Prologue// The creatures they call dhatins

"Despite my Ghoulish Reputation, I Really Have The heart of A Small Boy. I keep it in a jar on my Desk"

-Robert Bloch

~ In the year 3030~

The creatures called dhatins still seemed to be like a myth to Henrik, even considering how much he'd encounter them.

"Barbarous!"

That's the word to describe these insignificant monsters. At least, according to his mother, Henrik seemed to believe so.

His mother's words would often drill themselves one-by-one into his brain until they'd become a part of his brain cells, his dreams, his purpose, and even his thoughts. Like some possessed object lingering around the old mansion (where he grew up in Lilhem) his mother had the capability to summon such myths and make them ever so visible to Henrik.

However, he refused to renounce his promise.

" I promised to you, goddammit Amity." He muttered with a coarse, rather scratchy, tone of voice.

These such creatures are the very reasons for his existence. Without them, all he'd be in the eyes of others in Lilhem and to the RVOB... Well, he'd just be a pathetic little boy, who will only ever have the means to rely on his family's name and fortune. In fact, he should be thankful for these wild beasts to have had been on the island of Bali, Indonesia, for nearly 100 years. Traces of the origins of these creatures are unknown, until...Today.

There have been those days. Ah, days that seemed to boil the steam off Henrik's dear, lonely heart. This heart of his, it beats for a dead girl:

Amity.

A girl that he recalls was a friendly and sweet girl. One who would ask a 'how are you?' instead of 'who are you?' types of questions, would make Henrik smile, glowing from pride. She remembered me.She thinks of me as a friend!

This very act of genuinity would make Henrik's heart flutter with pure joy and give him hope. But, like a child high on sugar, he was high on pride from just the simple response, the slightest gesture.

Well, you couldn't blame him.

Henrik recalls being a lonely child. A child that would be bullied and doted on by his mother. A child who'd no kid would want to even think to befriend.

But Amity did.

And, that's why he remembered her.

Shaking his head in worry, he tries to deny it.

The reasons why he remembers her. Amity was a special girl to Henrik. A girl who showed him the right path to his emotional state of mind: she taught him how to grow, to love, to smile, to hug, and to cry together. While she was perished and forever forgotten by those in Semarang (the place Henrik grew up with Amity), she'll always be mourned by him.

A call.

Henrik picks up the phone, and answers in a curt manner, " Good afternoon, Captain Johannson speaking. What may I be of service to you?" He goes throughout the call in a businesslike manner, making sure not to cross the lines between genuinity and fakeness. For as his brows knit together in a furrow of disagreement with Lieutenant Colonel Birgens who's on the other end of the line, he refuses to conform to his state of mind. No, he definitely couldn't afford it, especially as a lower-ranked officer.

With a few disgruntled yes' and of course sir's Henrik was more than willing to end the call early; his tangled thoughts were tying in on themselves after all.

So, when Colonel Birgens ended the call, Henrik didn't expect to hear the very last words that uttered out of Birgens' voice before he abruptly ended:

" I'll let you go now, Captain. On one note however: find out the origin of the prisoner."

Prisoner.

A gruesome word to speak of the dhatin of capture. Earlier throughout the morning, Henrik and the rest of the RVOB captured a stray dhatin in the Dismouth Forests, near the RVOB headquarters.

However, if one thing was for sure, Henrik remembers his childhood friend, Amity Nugraha, and that dhatin 316 most certainly wasn't her.

So...Why did he tell that dhatin that he loved it in its past human life? Had he gone mad?

No. He probably just got possessed.

There's no way that he was the cause of Amity's death.

Or was he?

But Henrik didn't know: he'd always end up on the losing end in terms of friendship, and most especially...Love.

This causes his pride to get wallowed by his fear that maybe, just maybe...

He didn't know anything really. For his long-lost childhood friend's death wasn't a death. Instead of rotting in a casket like she was supposed to, her hands were licked by the bloodthirsty dhatins of Blight and she soon...Morphed.

******

" Who are you?" Henrik asked it. For this creature didn't even have the right-nor the privilege- to be called by name. He then noticed that there's a trail of blood leading up to the place called the torture room when he suddenly heard it speak.

The one place that the Colonel had given orders to never enter.

But then, as the creature that lurked from the corners of the torture-room started to make its way towards Henrik, he began to see that its small, shrunken head didn't look as scary as the others at the division had depicted it to be.

" Are you okay there?" He asked it, as he tiptoed slowly towards the creature.

"hehe yeessss, TASTY!" And then it leaped at Henrik, slamming his body against the blood trail.

****

It's just a dream, it's just a dream. He tries to encourage himself. However, he knew that this wasn't just any wild dream: it's a terrible, cruel, reality.

The creature, in an attempt to muffle Henrik's screams, taunted, " shut the fuckkk up, unless." And then, it reveals a long, sharpened bloodred knife. The sound of skin tearing, and his lips burning, he screamed.

" URGHH!!ARGHHH!" Henrik wailed, and when he refused to stop, the creature simply dug its knife further down his throat.

But then...

" Please, I'm begging you! I know deep down inside, you can hear me-" He begins to say, and then he can see, something that he never thought he'd see: tears.

" Amity, please."

The creature looked at his eyes, and though It was once a human, it has been replaced with a headless creature with a grotesque- small body. A body that wore not an ounce of clothing, and had burns throughout, and was etched in scars. But why scars?

He doesn't know.

The creature then releases its grasp, and yanks the knife out of Henrik's throat. Henrik coughs out the blood, and tries to escape...

Then, that's when Henrik notices the tag on the dhatin's neck that reads: 316. The same dhatin that the division had captured that day.

" N-no w-way. Y-you weren't supposed to escape!" Henrik wailed, as he tried to free himself from its grasp. The creature, upon hearing that word: escape... Has started attacking again. And now... Henrik couldn't break free again... The creature has become stronger. Almost too powerful. He tries to yank his hand away from the creature, but it doesn't break free.

And so, like the coward he is, Henrik tries to look around, in a plea for help, we screams for his fellow comrades from the Blitzkreig division. But... The creature had already started its midnight meal, as it etched its dark, long, talons into his hand.

"yaiiiiiiii" the creature spoke in a soft, melodic tone. It was whimpering, and its demeanor was similar to those of a small, afraid child. A child without a home, a precious home.

****

A warm tongue licked his cold hand clean. There was blood there, and because there was blood there, the tongue tasted it. The taste of human blood was more than enough for the creature to evolve. It evolved alright: Into a head with sunken holes for eyes, a smile that looked like it was slit with blood. The blood that it licked on his hand did all that.

Henrik, in an attempt to escape, tries to walk away from the creature, who had suddenly stopped licking his hand, once more.. But then...

But, he shouldn't have walked away from it.

" It's me." The creature says, looking into Henrik's eyes, pleading almost.

" No..." He starts to say, and he doesn't want to believe it.

It couldn't be.

But then, his hand falls off, and Henrik can feel the wrath of its pain. " ARGHHH! It burns!" He screams, as he witnesses the blood spilling from his wrist, and he almost gags when he sees his fallen-out hand, shake and twitch. And then... Move toward the dhatin of Blight's wide mouth.

"Mmm. Tasty." The creature liked to lie alright.

The creature continued to feast on Henrik's fallen-off hand, and it asked, in the same melodic tone, " Tasty?"

Henrik should've gone to sleep that night. He knew that it was a terrible idea to explore the plains that rested outside the RVOB. And now, he was to die. To die meant that he'd become that thing.

That thing that seemed to lick his detached right hand in vain. The vain creature evolved even more from every lick it tasted on Henrik's body part. As the creature muttered to itself, " TASTY!" Henrik felt his hand shrink, this tingled slight malnourishment in his hand-less arm.

It was strange. Strange that he could still feel his hand there, even though it was not.

The more that the creature licked his hand, his hand would change. Oh, how it changed all right. The hand that was once a sickening white, human skin color, it turned scarlet. Scarlet it turned! Usually, such a male human hand as this one was hard for such a creature to obtain.

Once it was a small grotesque creature, one that did not petrify a human as much.

The creature wasn't there.

Where was it?

****

Henrik looked around and was starting to feel relieved. Phew, at least he only lost a hand. Henrik was lucky that day. For he did not die.

The creature was hungry. It was lurking in the shadows of a strange man's room. A room that seemed to be dusty and cramped.

Just like how they liked it.

The creature, deciding to take a break from this taste of this human, leaped out of the creak in the door:

However, the creature didn't close it.

And this was only the beginning...

Of the creatures, they call dhatins.