The Moon, chapter 13: Apartments

It was a quiet, clear night outside. The cold air didn't bother Susie much, but when she noticed Hazel was shaking a little, she decided to pick up the pace to the apartments. Weirdly enough, they didn't talk at all on the way to Hazel's place, either because they have been talking in passing pretty much all day, or they just didn't want to spoil the pleasantness of the silence shared between the two. Regardless of which the case was, it took them no time at all to reach the apartment buildings. She didn't see this part of town up close very often, since she had no one to visit around that area, and it kind of looked unsafe to begin with. Maybe she judged wrong. If someone as nice as Hazel lived here, maybe it wasn't too bad after all.

Hazel and Susie reached the front door of the building. Building three, the last one on the block, and the apartment closest to the treeline. Susie desperately tried not to look into it. She knew that there probably weren't going to be any eyes staring back at her, but she didn't like taking chances. Once inside the small porch area, Susie knocked the snow off of her shoes, remembering that eventually she needed to find boots. That is, if she didn't want soaked feet all the time. The porch was lit by a flickering, yellow light that looked like it hadn't had a proper replacement in years. In fact, the rest of the building looked to be lit in the same way. Must be an old place.
“Hope you don't mind a bit of stair climbing, my place is on the top floor, after all.”
“No problem, I need the exercise anyway.”

Calling the ascent up the stairwell “exercise” was a bit of an overstatement, since it was only five floors, and Susie was pretty fit to begin with. Reaching the fifth floor took no time at all, nor did reaching the end of the hallway to room 509. Hazel reached the door and took a key ring out of  her pocket. It only had two keys on it, one for her diner, and one for her apartment. It checked out. Hazel slid the key into the doorknob, and hesitated for a bit.
“Hey, uhm... Sorry if it's kind of a mess in here. It's been a while since I've had guests over.”
“I'm sure it's fine. Trust me, if you saw my place, you'd have no room to judge.”
Hazel slowly opened the door, it's wood self creaking loudly, as if to announce to everyone that someone was using it. She walked into the darkness a little, then reached to her right to turn the lights on. Susie followed behind her.

Hearing her apologies for the sorry state of her house, Susie was almost disappointed when she saw how nicely kept together it was. It was your typical apartment room, with the living room and kitchen being in the same room, while the bedrooms and bathroom were in a hallway off to the right side. Directly parallel to the front door, on the wall, was a glass door leading out to a metal balcony. Outside, the moon's light was shining directly into room. She could see the treeline, too, and even further beyond that was the lake at the far east side of town, the moon's grace shimmering lightly across it's surface. She used to walk the path to the lakeside and watch the moon high in the sky. Back then, she found comfort in the moon.

Hopefully, this night, it would leave her alone.

“Nice view, huh?” Hazel remarked.
“Yeah, it's really nice. It's good you got the room with the trees for a view instead of the town.”
“Hey, I heard the town at night from up above looks really pretty.”
“Maybe.”

In the middle of the living room, and in front of the window, was a large, brown, three person couch, facing to the left at an old tube television. Didn't seem to be plugged in. In front of where the couch was facing, a brown coffee table with a white mug and a newspaper. It was a pretty boring place in her opinion, and lacked any decoration. But she supposed that when you work as much as Hazel does, the time to decorate doesn't come often. Hazel closed the door and locked it, then yawned, heading towards the bedrooms.
“Well, I'd love to chat, but I'm really tired after today.”
“You're heading to bed already?”
“Yeah. Early sleep means early rise, y'know.”
She didn't know.
“Now let me grab you a pillow and blanket real quick.”
“I'm good. I got my clothes.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, really, don't worry about it.”
“Alright. I guess I'm off to bed then. Night, Susie!”
“Night.”

And there she was, alone once again. Not to the same extent as before of course, there were people all over the place. Even limiting herself to this apartment, Hazel was just a few steps away. Maybe being around others was just something she had to get used to. Susie sat down on the couch, and out of curiosity, looked into the mug on the coffee table. Empty. She wasn't sure what she was expecting. Newspapers never interested her all that much either. Too depressing, she thought. She sat on the couch, waiting for something to do to cross her mind. When this didn't happen for quite a while, she decided that now was as good of a time as any to head to sleep.

It was a pain that she had to walk all the way to the light switch and turn it off just to walk all the way back again, but soon enough she was laying on the couch comfortably, her feet pointed towards the balcony. It was big enough for her to sleep on without being cramped, that was good at least. The only thing that caused her displeasure was the moon basking her in it's light once again. She hated that she couldn't escape it. The  She couldn't even move the couch without the possibility of waking up everyone in the building. She'd just have to deal with the moon watching her tonight.

She felt a little guilty. She felt like she was taking advantage of the people around her. Sure, Hazel offered, but it felt like that was only out of pity. Then, she felt guilty about not fully accepting her kindness. She hadn't felt this kind of complicated emotion before. Maybe she was being too self absorbed. Maybe she wasn't. It wasn't long before this thinking was making her mind exhausted. She just wanted to sleep now, put all this to rest until tomorrow.

Susie felt her eyes closing on their own volition, and she gladly gave in to their suggestions. The light from the moon faded a little as her eyelids tried their best to keep it out. She was finally able to relax for a while, as the moonlight completely faded, now, leaving her in complete darkness. She had only assumed her eyes just naturally filtered out the light to help her sleep.
That was until the faint moonlight basked her once again. She wondered what happened until she heard the soft wind of outside. Until she heard the sliding door to the balcony open.

Until she heard the breathing.

She felt a lot less alone now, but not in a comforting way like before. She felt something hostile.  She felt sick. Susie then felt a lot more worried, because if they weren't here for her, they were here for Hazel. And she wasn't about to let her get in danger. She had to think of a plan. How she could challenge whatever it was that was inside. Susie found herself in the exact same situation as the second nightmare, when she also heard breathing and had no idea what the cause of it was. She had to make a decision to either act stealthily or attempt to surprise it with an attack.

When she felt the cold, wet, and scaly clasp of a large hand grasp her ankle, she knew the decision was made for her. Susie resisted the urge to scream for help, and opened her eyes quickly, trying to get a good look at what had grabbed her. It's body was facing away from the moon, so she couldn't make out any details, but it was at least a foot taller than her, and had incredibly thin limbs. It's head was small in comparison to the rest of it's body, which seemed almost bursting with muscles despite it's slim appearance. It was wearing a blue shirt that barely fit it, and was ripped to shreds completely down the middle, exposing it's chest. What it was didn't matter right now. What mattered was what it was capable of, and what it would do. Susie kicked and tried to crawl backwards, only to be met with an astounding amount of resistance. It showed no signs of struggling against her at all.

It began to walk back towards the balcony, all of Susie's struggling having no effect on the monstrous being. Getting desperate, she tried to bite at it's arm, piercing the scales and into the soft flesh and muscle. No response. It dragged her out onto the balcony, and she felt it's body tighten up, as if it were preparing for something. She had desperately hoped it wouldn't do what she thought it was going to, but when it began to lift her up, she knew her hopes had been shattered.

Without using much force at all, the monster hurled Susie over the edge of the balcony, sending her body spinning like a top as the wind lashed at her body, her visions of it in the moonlight only being able to make out blurs of dark yellow, black and blue. It had sent her flying incredibly far for how little effort it seemed to put into the throw, if the wind hitting her body was any indication. She knew exactly what would come next. She felt a gash rip open her back as she sailed across the top of a tree, soon after recoiling  off of a few others as intense pain filled her body in almost every area. She felt blood flow from her nose as she fell through the branches, surely breaking a bone or two in a few places. Pain singed her body in every area, so it was impossible to single out which bones could have been broken.

Then to the hard, snow covered forest floor she fell, hitting the back of her skull off of the root of a tree, making her skull ring with nausea and agony. Agony. The perfect word to describe how she felt. Susie felt every individual cut bleed, every gash stung like she'd never felt before. She was facing up towards the sky, the moon staring her back down. Any part of her vision that didn't black out showed the branches above torn up and broken. She couldn't move. It hurt too much. It hurt so much that she couldn't stop the tears from coming out of her eyes. She didn't even know if she could walk. She felt darkness swallow her mind whole as well as her vision, the pain putting her into an incapacitated state.

Everything cut to black, as the last thoughts and feelings faded until the last thought in her mind fizzled out.