Spellcaster encounter
Here's a tiny horror story I wrote. I've been practicing writing fiction on-and-off for a while, but I've never really gotten anything into a finished state before now. If you read this then you should constructively criticize it so I can become less bad.
STORY START
Another restless night for the woman. She sits in her cramped apartment's kitchen, with a half-eaten bowl of instant ramen on the counter in front of her, looking out into the pitch-black darkness through a sliding glass door. From outside, the synthetic glow of the kitchen light feels quite inviting, as home-interiors often do. The woman slips another bundle of ramen noodles into her mouth and considers the chances of a real-life monster clawing its way up to the sliding glass door to gobble her up, like in the horror movie she just finished watching. This does raise some interesting questions, however, because the work's screenwriter was able to take a number of artistic liberties in their film due to their absolute control over its universe and the way in which its viewers would perceive it, specifically by showing the story both from the perspective of the victim and of the monster, allowing a greater degree of control over the presentation of information. This would not, however, be possible in real life from the perspective of an individual trapped in a monster scenario, where the information about the world known by that individual would be limited to what can be experienced with the senses. So, this monster would require some sort of special properties to replicate the same narrative advantages as something watched in a theater. This problem could potentially be solved by a scenario in which the monster were somehow psychically linked to the victim, almost as if they were a singular entity.
Her soul tightens.
So, with this in mind, the woman starts to think, what would such a situation look like in practice? What if, right now, a monster were to appear and walk right up to that sliding glass door and do something terrible?
And I do agree, this is a very interesting question. I can see that synthetic fluorescent light a few dozen feet away and I inhale the smell of summertime grass and roses and with the wind blowing across my exposed bloody spine and my spotty fur I jump swiftly to the porch of that house just within the reach of the light shining from within, and she sees me. Eyes widened, she wants to scream but she instead stays still and as calm as she can be, takes a deep breath, and looks away. She thinks, what would the victim of this scenario have as a defense? There wouldn't be one, I think, because this monster always wins, and I begin to tear my claws through her skillfully-prepared protective enchantments. The woman is jolted by the sound and her heart beats faster and her body tenses and her mind feels blurred but she expects that I do have a weakness, because we are connected and that connection can be severed, but I laugh and ram through another barrier with the certainty that my connection, my grasp on her being, is stronger than life and cannot be severed. She stops, and she takes one moment, two, and she composes herself and looks into the air where she knows lies the invisible tendrils of our intertwined souls, and does not cut and sever these connecting tendrils but instead takes her chair from underneath herself and swings forcefully towards them, and they shatter and melt back into their respective owners.
I lay on the floor with my heart beating and my hand still clutching the chair. It's over. I let go of the chair, relax, and breathe a sigh of relief. Tomorrow I'll ponder how a demon like that managed to follow me home, but for now I'll just make my way to bed and get some sleep.