Just as his instincts and gut feelings had warned him earlier, when Michael stepped into his home, he was greeted by a scene that could be summed up in one word.
Strange.
The lights in his living room flickered erratically without any discernible rhythm.
Doors leading to his bedroom and other rooms swung open and shut as if invisible mischievous hands were toying with them deliberately.
The television in front of the sofa he'd lounged on that morning droned on with static interference as though the slightest lapse in vigilance might summon a long-haired female ghost from a certain urban legend crawling forth to claim him.
A thick and acrid scent of sulfur assaulted his nostrils as a fierce gust of wind barreled toward him from his bedroom.
If not for the fact that in his twenty-two years of life he'd never encountered anything remotely supernatural, he might have believed this was a clichéd haunted house scenario, where the home he'd inhabited all this time revealed as a spectral lair, where a hell-spawned entity starved after years without sacrifice and now hungered for a victim.
And he would be the fool who dies first... the one who enter into the haunted abode and not flee upon realizing something is profoundly amiss.
But he refused to buy into such nebulous nonsense.
He would be more likely to believe that he was exposed to a hallucinogen without his knowing it.
Could it be Marc? No... He'd watched him prepare the new coffee meticulously, ensuring nothing suspicious was added. The croissant? He hadn't even touched it.
So only one suspect could have exposed him to hallucinogen without him realizing it...
That strange blond man... he'd sensed something off about him from their first encounter, but he'd been too cocksure in his assessment, dismissing him as merely overconfident and arrogant... a rookie who couldn't even mask the raw desire gleaming in his eyes.
Was his own hubris biting back at him now?
He was genuinely curious about the type of hallucinogen that man had used; it was utterly unfamiliar, though he wouldn't arrogantly claim to know every variety. He'd experimented with several hallucinogens and sedatives in the past, building his body's resilience, ever vigilant against the possibility of being targeted by others in the future.
But... what was the true intent of that man or whoever pulled his strings to give him a hallucinogen and then releasing him unharmed?
Revenge? Or some protracted psychological manipulation designed to erode his sanity bit by bit?
He swiftly dismissed the latter; though his perceptions were warped and chaotic, his thought processes remained sharp and unaltered. That too aroused suspicion... was this truly a hallucinogen? Having deliberately exposed himself to such substances before, he knew intimately how they felt.
It was utterly strange and contradictory.
So, the only-
Crack!
Ding!
A sharp of metallic clang from his bedroom jolted his racing mind. Though he'd pondered deeply, scarcely half a minute had elapsed since entering the house.
Ignoring the sulfurous stench and the flickering lights that heightened the tension, he advanced toward his nearby bedroom.
He'd completely forgotten about his wife, Jeanne.
Hmph. This must be that damned hallucinogen muddling his memory of her situation.
Bracing the bedroom door as it jerked open and closed, he stepped inside. Immediately, his nose was overwhelmed by an even denser sulfur odor, and his skin prickled with inflammation from an unseen heat source.
He also detected a tang of faint and familiar fresh blood.
With a sidelong glance from his right eye, he noted the bed where his chained wife had lain earlier now empty, except for the broken chains.
Shifting part of his gaze from the bed, he fixed on the man who might be the root of all this strangeness.
He pinched his finger until it bled, verifying if the apparition before him was real... because if it was, his entire worldview might shatter irreparably.
Standing there was a handsome man with a soft-featured face with his green hair cascading down to obscure a cunning personality that nearly veiled his narrow golden eyes. His inhuman smooth pale skin was clad in luxurious formal attire with a long white coat adorned with fine fur at the collar. To accentuate his already inhuman appearance, a pair of pitch-black bat wings sprouted from his back.
Cradled in the man's arms was his unconscious wife, Jeanne, her state disheveled, her pink pajamas torn, revealing white underwears... her left eye swollen as if struck by a powerful fist and her nose bleeding from a fractured bridge.
Now Michael understood the source of the pervasive sulfur stench and the scorching heat inflaming his skin; even from two meters away, he could sense it all emanating from the figure before him.
Ignoring the discomfort gnawing at him, he seized the initiative to engage that inhuman man before him in conversation.
"What are you?"
He didn't inquire why he was here or who he was; he cut straight to what this bastard truly was. For this is the first time he'd ever sensed such an utterly inhuman aura from anyone.
He poured every ounce of his energy into maintaining razor-sharp focus on the man's every micro-expression and subtle muscle twitch, all while ignoring the inflamed sting of his skin from the blistering heat. Yet even after maxing his mental capacity to their limits, he never anticipated this inhumane man who gave him the impression of aristocrat and cunning would reveal itself to be so barbaric.
Slub!
Though he'd caught the faint flicker in his narrow eyes and the subtle shift in his arm concealed beneath his long white robe, he still couldn't evade his right hand with its razor-sharp claws hurtling toward his chest and piercing straight through to his back.
Plash!
"Cough!"
While coughing up with his blood, Michael stared at the gaping hole in his chest, which now a relentless torrent of crimson before shifting his gaze to the man before him, his face a mask of smug disdain as he cradled Michael's fading heart in his right hand, its beats slowing to a halt, while clutching Jeanne in his left hand.
"Filthy worm! How dare you lay your grubby hands on my maiden!"
"If it weren't for those disgusting humans lurking nearby, I'd have made you suffer far more for wasting months of my time in the search for her."
Thud!
Brack!
With those aristocratic tones still ringing clear, that man delivered a brutal kick to his chest, sending him flying into the wooden wall of his bedroom which cracked with a creaking sound of protest from the impact of his body. In the fading remnants of his consciousness, which he fought desperately to cling to, Michael can felt his ribs and spine shatter utterly from his kick alone.
"Cough... cough!"
He struggling to sit up and leaning against the fractured wooden wall behind him, Michael watched the man's departure through what could only be described as magic when a glowing green magical circle materialized beneath his feet, he vanished with his beloved wife like a puff of smoke akin to the stage illusions of magicians he'd once witnessed.
That inhuman being truly never considered him worthy of conversation, or even a direct glance. Even in parting, that man never once looked at him squarely; it was arrogance etched deep into his very blood and bone.
This was the first time Michael had ever been treated as such utter insignificance, even the strange blond man he'd encountered earlier had regarded him as a fellow human albeit with haughty arrogance. But that inhuman man truly saw him as a worm he can crushed under his foot without so much as a downward glance.
With his green eyes dimming toward eternal closure and blood still bubbling from his lips, Michael gazed at the sunlight flooding back into the room after that inhuman man's exit. By some ironic coincidence, its rays focused upon him, and he could only muster a cynical smile, because this was the first time he'd felt the sun's embrace without its warmth or heat.
It was utterly strange and contradictory.
As he sensed the approach of the Grim Reaper poised to claim his soul, he couldn't help but wonder if he was truly about to die in such utter obscurity.
If he'd met his end at the hands of a victim's vengeful family or some righteous soul determined to halt his deeds... he might have accepted it with grace.
He'd always known that killing others meant he'd likely be killed in turn one day; he'd prepared for that eventuality.
But this...? What in the hell was this bizarre inexplicable farce?
He could still recall the scent, the sensation, the inhuman impression left by that man...
Sulfur. Heat. Bat. Magic...
How utterly cursed to perish just after discovering that the creatures he'd mocked and denied all his life were real after all...
How poetic... the devil slain by the devil.
Crack!
Ting!
As he could no longer resist the inexorable pull of his eyes closing forever, he vaguely heard a harsh tearing sound that pierced his ears accompanied by the familiar chime of something like ceramic.
A coffee cup... clinking on a familiar glass table... he'd heard it so often because he'd made that sound himself countless times...
That was his final thought as his eyes sealed shut for eternity.
---
A/N: I desperately want to continue this chapter and unravel the mystery right away, but that would utterly ruin the suspense and your reading experience lol. Try pondering first what really happened to Michael, I'll post it tomorrow after you've had time to mull it over thoroughly. In chapter 2, I planted a ton of clues to help you piece together what might be going on here, so keep at it!