Cat Hunter: Origins

## Cat Hunter: Origins by Trashy-Blaze

Moving out can be an exciting experience for children. However, that is not always the case for parents, as they are the ones responsible to make sure everything is accounted for. It’s a stressful experience overall. This was the case of Rodrigo and his parents: after living their entire lives in Chile, they were getting ready to move out to the United States of America. When his parents had told him that they were moving out to a different country, Rodrigo couldn’t stop beaming and screaming about all the new friends he was going to make. Yet, at the same time, the kid had to understand that he wouldn’t be able to visit his friends in Chile anymore. Rodrigo, only six at the time, had finished his preschool education and had to say goodbye to all his friends.

Rodrigo’s father, Gabriel Ortiz, was the most excited and nervous about the situation, as he was the reason they were moving out. Gabriel had been a PDI (Policía de Investigaciones de Chile) agent for over ten years, specifically, and had always been obessessed with murder cases. His biggest dream was to solve a considerable number of cases to make a name of himself. This obsession caused him to be distant from his family some days, but Rodrigo didn’t mind; he admired his dad and looked up to him since his old man was making a difference out there and protecting people from harm by finding criminals. Gabriel would sometimes take his son to places where crimes had long since been committed and told him tales about the investigations. The kid was always thrilled to hear them, as his dad made himself sound like a hero. But to the adult, Chile was too small with few cases (not to mention the poor quality of PDI agents and police), so day after day of trying to convince Fernanda Rojas, his wife and Rodrigo’s mom, to move to the United States so he could have a chance on the FBI, she finally gave in.

The flight to the US was eternal to the adults, but not to Rodrigo who had never been in a plane before. His light brown eyes lit up every time he looked out the window, every noise caught his attention and he wouldn’t stop pestering his parents about how cool (and scary) the plane was. But as hours passed, the kid grew bored and he only had his doll to entertain himself. Rodrigo and his doll were inseparable: his mother had made it for him as Rodrigo’s request to give his cat-like imaginary friend a physical form of sorts. After arriving in the US, everything went smoothly for the family. They already had a place to rent in Burlington, Vermont, and both adults had looked into jobs for themselves and schools for Rodrigo.

Rodrigo’s first years of school there were complicated: he had to get used to a new culture and a language he wasn’t an expert in (he knew a little, enough to understand a few things, thanks to his mom and dad who were fluent in English). Some kids made fun of his accent, while others were thrilled to hear swear words in another language. He managed to make new friends somewhat quickly and that’s all he cared about. After four years, the family finally got their American citizenship. Fernanda was able to work as an English teacher at a local school and Gabriel was finally able to apply to the FBI. After passing all the tests, Rodrigo’s dad was part of the FBI as an Special Agent (at last!), which meant he was going to be distant from his family once more.

Two years went by and Rodrigo, now twelve, was tired of his dad neglecting him. Gabriel no longer took him to crime scenes, nor spent time with him in general. His dad was now obsessed with strange, unsolved murder cases which were mostly commited around the woods. The cases had long since been dropped, as there was never enough evidence to keep the investigations going. Gabriel shouldn’t be looking into those cases; if his superiors found out about it he would surely face terrible consequences. Rodrigo accidentally stumbled upon one of the confidential files one day, his eyes lingered in one of the pictures inside: it showed a person who had an “O” with an “X” on top of it on their shoulders. The picture was blurry, but the symbols were clear as water. Gabriel walked into his son, and after having a talk with his kid, Gabriel revealed to Rodrigo that he had access to these cases with the help of two other colleagues who also wanted to solve them. Rodrigo was asked to not speak a word to anyone about it, so he kept silent.

A few months later, Rodrigo woke up at 3am after hearing his dad talking on the phone about a new case: his colleagues had found a lead for one of the cases. The kid immediately perked up at the conversation and, after grabbing his doll, sneaked to his father’s car which had been left unlocked (for keeping other’s safety, his dad surely forgot about his own sometimes). Rodrigo hid behind one of the seats and waited for his dad, he couldn’t believe he was finally going to see his dad in action for the first time! His dad finally made it to the car, started it up and they were off.

After about 15 minutes, they arrived at the outskirts of the city: an area surrounded by miles and miles of woods. Once his father got out of the car (this time he locked all doors), Rodrigo looked out the window. The kid could see what appeared to be an abandoned cabin and two other people. Maybe those were his dad’s colleagues? The adults seemed to talk for a little before going into the structure. "Should we stay in the car? I really wanna go look!" Rodrigo asked his doll. The cat creature stared at him blankly. The doll’s features were suddenly darkened by a looming shadow, Rodrigo looked up and it took every muscle in him not to scream. Outside the window and staring right at him was a masked person. Rodrigo tried to jump to the front seat to honk the car horn, but as he did, the masked person broke the back window and grabbed Rodrigo by his legs. In an instant the kid was being dragged outside, the leftover glass stabbing slightly into his hands as he tried to hold onto the door. Rodrigo was too stunned to scream, he was holding his doll for dear life while the masked person tossed him to the ground.

"Why would a kid be here?" The person exhaled, desperation in their voice. "Are you with them? Did they leave you out here as bait?" Now that Rodrigo had a better view of the person, they looked to be wearing mostly dark clothes and a pair of bloody metal claws on each hand. Their mask was black with a few white accents. The masked person was pulling their hair and muttering to themselves frantically. "What am I going to do they weren’t supposed to find this place I’ve nowhere else to go oh no they are going to find too much info *he* will be mad at me what am I to dooooo’". Rodrigo stared at the person and seeing as they were distracted, he got up and bolted towards the cabin. However, the kid didn’t get too far as the masked person grabbed and tugged on their arm, throwing him onto the ground again. "Will you stop distracting me!? I’m trying to think how to get out of this one without pissing *him* off! Oh what will *he* say… if I could only give *him* something so he could protect me-" The masked person stopped their dialogue abruptly and slowly turned their head towards Rodrigo. There was a shift in the person’s energy "A child." They giggled. "He loves *kids*. Once I take you to *him* he’ll surely protect me from those bastards and keep my place safe!' Without another word, the masked person roughly grabbed Rodrigo’s leg, metal claws digging into the kid’s flesh, and started running into the woods, dragging the kid behind them. Rodrigo’s shock finally wore off enough for him to scream as loud as his lungs would let him.

"Oh would you SHUT your yap! You’ll alert them!" The masked person’s eyes fell on Rodrigo’s doll and, curious about the little plush, they forcefully yanked it from the kid’s shaky grasp. The action caused one of the claws to tear through the doll’s face and, with newfound strength, Rodrigo started to kick his legs hard enough that the masked person let him go. The person threw themselves over Rodrigo, pinning him to the ground and digging one of their clawed fingers into the kid’s left wrist. "Come with me or something worse is going to happen to you! You’re my only way out of th-". Rodrigo screamed as a shot was heard.

Then, everything went silent. Not a single sound was heard in the vastness of the woods. The masked person looked at Rodrigo one last time and, grinning behind their mask, dropped lifeless on top of the kid. The blood pouring from the person’s chest drenched Rodrigo’s clothes. The kid couldn’t handle it anymore, his consciousness leaving him. Before passing out, he saw a strange, tall figure in the distance. When Rodrigo woke up he was in a hospital bed, he could see his parents outside the room arguing. How did he get here? A sharp pain on his left wrist made him wince and vivid memories started to flood his brain. Rodrigo started screaming and crying, his parents came rushing into the room and held their son close. Everything was fine, he was OK. He was safe.

Or that is what he thought. After the incident, Rodrigo was diagnosed with PTSD and wouldn’t speak a word to anyone. He shut down completely; the kid stopped studying for school, he started eating less and less, he didn’t want to hang out with his friends nor spend time with his parents. His father wouldn’t stop blaming himself for the mental state of his son, if he only had locked the car in the first place none of this would have happened. "No," objected Fernanda, "If you weren’t obsessed with those stupid cases our son wouldn’t be dealing with this." Gabriel knew his wife was right, but the cases meant so much to him. If no one else was going to solve them then it was up to him, right? Gabriel took a glance at his son lying in bed, eyes red and puffy from crying, face void of any emotion and decided it was time to spend more time with his family. Fernanda sewed back together Rodrigo’s doll and the kid wouldn’t let it go, he didn’t even let his parents get close to it anymore. Wherever he went, the doll was there with him; it helped him calm down, it became his comfort object.

After a while of their son not showing any signs of stability, Rodrigo’s parents decided to take him to therapy. No progress was made during the first couple of weeks, until Rodrigo finally started opening up and taking in the advice and words from his therapist. After two years, Rodrigo, now a teen, was acting somewhat normal. The color came back to his face, he started eating again and hanging out with his friends. His grades and his relationship with his parents also started to improve, however, it was an unspoken rule that his dad's job couldn’t be brought into the table as it triggered Rodrigo’s PTSD. One thing remained unchanging: the teen’s doll. It was always there with him, being a family trip or a walk with his friends, Rodrigo would not leave his doll alone at home. Other than that, everything went on fairly normal… until a few months later.

Rodrigo started experiencing strange events and his family would find itself caught up in them sometimes. Some events were as mundane as the power going out for a couple of minutes or static affecting digital devices, which ended up in Fernanda calling their energy suppliers and them assuring the family nothing was wrong, leaving the family utterly confused. Some other events were on the scarier side and only happened to Rodrigo; shadows in the hallway or in the corner of every room, creepy whispering coming from behind him and a vision that would haunt his dreams most nights: a tall, faceless figure slowly making its way towards him. The other event also only happened to Rodrigo and involved physical pain: his cut from the incident would sometimes burn and Rodrigo could have sworn that it changed shape every now and then. It wasn’t until one day after quite a bit of pain that he realized his cut had indeed changed into an ‘X’ shape.

Due to the recurring nightmares featuring the creature and the incident, Rodrigo was too scared to sleep and developed insomnia. His old friends back in Chile would chat with him every day and keep him in touch with events happening back in the Latin American country as a way of distraction. Despite the recurring events, Rodrigo tried his best to keep on with his life as normally as he could, never telling his parents about what he was personally experiencing. Once he graduated highschool, Rodrigo decided studying wasn’t for him anymore and chose to find a job instead. After finding a part time job, Rodrigo decided he had to leave the nest soon: he didn’t want to be a bother for his parents anymore. At the age of 20, Rodrigo ended up moving out with two of his friends and it was the first time in years that he had felt everything was going to turn out fine.

That was until a Saturday evening when he was going back home from work. A sudden sharp pain on his left wrist made him drop to his knees, his heart skipped a beat as panic flooded over him. The pain was much stronger than all the other times his cut had hurt in the past. Rodrigo ran back home as fast as his legs let him. Once there he checked if his roommates were home, thankfully they weren’t, and he sprinted to the bathroom. The man finally took a look at his wrist: the cut from the incident, once a mere white scar on his tanned skin, was now an angry red. A head splitting headache forced him to lean on the sink, he glanced up to the mirror: he was sweating bullets, his messy hair sticking to his forehead and his nose had started bleeding. Nausea overcame him and he had the sudden urge to vomit. Kneeling in front of the toilet, all that would come out of his mouth was blood. Rodrigo’s ears started ringing and he could have sworn there was a voice in his brain, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then, everything went black. Rodrigo didn’t know for how long he was out, but it couldn’t have been too much as his friends were still not home. The young man took another glance at his wrist and, to his shock, the cut was no longer an ‘X’; it now had an ‘O’ over it, forming the symbol he had seen so many years ago.

Everything went downhill from there. His PTSD started acting up every day, his insomnia got worse, he holed himself in his room and wouldn’t talk to anyone again. To make things worse, the events involving visions and voices got stronger and became hallucinations: the voice Rodrigo had heard that day was back, but it still sounded distant, and whenever he glanced outside he could see the tall figure from his nightmares standing in the distance, staring right back at him. The man didn’t know what to do, his friends were extremely worried and wanted to contact his parents, but Rodrigo opposed it. They couldn’t know, they mustn't, especially his dad. If his dad found out about the symbol on his wrist the old man would definitely connect him to the crimes. Rodrigo made the attempt to keep on with life as if nothing wrong was going on. This went on for a couple of months until one night when he heard the voice in his head again, this time clear as water.

"**Get up. You’ve too much to do to be lazing around.**" The raspy voice commanded him.

"Who… who is there? Stop fucking with my head and show yourself!" Demanded Rodrigo in a fit of courage.

"**Outside**." Outside? Rodrigo looked out his window and, surely, there was the tall figure staring at him. "This is just another nightmare. You aren’t real, none of this is real. Please leave me alone."

"**Oh, Rodrigo, this is very much real. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened nine years ago.**" Rodrigo blinked and, as if on cue, the figure was no longer outside. The man turned around and a tentacle-like appendage wrapped itself around his mouth to keep him from screaming. Rodrigo looked up, the creature in front of him couldn’t be human: there were no features on its face, it was unbelievably tall as it had to slouch to fit in the room and, was it wearing a black suit? Why would that creature need to wear a-

"**You are confused. Your questions will be answered later, right now I need you to do me a favor."** A favor? There was no way in hell he was going to do this creature a favor. "**You have no say in the matter. You will do it.**" Suddenly, Rodrigo’s body went limp, but he was still standing. His legs started moving on their own. What the *fuck* was going on!? As he walked outside, the creature kept talking to him inside his head.

"**Your wrist. One of mine marked you long ago. They thought that by offering you to me I would protect them from your father and his colleagues. They could’ve killed you and ran back to me, yet they decided to put all their burdens on you.**"

Wait, what? So, the masked person from back then was working for this thing? Did that mean that the symbol was related to the creature? Rodrigo walked on empty streets, he wasn’t sure where the creature was taking him until the streets became more and more familiar.

**"Don’t think I’m delighted by what your father did to my Proxy. They were my most loyal servant, and I’ve been in need of a new one since."**

Rodrigo stopped in front of a two story house.

"**Here’s what I need you to do. I need you to kill Gabriel. He’s been collecting information on my Proxies for years now as you can probably tell and, even with the lack of clues, he won’t stop.**"

…His father.

"**I need you to go in there, kill him and bring me all his work.**"

*The creature wanted him to kill his father.*

"**The case files are in his desk drawers. The rest of the information is safely kept on his laptop. If you manage to do that just fine, I’ll have mercy on you.**"

Rodrigo walked to the house’s front door, controlled like a mere puppet. He used his keys and opened the door. Once inside, he finally regained control of his legs. Rodrigo thought about bolting through the door, but the thought alone made his head split from pain. The creature would not let him off of this. He made his way to his dad’s office and turned on his old man’s laptop. As the old piece of scrap started up, Rodrigo began rummaging around the drawers and, soon enough, found the files the creature told him about. The laptop was finally ready, without thinking about it Rodrigo typed in the password —the year he was born— and looked for any important folders. Surely enough, he found one folder titled ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ which was protected by a password. The hall’s floorboard creaked.

"Rodrigo? What are you doing here so late?" Rodrigo’s father asked. "Why are you on my laptop, did you need to use it? You could have called…" The old man glanced at the folders now on top of the desk. "What are you doing with those…?"

"**The bottom right drawer.**", called the voice in his head, "**There’s a gun there. Kill him.**" Rodrigo’s body started moving on its own once again, his hands getting hold of the gun.

"Dad please just-! Just go upstairs, okay? Please just go." Rodrigo took aim at his father. Tears threatening to fall.

"Rodrigo,.". Gabriel gave a step towards his son, "Please put down the weapon. It’s OK, we can talk about this. You don’t know what you’re doing-"

"PLEASE DAD. I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS. JUST GO UPSTAIRS!" Rodrigo shouted. His dad was taken aback, but made no motion to leave the room. The creature’s voice was still commanding him in his head: "**What are you waiting for, shoot. Pull the trigger.**" Rodrigo had free movement of his fingers, and just like that fateful day, not a single sound could be heard.

The gun fell to the floor. No shot was fired. Rodrigo’s hesitation made the creature take care of the problem by itself. In front of him, the tall creature was strangling his father to death with his tentacles. ‘Stop! You’re going to kill him! STOP!’ Rodrigo cried out as he ran towards the creature and his father. ‘TAKE ME INSTEAD, DON’T HURT HIM!’ The young man took hold of the creature’s tentacles and pulled, trying to get them off his dad whose breaths were dying out quickly. The hall’s light suddenly turned on and a shriek was heard.

"Gabriel!" shouted Rodrigo’s mother. All the shouting and crying had woken her up. Rodrigo glanced at her and then back at his dad and, to his shock, the creature was no longer there. His hands were tightly wrapped around his dad’s neck. Rodrigo let go of his dad and the lifeless body fell to the floor. The young man could feel his heart beating a mile per second, the start of a panic attack forming. Had… Had he done that? Rodrigo’s body moved on its own again, he sprinted back to the desk and clutched the files and the laptop. He took a last glance at his mom who was crying on the floor holding her husband close while looking at Rodrigo with confusion in her eyes. The young man sprinted out of the house.

After running for a while, Rodrigo realized the creature had taken him back to the cabin from the incident. He fell to the ground panting and out of breath, the tears in his eyes finally falling.

"**You left a witness. You must go back there and-"** The creature was cut off.

"NO! I am *not* hurting my mother. *You* are *not* hurting her! I’ll do anything, just don’t hurt her please!" Seeing the desperate state the human was in, the creature took hold of one of his shoulders with one of its tentacles.

"**I was here to take you with me, although I’m surprised you’re so eager to comply.**" The creature said in a mocking tone and then presented Rodrigo with his doll. Where did it get that from? Had he taken the doll with him? "**It reminds me of you.**", commented the creature. "**Broken and alone, waiting for someone to protect it, to save it from the sorry predicament it found itself in."**

Rodrigo held his doll tightly and looked back at the city. This time, he followed the creature into the woods at his own will.