Chapter 6: The Thing at the Door

I jolted awake on the damp, freezing floor, my heart hammering against my ribs like a panicked animal in a cage. The fire had long since died down to a few glowing, resentful embers that cast long, skeletal shadows across the rotting timber walls. The rain was still a relentless patter on the leaky roof, but that wasn't what had dragged me from my fitful sleep.

A low, wet growl rumbled from the other side of the front door—a sound that felt less like an animal and more like a tectonic plate shifting through mud.

“Garrick? Bolen?” I hissed, my voice cracking and thin. I tried to push my massive body up, but my arms felt like wet noodles. Sweat was already drenching my stained nightshirt, mixing with the grime of the lodge. My skin was a roadmap of itchy, angry welts from the mosquitoes, and every joint in my bloated frame screamed in protest at the hard floor.

There was no answer from the guards. Only the sound of the wind and that rhythmic, wet breathing.

The growl came again, deeper and more resonant, followed by the unmistakable sound of heavy, serrated claws scraping against the wooden porch. Scritch. Scritch. CRUNCH.

“Fuck… fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whimpered, scrambling backward on my backside until my spine hit the cold stone of the fireplace. My eyes—tiny and buried in folds of fat—were wide with a terror I had never known in my past life. Through the wide vertical gaps in the rotting door planks, I saw it. A hulking silhouette that defied every law of biology.

The creature was a nightmare stitched together from a dozen different deaths. It was easily twice the size of a man, a mass of mangy black fur and gray, translucent skin that wept a thick, yellowish pus. It looked like a bear had been mated with a wolf and then dunked in a vat of demonic bile. Extra limbs jutted from its torso at impossible angles—one arm was a jagged pillar of bone spikes, while another ended in a cluster of thick, writhing tendrils that felt the air like blind snakes. Its head was an elongated horror of too many milky yellow eyes and a maw filled with rows of needle-teeth, dripping a viscous green saliva that hissed and sizzled when it touched the wood of the porch.

My bladder gave way. A warm, shameful wetness spread through my trousers. “Oh shit… oh fucking shit…”

I rolled onto my hands and knees, my enormous belly dragging across the dirt-streaked floor as I tried to crawl toward the back room. “Garrick! Bolen, you useless cunts! There’s a monster! Help me!”

The front door didn't just rattle; it groaned under the weight of a god. Claws raked down the exterior, gouging furrows deep enough to see the moonlight through.

I wheezed, my lungs burning as I tried to move my mountain of flesh. My thighs rubbed together, the friction raw and painful, but the adrenaline was the only thing keeping me from collapsing. “I’m too fucking fat for this… move, you piece of shit body, MOVE!”

CRACK.

The door splintered as a massive, clawed hand punched through the oak like it was parchment. I let out a high-pitched, pathetic shriek and tried to lunge for the back door. I made it three steps before my weak, shaking legs buckled, sending me crashing down in a jiggling, helpless heap.

The monster roared—a sound that vibrated in my very teeth—and slammed its full weight against the entrance. Wood exploded inward. The thing squeezed through the broken frame, its grotesque body contorting unnaturally, bones popping and snapping like dry kindling as it forced its massive bulk into the small room.

I sat there, weeping and shaking, as the creature loomed over me. “No! Stay back! Guards! Where are you?!”

Then I heard it. From just outside the broken doorway, the sound of soft, amused laughter. Garrick and Bolen were standing right there, their shadows visible on the grass, weapons drawn but held loosely at their sides.

“Looks like the forest finally sent you a proper whore, my lord,” Garrick’s voice drifted in, dripping with casual cruelty. “Big, ugly, and hungry. Matches your taste perfectly.”

Bolen chuckled, a deep, rhythmic sound. “We’ll just let nature take its course. We've been waiting for a show like this. Fat fuck deserves a proper trimming.”

The terror in my gut flared into a momentary, white-hot spark of rage. “You traitorous pieces of shit! I’ll have your skins! I’ll—AAAHHH!”

The monster didn't wait for my threats. A spiked arm swung down with the force of a falling tree. The blow caught me in the ribs, lifting my entire massive frame off the ground and slamming me into the far wall. I heard the distinct snap-snap-snap of bone. I hit the floor and slid down, leaving a thick, red smear against the wood, blood bubbling into the back of my throat.

The creature loomed over me, its foul breath reeking of sulfur and carrion. One of the writhing tendrils whipped out, lashing around my ankle and yanking hard. My leg dislocated with a sickening pop that I felt more than heard.

“FUUUUCK! STOP! PLEASE!” I wailed, my arms flapping weakly against the creature’s hide.

It didn't stop. It was playing with its food. The spiked arm came down again, crushing my shoulder and shattering my left hand into a mangled mess of pulp and broken rings. The monster then gripped the fat rolls of my stomach, its claws sinking inches deep into my flesh. It lifted me—all four hundred pounds of me—and hurled me across the room.

I crashed through the heavy wooden table, the furniture splintering beneath me. I lay in the wreckage, gasping for air that wouldn't come, my vision swimming in a sea of red.

Outside, Garrick called out, “That all you got, fat-ass? We thought a Baron would have more fight! Scream louder!”

The monster stomped toward me, each step shaking the entire lodge. It placed a clawed foot on my thigh and began to grind downward. I howled until my voice gave out as the femur snapped under the pressure. A tendril wrapped around my throat, squeezing just enough to make my eyes bulge, but not enough to end the agony.

“Please… I don’t want to die… not like this…” I whimpered through a mouthful of blood and bile.

I tried to crawl, dragging my ruined body toward the back door, leaving a trail of filth and gore in my wake. The creature grabbed my broken arm and flung me against the stone hearth. My head cracked against the masonry, and the world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of white stars and black voids.

I lay there, twitching in a pool of my own ruin. One eye was swollen shut; the other could barely focus. Deep gashes in my belly leaked dark, sluggish blood. The creature leaned in, its jaws unhinging to deliver the final bite.

“Oi, hold on,” Garrick’s voice cut through the haze. “If it kills him now, Sophia might actually ask questions. Let the fat fuck bleed out slow. We’ll tell her we fought it off but couldn't reach him in time.”

Bolen grunted. “Fine by me. He’s suffered enough to satisfy me for one night.”

The monster seemed to lose interest, or perhaps it was sated by the scent of my terror. It gave my stomach one last brutal kick, sending a fresh spray of blood from my lungs, before lumbering back out into the rain with a final, wet growl.

I lay in a broken heap, every breath a jagged shard of glass in my chest.

“You… cunts…” I whispered toward the doorway. “I’ll… remember…”

Garrick poked his head inside, wrinkling his nose at the stench of blood and fear. “Still alive? You’re like a cockroach, Viktor. Don't worry, we'll send word to the manor in the morning. Maybe your sister will send a priest. Or a butcher.”

Bolen stepped in and nudged my broken leg with the toe of his boot, eliciting a weak, rattling whimper. “Sleep tight, fat fuck. Try not to die before we get our story straight.”

They dragged the remains of the broken door into the frame to block the wind and left me alone in the dark. I stared at the leaking ceiling with my one good eye, tears mixing with the blood on my face.

“I… fucking… hate… this world…”

As the darkness finally began to claim me, one thought burned through the pain like a brand. If I survived this—if I could somehow crawl back from the edge of this abyss—I wouldn't just change the plot. I would burn the entire book to the ground.

But then, the scratching started again. Not at the front door.

Underneath the floorboards.