The world reassembled itself from a void of morphine-grey static, piece by painful piece. First was the smell—a chemical tang of antiseptic that coated the back of his throat, layered over the sterile scent of bleached linen and a faint, sickeningly sweet undertone of decay that he knew, with a cold, certain dread, was coming from the bandages on his shoulder. Then came the sound: the monotonous, rhythmic beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor, a sound he'd only ever heard on television, now measuring the terrified thrum of his own heart. A dry, cottony taste filled his mouth, and when he tried to swallow, his throat clicked painfully.
He was in a bed. A hospital bed. The sheets were stiff, starched into crisp folds that scraped against his skin. The light in the room was a flat, shadowless white, leaching color from everything. He tried to move, and a lightning bolt of pure, white-hot agony seared through his left shoulder, so intense it stole his breath and left him gasping, tears welling in his eyes. The memory crashed over him then, not as a coherent narrative, but as a series of brutal sensory flashes: the deafening bang of the front door being torn from its hinges, the coppery stink of blood and wet dog, the wet, crunching sound of his father's body hitting the stairs, the sight of his mother's rifle clattering to the floor, the feel of his sisters' small, clammy hands in his, the searing pressure of the monster's teeth grinding into his bone.
"Easy now. Easy, son. You're safe."
The voice was calm, practiced, devoid of any real emotion. A man stood by the window, a silhouette against the blinding whiteness. He turned, and the light glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses, obscuring his eyes for a moment. Dr. Evans, his nametag read. He moved to the bedside, his shoes making no sound on the linoleum. He was tall, reedy, with a face that looked like it had been worn smooth by years of delivering bad news.
"Where…" Jack's voice was a rusted hinge, a dry croak. He tried again, the words scraping out. "My sisters… my parents…"
Dr. Evans's expression didn't change, but a tiny muscle in his jaw tightened. He picked up a plastic cup of water, the ice cubes inside clicking softly, and held the bent straw to Jack's lips. The water was so cold it made his teeth ache, but it soothed the raw desert of his throat. "You're at County General," the doctor said, his tone even, measured. "You've been through a significant trauma. Your body needs rest to heal."
"The thing," Jack insisted, his heart beginning to hammer against his ribs, the monitor keeping frantic pace. "There was an animal. A big one. It… it bit me." He gestured weakly with his right hand towards the fiery epicenter of pain in his left shoulder.
Dr. Evans nodded slowly, a gesture of placid understanding that felt like a physical dismissal of Jack's terror. "The police found you in the basement. There was… extensive property damage. Their current theory is a home invasion perpetrated by a group using a large, trained animal as a psychological weapon. It's a tactic employed by certain… brutal factions." He paused, and the silence in the room was heavier than the morphine haze. "You are the only survivor, Jack. I am profoundly sorry."
The only survivor. The words didn't land as words. They were a physical impact, a sledgehammer to his sternum that drove the air from his lungs. His parents. Lily. Rose. Gone. Not just dead. Erased. The sterile white room seemed to tilt on its axis, and a cold, hollow void opened up inside his gut, so vast and empty it threatened to swallow the searing pain in his shoulder whole.
"No," he breathed, the word a puff of air. "No, it was one thing. One monster. It wasn't people. It was a wolf, but… it wasn't." He heard the desperation in his own voice, the frantic, wheedling tone of a liar, even though he was spewing the only truth he had left.
Dr. Evans gave him a look of infuriating, professional patience. "The human mind is a remarkable thing, Jack. In moments of extreme stress, it will often construct a narrative that's easier to process than the chaotic, random brutality of reality. A single, monstrous entity can be a simpler, more manageable concept than the actions of multiple, cruel human beings."
He leaned in, pulling a penlight from his breast pocket. The tiny, blinding beam shot into Jack's pupils, and he flinched back, the light feeling like a hot needle being driven directly into his brain. "You sustained a severe laceration and puncture wounds consistent with a large animal bite. We've performed a debridement, sutured the wound, and you're on a broad-spectrum antibiotic regimen and a morphine PCA for pain management. The police will want a statement, but that can wait. For now, your only responsibility is to rest."
He left then, the door hissing shut on its hydraulic arm, sealing Jack inside with the beeping machine and the crushing, suffocating weight of being disbelieved. They had taken the raw, screaming insanity of what had happened and sanded it down, fitting it into a neat, logical box labeled 'HOME INVASION.' It was clean. It was something they could understand, file away, and forget.
But Jack knew. He remembered the blank, stupid fury in the creature's black, pupil-less eyes, the sheer, unthinking momentum of its attack. He remembered the way it had snuffled at him before biting, a mindless, instinctual trigger being pulled. You are the only survivor. The phrase echoed in the hollow of his skull. Why? The thing had been a force of nature, a tornado of teeth and claws. It had dismantled his father, a trained soldier, in seconds. It had torn his mother apart. It had… he squeezed his eyes shut, but the sound of his sisters' final, shrieking cries, cut off with wet, final snaps, played on a loop behind his eyelids.
So why was he breathing this antiseptic air when they were not?
His right hand, trembling, crept across his chest to his left shoulder. The bandages were thick, a lumpy wad of gauze anchored by harsh, medical-grade tape. The pain was a deep, throbbing drumbeat, but underneath it was something else, something worse: a maddening, crawling itch that seemed to originate from deep within the muscle and bone, a sensation completely alien to any healing wound he'd ever had. His fingertips brushed the skin at the edge of the dressing. It was burning hot, the flesh swollen and tight, radiating a feverish heat that the rest of his clammy body didn't share.
The morphine drip was supposed to pull him under, to drag him back into a soft, grey nothingness. Instead, a jittery, wired alertness was coiling in his veins, fighting the drug. His senses felt stretched thin, hypersensitive. The smell of the antiseptic was now so potent it made his eyes water. The fluorescent lights overhead emitted a high-frequency whine that drilled into the base of his skull. He could hear the rustle of polyester from a nurse's scrubs three rooms away, the squeak of a janitor's mop bucket in the hall, the low, muttered conversation between two cops stationed outside his door—something about a football game and a suspect with no leads.
He closed his eyes, and the memories didn't just replay; they invaded. The taste of blood, thick and metallic, filled his mouth. The sensation of the creature's hot, rank saliva dripping onto his face made his skin crawl. The sound of his father's neck breaking was a dry twig snap inside his own head.
A low, guttural rumble vibrated in the quiet room.
Jack's eyes flew open. He jerked his head, scanning the empty space. The sound had been close. Intimate. It had come from him. From his own chest, his own throat.
Panic, cold and sharp as the combat knife his father had given him, lanced through the grief and pain. He fumbled for the call button, his fingers clumsy and numb, jabbing at the plastic until a pale green light blinked on.
The door opened and a different nurse entered, her face a mask of cheerful efficiency. She was younger, with freckles dusted across her nose. "Everything okay in here, sweetheart? Is the pain breaking through?"
"The bite," Jack rasped, his voice tight. "It's… it doesn't feel right. It's burning. And it itches. Inside."
She offered a sympathetic smile that didn't reach her eyes. "That's all part of the healing process, honey. The antibiotics can cause some itching, and a localized fever is your body's way of fighting infection. Let's get a temp." She pressed a digital thermometer against his temple. It beeped. Her smile became fixed, a little tighter at the corners. "102.6. We'll keep a close eye on that. I'll note it for the doctor."
She made a show of adjusting his IV line, her touch clinical and brief, and then she was gone, the door sighing shut once more, leaving him alone with the escalating dread. She hadn't understood. This wasn't a fever. This was a furnace contained within his flesh. The itch was burrowing deeper, spreading, a colony of ants tunneling through his marrow.
He was a prisoner in this sanitized cage. His family was gone, slaughtered by a nightmare that the waking world refused to acknowledge. And that nightmare hadn't just taken from him; it had left something behind. A contamination. A ticking clock woven into his flesh and blood. He could feel it, a foreign, restless energy simmering just beneath the surface of his skin, a second, feral heartbeat gaining strength alongside his own. The steady beep-beep-beep of the monitor began to accelerate, a frantic, electronic staccato that mirrored the wild, terrified animal his heart was becoming.