The body of Philip Conway was contained in the vault room of the holding facility, and he had been placed sitting on a stool that had latches made from chromium, cobalt, and nickel alloy fully enveloping his arms and legs. A collar around his midriff with four long poles anchored into the walls held him in place. The alloy was the toughest material ever created and was several inches thick to ensure that Philip could not break free.


    His skin, skull, and brain had evaporated shortly after his capture, and the body had become still ever since, making him easy to lead and handle, albeit he would strain on occasion in attempts to get away from his captors. The scientific research team had already determined that he could not de-manifest unless he was out of sight, and so there was a guard stationed 24/7 to keep their eyes on him.


    The guard was armed with a gun and a German shepherd, which they believed would react and transform when the headless hog farmer located new targets. The guard was to execute the animal and seal himself in the vault with the hog farmer while sounding the alarm for the containment team to come in and reassess the situation. They were confident his restraints would hold him, but if he began hunting, they couldn’t be too precautious.


    A second guard was to patrol the perimeter of the facility with another guard dog, with the same instructions as the first apart from that instead of locking himself in with the monster, he was to head to the guard shack and monitor the situation inside from the screens inside. The cameras in the prison were high enough that Philip couldn’t possibly reach it, and was embedded into the ceiling and armored, in case he tried throwing something, such as the guard inside, at it.


    The researchers were to arrive by company transport every morning, and leave via the same method, at the same time. They hypothesized that if they never left four candidates alone at the facility, he could never possibly mark them for the blessing. In addition, each guard was to conduct weekly psych evaluations to make sure they never suffered from a feeling of failure. This feeling was believed to be the catalyst for marking, based off previous targets of the hog farmer paired with their experiments inducing marking in others.


    There was a third party allowed to stay at the facility, Randolph J. Sorensen, who had an office situated with a viewing window facing the vault above the lab. He sat there now, going over the paperwork from the first day’s study. In his current dormant state, Philip Conway’s DMR readings had dropped to almost zero, an interesting change considering the association it had with the supernatural. The fact he could still move without a head, even with the reading so low, meant that DMR may not function the way they thought. Still, it had served its purpose in allowing them to locate marks and track the monster, and they had all the time in the world to understand the creature.


    The first day had been dedicated to taking baseline readings, and he was to be monitored for a month before experimentation was to commence so that they knew for a fact what his dormant and active states looked like. The excitement that came with finally having made such huge leaps in progress towards his dream had yet to wear off, but Randolph knew in the next few days that the novelty would begin to wear off. No matter, he would be able to think more clearly that way.


    Randolph glanced at the clock, it was almost ten ‘o’clock in the evening, and he needed to be getting some rest. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, debating in his head if he would just sleep there tonight. No, no, that wouldn’t do. He needed to have a level head, with a well-rested body if he wanted to study this thing. He would go home, and sleep for at least a few hours before returning. Considering they were just getting baseline; he may even allow himself to sleep in. It was the least he could do considering he had been unable to sleep the night before when Subject Omega had been captured.


    His phone rang. Randolph stared at it with sudden unease, no one knew he was still there besides the guard out patrolling, who would see him as soon as he pulled out of the driveway. In that case, who was calling him at this hour, on this phone that only the researchers should have access to? He picked the phone up and put the speaker up to his ear.


    “Good evening, this is Randolph, who is it?”


    “Sir, this is Dr. Smith. I’m calling from the-,” he was interrupted by Randolph.


    “The hospital regarding Allison Thomas, yes, I know. What happened?”


    “Sir, we have her on camera leaving the hospital in nothing but a gown and slippers about ten minutes ago. It would appear she somehow found keys on the ground, and then unlocked and drove off when one of our nurse’s vehicles.”


    “… I thought I gave you explicit orders to keep an eye on her.”


    “We were, sir, but we didn’t believe she would leave in nothing but a hospital gown.”


    “Then call the police. Tell them you have a runaway patient. I don’t care what you have to say, find her, and bring her back, now.”


    “Yes, sir.” The phone’s disconnect sound greeted Randolph’s ear, and he set the phone down and folded his hands while thinking. It didn’t make sense why she would leave in the middle of the night. Perhaps she was homesick, teenagers could be irrational and emotional, and considering the last twenty-four hours for her he could imagine her doing something so bull-headed.


    He dialed a number on his phone, and soon had his head of security on the line, “This is Randolph.”


    “What do you need, sir?”


    “Our patient has stolen a vehicle and ran off. I want you to get your men to monitor the roads leading to her house and stop any vehicles that match the description from Dr. Smith. If you find her, kindly escort her back to the hospital. Call me as soon as you have news.”


    “Yes, sir.” Randolph didn’t wait for the dial tone before hanging up this time. He folded his hands again and thought some more, but that sense of unease persisted. No, if it persisted it wouldn’t be worsening, sinking into the very depths of his guts.


    He rubbed his temples with his hands, pulled them across his face, and then got up from his desk. He walked over to a closet, opened it, and grabbed one of the kennels inside that contained a cat. He brought it to his desk, opened a refrigerator underneath his desk and pulled out a prepared needle and sedative he had stored in it. He put on some medical gloves stored in one of his drawers while he was at it, no need to get blood on himself. He filled the syringe, and then opened the kennel and brought the cat over so that he could inject it. The cat purred a little, before turning and hissing in response to the shot, its ears flattening on its head.


    He petted the animal to calm it as it became still and drifted to sleep. He opened a cabinet behind him and pulled out the surgical pan and placed it in the center of his desk before placing the unconscious cat on top of that, sprawled out on its back. He returned to the cabinet and pulled out a prepackaged needle and small kerosene stove. He set these on his desk and finally returned to the cabinet one last time to grab the scalpel and pick up a coal from a bag with a pair of tongs.


    He brought the rest of his supplies to his desk and sat down, pulling his chair forward as he prepared for his ritual. He unbuttoned and rolled up his right sleeve so that he could take a blood sample from his elbow with the needle. He fired up the kerosene stove, put the coal over it using the tongs, leaving it there to begin burning. Next was the scalpel. He picked it up and with practiced precision opened the belly of the cat open, blood oozing out slowly under its slowed heartbeat from the sedative. He picked the needle back up and pushed it out so that it dripped a few drops into the cat’s opened stomach. Finally, he picked the coal up with the tong and pulled the incision of the cat apart enough to drop it into the cat’s belly.


    “Hm, hm, hm.” The mask was inches from his face and staring directly at him, eyes wide open with an intensity that caused him to sit back in surprise.


    “Well, well, well,” he mused as he collected his bearings and made sure to hide his nervousness, “Aren’t you quite eager to speak to me tonight?”


    “I behold your gaze.”


    “I can see that,” he waited for a response as he noted that the creature’s fur, drifting through the air gracefully, was black. He had never seen its fur black before. “You look different, are you trying a new look?”


    “The boar shall bloat on the blood of the wolf, fattened under his guise of sheepskin.”


    Randolph’s feeling of dread became worse, “Excuse me?”


    “I behold your gaze, child.”


    “So, you keep saying. Care to explain?”


    “Hm, hm, hm. Wake up!”


    Randolph woke up with a jolt. “-you there, sir!? I repeat, we have a situation!”


    Randolph snatched the radio from his desk, accidentally knocking the tray and dead cat onto his carpeted floor. “What’s going on!?” he snarled.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    “There’s girl in a hospital gown right in front of me… and she brought guests.”


    “What is that supposed to mean,” he asked even as he turned to his monitor and switched his computer screen to the cameras outside. It showed eight camera views, and he clicked on the one that looked significantly off to enlarge it.


    From the camera he could see the guard standing across from a frozen knoll where the girl was standing. To his fascination, followed by abject horror, where there should have been a missing eye was now an eye identical to the masked beast, glowing wickedly in the winter air. Directly in front of her was a shaggy black dog that appeared to be malnourished, and behind her, as far as the camera could penetrate the darkness, was a field of glowing eyes belonging to a variety of cats and dogs.


    BZZZT! BZZZT! The siren for the alarm went off, indicating that one of the guards had sounded the alarm, and guessing from his camera feed it had to be the guard inside the vault, he opened that camera view and put it adjacent with the one showing Ally facing off the guard just in time to see the man inside the vault put a bullet into the body of the pig that was once his dog.


    He didn’t bother listening to the report from the radio as he interrupted to order the first guard, “Shoot her, then get inside, now!”


    The guard began to draw his gun, when suddenly his dog jumped up, beginning its transformation, and bit into his arm. The man cried out and dropped the gun, and went it hit the gravel on the ground it fired, shooting the man in the foot. He fell over and his dog dragged him towards Ally, even as its legs and face contorted and twisted into a hog. It finally released his arm and grabbed the man by the face, shaking his body back and forth as blood splattered onto the ground as it devoured his face. The cameras didn’t have an audio feed, but Randolph could hear his screams reverberating through his windows.


    The man in the vault started yelling, even as the nervous system spread like spiderweb from Philip’s gaping neck. Slowly his brain took shape, and his optic nerves threaded through the air before budding into eyes, that stared the guard directly in the face. He couldn’t take it, pulling his pistol again and emptying bullet after bullet into the monster. Most planted firmly in his chest, but one shot severed the spinal cord at the neck causing the brain to fall out of the air, roll off the hog farmer’s lap, and squelch to a halt just a couple inches from the corpse of transformed German-shepherd, its own brain matter oozing out of its skull.


    Click! Click! Click! In his panic he had emptied the barrel and fumbled with his second magazine for a second before regaining his composure and reloading with practiced efficiency and emptying his next clip into the straining corpse, still attempting to break free from his metallic bindings.


    What he failed to notice was the brain, although disconnected from the body, was still moving. Tendrils of nerves trickled from its severed cervical and began prodding and poking at the corpse of the pig. Finally, a tendril found its gaping head wound, and streamed into the head causing it to twitch and spasm as the body jolted.


    The guards second, and final, clip was empty when he noticed the swine spasming and gaped in horror as the thing pulled itself up, twisting and snapping bone as it forced itself into an upright position, standing on its two hind legs as if it thought it was human. Indeed, with Philip Conway’s brain drooping over its shoulder, connecting into it fractured skull causing its pulped brain to ooze out sickeningly. It snorted and lurched forward, reaching its front hooves forward like it thought it had hands to grope with. The guard screamed and attempted to kick the abomination, but all he did was seal his fate as the thing lunged on top of him and spasmed violently against him, pinning him to the wall.


    His screams only ended once the swine managed to bite into his throat and tear, cutting his voice cords off and causing blood to gush like a waterfall over his chest.


    With a tremendous metallic bang, the restraints on the body shattered, dismembering the guard and pigs’ body as the monster stood up, bone forming and stopping just enough to leave an opening on the top of its scalp. It walked over and the nerve tentacles freed themselves from the hog’s head with a wet sucking sound before wrapping and pulling itself up the pant leg of the hog farmer. Slowly but surely, it brought itself to the opening in the skull, reoriented itself to face the correct direction, and then returned to its home as the skull finished forming to protect it.


    Randolph breathed heavily as he realized help wouldn’t be coming soon enough. He wiped his brow and when he looked at the monitor again, instead of seeing Ally standing in her gown out in the cold, and Philip banging on the door of the vault as he tried to escape, he was instead greeted by a single mask with flaring eyes, paired with a childish laughter. “I behold your gaze, child!” The monitor suddenly cackled as it short circuited and the smell of smoke billowed through the cracks in the screen before it turned black, causing Randolph to flinch.


    He got up from his desk and tried to walk to his cabinet, where he had a shotgun, but tripped on the body on the floor. He stared at it in horror when he realized it had transformed into a pig, and squealing started bursting from his closet where the other cats were stored.


    He scrambled to his feet as he reached out to the cabinet before stopping short, a lump catching in his throat when his hand stopped just short of the hospital gown of the teenage girl in front of him. Randolph stood up straightly slowly, even as Ally stared with him wither her heterochromia eyes, one glowing softly in his well illuminated office.


    Sweat dripped down the side of his face, but he decided to maintain some dignity as he straightened his tie and addressed the girl who had appeared so suddenly. Even now, he could hear Philip Conway banging on the vault door as he struggled to break free. But the worst part? Her hair had blackened, and now billowed in the air like it was suspended in water. “Well then, Allison, to what do I owe the pleasure?”


    “Hm, hm, hm. To what indeed, arrogant child,” her voice was more mature, but its tone was unmistakable. Ally spoke with the same voice as the mask.


    “Don’t tell me…!? You’ve given your power to this… girl!?” A vein popped on Randolph’s temple as his blood pressure rose. From fear or anger, he did not know. Perhaps they were one and the same by this point.


    “Incorrect. I am Allison Thomas. I have merely become an avatar of Death, and I am here to bring meaning to your life.”


    “Meaning? What meaning!? You’ve released a monster who is too much of a failure to even take advantage of his blessing! I could have done something with that power, no! I will do something with that power! You think you can stop me? That monster only hunts failures, like him, and he only had two people to hunt tonight! You may have freed him for now, but me and my team will capture him again, and next time I will make sure our security can’t be overwhelmed by some stupid girl!”


    “Hm, hm, hm. You misunderstand the blessing.”


    “What do you mean?” he snapped.


    “You’re right, the blessing prefers to trade the lives of four like-minded victims to restore life, but this is not the same blessing from seven years ago. Nor is it the same blessing as last night. The boar has been starved for so long now, and now it no longer cares who it must devour to bring back his beloved boy! No, wicked wolf, swollen by the blood of lambs. You are marked!”


    Randolph inched backwards as he screamed at her, “No! You think I’ll die tonight! You think this is the first time I’ve been marked! I am a survivor, and I will-,” his voice caught, and he grabbed as his throat. “I-I will-,” he struggled and strained his voice, until all that emerged was the squeal of a pig. His eyes bulged in horror, and with sudden rage he threw himself at Ally, grabbing her by the throat. There was a horrendous noise as metal tore from armored hinges and the vault door caved under the onslaught of Philip, but Randolph was too far gone as he squealed bloody murder into Ally’s face.


    Ally’s eyes rolled back, and her hair returned to her natural color as it fell back down, taken hold by gravity once again. Randolph did not relent though, he needed to make sure she was dead. He would not allow someone else to live with the power he so desperately craved.


    “Hm, hm, hm.” He jumped up as beside his face appeared a corporeal mask attached to thin air. He backpedaled in terror, not realizing how fast and hard he was approaching the viewing window. It shattered as he tripped through it, and he flipped through the air once before his neck hit the edge of one of the lab tables, creating a sickening table while spilling some fluid onto the ground as he finished landing on the ground.


    Randolph laid on the ground and felt numbness instantly seize his body, even as the fluid level increased around his body. He attempted to pick himself up but found himself unable to move. A boot came into his view, and he knew instantly who’s it was. The skulled monster grabbed him by his white hair and pulled, dragging his body through the lab, and exited outside, where hundreds of swine stared hungrily through the darkness with their beady eyes. He dropped Randolph to the ground before placing his barbed cowhide glove into his eerie mouth and whistled. The horde descended with an uproar.


    Philip Conway reeled back in horror as his face had fully restored, now transparent, “No, no, no! What have I done this time! My God, why!?”


    Ally stumbled down the stairs from the office, massaging her throat where Randolph had strangled her. Her fake eye had lost its mysterious glow, and with her walked a shaggy black dog, ribs showing against its dull coat. “It’s alright, Philip, everything is going to be alright.”


    He turned, tears streaming down his face, “You! It’s you again! Please, I didn’t want this to happen, I didn’t want any of this to happen!”


    Ally shushed, “I know. Everything is going to be alright. You won’t ever hurt anyone ever again.”


    “No, you don’t understand! I can’t stop myself! Please, you need to run away, before I lose control again. I’m begging you, please!”


    Ally walked over slowly and embraced Philip, causing him to flinch in surprise, then stared down in confusion at the girl, “It’s fine. After tonight, the nightmare is over.”


    “W-what are you talking about?” The man stared at the dog in some confusion, and then asked with surprise, “Ch-Chester? Is that you boy?”


    Ally released him and said, “Your dog is the one who carries the blessing. He’s been waiting for you to come back, this whole time.”


    The dog barked a weak, but happy bark, even as its bones started to crack and its body convulse, “What’s happening to him!?” Philip cried as he backed away.


    “He’s hungry, Philip, so very hungry. And I’m tired. So. Very. Tired.” Ally sat down on the ground with a relieved sigh while Philip looked at Chester transform into a massive boar, now standing almost eight feet tall.


    “… Get up. Girl, get up! Now, he’s going to eat you!”


    “It’s fine, Philip, this is what needs to be done.”


    “What are you saying!? Get up now!”


    The boar started sniffling at the ground as it took its first step towards Ally, even as she shook her head. “I can’t Philip. This is the only way for it to end. It’s time for you to take your second chance. Please don’t waste it, a lot of lives have gone into it. Make it meaningful.” Ally lay down on the ground and closed her eyes.


    “Stop it! Don’t!” Philip ran to the boar’s side and pulled at one leg, desperately trying to pull Chester away. “Stop.” There was a sickening crunch.


    “The headless hog farmer of Hazelwood was apprehended last night after he broke into a Lamb research facility and killed two guards, an unnamed runaway girl, and the CEO of Lamb, Randy J. Officials have yet to release a statement explaining what happened last night when-,” Mary turned off the television and cried.