1. Investigate.
You cock you ears forward and listen for a bit longer. The crying is disjointed, but somehow regular. Soon you are able to ascertain that it seems to loop about every eight seconds, skipping backward like a record. You begin to head in the direction of the noise.
As your soft footfalls press into the damp grass of the park, as the mist eddies and swirls and parts before you, as your paws brush the dew from the blades of grass, as the sense of unease and the strange, regular, almost buzzing heartbeat grows in your mind, as your nose begins to smell the sweet stench of decay, you walk toward the crying. The lost child in a lost world.
The Willow tree looms before you, its tendrils swaying gently. Beneath it, sits a small child with dark and tangled hair. Her clothes are rotting and torn, pretty blues and browns now stained with blood and rust. She is crying in that strange, looping cadence. The sound is like fingernails in your mind.
A sudden breeze toward you and your sensitive nose picks up the smell of them, of they, of the ones who have taken this world and bored into it like a worm into an apple, eating it from the inside out, the smell of death, the smell of the shadow, the smell of the Other. You raise your hackles and growl without thinking, an instinctual response you cannot repress.
The crying abruptly ceases.
The girl begins to turn, slowly, rotating not with her waist or legs or neck, but pivoting on the ground like a wooden fixture, impossibly smooth, as she raises her face to look at you.
You bare your teeth.
The face is perfect. Like paper, impossibly white and impossibly without flaw. The eyes are burning coals in a sunken mire. The mouth is a thin and cruel line. She blinks.
You blink.
She is standing before you, less than three feet. You blanch away and try to run, but your feet seem so heavy.
She raises one hand and extends the index finger. A long red fingernail extends from it. As you watch it seems to lengthen, elongating like a sword from the scabbard. You try to move, to run, to turn your head, but the heaviness is upon you entirely now. The best you can do is whine softly, awaiting your inevitable fate.
Suddenly, the creature before you (The Red Girl) shudders, like a weed bending in the wind. She opens her mouth to reveal an endless black and red pit, and the sound that issues from it is like a black wind of agony. It is literally painful to hear. You shut your eyes against it.
Then the sound stops, and you open your eyes to see another girl standing between you and the first. Her back is to you. Her dress is similar to the other, but her hair is smooth and clean, and there is no blood on her.
"No," she says. "This one is mine."
The first girl cocks her head, ever so slowly. Her eyes bore into the eyes of the new girl.
"He isssss one of usssssss, one of usssssss, one of usssssss, we have claimed him, yessss, you are not welcome here, interloper, one of ussssssss."
The second girl puts her hands on her hips, defiant.
No. He is mine.
One of usssssss.
You are the unwelcome one. Begone from here.
One. of. usssssss.
Begone!
The second girl stamps her foot and the other blanches and begins to fade. But before she does, her eyes shift to you.
One of usssssss.
Then she is gone, drifting away in the fog.
The second girl turns to you and places a gentle hand behind an ear. The heaviness is lifted and you fall gently to the grass. The girl kneels down with you, stroking your head and neck with her hands. She leans down and whispers in your ear.
You do not know me, but I know you. Max, Max, my Max, find my Wolfy and bring him safe to me. This I beg you. I fear for him alone in this lost world without me.
You whimper and slowly lick her hand.
Awaken now. There is not much time.
You open your eyes.
You are laying under the Willow tree. You get up and shake yourself. There is no sign of either girl.
Suddenly, something catches your eye on the trunk of the tree. You head over to sniff it, curious. Someone has cut something into the living wood.
Sniffing for a bit, you inwardly shrug and begin to trot off, the memories of the strange and frightening dream quickly fading. Behind you, the words upon the trunk of the tree go unread.
But despite this, a sudden thought pops into your head, unbidden by any conscious stimuli:
How's your mom? :)
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You continue back to the apartments, hoping to once again pick up the trail of your new master. In a broken and empty room you find his footsteps. They lead north. You begin to follow --
A man steps into the room. You had not smelled him. This is worrisome to you, but now more immediate action is required. You sniff once, cautiously --
This is not your master. This is a stranger. He is wearing something over his face, and is holding some kind of long object in his arms. Before you can focus your eyes on it to determine what it is, he speaks.
"Holy shit! What the fuck is a dog doing here?"
At the voice of a human your ears begin to perk. Perhaps he will help you to --
Another man comes into view. Why can you not smell them? Is something broken inside you? The second man speaks.
"You know our orders. Poor thing is probably infected, and even if not we're doing it a favor. Let's kill it and keep searching. We don't have a lot of time before the hammer comes down."
He raises the long object in his arms. You suddenly realize what the object is and also that these men will not help you.
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1. Run.
2. Barge past the two men and run.
3. Bite at them sso they drop their weaponss.
?. Kill them. They are soft and weak.