Yep, doing one of these again. It's been a while, hopefully my writing skills haven't gotten too rusty (as if they were anything great to begin with
)
Chapter 1
This had better be worth all this trouble . . .The sound of footsteps broke up the silence of an old, long-abandoned movie theater. A lanky male casually strode into one of the screening rooms through an opening, taking care not to hit the guitar hanging on his back on the doorway, which had signs of the hinges having been carelessly ripped off. He made a mental note of this, rubbing his beard absentmindedly as he activated his cell phone's flashlight.
The mohawked young man walked down the aisle to the fire exit, making sure that his heavy boots didn't make too much noise. Best not to alert whatever it was that he was trying to track down, of course. The scrawny figure rested his phone in his pants pocket, leaving just enough hanging out of the top for the flashlight to be useful, and lifted his guitar into playing position. Holding the neck of the instrument in one hand, he reached up to the cold horizontal bar that served as the door's handle. The door didn't offer any resistance as he pushed it open – in fact, it fell of the hinges as soon as he applied the slightest amount of pressure. The confused guitarist slowly laid the door to rest on the ground, making as little sound as he possibly could. Then . . .
Noise. A loud, blaring noise cut through the all-too-silent atmosphere, making the guitarist jump in fright. He quickly identified the source of the sound – his cell phone, blasting its death metal ringtone. He quickly retrieved it from his pocket and, recognizing the number as important, answered it. “Yes?”
“Hey, Lewis!” a voice said, coming far too loudly out of the speaker. gh quickly tapped the “volume down” button a few times.
“Nacho, I'm really busy right now, can I-”
“Yeah, I'll make this quick,” gh's manager said, cutting the frightened RAFian off. “Hey, I need you to come in on Tuesday, Greg has a family thing going on, and . . .”
“Yeah, I'll see if I can make it.”
“. . . I asked Stefan to come in, but he's busy, and you know Aaron quit last week . . .”
gh frantically looked around for any sign of movement, not really listening to the phone call. “Yeah, I get it. I'll call you back tomorrow, I'm-”
“. . . Freddy has Tuesdays blocked off, and Ashley's already working. . . .” It was fairly obvious by this point that Nacho wasn't exactly listening to gh, either.
“Yeah, I'll call you back. I'm really busy right now.” gh quickly ended the call, having said the last part a little louder than he had meant to. His focus quickly returning to the hallway that he ended up in, gh looked up and down the hall, his guitar neck still supported with his left hand. If only he could see a little better –
Movement. Dropping his phone to the floor, gh quickly jumped backward, his back to the end of the hallway. Luckily, the phone landed so the flashlight was facing upward, partially illuminating the creature that he had narrowly dodged. It resembled a giant gargoyle so tall that it had to hunch over as to not hit its head the ceiling, and its wings almost as wide as the hall itself. It was difficult to make out, but it seemed to be covered in scales instead of being made of rock.
The creature pointed a clawed finger at gh, maybe a little too close to the RAFian's chest for his liking. “What isss your busssinessss here?” the dragon-gargoyle hissed.
“So, I'm guessing you don't want any thin mints,” gh muttered. In response, the claw jutted even closer, stopping inches before impaling the guitarist.
“Don't tessst my patienccce.”
Although the monster probably didn't see it in the low lighting, gh grinned. He strummed an open chord on his guitar, sending the beast flying to the other end of the hallway with a concussive blast of sound. gh sighed and fine tuned a couple of his strings, clearly not happy with the timbre of the chord. When he looked up again, the beast had stretched its wings out and was running toward gh, tearing the walls away as it moved toward him.
“Seriously?” gh intoned, moving up on the neck to play a slow, dirty blues lick. The beast fell to the ground, landing on top of the cell phone that illuminated the hallway. Not enjoying the advantage that it gave the musician, it picked up the device and crushed it in its hand, extinguishing the light along with it.
“Well that's not fair,” gh whined. “Do you realize how expensive-” He was cut off mid-sentence by the feeling of being lifted several feet off the ground.
“I repeat,” the monster snarled, “what isss your busssinessss?” Its words displayed a patience that its actions and exasperated tone of voice betrayed.
Caught off guard, gh stuttered his response. “Uh, disappearances. P-people have been disappearing here, I was, uh, sent to investigate.”
Even in the complete darkness, gh could see the glow of the beast's eyes, staring directly into gh's. After a disconcerting amount of time, the beast spoke. “Well,” it growled, “I sssuppossse . . .”
Without any warning, gh was sent hurtling into a wall. He groaned loudly as he tried to pick himself up, but he had landed hard on his guitar, which had miraculously survived the impact. Before the RAFian could regain his footing, the gargoyle was already on him, pinning him down with its foot. It bent down and held a claw against the back of gh's throat, the human gasping and whimpering beneath it.
The claw unceremoniously punctured the guitarist's skin, making him choke and cough as it bore through the front of his neck. He couldn't cry, couldn't plead for mercy . . . not that it would do him much good at this point anyway. Having released gh from beneath its foot, the monster ripped him off of its claw as if he was the shrink-wrap on a new video game, and he found himself thrown back down to the ground at its feet. He tried to gasp for air, but he was already choking on his own blood, and it was almost certain that he had plenty of broken ribs. The beast knelt down to make sure that gh could hear him, as the guitarist was quickly losing consciousness. The last words gh heard before passing out were, “You may join them.”
