There was another sound, or at least a kind of sense of movement, somewhere to the side. Xavi tried to look towards it and managed only to flop his head to the side, letting any remaining tension go from his neck. The movement made his brain thud inside his skull, leaving him with a pulsing pain that only seemed to continue and grow. He could see something. Someone.
No, not someone. What the hell was that? Not a person, but person-shaped.
A mannequin. Faceless and blank, though almost staring down at him from where it was propped up against the wall nearby. The wall of his own home. It shouldn’t have been there.
He couldn’t make sense of it. A mannequin with no eyes could not come to life and attack him. And yet…
Fumbling to the side, Xavi managed to move his arms but not his legs, finding them heavy and unresponsive. He tried to make a sound, a kind of scream really, but all that came out was a mumble he could not control. A sound with no words, no purpose. Something hot and wet slid across the back of his head as he used his arms to push himself a little, away from the mannequin. Away from that blank face. Away from the threat that maybe, maybe, this had been the thing that attacked him.
It took all his strength to push himself backwards on his fingertips, but he looked at the mannequin and saw that it looked like it was just as close as it had been before.
Xavi tried to make a noise again, to shout for help, but only that mumble came out, that broken noise that made no sense.
Something blocked his light; he blinked to bring it into focus, trying to fight against the overwhelming sound of the television, the brightness of the lights, the heat of whatever it was on the back of his head spreading down his shoulders and back against his cold skin. A face. This time with no body.
A mannequin with no face, a face with no body.
Some kind of pair.
But no, the face was attached to a body after all, to an arm holding something, something he blinked at to try and see, but it was moving too fast, moving towards his face –
Xavi saw nothing, and his last thought escaped him like a sigh, gone on the wind before he could finish grasping hold of it.