Whether or not we want to accept it, the world is full of monsters. Not monsters the way you and I perceive them; there's nothing under the bed, or in the closet, or in that corner of the basement that the light never touches. The monsters live in the coffee shops, they drive the same cars we do, they see the same movies we do. Sometimes, they have little monsters of their own, and on the surface we see nothing but a happy family. Because everything is skin deep these days, and trusting a friendly smile could very well put you deep in the dirt.
Take, for example, Dr. Victor Cadawaller: skilled doctor, benevolent employer, and loving family man. He worked hard to be where he is today, and all he wants is to give back to his community.
Victor Cadawaller stood, hands in his pockets, gazing at the body of the young woman on his table, her white knuckles still clinging tightly to the sides of the table. What's worse, this was the expected outcome of his... procedure.
Victor was a good man when the public eye was on him. His clientele was all the same: attractive young women who went too far on a date, and didn't feel like carrying the responsibility of parenthood any longer. Victor would give them his artificially whitened smile, and gesture towards his two dollar PhD (nobody ever looked close enough to see that his name wasn't even on it), and when all was said and done, they always ended up on the table. Success or failure, they seldom lived through the night; Victor and his... nurses would remove the evidence however they could, clean away the excess blood, and reset for the next day. Rinse and repeat, often literally.
For Victor Cadawaller, and for the lifeless woman on his table, it was just another day.
"Jesse!" he called out, "It's another sleeper. Can you take care of it before we close?"
A young man stumbled into the room, wearing a similar lab coat to Victor's. He had shaggy blonde hair, and a distant look in his eyes. He wrung his hands together, his profession keeping him in a constant state of unease.
"Another one, doc?" he asked worriedly, "feels like it's been happening an awful lot..."
Victor turned to face him.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it's just..." Jesse stammered, "we're a clinic, right? We're supposed to be helping these people; I know we're doing what's best for ourselves, but it just feels like... I don't know."
"Jesse," Victor explained, "I'm not a supervillain. I don't do this because I want to, but you have to understand our role in this world. There are places these people can go, places that can actually help them. When people come to us, they're desperate. And desperate people have money to spare, do you understand? Live or die, success or failure, you and I both have tables to put food on. When you see a body, you have to reason- would you rather it be you?"
"N-No..."
"Of course not! Look, take care of this sleeper, and we'll close up early tonight. Oh, and don't forget to bring me the ID before you dump 'er, ok?"
"Of course. I'll get right on it."
"Attaboy, Jesse. I'll lock up tonight, I need to do some bookkeeping anyway. You have a good night, you hear?"
****
Click clack. Click clack.
There it was again. Victor looked up from his computer, quickly glancing around the darkened office. Jesse had gone home hours ago, and there was nobody else in the building but him. Despite that, the sound kept recurring throughout the night. Never very long, never very loud. But always there, just barely out of earshot.
Click clack. Click clack.
Victor pushed it out of his mind, focusing on his work. He looked back at the spreadsheet open on his computer, turning his gaze to the ID he held in his hand. Not too long ago, the straight faced woman on the driver's license had been alive and well. He remembered her glowing smile when he told her that the chance of a successful operation was high. Then the sedatives kicked in, and the coat hanger came out.
Victor shuddered, partly due to the draft and partly due to his grisly train of thought. True, it was gruesome work; he hesitated to say that it was work that had to be done, because it didn't. There were hundreds of jobs open to Victor, but he chose to stick with what he was good at: covering up his own shortcomings with a firm handshake and a corporate smile.
Click clack. Click clack.
Victor clenched the license in his hand as he turned around him. The sound persisted, no matter how hard he tried to ignore it; if he could find out where it was coming from and what it was, he'd be able to stop it.
"Fine," he said out loud to nobody in particular, "you win. Ready or not, here I come."
He pushed back his office chair, standing up and stretching. The sound had stopped for now, but still he paced the dimly lit hallways of the clinic, running through his mind what it could possibly be.
A tree branch knocking against a window. Someone left the tap running. Fuck if I know.
Suddenly, he heard it. The peculiar click-clacking emanated from the end of the hallway. He strode towards the sound, removing his hands from his pockets as he moved. He reached the end of the hallway, stared at the back exit, and stopped.
There was a human figure standing outside; whoever they were, they were tall and seemingly bald, as judging by their vague appearance through the dirty glass. Victor couldn't make out any other defining features.
"Um, excuse me," Victor called out, "we're... we're closed for the night. If you need an appointment, come back tomorrow."
The figure didn't move. It raised its hand to the glass, pressing it firmly against the door. Victor rolled his eyes; this was either a homeless person, or a drug addict, or probably both. Either way, they had no business here, and he wasn't afraid to get nasty if it meant keeping them off his property.
"Look pal," he continued, "I'm telling you, we're cl-"
Victor's words died in his throat as he stared ahead of him. The figure's hand began to move and twitch; it looked like it was... unfolding. Its fingers grew longer, as if all of its digits were curled up under the knuckles. Once its fingers stopped growing, little slivers of them began to break off and continue upwards. It looked as if each individual finger had splintered into its own set of razor thin claws. Slowly, the claws rapped against the glass.
Click clack. Click clack.
Victor could feel his pulse quickening. This wasn't real. It couldn't be.
Click clack. Click clack.
He stumbled backwards, desperate to get away from whatever was out there. He ran back to his office, slamming the door behind him and locking it. He sank to the floor, resting his back against the wooden door. He listened to see if the thing was persisting, and he realized that the sound had changed.
Skitterskitterskitterskitter. Click clack. Skitterskitterskitterskitter.
It sounded like an ice skater who was struggling to stay on their feet. Whatever it was, it sounded like it was fumbling with something.
It was fumbling with the back doorknob.
Victor bit down into his arm to stop himself from screaming. He crawled over to his desk, pulling open his drawer and removing the revolver. He gripped it tight in his hands as he waited in horrifying anticipation.
He heard the door creak open, and he was treated to an even more horrific noise.
Click-clack... Click-clack... Click-clack...
...
CLICKCLACKCLICKCLACKCLICKCLACK
This time, Victor couldn't stop the screaming. He yelled out in a mix of anger and fear as the sound continued endlessly. It didn't make any sense; the click clack was its claws, then why was it still tapping the glass?
"It's not tapping the glass anymore," he said to himself, "it's inside. Why would it be tapping the g-"
Click clack.
The glass of his office door began to shake and clatter.
Click clack.
The thing's silhouette lurched towards the door, scraping against the glass with malicious intent. Victor grunted angrily, clenching the revolver. Slowly, he moved towards the door, one hand outstretched, the other wrapped around the trigger.
"Alright, motherfucker," he yelled in an attempt to rile himself up, "you wanna go?! Then let's g-"
The sight of the thing alone was enough to make him drop his revolver in shock.
At first, he thought it was made of silver. It was composed entirely of wires; its body seemed to warp and twist in abstract lined patterns, as wires wrapped around every inch of its being. Its legs were stiffened cables that had been pulled apart; it looked as if something had blown its legs off, and it continued walking on the stumps. Its hands were abnormally large, and each finger culminated in a series of protruded metal wires. Its face was the same; wires, wires, and nothing underneath.
It moved forward, pushing itself into the room. It seemed to slosh and jiggle with every step, as if there were something inside it. As it moved, its chest and stomach gyrated bizarrely, like waves were crashing against its innards. In the light, Victor could see that there was something seeping out of where its face would be. There was an opening in the tightly coiled wires, and something red and viscous was leaking from beneath.
That's... that's too thick to be blood. What the hell is this thing?
Suddenly, the pieces all clicked together. The thing wasn't made of wires, it was made of dismantled coat hangers. Whenever Victor was finished with a procedure, he'd unwind the coat hanger and trash it. He'd put them in the same dumpster where he would drop the...
He looked back at the red blob coming out of the thing's face, and he put his hand to his mouth in revulsion. His surroundings began to grey out as panic and disgust overtook his body and mind.
"You..." he stammered, backing up against his desk, "you're them. You're the little bastards, aren't you?"
The thing stared at him in silence, its gnarled hands at its sides. It cocked its head sideways like a curious puppy.
"I knew this life would catch up to me. Just never thought it would be like... this. Well, what do you want, huh? I can't undo what I did, so what do you want from me?"
The thing raised its hand, claws extended outward. With its free hand, it bent each of its finger wires further out until they resembled the hooked part of coat hangers. It said nothing, but Victor understood what it wanted.
"No... no, you can't do this to me!" he yelled, nearly toppling over his desk as he tried to find somewhere to run to, "It wasn't my fault, do you hear?! I was just following the money, I never meant... I never meant to..."
It heeded no words, and it acknowledged no desperate pleas. In a moment, the thing was upon him. It raised its hand, bringing the hooked claws to Victor's face.
Beyond the cacophony of the night- beyond Victor's screams, beyond the sirens that followed minutes later- the tearing of the claws against tender flesh made for a familiarly comforting noise.
Click
clack.