I was jolted awake by the never-ending sound of my alarm tirelessly chirping in my ear over the nightstand next to my bed. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and saw the time as I turned off the alarm. The screen burned my eyes. It felt like someone had been pounding my skull. My best friend’s graduation party yesterday left me with a massive hangover. I had told myself that I wouldn’t drink as I had to get up early to go to work, but the atmosphere was good enough that I had lost myself drinking with our group of friends- well, more of his friends than mine, but we were on good terms.

  “It’s still seven o’clock. I can sleep for a few more minutes,” I said as my eyes closed briefly, but my alarm went off again. I had just closed my eyes; how was it already going off? Each second of it shouting near me felt like drills penetrating my skull.

  I forced my eyes open again and took a look at my phone. The moment I did, and saw my other four alarms had already gone off, I shot out of my bed, something I immediately regretted. My blood pressure crashed, and I nearly collapsed, feeling like I’d slammed my head against cement

  “I just barely closed my eyes. How is it already eight o’clock?” I complained to the universe as I rushed to get dressed and drink a small bottle of water, my kidneys probably thanking me for remembering them.

  I forced myself to change my clothes in a rush, then brush my teeth, all the while, there was the constant hammering of my head from last night's adventure. As I was picking up my keys and phone to get out of my house, my phone rang, sounding like an explosion inside my ears. I grabbed it and checked who was calling me. If it hadn’t been someone I knew, I would have rejected the call, but it was my best friend calling me, so I had to accept it.

  “Alex.” His voice was loud and sounded rushed, making me flinch as I could feel the veins in the back of my head throbbing with pressure. “Thank god you picked it up.”

  “Vini. How are you, buddy? Could you please talk lower? It feels like my head is in a hydraulic press,” I said softly, trying not to cause another headache.

  “Alex. This is very important. Stay at home today. There will be something happening, and I cannot explain, but please, listen to me. Stay at home.”

  “Dude. You’re still drunk? Don’t tell me you stayed awake all night drinking?”

  “What? No. This is serious. Stay at home. Please. You’re my best friend, and I… I…”

  “Vini. Take a small piece of advice from me. Don’t spend all night drinking. I have to go now. See you tomorrow.”

  “Wait. No-” He started to say something, but I hung up. My headache was at full force after the call, and I couldn’t bear anything else making it worse, so I placed my phone on silent mode and exited my house, got into my car, and started driving to my work.

  The traffic was shit as always. It was a little past rush hour, but there were still a lot of traffic jams. The same old S?o Paulo as always. The sound of the cars and buses did nothing to ease my headache, but only worsened it slightly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury to just miss work, else I would kiss my salary goodbye, and then at my house, and then I would say hi to a life of homelessness, which I wasn’t sure I would be able to survive or get out of.

  After two more hours in my car, I had finally arrived at the supermarket where I worked as a cashier. I still held hope that one of the many businesses I had sent my résumé to would answer me… It has been a month already, but hope is the last to die.

  “Alex. You’re thirty minutes late,” my supervisor told me the moment I clocked in.

  “I know, Rogério, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” I tell him back.

  “It better. This is the last warning. The next time it happens, you will be written up. Now go open your register. There are clients waiting.” He then went back to his room, where he stays most of the time, probably doing things that would be a fireable offense, but at least he didn’t bother me while I worked.

  The next few hours were a blur, with me sitting on my register while I scanned product after product on an endless cycle of infinite boredom. At least my headache faded while I did these meaningless tasks.

  Eventually, I heard a woman coming into the store while singing a simple melody. My till was the closest to the front doors, so I heard her voice as the automatic doors opened. Turning my head, I saw a woman in her late forties, dressed in a black dress, dragging a leather bag taller than her body. Something in her eyes told me that she was missing a few screws in her head.

  I decided to ignore her and kept waiting for the next person to arrive at my register to ring them up, but the moment the woman who had just entered started speaking, I found myself looking in her direction.

  “Oh yes. This place will do fine. Lots of good food for you to eat, sweetie,” She said as she patted her leather bag, which I was sure I saw move, but it was probably my imagination.

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  I was about to look back at my register when she dropped the bag on the ground and moved to its side. She then proceeded to squat next to it and made a gesture to open the bag. At the same time, a security personnel was approaching her.

  “Can I help you, madam?” The security guy asked.

  “You can eat all you want, sweetie. You can start with him,” She said as she opened the bag and then pointed at the security guard.

  The next moment felt like it came out of a horror movie as a creature with the face of a dog, two elongated arms, and a serpentine body jumped out of the leather bag and swallowed the security guard whole. The creature that had just come out was easily five times larger than the bag it was inside.

  I froze as I watched it happen. The creature then moved swiftly to another person who had just started to scream, grabbing them with its mouth and throwing them upwards before swallowing them whole as well, then moved to the next victim. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was this a nightmare? Was I still sleeping on my bed? I didn’t want to believe my own eyes, but there was no mistake. The loud beating of my heart made me extremely aware this wasn’t a nightmare.

  The laughter of the woman brought me back to reality and turned to her, just to watch her pulling what looked like a metal rod from somewhere in her dress and with a movement of her wrist, the metal gates for when we close the store came crashing down and I heard the electronic lock engage as she laughed at the people who were now running and banging on the metal gates.

  “Look at this bunch of parasites!” She laughed. “Trying to run to protect your sad, miserable lives.”

  I heard the creature somewhere deep in the store, trashing the place and knocking down shelves as people screamed and ran for their lives, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop staring at the woman in front of the doors. I was frozen in fear. I knew my life was over, I just didn’t want to believe it yet.

  With another movement of her wrist, people were thrown by some invisible force towards the creature that still roamed the aisle, eating everyone it could. I could hear the moment his giant jaws ripped someone apart as the wet sound of their blood and organs hit the floor. I swear I could almost see my entire life flashing before my eyes.

  The moment when the woman’s eyes met mine felt like a jolt of electricity ran down my spine.

  “Oh, would you look at that,” she said. “You’re not running away. Then you must be someone from the bureau.”

  Another movement of her wrist, and I was yanked from my chair by some invisible force. I was dragged across the floor until I was then thrown into the metal doors. The impact left me with no air as I fell to the floor, gasping.

  “What gives?” She laughed. “Too weak to defend yourself?”

  She was close enough to me so that I could make out her appearance better. She had long hair that seemed like it didn’t know what a brush was. Her eyes were red and seemed to have a glow behind them at the same time that there were dark rings underneath them as if she hadn't slept for weeks. But the most disturbing part of her face was her smile. It wasn’t a simple smile of happiness; no, it was the smile of a predator that had just found its favorite prey to not only hunt but to play with, and I was that prey.

  I was suddenly hit by her foot as she kicked me, making me slip several meters from the force of her kick. I knew she had broken a few of my ribs with that kick alone. I could barely breathe as it hurt too much to do so. I barely heard her steps towards me through my wheezing breaths, trying to pull in as much air as I could.

  Her steps were slow and steady, like a model on the catwalk of a fashion show. She stopped right next to me before giving me another kick, weaker this time. It felt like she wanted to prove her point instead of actually hurting me more; either way, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. My broken rib had probably punctured my lung.

  “You aren’t from the bureau, are you?” She asked, scanning me with her cold eyes. “You’re just a normal human.”

  She kicked me once more. I barely felt it between the burning fire that was inside my chest from my punctured lung and all the other bones she had broken. Suddenly, I felt weightless, and I found myself floating in the air one meter above the ground.

  The woman kept staring at me while holding what looked like a wand made out of metal. She was making a disgusted face.

  “I can’t believe I touched someone like you. Urghh. I have to throw these boots off. Don’t you know how hard it was to find boots like these after I destroyed the shoe store?” She said, her voice filled with revulsion. I could barely make out her words, my vision becoming blurred and sounds distorted.

  “Leslie!” She shouted. “I have a treat for you!”

  I heard the creature knocking more things down as it thrashed around, coming closer and closer.

  “She’s such a sweetie. I love her so much,” the woman said.

  The creature stopped right in front of us. It held itself with its two long arms as the serpentine tail wagged from one side to the other. Its dog-like face was covered with blood and bits of meat. I was moved up and down.

  “Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl? It’s you! I have a treat for you. Right here,” she said as she moved me in front of her. The creature made a move and jumped at me with its jaws wide open, but I was jerked backward, and the jaws closed just a few centimeters from my face.

  “You know the rules. You have to catch it,” the woman said. The creature nodded and prepared itself to run. “Ready. Set. Catch!”

  I was then thrown towards the back of the supermarket. Time seemed to pass in slow motion as my body was flung like a ragdoll through the air. I could see the amount of destruction the beast caused. There were bodies all around the floor, and a lot of them weren’t even killed by the beast itself. They died crushed as the shelves came crashing down on them.

  I saw the beast jumping at me, faster than I was moving. I saw its maw passing around me just enough so that only my head was outside of its mouth, and then it closed fast.

  As half my vision became dark as the creature’s mouth opened up around me, the last thing I was able to see was the glint of a sharp tooth closing in directly in the middle of my eye, and everything went dark.