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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CapnMarvelous on 2024-11-07 01:41:36+00:00.

Part 1

The longer you’re in a strange situation, the more your brain just numbs itself to the insanity of it. It was strange at first, waking up to sometimes see Rocky at the foot of my bed. His appearance was sporadic. He’d appear and disappear as he saw fit. The longest I recall him being gone was about a month and a half. I almost thought he had left for good. Maybe he went to heaven? Then he came back, as if nothing had changed.

After a time, it became weirder when Rocky wasn’t around. I’d still see spirits, now and again, but I hadn’t seen anything like Rocky since he came into my life. I kept him a secret from my parents. Coupled with everything that had happened, I thought I was an adult now at six and too old for an “imaginary friend”. It’s laughable what children think maturity is and to my younger self’s credit, Rocky wasn’t imaginary.

At the beginning, I merely tried to introduce him to my hobbies and interests. It was through this way that I found Rocky couldn’t see electronics that well. He could make out movies, video games and TV shows, but he told me they were often muted and filled with static. When I tried to introduce him to video games, he just didn’t comprehend it. “A show that you play. It doesn’t make sense,”. Board games he seemed to respond better to, though I’d have to read the rules and explain them.

It was a friday night that I finally asked about him, alone in my room when I should have been sleeping. Mom and Dad din’t know, plus my door was locked. “Where do you come from?” It was a simple enough question, open-ended.

“I was like you.”

“You were a person?”

I flipped a card for Rocky. Pass go. I’d move his piece for him and place the money in front of him, though he didn’t seem particularly interested. Rocky just seemed to enjoy being treated like a person as opposed to…whatever he was.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember your life?”

“I was a…person. I don’t remember much of the before time. I remember that I was a…soldier. Yes. I did things. I killed people.”

My brow furrowed as I flipped my own card. Go directly to jail. Gross. I moved my piece. “Is that why you’re how you are?”

Rocky craned his head to better look at my eyes. He liked to make eye contact, even though he had none. “It is a rule I found out about the after. When you kill, when you take a life personally, you become more like me.”

I stared at him. It was a heavy topic for a child, much more so with the frankness he presented it with. “How do you know?”

“I’ve found others like me. I can smell when its close. When someone is close to dying. The smell…what’s your favorite food?”

I moved his piece but I did so half-heartedly. My attention was elsewhere. “I like pizza with onions.”

“Imagine that. But you haven’t eaten in years. Imagine the smell. The aroma. So close. So delicious.” It was the first time I ever saw two slits open on Rocky’s face, just above that mouth, a wheezing inhalation sound. “You couldn’t understand it. How hungry you get. How you’ll do -anything- for it.”

My mind had finally linked what had happened with Mr. Raymonds. “…But you only chase after bad people, right? Was Mr. Raymonds a bad person actually?”

Another wheezing. This one, however, was more of a laugh. “No. I don’t know. I don’t care. I simply need it.”

I frowned. That wasn’t a good answer. It was cruel and callous, even to a child. “But you should only chase after bad people.”

“Life and the after don’t care about such things.” Rocky’s gaze locked harder with mine. “Look at me. Understand me; Fairness. Justice. Morality. They do not exist. When you are in the after, you do what you need. You fight. You thrash. You eat. You survive. Because that is all there is here.”

It was times like this, looking back, I don’t think Rocky truly grasped how young I was. I don’t think he had known such words would bounce off a child’s head. I only remember them now because of what would come after. “What if you just…didn’t?” I’d ask, rolling my dice. Not out of jail.

Rocky wheeze-laughed again. His head tilted further down, twisting his neck until he was almost looking at me upsidedown. “I need to eat. I need to.”

“But—”

“You know so little of this world. You know so little of my own. One day, you will understand.”

The room felt just a bit colder. I stared back at the board, playing my game which at this point was me moving pieces while he watched.

“Where do you go when I’m away?” I asked.

“I search to fill the void.”

“And…uh…what fills the void?”

“Do not ask questions that we both know the answer to.”

We’d continue our game in silence after that, me moving pieces, just trying to enjoy myself. But the question lingered. Did it really take him that long to live? Was that his equivalent of chores? I didn’t know. Looking back, I should have shooed him off then and there. But I didn’t. I wanted to try and “help” Rocky. Whatever that meant. Maybe if he saw how I lived my life, he’d have a change of heart?

“Do you want to come to school with me?” I asked.

A confused look, the tapping of knife-like fingers. “I could.”

“It’ll be fun if you do.”

“…I will do this. I will see how things have changed since I was in your world.”

I wish there was more to talk about. More hints, more things, but that was the thing about Rocky. He was an observer. A guardian angel, if you believe he was pure. A malevolent curse, if you don’t. It was rather unnerving how normal that school day was. He didn’t comment or say anything, he merely watched. The expression never changed: Passive confusion. An alien on the outside, watching acts and rituals. Nothing seemed to click. It finally occurred to me that…maybe Rocky was too far gone? Maybe Rocky had just let his mind wander away from what it meant to be like us? To be human?

The one brief note was that as we were walking to lunch, Rocky stopped. I didn’t say anything and kept walking but he seemed to be drawn to another classroom. My school went from kindergarten to eighth grade, Rocky focused entirely on a history class watching what I think was a war movie. His head tilted to the side, breaking away from me as he went to look through the window.

Rocky would rejoin me later after lunch. It was during recess now and I was distracted playing kickball. Rocky followed me, watching children play, as I guarded the outfield. “Did you see something that you remembered?” I asked in a hushed whisper.

“Yes. Maybe. Possibly.”

“What was it?”

“A far away place. Blood. Fire. Noise. Hate fo—”

Rocky stopped what he was saying. Those slits on his face where his nose would be opened up, drinking the air of the after in deeply. A low, gutteral groan rippled from his throat, his words stopped. Every muscle on his body flexed, growing taut, his fingers writhing as he smelt something. “Rocky?” I whispered, confused.

He didn’t respond to me. I don’t think he even knew who I was. He dropped to all fours and began to sprint. It was exactly as I saw him when Mr. Raymond died; a wild, charging behemoth. The worst part of it all was how silent he was. That silence made it easy for me to hear the braying of something in the distance. The direction of which Rocky had begun sprinting towards. It was feasting time.

“IDIOT! THE BALL!”

I was so distracted that I hadn’t noticed that the kickball had landed in my field, tumbling toward the direction Rockey had gone. Morbid curiosity overcame me as I saw it roll where he had gone, his mountainous form hunched over…something. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll get it,” I called out, rushing to follow it. When others weren’t looking, I’d subtly nudge it toward the treeline. Our school was on the very edge of a forest, with no fence to stop children. An oversight from the pre-millenium, to be sure.

The ball tumbled down into the forest’s edge, just close enough to where Rocky was. I could finally see it then. The scene before me. It was the first time I had seen Rocky actually doing what he did as opposed to hearing from afar. In the physical world, I saw a dead body for the first time. A deer, freshly deceased. Nothing that would scare someone, unless they’d never seen a dead body before.

The spirit world, on the other hand, was a different story.

The blue “body” of the spirit was torn apart. I would have never considered such a sight could exist in the realm beyond life, yet here it was. The deer wasn’t a deer anymore, having been rended apart with a brutal savagry my young mind could have never comprehended. Limbs sent in all directions, the body torn asunder. Yet there was a…softness to it. Already, that gore began to evaporate, disappearing from the world around it.

And there, hunched over the spiritual carcass, was Rocky. Shoveling pieces of of it into his blender maw, completely ignoring me. Gore shot out from his mouth, anything that wouldn’t feed him staining the ground. Claws tore apart what remained, getting pieces that could fit. He gorged himself on whatever he could, ignoring me watching. Did he not care? Did he want me to watch? Or was that hunger so all-consuming that he couldn’t be bothered to think about anything other than eating?

“Dude, what’s taking so long!?” one of my classmates called out, running up to me. “…Woah, is that a dead deer!? GROSS!”

It was right then that I collapsed.

I got to go home early after that. The guidance counselor recommended some time …

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