Coming Undone by purplesunsets

4

"Clay?" George squeaks. He doesn't dare to move an inch.

"George? Shit, sorry." Clay lowers the knife from George's chin and George can breathe again.

"What the fuck, Clay?" George hisses and jerks away from Clay. "Are you insane?!"

"Sorry. I was sure someone had broken in and it's kind of dark in this hallway, so I saw you and just reacted."

"Why would you think someone broke in?"

Clay pulls out his phone and shows George the security app. "The back door was opened without the code being put in, which is on me since I forgot to tell you it. Here, I'll give it to you right—"

"What back door?" George asks, dread churning in his stomach. "The one in the kitchen?"

"Yeah, why? Didn't you go for a walk or something?" Clay furrows his brow.

"I didn't open it." It feels like his tongue is made of cotton and George struggles to get the words out. "I didn't go outside. All I did was go to the kitchen and eat something and then I decided to walk through the halls a bit."

"Fuck." Clay glances over his shoulder. "Shit, come with me."

"What's going on?"

Clay doesn't answer and grabs George by his upper arm and drags him down a different hallway. George struggles to put each foot in front of the other. They reach the door that has a passcode lock and Clay enters the code too quickly for George to comprehend.

The room that greets him is nothing that George had expected. If he's honest, part of him was expecting the walls to be lined with guns or for it to be some type of sex dungeon. Instead, there's just a dual computer monitor on a rather humble-looking desk. A map is on the wall with push-pins at various locations.

"Fuck, where are you?" Clay mutters and crouches in front of the monitors. On the screen is what looks to be live video feed of each room in the house. "I knew this would happen, I don't even have a gun on me."

"Clay, what's going on?"

"Later, okay? I'll tell you later." Clay says hurriedly. A man darts across on of the screens and George wonders if this is how he'll die.

"You have to tell me what's going on! Who the fuck was that?!" George rakes a hand through his hair and tries to remember how his lungs work.

"What do you want to know?" Clay asks, but doesn't peel his eyes away from the monitors as he clicks the mouse rapidly.

"What the hell is happening?"

"I'm trying to see if any of the cameras are picking up on anything." Clay scrubs at his face with his hands roughly. "Fuck. I knew this would happen."

George's heart stutters in his chest and his tongue feels like sandpaper.

Clay curses and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know how he got past all the security I have outdoors, but there's someone in the house."

"Do you..." George swallows around the fear in his chest. "Do you think it's the Florida Fiend?" He asks in a hushed voice.

"I don't know. Maybe." Clay is quick to say, but he doesn't elaborate further.

George watches as Clay flips through the video feed of the different rooms in his house. They've looked at nearly every room on the first and second floor when Clay's breath hitches.

"He's there."

"Where is that?" George squints at the screen. It's a room he hasn't seen before.