#sorry I forgot the Harringrove aspect of it lmao

[runraerun]

story prompt: Harringrove featuring demon!Billy ??

Thank you so much for the submission, Anon!🙏

Now, admittedly, this was for a different creature!Billy (won’t spoil it), but he’s not not a demon here sooo… 👀 10 points for whoever guesses what the hell Billy is here.

Rating: T | Word Count: 1.2k | Tags: Creature!Billy, Spooky!Billy, Max Mayfield POV.

Warning: graphic depictions of the eating of raw meat. 🥩

⬇️⬇️⬇️ Ficlet under the cut! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

There’s something wrong with Billy.

Max has known it ever since she was forced to live under the same roof as him and his Dad—her step-dad, now, she thinks bitterly. Max and her mom were doing just fine before Neil came skulking around, darkening their doorway every weekend. Max’s dad had finally gone, and her Mom was apartment hunting to get their own place, to get their fresh start. ‘Just us girls’, she said.

So much for that... Now Max is stuck living in the house with two creepy strangers who hogged all the hot water and never let her watch anything on TV that she wanted to.

And there was something very wrong with Billy.

Max had tried to telling Mom as much, but once Susan Mayfeild got her mind set on something, there was nothing anyone could do to talk her out of it. She only saw what she wanted.

What did her dad used to call it? Scales over her eyes. Like they talked about in the bible. She didn’t want to see any red flags with the Hargrove’s, so she didn’t. It was as simple as that.

But Max knows what she saw. Knows what she heard.

It was the middle of the night when the sounds woke her up. Shuffling noises, then thumping, like someone was moving furniture down the hallway, not caring if they nicked the paint off of the walls as they went.

At first, she had ignored it. The Hargrove’s house had been full of weird noises—full of weird people too. So Max had written it off. Maybe Neil or her mom had needed to use the bathroom, or maybe Billy was sneaking back into the house after a night of partying. Nothing that had anything to do with Max.

But the noises continued, only now it wasn’t something she could have simply explained away.

It was… growling sounds. Or moaning, maybe. Like an animal in pain.

Neither the Mayfield’s nor the Hargrove’s had pets—their lives were all too tumultuous.

‘It’s no life for an animal, Maxine.’ Her mother had timidly explained to her when Max had asked for a puppy.

She bit her tongue before she could spit back, ‘but it’s okay for your daughter?’

But despite the distinct lack of pets in the house, the growling noises had continued.

Max had thought maybe something had broken in, like a stray dog? Maybe one that had been injured, and needed a place to lay low for the night, lick its wounds. The poor thing, she had naively thought.

So she hadn’t stopped to think twice before she had swung her legs over the side of her bed and tip-toed her way towards her door. When she reached it, she pressed an ear to the frame, straining to hear.

She could hear the distraught, wild sounding growls, along with desperate huffs of air, like whatever it was had been suffocating.

Max hadn’t been sure what kind of dog made sounds like those, but it sounded big.

She cracked the door open. Thought briefly about going down the hall to get her Mom, but her Mom had never been an animal lover… she would probably end up chasing the dog off, leaving it to find some porch to crawl under and die.

So she had set out on her own, following the sounds, padding towards the kitchen on bare feet, careful to not make a sound.

That’s when she’d seen him.

Billy.

Her new step-brother, hunched over with his back toward her, outlined by the sharp, singular light from inside of the refrigerator.

He had been shaking, moaning, like he was in pain—as if Billy was a hair’s breadth away from tearing out of his sweat-covered skin at any moment. She remembers how his shoulders curled in, and how he kept his hands held in front of him, blocked from Max’s view.

The sounds Billy made that night didn’t sound human. They sounded guttural, deep, like something that could carry long distances. The hairs at the back of Max’s neck stood on end after a particularly long, mournful sounding bellow.

Something dropped by Billy’s socked feet. A rectangular tray of some kind. Then more snorting, wet sounds, followed by panting, like whatever Billy’s shoveling into his mouth can’t get down his gullet fast enough. His movements were panicked that night—she’d thought he was going to make himself sick if he didn’t slow down. And then another tray dropped, this one facing upward, and the shine of the plastic wrap made it obvious what it was. Her eyes had widened in horror, and she felt her blood run cold in her veins.

It was the ground beef. The packets Neil had brought home in bulk earlier in the week. ‘For hamburgers.’ He’d said, when Susan questioned why he’d bought so damn much. As if it answered the question.

But Billy was tearing through the packages, sucking back the red, bloody meat. Moaning as he cleaned off a tray, licking the blood that’s pooled at the bottom of the styrofoam, then letting it drop to the floor before he moved onto the next.

Billy growled as he tore into the newest package, loud enough that it shocked Max into jumping backwards, her back smacking against the wall behind her.

Shit shit shit—

Her heart jackrabbited in her chest as her step-brother went stone still. Inhumanly still.

The moment had stretched on for long enough that she had begun to feel light headed. Max had realized at that moment that she hadn’t been breathing the entire time she had been watching Billy. When she finally sucked back a trembling gasp, it felt as though her lungs were on fire.

Slowly, Billy had turned to her. He didn’t look right. His eyes in that light—they looked black. And his face.. Billy’s face is a mess—covered in red, raw chunks of meat with an expression so blank that for a split second Max wondered if it was all just an intensely fucked up sleep walking episode.

They stood, staring at one another. Neither one of them blinked. It had felt like the entire world had just… stopped.

“Go to bed, Maxine.” A voice that sounded like Billy’s ordered her. But it was more than Billy’s voice, she knew. It was like a dozen voices compressed into one, all speaking in harmony, save for a few delayed whispers. It was terrifying.

Normally, she would have pushed back against Billy’s stupid orders. He wasn't in charge of her, he was nothing to her—but that night, she felt the weight of his words. She felt compelled to obey.

She scrambled back down the hallway, never turning her back on Billy, keeping her eyes pinned on his dark, looming shadow. Maybe it was the fear, or maybe it was the trick of the light—her eyes playing tricks on her—but for a split second, right before she slammed her bedroom door, Max could have sworn Billy’s eyes had glowed.

She locked her door, then dragged her dresser in front of it to serve as a barricade, just to be sure. She didn’t sleep the rest of that night, replaying the image of Billy curled in on himself, frantically stuffing his mouth full of raw meat, like he would die if he didn’t get it into him quick enough—replaying the sounds that had come from somewhere deep within his chest.

Max didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, about what mess her mother had foolishly gotten them into… no, the only thing she knew for certain was this:

There was something very wrong with Billy.

—

Make me write more today!