When departing what served as their prison for the past five years, Vice neglected to make a number of reasonable precautions. Ranging from tidying up the upstairs bathroom, closing the door to their former cell, and turning off the oven that was in the midst of baking their former body. Though the most glaring misaction was opting to leave the front door open a smidge, allowing for any number of woodland dwellers to venture into this home and take it as their own. Aside from insects, most animals failed to realize this opportunity during the first two hours of Vice’s absence, but just as the clock passed 8:30 PM, an intrepid intruder slammed the door open.
Said intruder was none other than a young girl, no older than 7, and no taller than 120 centimeters. Her shoulder-length black hair had been ruffled into a mesh of wavy knots that puffed from the rampant humidity outside. Her dark tan-colored skin was coated in a mixture of dirt, scratches, scabs, bug bites, and assorted boo-boos. While her clothes were similarly damaged, with holes, stains, and tears present across all articles. Including a pink t-shirt with a green cartoon snake on it, a pair of plum-colored shorts, and a pair of brown Velcro shoes that were not brown until today.
The manner in which she carried herself and tear stains on her face made it obvious that something terrible had happened to her earlier today, and a glance into the recesses of her mind answered all potential questions. The young girl, named Abigale Quinata, and known to most as Abi, had left her home 14 hours ago in an impulsive attempt at running away. One that proved to be fairly successful, given how she traveled from another town, located nearly 25 kilometers away.
She was a child in a unique position, being the only offspring of a couple that frequently traveled around the world for business. It was a lifestyle choice that caused their daughter a great deal of frustration, as she was unable to attend a given school for any more than a few months, or make any true friends. While her deeper memories did reveal a number of instances where she delighted in seeing the sights and sounds of other countries and spending time with her mother and father, she was something of the impulsive sort. Their relationship was shaky, but after hearing about her parents’ plans to ship her off to boarding school, Abi decided that a drastic correction was needed. And if she was not allowed to live with her parents, she decided that she would rather run away and try her hand at living alone.
The ensuing day was hard on her frail, youthful body. She was sore, tired, and had lost everything but the clothes on her back, including the supplies she saved in her backpack, and the backpack itself. She was thirsty, hungry, in dire need of a long nap, and hoped she would be able to satiate all these desires by pillaging whatever she could find in this home. Operating under the assumption that this home was occupied, as homes ordinarily are, especially late at night, she proceeded to call out for its residents.
“Hey, anybody here? I needs some foods and water!” She shouted in her shrill lipsy voice, its clarity impaired by spending half a day in a humid forest, and by a muddled accent of sorts. Still, it was enough to garner some reaction from any resident, which only left Abi surprised when she was met with the sound of ambiance.
“Huh… guess I can just help myself to your food… fart yeah!” Abi said with more than a modicum of joy as she kicked off her dirt-encrusted shoes, and planted her bare feet on the kitchen floor, taking delight in the slight chill of the linoleum tile.
Her attention was then drawn to a half-empty glass of water placed on the table, originally left by Jessie. Abi downed the water in a single go, letting out a reflexive ‘ahhh’ as she emptied the glass. Now somewhat hydrated, Abi paused to take in the sights around her. Or more specifically, the smells. Abi’s nose led her to the oven, as it emitted the palpable aroma of baked meat.
After grabbing a conveniently placed chair to prop herself up onto the counter, she turned off the oven and proceeded to open up the appliance. There, she was met with a well-done corpse, covered by a layer of charred remains, obscuring their identity and making them borderline unrecognizable as a person. It was a horrific sight that would have bred disgust in anybody… but Abi didn’t quite see it for what it was.
“Oh snaps! Somebody was making one big old pig! Well sorry, ya poopy scoopy, but I’m gonna eat all of yer pig, and you can’t stop me! ‘Cos you’re not here!”
With a meal before her, Abi began looking through the many drawers of the kitchen for some tools, eventually finding some oven mitts that fit her petite hands about as well as one would expect, along with a fork and knife. Practically salivating at the food before her, Abi yanked out the baked corpse and began examining it closely, looking for the best place to make the first cut. The form confused her at first, particularly the head, but she paid that little mind as she circled around the flesh for something good to eat. Her eye eventually landed on the tube-shaped piece of meat between what would have been the body’s legs.
“Huh, did some weirdo put a hot dog in with the piggy? Oh well. I’m sure it will be yummers!” Abi said as she began slicing her way through a human penis.
Abi momentarily examined the well-baked sexual organ as she spun it on her fork, before jamming it in her mouth. Her hunger drove her to chew and swallow before her taste buds could comprehend this thing, but after a few bites, her face began to sour.
“It tastes like a funky thing… but I am super hungry and it’s better than the bad restaurant we went to back in Manila. It gave me super bad poops for the next week and I had to go to that mean doctor. He was the real poop!” Abi exclaimed to the corpse she was devouring.
Having already fallen down the slippery slope of accidental cannibalism, Abi soon went in for seconds, choosing to dig in and consume part of a thigh, which she inexpertly tried cutting before throwing her utensils aside and eating the ‘pig’ before her like a little piggy, biting and gnawing at whatever edible flesh bits laid before her.
She only got a dozen or so big bites in before she had her fill of this ‘funky-tasting pig,’ and began perusing around the kitchen. Ramming her dirty little fingers into a jar of pickles. Munching her way through a bag of chips. And tearing through a box of cookies. Only after this did her tummy finally tell her to stop.
Abi finished her scavenged approximation of a meal by crawling on the kitchen counter and pouring herself another glass of tap water. With her body satiated, Abi found her eyes drooping, indicating that it was time for a nap. Abi would never admit to liking naps, but she was at her limit, and with fatigue coursing through her being, she clearly needed some rest. She began exploring this home beyond the kitchen, looking for a bed she could borrow, but only a few steps into this pursuit, she heard something that put a wrench in her plans. Police sirens.
Though the sound varied all over the world, it was a universal fact that high-pitched wailing noises were not a good sign, and meant trouble was afoot. Abi assumed that she was the trouble, that the police had somehow found her, and were preparing to rob her of her newfound freedom. That they would put her on the path that would force her to live at a school for the majority of her childhood, and she was having none of that.
“Screw you, fuzzies! You’ll never take me alive!” Abi shouted at the approaching sound, trying to sound intimidating by paraphrasing something she once heard on TV.
Opting to hide rather than attempt a last stand with an array of kitchen utensils, Abi started dashing through the home in search of an adequate hiding spot, eventually settling on an innocuous door beneath the stairwell that led to the basement of the home. She promptly shut the door behind her and pulled the light switch… Only for the bulb to burst following a single flash of light. The flash caused Abi to let out a shrill scream as she fumbled down the stairs, narrowly avoiding many shards of glass, and instead only getting another layer of bruises over her bottom. It was a painful experience that would have caused tears to leak from any other child her age, but after such an arduous day, Abi recovered from the fall expediently.
As she felt her way to a secure hiding spot in this dark dwelling, the sound of the sirens stopped, and the police car’s driver made their way through the unlocked door. In many ways, they served as an opposite to Abi, being a tall man, age 20, with a chiseled face, light complexion, well-kempt blonde hair, and a hardened muscular physique.
As the cop took his first steps into the home, he recapped the situation to himself: One hour ago, the Murinova police station was notified that a dangerous individual imprisoned within the outskirts of this town had escaped from secure confinement. The very existence of this individual came as a surprise to most recipients, delaying their response time after their attempts to contact this individual’s residence via telephone failed. Being an understaffed police station in a hick town, the Murinova police department elected to send a young yet promising recruit by the name of Yuccot Kikansky to investigate this dire situation, alone.
Aware of the potential dangers of this situation, Yuccot entered this building with his handgun out, ready to murder lightly detailed dangerous psychopath with extreme prejudice. With the aid of his weapon, Yuccot was confident that he could take down any threat… only to have such confidence crumble into dust once he made his way to the kitchen, where he saw the charred remains of a human being poking out of an oven.
“The fuck is going on here?” Yuccot verbalized under his breath.
In the rushed briefing on the situation, Yuccot was only informed that the dangerous individual in question was male and that they had a female caretaker. Looking at the corpse, he did not get enough visual information to discern things one way or another. And the more he looked at it, the more he recoiled.
He, like most humans, was not accustomed to the sight of naked, charred, bodies, and he was certainly not in the right mindset to examine it while knowing that there could easily be a vicious murderer lurking in the shadows, ready to assault him at any moment. With a heavy sigh, Yuccot clutched his walkie-talkie and reported his findings to the department proper.
“I found a dead body in the… oven. It’s… burnt so I can’t tell who it is… You know, when I took this job I thought that places like this were the last place on Earth where you could avoid running into twisted shit like this. But no, I guess fuckos don’t have any boundaries, now do they?” Yuccot muttered, half-joking to alleviate the tension and maintain his cool.
With the update out of the way, Yuccot began to search through the kitchen, wondering if any other bodies were stuffed anywhere, but he found nothing aside from crumbs and a pair of dirty shoes that belonged to either a child or an exceptionally small-footed adult. His search through the ground level was similarly uneventful, finding nothing suspicious beyond a packed suitcase of clothes and personal belongings and a broken bathroom mirror.
Yuccot was sure that something “beyond fucked” happened here, but could not pierce things together just yet. He then made his way to the upper level, similarly finding little of note. The rooms were all empty, and there were no signs of a struggle of any sort to be found in Vice’s open prison. Just the scent of bodily funk, feces, and a hidden security camera that existed only to ensure that this room did not remain unoccupied for more than an hour.
Having exhausted even more options, Yuccot reported his findings back to the station yet again, only to be informed that this place had a basement as well. And sure enough, there was a trail of crumbs leading from the kitchen to the basement door, hidden behind the stairs. After cursing at himself for ignoring something so obvious, Yuccot proceeded to open the door slowly, pulling out his flashlight after seeing the shattered bulb dangling from the ceiling.
“Murinova police! Come out with your hands up!” Yuccot shouted at the basement, only to be met with the sound of silence.
Not dissuaded, Yuccot continued his trek down the stairs, his shoes crunching against the glass shards as he tried his best to illuminate his surroundings. Between the makeshift storage wall in the center of this single-room basement and the metal shelves covering the perimeter, there existed a large number of potential hiding spots for the subject. This worried Yuccot, due to his lack of any backup, but he managed to retain his cool as he began shining his light throughout the basement, in search of anything noteworthy.
Seconds into his search, Yuccot cast his flashlight over an innocuous rag on top of a box. It twitched and shifted, as if a rat were underneath it. As Yuccot moved closer in order to confirm his suspicions, the rag leaped away from him, and dashed from one side of the wall of shelves to the other. He followed the rag as best he could, and soon found it on Abi’s face, where it was suffocating the young girl.
Holstering his weapon, Yuccot rushed over to aid the screaming child and grab the rag with both hands. As his skin made contact, a sharp burning sensation began rushing through his fingers and up to his arms. The burning sensation soon resonated across his entire being, causing him to unleash a guttural yell before a searing white light flooded the basement.
