There were hardly any people outside this late at night. Rumors of monsters lurking around have been spreading like wildfire. You didn't believe them, but presumably everyone else immediately believed they were true and was hiding inside. Still, there were a few brave souls out and about. They were hardly distinguishable in the thick darkness, their silhouettes barely visible. You were fiddling with your phone trying to turn on its flashlight when you accidentally bump into someone. You immediately began apologizing to them when you slowly shined the flashlight up at them.
The man was dressed in a ragged, torn hospital gown that stank of something unidentifiably rancid. His arms and legs were covered in dingy, blood-stained bandages. Judging by his appearance, those wounds under those cloths were probably infected beyond belief. You felt your hand shaking as you brought the light closer and closer to his face. He winced when it hit his face, bringing up a scarred hand to shield his eyes. His dirty-looking hair clumped together on his head. He wore a clean white surgical mask that stood out against his otherwise dirty appearance.
You might have shined that light in his face for too long. His hand began to tense into a fist and he started to groan… or so you thought it was a groan. You'd never heard a sound quite like that before. You almost dropped your phone, but quickly brought your arm down and began to run. Never before had you felt such fear until encountering this man. The adrenaline powered your legs to run faster than you ever thought you could run. Once you thought you were sufficiently far away from that man, you slowed down your pace again. Luckily, there were more street lamps around here, so it would be much easier to see your surroundings.
You stopped in your tracks. It would be much easier to see your surroundings. Why would you think that's a good thing? He might be able to see you now that you're shrouded in light. This is no time to slow down. You picked up the pace again, walking at the same pace as your pounding heartbeat.
Suddenly, you felt a piercing gaze in your chest. You clutched your heart, now frozen in your tracks. Some kind of outside force was preventing you from moving. It felt as though darkness were closing over you, despite the street light directly above your head. All you could hear were your own sharp breaths, and…
Footsteps.
Step.
Step.
Step.
The more that you hyperventilated, the faster the steps got. The nagging noise became louder and louder, until it suddenly stopped. You returned to reality and reassessed yourself. You didn't even realize the beads of sweat lining your forehead, or the tears streaming down your face, or that you subconsciously balled up in the middle of the sidewalk. But there was still a lingering presence. Against your better judgment, you slowly turned around.
It's behind you.
The man was staring down at your pathetic, balled up body. He squatted down to your level and removed his mask. Your eyes bulged as you saw the horrors under the mask. There were two jagged cuts on either side of his mouth that nearly reached his ears, encrusted in dried blood. As his mouth twisted into a horrifying grin, the flaps of skin curled up to reveal the insides of his mouth. At the sight of his entire set of teeth, you felt nauseous. He moved the clumps of black hair away from his eyes to reveal crimson irises that almost seemed familiar. Could that have been…
Your thoughts were interrupted by an inhuman sound that came from his mouth. It sounded like a laugh mixed with some kind of demonic screech. The flaps of his mouth bounced around as he laughed. He seemed to enjoy your pathetic form. He fiddled around in his pocket, looking for something buried deep in there. You didn't even want to imagine what it could be.
He pulled out a pair of rusty scissors, his eyes beaming with twisted joy. Your heart skipped a beat. Your weak limbs tried to drag you away from this psychopath, but to little avail. In a last-ditch effort, you found the courage to yell out to him,
"NO! DON'T SLIT MY MOUTH LIKE YOURS, YOU MONSTER!"
Your voice cracked several times, and now your throat feels raw, but your point still made it across to him. Something in him changes slightly, and he lowers his hand holding the scissors back to his side. You exhale deeply, but this was only a false glimmer of hope.
He began to open his mouth wide, which was all the more horrifying with the slits exposing the entire inside of his mouth. Another wave of nausea passed over you at the sight. His mouth opened as wide as the jaw would allow. A sickening cracking noise came from his jaw as it opened unnaturally wider and wider. The horrific sound coming from this man would make nails scratching a chalkboard sound like a peaceful piano melody. Of course you wanted to run from this horrific scene, but the fear and adrenaline that you felt cemented your legs to the sidewalk. At last, with one final snap, his lower jaw limply hung perpendicular to the rest of his skull. His tongue was directly in front of you, lolling around in a disturbing way.
Your throat was still raw from yelling at him earlier, but you managed to croak out one desperate word. "Why…?"
He wasn't finished with the show. He began to remove his bandages. A putrid stench came out of the bandages as he pulled them away from his arms. The skin peeled away from the bandages in uneven clumps, some staying stuck to the cloths. When they were free from his arms, the blood began to flow freely from the infected wounds. It dripped off of his arms and hit the sidewalk like a sprinkler. He stretched the filthy bandages across his body and started coming closer to you. Your petrified gaze met his crimson eyes, and you couldn't move at all. His piercing gaze locked you in place… an oddly familiar feeling.
He swung the bandages around your neck. Drops of blood flew off his arms and fell on your clothes. He crossed the two ends to each other and pulled tight. Everything you saw began to darken. Those psychotic red eyes burned into your brain. His unhinged jaw swung back and forth as he let out another horrific laugh. It drowned out all your thoughts…
And then everything stopped.
***
The monster looked at the limp, lifeless body in front of it. It liked this particular human. Its screams and looks of panic were very enjoyable to the monster. It treated the human with the utmost respect (that a monster could give, that is). It tied the blood-encrusted bandages around the human's neck into a nice little bow. It smiled and felt warm and fuzzy inside. Perhaps the human wants to look like me now, it thought, grabbing the rusty scissors out again. After a few jagged cuts, the human's mouth was bleeding profusely, and the flaps of skin flowed in the night breeze. The monster felt so proud of what it had done. It slid its hands along the fresh cuts and took a deep inhale of the human's blood. It dragged its hands along the sidewalk to create a heart with the human's blood, licked its hands and the dirty scissors clean, and left its prized human as a gift to all the other humans.
