My hands trembled as the images poured in.

Images that should have stayed within the dark recesses of the human imagination flooded into every receptor of my brain.

I remember.

-

Being slightly taller than a foot, with lithe outstretched arms protruding too high up his torso, I did not recognise him.

Only after he had stumbled into the light could I properly observe his true grotesque form, noticing the greasy, fleshy exterior that was similar to Kevin’s. He resembled a skinned bird with disproportionately long forearms, his tiny head sporting a meaty beak looking as though it were stitched on rather than organically grown. He staggered slowly in my direction, the fragile bones clicking and rattling at every step he took.

I backed away slowly, fighting against every urge in my body to bolt out into the street and away from this hellish nightmare.

Grabbing a screw driver from the mantelpiece hanging beside me, I put it between myself and Kevin, ready to end the monsters life as soon as he got within arm's reach.

However, rather than going for my neck, Kevin simply staggered for a bit before dropping like a ragdoll, ceasing any sign of further movement. I anticipated the worst and didn’t dare move, staring him down with my weapon in hand.

It took me awhile to finally muster up enough courage to creep over and examine the lifeless gimp. I used my foot to nudge and prod his body, flipping him onto his belly where I could get a better look at his fierce little features. Pinkish, translucent skin hung off his body like a wrinkled coat, faintly exposing a fully developed skeletal and nervous system.

The muscles and bones however appeared extremely disproportionate and malformed, some to the point of appearing to be completely random and unnecessary.

It was as if he were a failed prototype of some organic monstrosity, or the runt of a miniature pterodactyl litter.

The worst however, was Kevin's face. It was ghoulishly placid, viciously scarred and sprouting the most disturbing maw I have ever seen on any creature. However, what unnerved my senses the most were his eyes, not because they displayed alien or grotesque features, but because of something far more unsettling. There was just one. And it was cloudy.

Thus I ended up not crushing his head with my shoe, locking him inside a dog carrier with thicker bars. Considering Kevin's frail appendages though, I doubted he could crawl his way out of a sandbox - much less scratch the surface of iron. It was a wonder how he had managed to pry open the aluminium bars on Lily's cage.

As soon as he was secure, I quickly got to work on cleaning up the mess, spending nearly 4 hours scrubbing at the blood imprints on the walls and floor. I would have to re-plaster everything and maybe even change the curtains and rug to be safe. I didn’t want the room to become contaminated in any way, especially since I had no clue as to how Kevin's biology worked.

What is Kevin supposed to even be?

The more I thought about it, the more complicated it became. There were so many possibilities as to what could have happened between him and Lily – and none of them made any realistic sense.

Eventually I began to detail every thought I had onto my log, slowly analyzing and narrowing it down to just two of the most plausible reasons. I deduced that Kevin had been some sort of strange growing egg the entire time, and when I had left to purchase the mice, he had hatched into the creature that consumed Lily. The second and more complicated possibility was that Kevin had somehow broken through the wire mesh, escape the linen closet, and slip through the crack in Lily’s cage to consume her, later assimilating into a form that vaguely resembled her both externally and internally.

Unfortunately, as much as I would have loved for it to be otherwise, If Kevin had turned after consuming Lily in the cage, he would have been far too large to slip back out, therefore having the need to break open an alternate exit. Then of course there was his bird-like transformation and Lily's clouded eye. It seems as though absorbing and replicating the old birds' life force did not exclude her aging defects- which in turn would also explain his current decrepit stature.

It scared me to realize I had little to no idea of what I was dealing with, and that Kevin could die at any given moment.

I however chose to not give in, becoming ridiculously determined to do whatever it takes to keep him alive. I ran downstairs and brought up the package of mice, cursing myself along the way for not having chosen smaller specimens. These hulks were handpicked by me at the store to most resemble the size of a full grown rat, and I was now deathly afraid of them injuring Kevin in his weakened state.

Even after selecting and subduing the smallest of the pack with a shot, I had become so paranoid to the point in which I decided to tie a string around the rodent's neck. If anything were to go wrong, I would tug on the string and break its neck.

However, things did not play out as I had perceived.

As soon as the cage door slammed shut, the mouse neither approached the entity that shared this confined space, nor did it showcase any of its former active traits. It merely wavered around a little, assessing its new environment before looking forward and becoming deathly still. All that moved were the wrinkling of its nose and the rubbing of its paws. This went on for almost 5 minutes, with just the mouse inertly gazing upon Kevin's lifeless form.

‘It’s probably the shot, too much of it' I thought to myself, watching as it shifted its gaze to the wall and then back toward me.

I hadn't noticed at first, watching Kevin lie on his side, but then I turned and caught the glimmer that shone in the rodents eyes. Two dark dots, soulless and black, and yet held an unmistakable emotion that I knew all too well. An emotion I had failed to notice through Lily’s handicap.

The raw tentative expression of fear.

I began fumbling for the lock, my mind geared on getting the hapless mouse away from the cage as quickly as possible. The iron mechanism clicked and slid, unshackling the barrier which bound the rat to its inevitable execution.

Unfortunately, a sluggish, jagged form rose from the shadows within the carrier at that exact moment.

I stood there watching, paralyzed with my hand clutched onto the barred door. All I had to do was pull and the rodent would be free, a simple motion which could have redeemed my eyes from the horror of which it would further witness.

Even now I am still not sure what immiscible force had prevented me from doing just that... what omniscient being had made me slide the lock back into place. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Or perhaps it was just an acceptance of the fact that this was what had to be done, that I cared far more for Kevin's well-being than the life of a single mouse.

Maybe I was afraid of Kevin slipping out with it.

Kevin moved.

What followed reminded me of a scene from a nature show I had watched back when I was a child. It was one of those documentaries set in the great African plains - except it focused on the lives of the smaller, scavenging primates, rather than the lions and buffalo.

Their aggressive, territorial banter fascinated me to no end, but it was only during the climax of the show was I both truly captivated and disturbed at the same time. It was a scene in which one of the larger primates had gotten hold of a baby gazelle - a considerable upgrade from their usual diet of savanna birds and insects.

The beast tore open the gazelle's belly and was feeding off of it while it was still kicking. It paid no sympathy, clutching firmly onto the animal's leg like a drumstick while baring its blood stained teeth at other advancing primates.

Kevin's beak snapped open the rodent's skull.

I then realized it wasn't the brutality that had triggered this frame of reference but something far more unsettling.

There was no sound, not even a squeak that arose from the mouse during its mutilation, almost as if it had given up hope once placed into the cage. The gazelle was too young, too oblivious to the ideas of death that it too simply uttered not a sound as the primates tore into it. I recalled how it had tried to roll on its back, desperately trying to prevent its innards from spilling out the rupture across its belly, trying to ease the pain of the inevitable.

I averted my gaze, pretending to fumble with pens as the sickening soundtrack played in the background.

In the most part, it was now clear that Kevin was not, in fact, a bloodsucking worm.

I brought out another mouse and turned on the camera.