Are you here from the masterbin? Well, you shouldn't be. I don't know why Deimos put it on there. This is a little sneak peek into a scrapped /hmofa/ story that I was working on last winter. The main summary can be found here (https://pastebin.com/MaN7p0Lb), which was meant to be the way that people would access this page. Jeffory wakes up at some point during the night, the summer heat making it uncomfortably warm and sweaty beneath the covers, even up here in the northeast. The second thing that he notices is that Alice doesn't seem to be in the bed. He shuffles his hand around on her side of the bed, confirming that she's missing. He sits up a bit, opening his eyes to the darkened bedroom with blue moonlight beaming through the window. And then he saw it, right in the corner of the room. It's Alice. The ghost Alice in her red beastly from, standing on all fours and looking at him as if she were a wolf or a cheetah stalking their prey, waiting to pounce at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, Jeffory's brain immediately switches into red alert. "Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit, where's the gas mask? WHERE'S THE FUCKING MASK!?" he thought to himself, desperately searching around every corner of the room. And then he remembered where it was. His only option now was to plead for his life. "Oh fuck. Look, Alice, I'm sorry for everything I've done! Please don't do this, I'll leave you alone if you let me live, I swear!" That and many other panicked ramblings of apology rapidly spewed out from his mouth as his eyes closed in fear, tears streaming down his face, vainly putting his hands in front of himself to try and offer any sort of protection. But it was all useless at this point. She wasn't buying a word of it. His cries for mercy were cut off as she lunged at him, letting out a beastly roar that resembled the mixture of a wild animal and a demon. He briefly screamed and flinched before she had made contact with him, striking at his face with her claws before lunging downwards and sinking her teeth into his torso, just between his neck and his left shoulder as she clamped down on his throat with the other hand. With the immense weight of her monstrous form sitting on top of him and her teeth sinking deep into his chest, Jeffory was left with no capability to even try resisting. All he could do was lie there, sobbing in pain, choking and gurgling on his own blood at the hands of the girl that he was trying to save. Eventually, the sobbing slowed down and his senses faded as his body was finally allowed the mercy of death. Jeffory woke up once again. It was morning, and golden rays of sunlight cast through the bedroom window. It took him a moment to wake up, until he noticed the massive stains of blood on the sheets below him; as well as his upright position, more leaning against the wall than lying down in the bed. He then remembered what had happened the night before, and looked down only to see the massive, fatal bite marks that Alice had left the night before. He brushed aside the few strands of hair clinging to his face, feeling several deep cuts on the right side, one of them going across his eye. But he was in no pain. He could feel the bed sheets and mattress around him, and he could feel his clothes and his body as normal, but there was no pain. He knew what this meant. He was dead. More importantly, he had realized that Alice had ticked him — all of it, just a ploy on his senses. He had failed. The dream of a happily ever after with Alice, allowed to live the full and normal life that had been stolen from her, was now all but snuffed out. He couldn't save Alice like this, it just wouldn't feel right. A storm of sadness and anger swirled inside of him, but he kept it together as he shakily got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. He looked into the dusty mirror to see what else, but an undead version of himself. His skin was deathly pale, displayed clearly as he wore nothing but the pair of boxers that he had gone to bed in, leaving the very large bite mark on the right of his neck to stick out like a sore thumb. His eyes were even more striking, however. Much like those of Alice, his eyes now resembled pitch-black voids with two bright and incandescent pupils, although more of a mix of orange and brown than the crystal blue pupils that Alice wore. On the right side of his face were five deep, dark red lacerations running from his forehead to just above the mouth, two of them cutting through where his eye would be. Not much else seemed physically different as far as he could tell, although seeing himself in the mirror in this ethereal from created a much different aura than seeing his normal self ever did — a more curious and somber atmosphere. After taking a moment to inspect this new undead body of his, Jeffory remembered Alice's ability to change into different forms. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to visualize himself as he was in life. He opened his eyes again, and there he was, the Jeffory that he had always recognized. Fair skin tone, normal brown eyes, long unkempt brown hair and beard, no bites or lacerations or blood visible on his body, just the normal man that he used to be before his obsession with Alice, dressed in a worn pair of blue jeans, a grey T-shirt, and his light brown coat, no markings on the shoulders. He closed his eyes again, and upon opening them he was greeted by the silent and determined crusader that he had been just last night when walking up the stairs. An old Soviet gas mask, the lenses showing a pitch black void with the same orange-brown pupils glowing from behind them. His usual coat, with the symbols of his crusade on the shoulders and chest noticeably more faded than they used to be. In his left hand, he clutched the handle of the storm lantern that he had used to traverse the house, and in his right was the wooden symbol that he held in his fist during the final walk up the stairs. His dark brown hair still flowed down to his shoulders behind the gas mask, and the grip of his bayonet was still poking out from his pocket. He liked something about this form — that of the silent cultist. Jeffory stepped out of the bathroom and begun heading down the staircase, hoping to get a VERY stern word in with Alice for what she had done. The slow squeaking and rocking of his storm lantern was brought to a stop at the middle of the stairs, as he noticed Alice standing beside one of the living room couches, quietly staring at him with her empty void-like eyes. Jeffory was about to reach for his bayonet and stab the girl for what she had done, but he decided against it. What would it make him, to do the exact same thing that her murderer had done? As much broiling rage and confusion that he held towards her at this moment, Jeffory kept his temper. Besides, the bayonet likely wouldn't have done much good, considering the fact that she was already dead.