"𝔻𝕠𝕟'𝕥 𝕔𝕙𝕖𝕔𝕜 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕙𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕨𝕒𝕪."

Recondite

( Content warnings: character death, gun violence, descriptions of the uncanny. Reader discretion is advised.)

The fucking alternate had gotten away, Mark knew that much. How long had it been posing as Cesar? The thought of it sickened him, that he'd been having fun with his best friend's killer, none the wiser of its identity: a filthy alternate.

He knew there was something fishy about him, about how he hadn't seen Cesar's mom ever since that one phone call years ago-... Years ago. His best friend had been dead for two years, and throughout all that time Mark had been more than willing to just play house with the thing wearing his corpse like a badly made Halloween costume.

The shotgun clattered to the ground, Mark's hands curling into fists. Two fucking years. He screamed until his throat felt rather and sore, until he was sure that if he kept it up for much longer, he'd actually end up losing his voice.

And then, he stilled. Ever so slowly, he leaned down to grab the discarded shotgun, making his way back to his house. There was no way that the alternate would be coming back, not after how badly he'd wounded it. So, all that he needed to do was rebuild. Make his life again. Stop thinking about calling Cesar, because Cesar wasn't there, and he hadn't been for two fucking years and he'd been too blind to see it-... Mark needed to calm down. This wasn't doing him any good.

Eventually, he'd reached his home again, taking longer than he'd expected. Had he really been chasing that monster so far? Because it felt like hours had passed when he finally unlocked his front door again. The human threw the shotgun carelessly to the side, practically crawling up the stairs from how exhausted he was. Mark barely managed to make it past the door to his bedroom before he stumbled down upon the bed,  landing on it with a soft, thud.

He couldn't be bothered to move, to try and find a more comfortable position to sleep in. So what if he woke up with cramps in the morning? He'd had a fucking day, and he just didn't have the energy to try and do anything else than rest.

Mark woke up the next day with cramped muscles, barely able to scramble out of bed without losing his balance. The first day without Cesar, without the thing pretending to be him.

He got through the day without much hassle, and really, it should've stayed that way. He scared off the offending alternate, so that should be the end of that.

Mark was proven wrong a week after the incident. He had been busy making himself some instant ramen, stirring the pot every now and then to make sure it didn't stick to the sides.

And that's when it hear the thud. He turned off the stove, spoon forgotten about as he turned around. It sounded far away, so chances are that it came from upstairs. Mark looked around for his shotgun, finding it near the front door, propped up against the wall.

He quickly checked if it was loaded, slowly making his way to and up the stairs. Another thud, further down the hall. His... Room? What the fuck was in his room?

Mark didn't have to wonder long, because right as he was about to reach the doorway, something jumped out of it. He took a step back, aiming his shotgun at the thing. It looked... Somewhat like the most recent alternate he'd seen, but it was obvious that it wasn't the same one. Its limbs were all wrong, jutting out in strange angles, as if they were on backwards. Its face was hard to describe, what seemed to be a maw splitting off at the sides, like some sort of flower made out of flesh.

It didn't take him long to decide to open fire on the thing, shooting it in its face before it even had a proper chance to respond. He reloaded his shotgun, shootung it twice in the chest. It might not be dead, he supposed, so he just needed to shoot it until it stopped moving.

It was five shots later that he could say, with certainty, that the thing was dead. Fuck, he had to clean that up now. It took an hour for Mark to be able to toss the creature's corpse away and clean up while he was at it.

Now, sitting down with his ramen in front of him, Mark hoped that this would be the last alternate encounter he'd have, ever.