A Wild Guest

Lux watched 'Mrs. Creeth' bend her back and sprout sticks of flesh, fingers on her sides.

"Lala!" he screamed, hopelessly trying to detach her pointy hands from his arm. But 'she' wasn't bothered, for she continued to rip the gray dress, stretching her meaty composition into two more hardened pairs of limbs. All of it, after successfully achieving shape, seized Lux's arms and raised him from the floor.

Mrs. Creeth's face started to disfigure, shifting from the auntie he knew into a terrifyingly dark creature. Each of its eye split into two, while all of its teeth elongated. The fear caused by its being resembled another fear, that of a limao.

'Why isn't no one coming?'

Lux struggled within all six claws but nothing happened. His screaming was incessant, hoping for someone to help.

Finally, he weakly turned his head to the kitchen and saw Aling Alyng. Her face was shocked, but she was ready to fight, but just like that, it hit him, that with his call for help, he has doomed the one he loves.

The boy couldn't believe what happened next. The sofa was flying in the air, and now, broken and crushed above his beloved Lala.

"Lala!" he shouted, badly wanting to go to her.

Then, their attention was caught by the loud banging door.

Lux was beyond shocked and unable to think, so the monster did it for him.

"You're wondering why your friends couldn't get in?" The beast said, with the voice of his auntie. To explain, it lifted one of its six hands.

"With this." It stretched the fingers, suddenly pointing them towards Lux's eyes.

"But you know, it wouldn't hold very long, so it should be time to flee." Faster than ever, it sprouted its flesh once more, this time on her back. Both took the shape of large flaps, pushing the air under it.

Lux was tremulous, trying to break free, but he couldn't escape. He's losing strength and he's losing hope. At this point, he just waited for something to happen. Anything that could pull his life back from drifting away.

"Let's go, lively one." The beast whispered as its voice transitioned from a caring mother into a pain-loving monster.

The winged beast flapped its wings, ascending little by little.

"Mother would be pleased. I caught a lively one!" It exclaimed. It then roughly pressed Lux's cheeks and turned his head according to its wishes. The beast grinned, breathing down on his neck, smelling the quivering fear escaping from his throbbing heart.

"Awww, don't worry, I'll let you look long enough for you to remember... REMEMBER WELL, because to where we're going, you'll see anything but daylight."  

They started hovering from the ground with Lux's fate sealed into a place of no return, but that's not what he was thinking.

'Lala, she's gone.' He told himself.

'And I will be gone too.'

However, his sealed fate was broken by another sofa flying into the air, smashing hard into the beast's face. 

Lux was able to escape from the creature's claws. He fell into the floor and held his throat. He then took no thought into running towards the banging door. It's shut like it was glued but it's getting loose, his friends are pushing violently on it!

"Ho-how was this even stuck?, Wait how did the sofa even..."

A line of thought entered his panicking mind. Of why another sofa came flying into the beast's head. Lux looked back, and aside from the winged beast stunned, he saw another black figure from the kitchen.

It was huge and fearsome. Its limbs are long and bulky. Its eyes were tangerine and its aura was icy. A monstrous being with darkness written all over its face, and body. A limao.

The beast eyed at him, the winged one. It charged above Lux when he decided to roll under it, going straight to the tree. Quickly, he decided where to go.

'Kitchen or door?!'

Both of which were blocked by monsters.

'Idiot, the stairs!'

He ran up with his life and looked for an exit.

'That's it, the window!'

He was about to jump through when he heard a shocking voice.

"Lux!" Frozen, he questioned his own ears.

'That's Lala! She's alive?'

He then had a reason to turn back, contradicting his other reason of escaping and getting help. But Lux's love for his Lala was stronger than his hesitations.

He had an idea. He looked under his bed and found a pair of sticks, not just wooden twigs, but his Arnis sticks! However, he didn't know that the winged beast was stronger than the wooden floor he was trembling on.

The monster burst from below and broke that floor into smithereens. With its long claws, it climbed from the hole it made and widened its tough, rubbery jaw. It used its large wings to encapsulate Lux, preventing him from jumping anymore to the window.

The monster growled in fury! A sofa on its face must've angered it, he figured.

It prepared to blast its claws towards Lux, charging up the force that will easily cut him through.

Lux shielded himself and anticipated the attack, but he found a rushing pull from below.

'Something's pulling the monster!'

He watched the winged beast being dragged down to the hole, but with those many limbs, one or two were bound to drag Lux down. Actually, three of its claws pulled him down from his feet. Together with the monster, he fell unto the bottom floor, down at the table.

His eyes were blurry from the fall, still gaining focus on what he was seeing.

Two dark figures punching one another.

'The limao, fighting the winged beast?'

He rubbed his eyes again, thinking that his vision's still blurry. Then a voice and a statement made him troubled even more. Though it was a confirmation that he had someone on his side.

"Lux! Run!"

The limao shouted.

'That's Lala's voice! '

"Lala, di-did the limao ate you!" an idiotic question he asked, but he didn't had the time to think of the right question.

He instead watched his 'Lala', a supposedly old and weak woman, fight the monster with her limao-ish physique.

"What? No! Help Me!" Aling Alyng said occupied with six arms on her hands.

Lux tightened his grip and used his sticks.

He attacked the beast's back, and tried to do some damage. Aling Alyng also tried to restrain it, but it soon overpowered them both, throwing Lala in the process.

Right after, it tried to gnaw Lux's head off, but he was able to horizontal his sticks, preventing its teeth from reaching his face. It pushed hard but Lux fought back with his elbows pressed on the wall.

He then realized that its arms were missing, unused, but together with him, the monster also realized. So it then went up for another charging attack, all of its claws ready to cut Lux once and for all.

The helpless boy tried to push it back but he didn't have the strength to do it. He caught for a second time the motion of its claws, opening and sharpening. In foreseeing the pain, he closed his eyes.

'Any second now, you're gonna die. Say all your prayers, just say...'

Lux stopped, and flinched, but nothing happened. He could've sworn that the beast would've ended him in mid-sentence.

He opened his eyes and saw the winged beast halted not by one but by two dark beasts. Both limaos grunted, straining to pin all the 6 arms and 2 wings down to the ground, and so they did!

Lux rested his body against the wall, bewildered by what happened. However, another surprise presented itself.

"Lux! KILL it, now!" the new limao ordered, with a voice exactly like Mang Kuno. But instead of questioning it, he figured that he should just do it.

"Choke it! The sticks!" The limao grunted. Lux then took no time and directed his Arnis sticks towards its throat, but as soon as he did that, the winged beast started turning back into the old Mrs. Creeth. 

'That's not Mrs. Creeth, you know that. Just push! '

Lux tried hard, but he couldn't move his body. He couldn't take it, the sounds, the pain, the intensity. He's having too much! Out of it, his ears cancelled all noises. He couldn't hear anything, he wouldn't hear anything. He just saw the two limaos pressing on the two arms of her auntie, Mrs. Creeth, who is now opening her mouth like she was screaming for help.

Lux couldn't bear it, so he closed his eyes once more and breathed. He was disconnected from the world. He felt nothing, except for a significantly cold touch above his hands.

After seconds of silence, he felt his hearing coming back. His eyes still closed and his ears receiving nothing but heavy breathing. He suddenly felt the weight of the cold touch above his hands, and there, he lifted his eyelids.

Lux saw a hand of a limao above his own. Trembling, he followed the sight of the hand to the stick he was holding on and down and down to the other end, inserted into someone's throat. There she was, old Mrs. Creeth lying on the floor.

The limao let go of Lux's hands, while the other let go of Mrs. Creeth's arm. Only Lux was the one who wasn't able to let go. His feet broke down and his legs kneeled.

After that exhilarating threat to end his life, feelings bursted from his chest and disappeared. The most intense feelings of pain, shock and weakness are now over, he thought. It wouldn't take long for him to realize that what came after would be what he'd consider the unluckiest misfortune that changed his life forever.

Take a wild guess.

They heard a loud bang from the front door, and Lux found a couple of people staring directly at them. He saw them react the way he would if he saw an old lady dead with two limaos. But what's worse was how they saw Lux holding the two arnis sticks against Mrs. creeth's throat.

The limaos then shifted back into looking like his caretakers, intending to ease in an explanation, but Lux watched his friends cower in fear as they run away from the nipa hut standing up on this hill.