Of all the days in Red White’s life, surely this was the worst. Even worse than, perhaps, the time his boss devoured one of his stooges for an untimely delivery. It was grotesque and hard to top in the category of ‘days one would rather not relive’. However, cannibalism was the way of the wendigo, and it was hard to move up the corporate ladder without witnessing the CEO feast on the flesh of others. No. This was surely worse than even that.
The young man stood at the top of a stairwell, staring down at the now mangled corpse of a recently departed old lady of which Red had startled and subsequently led to her early grave. As if unintentional manslaughter wasn’t enough, his very purpose for being in the home was of criminal intent. Grisha, big boss man and CEO himself, sent him on what was to be a quick and simple job.
“Just steal the family jewels, dipshit. You can’t possibly fuck that up.”
Grisha, however, was so, so very wrong. Red wasn’t known as the bad luck boy for nothing, and it did not stop there; the small list of misfortune in his newly titled ‘worst day ever’ was amassing quite a few bullet points. Some of the most prevalent consisting of him having lost his legitimate day job, being on thin ice with Grisha himself, and his treehouse becoming infested with termites -- which wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself were he not living out of it. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, the witness who had entered the house just in time to catch Red’s tango with the elderly woman. Opposite of Red, and beside the lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs, stood resident thorn in CEO’s side, Seere Arva.
Red’s eyes clearly begged with Seere to keep this dirty little secret between the two of them, but Seere didn’t seem to notice or care. Seere didn’t often react in ways that one would expect, and definitely didn’t make it easy to read his thoughts or predict his actions. This was making Red very nervous, as he continued to stare and plead with his eyes, unable to actually move a muscle.
Seere looked down at the body, back up at Red, back down at the body, and back up again at Red. His stoic expression sending waves of anxiety through the unfortunate young man at the top of the stairs.
Finally, he spoke, in a monotonous manner of which he was known for, “Well lather my hamster and shave it for charity, you murdered a grandma. You’re a goddamn grandma murderer. Them’s some messed up beans you’re bakin’, Ruby.”
He then immediately turned on his heel and headed out of the house, leaving behind a very disoriented Red. His face contorted with confusion for a few moments trying to figure out what exactly had just transpired between the two of them, still frozen in place. However, when he realized that Seere was likely on his way to turn in the freshly birthed murderer, Red bolted down the stairs after him.
Red yelled after him in hopes he might hear before he’d left the property, “Seere!” but he dare not scream it outside of grandma’s house, lest a passerby were to hear it and decide to inspect the source.
Looking outside of the door, Seere was nowhere to be found in the immediate vicinity much to Red’s dismay. His panic was all consuming at this point, leaving him to make irrational decisions, such as instead chasing after Seere and leaving behind the dead body.
Although he couldn’t see which direction he disappeared in, Red had an idea as to where Seere might run off to. He hoped that he could catch up with him before he told anyone about what had happened. An eyewitness was worse than the actual body, afterall. Grisha was in the business of murder, and that was the least of Red’s worries. Grisha’s ire, however, was at the forefront. A whistleblower was all Red needed to be the next meal lined up for the wendigo.