Hybrids: An Indoraptor Story ✓

What's Wrong?

||𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟗𝐭𝐡, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎||

It started on an eerie backroad.

I found myself here, staring out across an empty roadway, sensing nothing more than the wall of darkness before me... and myself. My silver claws tapped upon the cold slimy asphalt, courtesy of a faint raincloud rolling across the surface of an ancient forest. The starless skies had turned into a fuzzy haze of red, twisting and churning like spider silk above the woods. But aside from this damp, miserable world, all that seemed prevalent here became the silence.

Because there was nothing. Nothing more than a breeze that shifted the fog.

Nothing but me. Or so it seemed.

My pupils suddenly dilated upon the discovery of an overturned shape ahead of me, lying motionless on the ground. It, too, bore no scent, no color, no anything. I hoped it to be a dead rodent, or a morsel to savor -- something my churning belly longed for. Drooling for a taste, I tipped it over by the edge of a talon, leaning in for a bite.

And then, the shape turned into a shoe.

I took a puzzled step backward. 'A shoe? Is that really what I'm dreaming of? Couldn't I think of something better?'

My immediate confusion was a bit over-reactive, enough so that even my instincts were completely helpless to do anything. How else was I meant to react? A shoe was like a rock on a beach, it didn't serve any purpose other than proper interest. So, for a time, I simply stood there, dumbfounded, wondering if this 'thing' did anything more than just sit there.

It didn't.

But I knew better than to sit by and nibble my scales, especially in an environment that offered nothing. Click taught me enough to understand how to investigate a scene of doubt, even in  a world where a threat seems impossible at first...

And then it turns.

So I decided to investigate. Snorting, one claw pinned the trinket while my snout dove in for a whiff, catching the flavorless aroma of mold and rainwater. After a few minutes I bumped it to the nearest source of light -- a flickering lamp post bending inward toward the street. At least now I had a better look of it: a moist white sneaker with pink lines molded to the heel and a strange symbol -- like a sanded check mark -- drawn upon its side. It didn't seem like much, and frankly I had no care for what other details were marked on it.

That is, until a shimmer of silver caught my attention.

Near the surface of the shoe sat a thin shard of metal, protruding out from the rubber sole at its very tip. I licked it, still finding no taste or intrusive odor, and growled in annoyance. I thought it was something-

Wait. There's another piece.

And another.

Glass, too...

Slashes and tears were marked all over the shoe. It was as if something massive had shot debris under the sole and through the laces. Without realizing it, my eyes instinctively tipped up, falling upon a massive gash split through the metal lamp post in front of me.

No, three gashes. It looked just like a...

A chill washed over me at that moment. I didn't know why my instincts flared up, I could've mistaken it for anything. Hell, I never finished a thought. But the shoe, the broken lamp post, the glass...

And then the flickering orange lights in the fog. Warning blinkers.

My stomach began to writhe. Why am I growing scared?