead chosen to unite him with Allison. He was unsure what game it was playing, but he was confident that he was close to achieving the impossible.


    “Soon.” He mumbled. “Soon I’ll have conquered death.” He chuckled. That was the goal after all, to finally end death. The blessing of the second chance was the only clue to it being done, and it was clear that it was possible. If those blessed by the mask could cheat death, what stopped him from claiming that power for himself? And once he did, he could usher in a new age for humanity, one where there would be no need to fear time itself. For a price of course, at the end of the day, he was a businessman.


    Ally sat in her hospital bed; the side of her head wrapped in bandages where her eye had been destroyed. She had emergency surgery done removing what had been left of it and had been told they would be bringing her a false eye to replace it in a couple hours, but the optic nerve had been too deeply damaged for them to be able to replace it with a donor. When her mom finally arrived, she exclaimed, “Oh, honey, you’re okay!”


    “Hey, mom.”


    “I can’t believe Lamb let another one of the patients sneak a knife into the facility and burn it down! They told me you were the only one to get out alive!”


    “… I see…” Ally had been told when she woke up what the story was going to be peddled by some Lamb employee, but it didn’t make hearing someone else say it feel any less surreal. That wasn’t what happened. She had met something supernatural and survived. She was responsible for the death of Brandon, Mellie, and Apollo, even if there was little that she could have done. She was alive… but then again… was she?


    “Oh honey, I’m sorry, I know you must still be in shock, here we can talk about something else.”


    “Where’s Lily?”


    “Oh… She had to stay at home. They don’t let dogs into the hospital.”


    “… I’d like to see her…” Ally stared blankly down. She felt… numb? No, numb is how she felt when the day had begun. What she felt was…? “Mom,” She turned and started shaking as she began to cry uncontrollable, “I want to see Lily!”


    “Oh, honey,” Mary hugged her daughter, “It’ll be fine, you’ll get to see her when they release you.”


    “Dad… Lily is all I have from dad,” Ally let the anguish pour from her as she released everything she had been suppressing, “I’m so, so sorry!”


    “Don’t be sorry, Ally, there’s nothing to be sorry for!”


    Ally cried and cried, until there was nothing else to mourn. Months of pain was released in moments, and while it didn’t abscond her numbness, it allowed her a respite of emotion she had been starved of for so long. Was she alive? Of course, she was! She had survived. And now she needed to live, for the sake of who had died. There was meaning in her life… and she knew what she needed to do with that life.


    Ally lifted her head up from Mary’s chest, and stared over her shoulder as she sniffled, and right into the mask of the beast, who resided in the room with them, cramped against the walls. “Hm, hm, hm. I see you, child!” The child-like voice spoke in amusement even as the eyes of the mask glowed brightly as it stared into Ally’s very soul.