Bred for

The deadbolt is unlocked from the outside and the bell above the gas station door explodes into frantic noise behind me. I spin instinctively toward the entrance just as the door slams inward hard enough to rattle the windows in their frames. A man steps inside, at least I think he is a man.

He is enormous, bald, and built with the thick unnatural proportions of something bred for **** and born into it. Animal fur hangs across his shoulders over filthy leather clothing darkened with sweat and old stains. His skin looks pale and stretched too tightly across his skull beneath the flickering fluorescent lights.

One eye drifts slightly away from center while the other fixes directly onto me the moment he enters the station. The man who steps through the gas station door does not look around the room when he enters. He does not hesitate. He does not react to the wreckage scattered across the floor or the weak fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.

His pale eyes lock onto me immediately with the cold mechanical focus of something following a path it already knows by heart. The sight of him drains the remaining warmth straight out of my body. He never speaks, not a greeting nor a threat. He does not make a sound beyond the heavy rhythm of his breathing and boots crossing the floor.

The silence somehow makes him worse. Human beings talk. Human beings shout, curse, threaten, or laugh. This thing just keeps coming forward with the calm certainty of a machine carrying out a task, and the moment I see him, I know exactly who he is, Pluto.

My body reacts before my brain catches up. I grab the nearest glass soda bottle from the counter and hurl it at his head with everything I have left. The bottle explodes against his temple in a spray of cola and shattered glass. Pluto barely reacts. He simply keeps walking.

Fear crashes through me hard enough to almost lock my legs completely, but instinct finally takes over and I run deeper into the station toward the back storage hallway. My bare feet slam across dirty tile while shelves rattle around me.

Behind me, Pluto simply walks through the aisles. Metal shelving crashes sideways as his shoulders plow directly through snack displays and hanging racks. Bags of chips burst across the floor beneath his boots. Glass bottles shatter against the walls. The entire station seems too small to contain him.

I grab a rusted display stand near the hallway entrance and shove it backward into him as hard as I can. The metal rack slams into his chest. Pluto catches it with one hand and throws it aside without slowing down.

I reach the storage room and slam the door shut behind me just as his full weight crashes against it from the other side. The hinges scream violently, and then the door bursts inward entirely. I barely dodge aside before it flies past me into the shelves behind.

Pluto steps through the broken doorway calmly, emotionlessly, like none of this requires effort. I grab the first thing within reach, a heavy metal flashlight sitting on a shelf, and swing it directly into the side of his skull with both hands. The crack echoes through the room. His head turns slightly from the impact, then slowly turns back toward me.

No anger crosses Pluto’s face after the flashlight cracks against the side of his skull. No pain either. His expression remains completely flat beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights while a thin line of blood slowly runs down the side of his bald scalp. The absence of reaction terrifies me more than if he had screamed.

For one impossible second it feels like I just swung at a concrete wall pretending to be human. I stumble backward instinctively, my pulse hammering hard enough to blur my vision, and that is the exact moment Pluto suddenly lunges at me with terrifying speed.

His hand catches the straps of my overalls before I can reach the rear exit, and the **** of the grab jerks me completely off my feet. He throws me sideways across the storage room hard enough that I crash through a stack of plastic milk crates.

Pain detonates through my ribs and shoulder. I **** myself upright anyway and drive my bare heel directly into his knee the second he reaches for me again. The impact lands hard enough to buckle a normal leg sideways. Pluto does not even stumble.

I grab a glass bottle from the fallen shelf and smash it against the edge of a metal counter before slashing the broken neck toward his throat. His hand closes around my wrist instantly. The attack stops cold inches from his neck. For one horrifying second I realize he has not even started breathing hard yet.

I scream and claw at his face with my free hand while driving my knee repeatedly into his stomach and ribs. My nails tear bloody tracks across his scalp and cheek. Pluto absorbs all of it without reaction. Then he lifts me completely off the ground and hurls me backward into the storage shelves hard enough to collapse them beneath me.

Cans and boxes rain down across my body while the entire room spins violently around me. I barely manage to crawl upright before he reaches me again. This time his hand closes around my waist. I slam my elbow into the side of his head. Then again. Then again. Nothing changes.