Fox and Serpent: Part 1, Eyes on your Screen (Patreon)

*A/N: Viewer discretion advised.  Strong language, scary  or uncomfortable situations, and themes of cyber-stalking ahead.*

The hum of the dual monitors droned softly, creating a dull hum in the soundproofed, darkened room.  Shadows danced as strobing lights occasionally thrummed on screen, dull, muted effects of simulated gunfire or explosions.  The video-game system's lights shone brightly beneath the left monitor, eager for the game to begin.  

It was not the looming presence of the one on screen however that had the air positively crackling with anticipation.  Tonight, a very different game would be played, and not one the unwitting players waiting in the lobby had any idea what they were in store for.  It was not them that were the guest of honor of tonight's hunt.  Not all of them: just one.

A headset lay on the counter, microphone muted for the moment.  Dull chattering came from the speakers, mostly just grainy male voices arguing, laughing, joking, or otherwise killing time till the match began.  A click of a door sounded from across the hall, light briefly spilling out from underneath the doorway to the gaming room, before it shut off.

Brayden returned to his seat from the bathroom, adjusting the string of his sweatpants around his slender hips, always seemingly ready to slip off at the slightest weight or motion.  He sniffed, rubbing at his sore nose, which was still swollen from being punched a few days ago.  It hurt even now, and the black eyes that stared back at him in the mirror, adding to his gaunt appearance, were even more ghastly in the dim radiance cast by his set-up.

He slipped the headset back onto his head of long, dark hair, combing the loose strands out of his freckled face.  He went to unmute the mic before stopping and remembering to turn on the voice modulator.  He had to be careful after all.  He'd been preparing for tonight for a while.  Dark eyes flashed across the name of his target, a crude and vulgar one if ever there could have existed one fitting enough to designate the scum who owned that tag: ToBVile.

"Hey guys," came the feminine voice through the microphone as he unmuted himself.  "Sorry that took so long."  It wasn't the best modulator but it was effective enough when paired with his already lighter, less stereotypically-masculine voice.  At least he didn't have to actually pitch his voice to sound feminine with this app.  It could be hard maintaining that kind of concentration when he was deep into a hunt.

A chorus of accepting male voices sounded back at him.  All of them were understanding and more than happy to hear 'her' come back.  All save one.  "Took you f*ing long enough," ToBVile uttered.  The swearing moderator bleeped out in the middle of his sentence but everyone who had been gaming in that chat tonight knew that it was working overtime every time that his microphone turned on.  "What, you had to change your tampon or some sh*?"

Disgusted comments resounded from the chat, all of which Vile laughed off darkly, calling them slurs and hateful things.  Only his high reputation and rank in the action-shooter game they were all playing had kept him in the party.  That and since 'she' was the one who set up the lobby, only 'she' had the power to boot him, despite many requests for 'her' to do so.

Brayden's eyes narrowed, trying not to let his blood rise too much as Vile continued to mock, belittle, and patronize every single person who dared to draw his ire.  His misogyny was so apparent that it practically oozed out of his in-game avatar.  Instead of rise to the comments, Brayden just laughed it off.  "Come on guys, don't we all want to just play the game?" 'she' asked.

Mutterings of assent came and Vile commented with "F*ing finally..."  As the matchmaking ended and the map began to load though, he seemed unable to spout off with at least one more.  "You're lucky you can f*ing play halfway decent, cu*, or I'd have bounced a while ago.  If this affects my league score, I'll skull-stomp you."

"Dude, f*ing lay off," came another player's voice, lilted by an Australian accent.  Dougie102 was a nice enough guy, and Brayden legitimately felt bad for fooling him by pretending to be a girl.  He would have been a great friend to have.  Maybe when this was over and he went back to his original channel, he could innocently look the guy up and strike up a real friendship then.

"Suck my D*," was Vile's eloquent response, alongside throaty chuckles.

The match wore on, everyone jumping, flying, and blazing their way across screen to take the objective before the other team could.  Then came the usual hunting through the abandoned buildings and streets, gunning one another down.  It was actually going well: although it was permeated with the constant yammering of Vile as he trash-talked, mocked, belittled, and swore at everyone.

Brayden tried to focus, but tonight was a special night.  He kept very close to ToBVile the entire match, pretending to watch his six and let him take most of the reputation, tags, and glory.  He complimented Vile's efforts in his usual, candid, well-spoken manner, which fed into Vile's delusion that people actually liked his vulgar attitude.  No one else liked it, and he felt horrible for these people having to be involved in this.  Still, this was all necessary.

When the match ended, about ten minutes later, everyone had undoubtedly had enough at last of Vile.  The other team logged off without a second thought, as did most of Brayden's team, but Dougie did at least stay to say goodnight.  Before Brayden could respond though, Vile of course jumped in with "Simping fa**.  Go j* off to your mom."  The real problem with Vile, other than everything, was also his lack of originality or thought into his insults.  It was every single stereotypical jibe that one might hear from anyone on a trolling forum.  Nothing he said was anything but stupid, toxic trash talk.

No one who didn't actually know Vile in real life would have ever tolerated it.  No one in real life really tolerated him either, but Vile had been born large and strong, and thus easily intimidated everyone around him.  Rumors that he scared even the police had abounded since middle school.  Brayden had believed none of them.

"Goodnight, Dougie!" Brayden told the player, feminine voice sounding cheerful and bright, two things that he himself had not been in a long time.  Hopefully, however, after tonight, that would all change.

The player icon vanished and suddenly it was just him and Vile in the lobby.  There was a long pause before the microphone hissed from what sounded like a drink being opened on the other end.  "F*ing losers, can't shoot for f*.  You actually a girl, b*?"

Faking a laugh that came out flirtatious over the mic, Brayden tried hard not to vomit.  "Well, yeah."

"Cuz your voice sounds weak as sh*.  Didn't want to call you out over the lobby over everyone else, but that's f*ing lame."  Such a gentleman.  "F*ing prove it."

"How do you want me to do that?" Brayden baited him.  He had the package all ready to go.  Tonight was a long time coming, and sweet justice would be served.

"Send me your SnapChat," Vile demanded.  "I wanna see if those tits are real."  Wow, really mods?  You seemed to be doing so well on the censoring.

"I don't know...I'm kinda tired.  It is late," he played it off innocently.

"F*ing do it, or I'll report and doxx you.  I got nothing else better to do.  I can scan for your IPS for fun, and find you for the raggedy little Fa* that you are unless you do what I say."  Wow, Vile was in his element.  Full on intimidation tactics over absolutely nothing.  Brayden was impressed he even knew what an IPS was.  Then again, Vile's real life antics had always been more insidious and meticulous than anyone might have given him credit for.  No one expected the hulking brute that he was to be halfway decent at hacking.

"Oh don't do that," Brayden whined.  "I really like my profile...I just started it."

"Then send me your SnapChat," was Vile's retort, sounding utterly pleased with himself.  "If you are a chick, then I deserve to see proof, carrying your ass all night like I did."

Entitled too.  This was going to be more fun than Brayden had first thought.  In all fairness, Vile was like the crowning jewel of his Hunting career as the cyber-sleuth of justice: Fox, almost the exact reason he had taken to this line of work.  All of it was done as if in preparation for the day he could take down the bully who had haunted his school hallways and even nightmares for so long.  Brayden had been one of the lucky ones though, receiving only physical abuse in the form of standard bullying from Vile's real life counterpart: Toby Fully.  It was for others' sake that he was here, to dispense online justice, for those who couldn't stand up for themselves.

"Ok...I'll do it," he muttered, pretending to cowe down beneath Vile's supposed threats.  In truth, there was no way that he could have been tracked, even by a halfway decent doxxer like Vile.  He had multiple securities inplace, pretty much a requirement when you went surfing on the deep web.

You could never be sure what you'd find out there, deep in cyberspace.  It was almost like swimming in the ocean.  Most people only ever dipped their toes in or occasionally put their head underneath the surface.  He'd heard stories of the true depths of how dark and twisted those undercurrents could be, the real shady nature of the dark web.

Sex traffickers.  Child abductions.  Online murder auctions.  Rumors at best, suspected truth at the least for some.  It didn't bear thinking about, and none of it was his domain.  He liked to Hunt scum like Vile, that was his purview of justice.  He'd have loved to truly dispense righteous punishment, but that could maybe wait till after college.

Just as he reached for the preprepared package of Fully's personal data to send and blackmail him into no longer bullying anyone ever again, however, the lights in his room abruptly flickered.  He blinked as the screens buzzed and went to static for a single second.  Then they went right back to normal.  He checked his securities, his power cord, his network connection.  All as they should have been.  That was bizarre.

"I'm F*ing waiting, b*!" declared Vile then from his ear.

"Sorry, power flicker," he explained.  He attached the data package to a file and sent it directly to Vile's player ID, which would of course be hooked up to an email and chat website.  "I hope you enjoy what you find on there~"

"I f*ing better..." Vile grunted.  There was a burst of static suddenly.  "What the..." came his voice.

"Something the matter?" Brayden asked, playing up the innocent angle as he prepared to unload hell on his longtime abuser.

"F*ing power flickered.  Bull Sh* wires..."  There was some scuffling and shuffling on the other end of the line.  Brayden prepared to switch over to his Hunting mode, shutting off all avenues of Vile being able to leave the lobby.  It took some skill to do so, remotely hacking into a system, and inserting his own code into the stream like a mild technical glitch.  He waited to pull the trigger, waiting for that moment of absolute shock to come across from Vile.  Finally...  "There's nothing here."

Wait what?

"Did you hear me B*?  There's nothing here.  You sent me a link but it ain't SnapChat.  It's just some stupid livestream with a blank screen.  What is this?"

Maybe he'd done it incorrectly.  He checked the outgoing package's status.  It said sent.  The file was correct.  "Are you sure?" he asked, trying to play this weirdness off.  "Just click on it."

"What you think I'm F*ing stupid?" Vile growled.  Well, yes.  "I ain't clicking on some unknown link.  I don't wanna get hacked."

"Click on it."

The words blazed through Brayden's headphones.  All at once, everything stopped.  The music in the background of the game cut off, as did the muted explosions.  Brayden's avatar still stood in place, holding its weapon and looking around, but it was now in total silence.  His stomach tightened on reflex although he had no idea what had just happened.

"What the..." he muttered.

"What the..." came Vile's voice, echoing him.  Even he sounded surprised.  "Did you just..."

"Click on it."

The voice came again, deep, gravelly, distorted so much that the words were almost hard to make out at first.  Then, ominously, the screens in front of Brayden flickered as before, and went dark.  His own surprised, unsettled face stared back at him for a moment, then the power returned.  Again, he and Vile were in the lobby.  But the music hadn't come back.

"Are you pulling some shit?" Vile demanded.  Unlike Brayden, he just sounded annoyed.

"No, I'm not," Brayden insisted.  Then he realized the modulator on his voice was crackling.  The feminine, slightly automated tone was staticky.  "I think something's wrong with our connection."

"Bullsh*," muttered Vile.  "Ain't no damn way."

The screen froze.  Mid-animation, the avatar stood there, unmoving, unseeing behind its skimask and goggles.  It was looking just over its shoulder.  Then...the words.

"Click on it," came the voice again.  This time, however, the word appeared on screen.  They were large, spiky, and bright red.  Red as blood.  They shone in Brayden's eyes.  The voice rattled around his ears, almost as if echoing in the room around him.  He felt cold all of a sudden, as if cold icy breath were ghosting past his ears and down the back of his neck, despite the thick hair and hoodie he had covering it.

"What the fuck..." Vile uttered, sounding much less confident than usual, and this time the censor didn't bleep out his words.  "What the actual fuck is going on?"

Brayden, however, didn't focus on his erstwhile prey.  He instead stared at the words still shining from the screen at him.  "Are...you seeing this?" he asked.

"The words, yeah, and what the fuck?  Why the fuck is this happening?"

Brayden's eyes strayed towards the link he himself had sent.  His hands twitched, mouse quivering beneath his trembling fingers.  "I...I think we're supposed to click on the link I sent?" he ventured.

"Hell no I'm n~," Vile started to say.

"Good boy..." the voice suddenly growled.  Dark, ominous, rolling laughter came through the headset then, setting chills all down Brayden's spine.  "At least one of you has some sense."  As before, the words on screen mirrored the spoken ones uttered by whatever voice was coming across to both him and seemingly Vile.

"I'm not gonna..." Vile muttered, sounding a even less confident now that it was confirmed that what he was seeing and hearing was exactly the same as Brayden's perception.

"Click on the link, Tobias Fully," the voice commanded.

Silence came from Vile's mic, followed then by.  "Wh-  How the-... How the fuck do you know my name?!"

"We know many things, Mr. Fully," the voice mocked him.  "Many things.  Things you've done."  Images and pictures flashed across screen, all too blurry and distorted to make out beyond vague human shapes.  "The people you've hurt."  Faces blurred across the screen, all moving too fast for anything or any one of them to be distinct enough to recognize.  Unless you knew them.  Like Brayden did.  Like Vile did.  "The ones you've broken, bullied, battered..."  The voice spoke slow and sinister, heavy modulators hissing like static mixed with a predatory rumble.  Each word was grated out like a heavy weight.  A final image crossed the screen: Vile's driver's license.

"What in the fucking..." Vile, Tobias aka Toby, uttered.  Then his tone turned accusing and superior again, his go-to reaction.  "You can't prove anything."

"Oh, but we can," chuckled the voice.  "We have proof of everything you've ever done.  We've been watching you, for a long time, Mr. Fully, we've watched you."

"Oh yeah, get a good show then?" Toby retorted.  "How's this look then?!"  He no doubt made some kind of rude gesture.

"We are not sure, Tobias Fully," again chortled that ungodly powerful, hungry-sounding voice.  "How does this look?"

The screen flickered and, before Brayden's very eyes, the avatar on screen turned slowly to face him.  It moved monotonously, almost like a robot, every motion stiff and unnatural, often jerking in tiny spasms as if not operating underneath any mode of coding that it was used to.  It's right hand lifted, shaking, and extended a fist.  The middle finger shot up like a rocket.  Then, in the bottom righthand corner of the screen, a square appeared.  In it appeared the brightly lit image of an all-too-familiar face, seated before a TV or computer in an illuminated living room.

Tobias stared at himself seemingly, fat, pudgy, achene and stubble-ridden face wide-eyed looking right back at him, and also at Brayden.  His hand was still lifted, flicking the screen off.

The laughter resounded through the speakers in his headset, almost numbingly loud, shivering through him and almost locking him entirely in place.  It was like being held by some dark, spectral hand, forced to sit there and watch.

"But we did not come here to exchange vulgarities and meaningless offensive gestures," it, the speaker continued.  As before, the words, blood red, almost dripping somehow with such dark intent behind them, scrawled across the still posing character on screen.  "We are here to divulge to you, Tobias Fully, your predicament, and how your life, up until this moment, has led you unerringly towards Us.  To the path of your destruction."

Fully licked his lips, for once his macho, confident, toxic persona shaken.  "My...destruction?" he mirrored.  "What the fuck are you talking about?"  His eyes flashed towards the corner where the player ID's were still visible.  "Are you seeing this shit too, bitch?"

"Y-yeah I a-," Brayden started to say but was cut off.

"Do not talk to them,' the voice harshly commanded.  "Your work has been sufficiently meddling as of late.  You dared to intrude upon our intended prey, to meddle in matters in which you had no place, to wander witless into the pen of predators who are superior to you as the bonfire is to a candle.  You burn brightly in your blissful seclusion and think you are fit to hunt the refuse of humanity, that your torch could light the way through the tumultuous terror which We shall sew?"

Ordinarily, Brayden might have refuted these words, but all of this was way more than he could ever have pulled off.  Voice modulating, hacking, stalling, using fear tactics, blasting personal information and knowledge of events that no outsider should have had access to?  All of that took time, effort, dedication.  He'd spent months accruing a fraction of what this...thing had.  The alliteration also was a nice touch.

"I'm...I'm sorry," he muttered.  "I just...I just wanted him to pay..."  Only now did he realize that his voice modulation was completely defunct, his own, normal speaking voice clearly audible.

"Pay?" growled Fully.  "Who the fuck are you to make me pay?  ...Brayden Reynard is that fucking you?!  I'm gonna beat the shit out of your faggoty ass for pretending to be a-!"

"Enough," commanded the voice.  Both boys fell quiet.  "Your vile vulgarity vexes us, Tobias Fully.  We are not here to contest, to compare, to combat your compatriot for his meddling in affairs where he does not belong.  For now, we attend to you."  The hissing voice slowed on this last line, grating out each word.

"Whatever, you doxing freak," Toby growled out, sufficiently distracted from the terror by the knowledge of Brayden's existence in the chat.  "What you're doing is illegal.  I'll have you reported.  You too, Gayden!"

Brayden growled at the old, not even clever moniker but the laughter cut him off again.  "Your misplaced masculine macho mannerisms amuse us much, Mr. Fully.  We appreciate seeing spirit and sport in our selected specimens, our sacrifices.  We have dealt with greater and lesser evil, and while your existence is as a blip to us, it is an existence nonetheless.  Be grateful that for all of your witless whining and wailing to establish your weak-minded identity, for all the pain and suffering you've caused, that someone finally took notice of you.  They determined that your evil, lesser, middling, or minor as it is, was worthy of damnation."

"Fuck you!" Tobias snapped out.  "You're just some faggoty ass modded voice and some special tricks!  I'm not scared of you!"  Then he sneered.  "I suggest you back the fuck off before I trace your IPN and come thrash you like the fucking nerd you are."

"Please, Mr. Fully," sighed the voice, now sounding bored.  "Your spirit is seemingly something in the face of what, who, we are.  We commend you on courage and childish confrontation as you are so adept in conveying, but tonight we are here.  Tonight, we are aware.  Tonight, Tobias Fully, we seek to fulfill the contract we were assigned."

"The...contract?" Tobias and Brayden uttered at the same time.  "You saying someone took a hit out on me?" the bully demanded.  "You some cyber-assassin or something?  Gonna threaten to link my personal data to the web or something?  Hack my accounts?  I ain't scared of you.  Who set you up to this?  What, that one bitch set you after me?  She pay well, motherfucker?  Hire you to 'teach me a lesson'?"

Give Tobias credit; he was too stupid, seemingly, to recognize the inherent air of danger lingering about him.

"We care not for the motives or means with which our contract was mediated.  We carefully observe any and all potential targets assigned to us.  In truth, while we do hunt occasionally for ourselves, your presence would nary have ever alerted our attentions to your presence, were it not for the permissions and purview of certain pleading parties."

Toby looked unconvinced, although particularly annoyed at being dismissed so eloquently by whoever, or whatever this thing was.  "Man, whatever," he grumbled.  "I'm done with this shit.  Hey, Gayden!" he shouted through the mic, diverting his attention from the soldier on his screen still flipping him off.  "I'll be seeing you at school, asshole.  I'll be making you talk pretty for real when I'm done..."

Even with the threat hanging over his head, Brayden couldn't even muster up a modicum of sass back at Tobias who was standing up from his chair.  His eyes remained glued to his feed, where, in the background of Fully's feed, the lights had just flickered.

"Did we say you could go?" the voice rasped, soft and gentle.  "By all means, Mr. Fully, if you desire immediate dissemination of everything vile and vicious about you, please do divert your eyes from the screen.  Look away, if you dare.  But if not...Keep your eyes on the screen...The show is about to begin."

Unable to stop himself, Brayden shouted, without any reason behind it as to why he'd ever try and help his abuser and longtime bully, "Fully, don't do it!"

Fully stiffened as the lights flickered more and more, flashing on and off rapidly, almost like a strobe effect.  His entire, burly body was stiff as a board, still half-raised out of his seat, but now standing stock-still and frozen, as if electrocuted.  The lights flashed off, on, off, on.  Then.  Out.  Fully jumped in place, eyes staring straight ahead at his screen.

"Click on the link," the creature told him.

Moving robotically, almost with no life at all to his motions, Fully reached for his mouse.  A deep sense of dread loomed inside of Brayden and he wanted to do something, anything, to stop the other boy from doing what the voice commanded him.  But he could no nothing.  He watched, silently, terrified, as Fully clicked on the link he had sent but someone, something, this thing, had appropriated and changed.

The lighting of Fully's display changed, growing darker before brightening up, but dimmer now.  With the illumination of his living room lights no longer in place, the only thing on Fully's side that cast any light at all was the brightly glowing monitor of his screen.  The lighting took on a dull red, like the words but infinitely brighter, casting the bully's face in its sinister, bloody glow.

His already dull eyes had become flat, unfocused, and fixated entirely on whatever he was seeing in front of him.  Behind him, crawling up his arms, along his shoulders, inching their way all over his dirty, sweat-stained shirt, were hundreds of black, wriggling, crawling things, like an army of demented centipedes.  They trembled like the video game characters had, spasming and vibrating as if caught in some bad glitch, slowly encompassing him in their grasp.

Then Brayden saw the eyes.  The burning, bright, luminescent eyes that blazed behind Fully.  Eyes in a face that was only scarcely describable as human.  The skin was polished, flat, almost metallic or skull-like, pursed on the cheeks and sunken in, making the shape of ridged cheekbones and a sharp, almost bladed chin stand out all the more.  The lips were tight, thin, stretching somehow over a mouth that both did not smile and did, the most terrible smile imaginable.  Jokeresque markings on the cheeks stretched it even further, all the way up, across that polished skull, to where the ears would have been.  A sharp-toothed, too-wide smile down at the prey before it.

A Glasgow Smile.

The face had no nose, no clearly defined nose anyway, just holes and ridges where a nose should have been.  A long crack distorted one side of the mask-like face, spider-webs of splinters extending from it, all beneath just one of those two, ominous, horrible eyes.  It wore nothing that he could see of it, towering over Fully unnaturally tall.  The only defining feature that resembled clothing was a tattered black hood, fraying and riddled with holes, that cast the majority of its ghastly features in shadow.

Then it spoke, audible now over both his headset...and Fully's microphone.  As it did, the eyes and mouth slit thrummed with the same evil lighting, although the mouth did not move.  "Don't look away from the screen, Mr. Fully.  See.  See the damage you've done.  The havoc and harm," it commanded as it continued to wrap Tobias up in its slithering, tightening grasp.  The twitching fragments had begun to solidify, trembling setting into some kind of rippling, roiling flesh, like giant fingers tightening around him, compressing him.  

No.  Not fingers.  Coils.  Coils like a snake.  A monstrous, human-faced, glowing-eyed snake.  Like an Anaconda, but somehow bigger, broader, darker.  Fully's muscles tightened on screen, as if he were being squeezed.  He still had not broken his unblinking stare at whatever was facing him, producing that same, horrible glow.  But now he did not stand so slack-jawed.  He looked...afraid.

Tobias Fully, ToBVile, was terrified.

"N-no..." Brayden heard him whimper, in a voice that no one would ever have expected he could utter.  "No...I didn't...I didn't mean to..."

"See their faces..." the Serpent told him.  "Face their fear, propagate their pain, relish in their rage...  See the monster you've called forth.  See us reflected in your own eyes as you took from them...As you took from her..."

"I...I don't...I don't wanna..." he whined and cried.  Actually cried, tears were streaming down his ugly cheeks.  "I d-didn't...I didn't know what else to do..."

"You hurt her..." it whispered softly, hissing now in what could only be the voice of a snake given the ability to speak, echoing a hundred times within itself.  Not male, not female, only malice, only fear manifest and hate and rage...and hunger.  "You don't like it when your prey fights back...so you chose the one who couldn't fight back at all...the victim who could not even scream for help..."

"Sh-she said she wanted it..." he blubbered, eyes beginning to tighten with the need to blink.  "Sh-she...she...she was such a...a...sl-"

The coils tightened and there was a sickly sounding crackling that came from Fully.  He gasped, eyes almost closing from the pain but remaining open at the last inch, never daring to look away from whatever he was being shown, or more rather subjected to.  "Speak the word you were about to utter and we will perform such perverse pleasures and pain upon your pitiful personage that your screams will resound in space and static!" the Serpent thundered.

"I'm sorry!" pleaded Tobias.  "I'm sorry!  I didn't mean it!  I'm so sorry..."  He began to bawl, tears leaking down his face even more.

"Relish this, your requiem of remorse, Tobias Fully," the Serpent hissed, growing calmer again.  "Flavor the feeding I intend to fulfill, the contract I must now consummate, consuming your craven corpse once the fetid flutters of your fear have finally driven what fetters of your feeble mind remain to total madness..."

"I don't...I don't want to die..." Fully moaned.  "Please...please show mercy...I'm so sorry..."

"Did you show them mercy...?" cooed the Serpent.  Then it shoved Toby's bawling face closer to the screen.  "Did you listen while they pleaded and pined for peace?  For respite?  For release from your ministrations of murderous, malicious, malefaction?  You took from them, so relish in their ragged outcries!  Hear their Screams and echo them for me!"

The Serpent's laughter echoed across the void and breadth of cyberspace to reach Brayden's ears, mixing with Toby's fearful, almost animalistic sounds of terror.  Over the headphones, Brayden heard the distant, muted sound of wailing, as if torn from the throats of dozens of lost, angry souls.  All of it coming from the screen Tobias had no choice but to stare into.

On and on it stretched, Brayden able to do nothing but look on in horror as the Serpent thing forced Tobias to somehow undergo all the years of bullying, taunting, abusing, and causing of pain that he had inflicted on so many others, too afraid to ever speak out or stop him.

"Hear hers the loudest..." It spoke then.  The voices quieted down, all save for one.  A girl's voice, groggy but clearly pleading, ordering, screaming in pain, begging whoever was hurting her to stop.  He knew that voice... Connie Jeckle...  She had dropped out of school after an infamously chaotic party had gone freakishly awry.  Rumors that she had been raped had circulated like wildfire and she had left shortly after.  Her entire family moved away, never to be seen again.  Connie had not been Brayden's friend, a harsh and often antagonistic girl that got by on her good looks and connections to the jocks, of whom Tobias was one.

"I'm sorry Connie..." Fully groaned, barely audible over his rasping, strained voice from how much he had been screaming and crying.  "I never should have touched you...I'm sorry...I'm so, so sorry..."  The screen darkened for a second, before it flashed bright again in Toby's eyes.  They went wide.  Disbelief, fear, sorrow.  "Connie no!"  There came the sound of something clicking...and the unmistakable bang of a gun.  The screen flashed bright for a second.

"Teresa Jeckle hired us, Tobias Fully," the voice continued.  "Hired us to find the one who caused her sister's suffering and silence the soulless wretch.  The price, negotiable, once proof of pursuit warranted was perceived permissible."

"I-I'll pay!" Toby pleaded then.  "I'll pay you!  Whatever she did!  I'll pay you more!"

"We want none of your pathetic human pauper papers.  Money and monetary means are meaningless to us.  What we want...has already been paid.  We have pursued...we have played...and now...we...will..."

That was when the screen finally went black.  Reflected in it was Toby's grief-stricken, terrorized face.  His dull eyes flicked up at the glow behind him, the eyes gazing down at him without pity, remorse, or anything approaching human empathy.  He turned from the screen to look over his shoulder at what was holding him.  He screamed again, his most terrified utterance yet.

"Feed," concluded the Serpent.  The steel-skinned mask, so barely resembling human features, split at that seam in the jaw, opening wider than a human mouth ever could have.  It stretched, vast and gaping, like the maw of some demonic leviathan.  No, not like a monster.  It was a monster.  Its fang-strewed jaw was so wide that it could have bitten off a human head in one gulp.

But before it could, Brayden lurched forward in his seat.  "Wait!" he pleaded, holding up his hand as if that somehow could stop what was unfolding before him.  And yet, somehow, the Serpent paused.  The mouth slowly inched shut again, tendons and strings of connecting, oily black flesh sewing those unmoving jaws tight once more.  "Please...wait..." he begged, not even sure why or what he was doing.

"You would attempt to save the life of this?" it demanded, gesturing without motion down at its prey which struggled feebly in its grasp.  "This thing?"

Despite all of my better judgement...  "I...I would...if only because...death is...the end."

"Define," it rasped harshly, obviously not pleased at the interruption.

Oh.  Well.  Didn't expect that to work.  "If...if you kill him, that's the end.  His suffering is over, but for everyone else it'll go on for years, maybe never stop.  He would never answer for his crimes.  None of his victims would ever know this is what happened to him."  He looked at Toby and tried to find some part of him that really cared.  He found...more than he wished he ever could have.  "Don't get me wrong.  I hate him.  He's caused so many people so much harm and grief, but even in my wildest dreams... I never would want..."  He looked warily up at the glowing eyes on the screen.  "...this."

The skull-like mask of metallic angles and sharp contours leaned in close, eye-for-eye matching Brayden's uncertain, terrified gaze.  "You desired to predate and prey upon this pustule of human putrefaction and pernicious perversion.   Is this not true?"

"It is..." he admitted.  "But...that's different than what you were going to do..."

"Our intent was to rid the world of such wanton waste and fulfill the fiscal finite form of our contract to do just so," came its gravely, echoing and genderless voice.  "What could you have done that would be better?"

"I didn't say my idea was better," he challenged, knowing he probably had a death wish of his own to talk back to an...entity like the Serpent.  In all realms of possibility, he never would have imagined this was possible.  Yet here he was, defending a bully and rapist from a cyber-stalking, man-eating spectral serpent boogeyman.  "But mine gave him the chance to...make something better of himself."

"His actions have taken the life of a girl and inflicted harm upon countless others.  Surely, you concede that cessation of this senseless course of conversation and returning to the causal climax of our evening would be the most logical."

Taking a deep breath, Brayden stared the Serpent dead in the eye.  Probably literally.  He could absolutely see a world, multiple ones, where it refused to listen to him, ate Toby, and then came after him for daring to contradict it.  "He should go to prison," he concluded.

Sinister laughter echoed all around them.  "Your corrupt system of law enforcement would do little to provide adequate means of punishment for Mr. Fully.  He would be released on 'good behavior' shortly into his sentence, however sequenced, and return to romping and ravaging."

"Look at the guy!" Brayden argued, gesturing down at the now catatonic Toby.  "You think he's ever going to recover from the nightmare you inflicted on him?"

Casting a glowing eye down at the boy in its coils, the Serpent pondered this.  "Perhaps not.  The stupor of our suspension of sentencing would most likely ne'er fade from his mind.  He will live tonight out, again and again, in terror.  Is that not a crueler fate than feeding our needs?"

Shaking his head, Brayden looked down and away from the screen then.  "...Call it my one concession into cruelty," he muttered.  Damn, now he was doing it!  "But somehow that feels like the more just punishment.  Send his crimes to the police and let him live the rest of his life regretting what he's done.  Purgatory has always sounded scarier to me than hell anyway."

There was a long pause, in which the Serpent seemingly did not either move or speak as it pondered.  Then, it looked to Toby still nearly passed out in its coils, and suddenly dropped him flat.  The boy collapsed onto the ground where he lay unresponsive.  "Very well, Brayden Reynard," it hissed.  Oh crud, it knew his name now.  That felt bad.  Very bad.  "Your efforts for the sake of humanity will not go unrecognized.  Realize, however, that reaping the rewards of your rueful crusade for the cause of the righteously indignant, only comes as you too have been this one's victim.  The contract has been fulfilled in that, by allowing your human authorities to handle this lesser lingering lice of lasciviousness, he will never see again the light of day.  Or at least, he shan't ever perceive it."

He swallowed hard.  "You...are more merciful than you first so claimed," he uttered, trying to sound suitably fancy to match the eloquence of the being he was negotiating with.

"Free us from your false fancies of frivolous fraternization.  You have gained nothing but our attention in this.  You have waded in waters wholly unwelcome to you, and in so doing, wakened the watchful gaze of We."  The eyes began to fade slowly from view, the darkness of Toby's room brightening once again.  "But know this..." came that ominous hiss, now only audible over his headphones.  "We will be observing you...should you ever again stray from the safety of shore, and slide once again into the sinister suspension of our supposed 'mercy'.  Take care in deep waters..."

And with that, the Serpent was gone.

He had just begun to let out a deep sigh of pent-up fear fading to relief when he felt it.  A whisper of cold air brushed the back of his neck just as his room's muted lights, other than his computer screen, momentarily dimmed.  Words began to bloom across the monitors in front of him and he hurriedly unplugged them, turning off the computer entirely.  The words flashed out of sight.  As did the computerized, 8-bit version of a small, pointy-eared canine creature with a long tail, paddling in deep water, just as it was swallowed up in dark coils and dragged down out of sight.

The chill that seeped into him turned into the echoes of still heard, lingering laughter, like the emanations from deep within a dark cave that never saw the light of day.  He had had enough time to distinctly make out the obvious shape of the animal before the screens had powered down.  A fox.  His cyber identity.  Fox.  He saw the words again, even though the screen was black and completely off.  Dark whispers came to his ear.

Eyes on your Screen.

*End of Part 1!

*Inspired by Lt. Lickme and the Watchers*