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immediately.This was weird. She’d dealt with some odd customers before, but this man was definitelysomething else. The way he acted was almost inhuman, and he was eating more food than she hadinitially believed to be physically possible. She just hoped there was a bucket nearby, in case he didat any point begin to regurgitate the food back up.But he didn’t. Instead, despite how hot the paninis still were, he finished them in record time, goingso far as to lick crumbs from his own hands.Mora’s mouth began to move, but no sound came out. “Um . . . Is there any way you’ll be payingfor that, sir?”“I’ll be paying?” he repeated. Then a laugh followed, a completely deranged chortle. All Moracould do was stare like an idiot. “Oh, if anyone will be paying, I assure you . . .” He leapt up ontothe counter in one perfect jump, “. . . it won’t be me.”The agile leap he’d performed sent her stumbling backwards in shock. She’d had one hand on thehandle of a knife with the plan to use that to defend herself, and another hand on her rape alarm,but said alarm scattered across the floor away from her with her fall, which left her with only theblade.And maybe she wouldn’t have been quite as terrifiedly uncertain of herself if the man in front ofher hadn’t begun to glitch.She could’ve sworn it hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. His skin had become translucentand blue, if only for a brief moment. She could see straight through his body to his skeleton as if hewas made of nothing.At her wide eyed expression, his grin broadened and became only more predatory, if that was evenpossible. “Oh, I am so hungry.”He made a dive at her again, but this time far faster than before, and with the intention of grabbingher and doing goodness knows what with her. Simply following her survival instincts, she duckedto the side as he reached for her, slamming her head against a lower shelf in the process.She could feel what was almost definitely a thin trickle of blood down her forehead, but she knewthat stopping to tend to that couldn’t possibly end well when she had such an imminent threatalready in front of her.As she stumbled up to her feet and began to run towards the door, he inhaled deeply, the scent ofthe air causing him to hum in content. Then he glanced back at her and grinned. That grin on itsown was enough to send shivers down her spine.Without a second thought, without making any attempt to stop herself to think rationally about hersituation, she sprinted out of the pub and down the street only a small stretch, before makingseveral hopefully misleading turns left, and then right, then left, left again, right again, and thenstraight ahead for a few more blocks.She was forced to a stop when she reached a dead end down an alleyway between two run-downshops. An engine, likely for a heating system in one of the buildings, whirred away nearby, butother than that and her heavy breathing, there was silence. The cold air bit at her exposed skin onher neck and face, while little puffs of condensation left her mouth.Footsteps. They were soft, quiet, but assertive somehow, enough to force her feet to turn her around

against her will.And there he was. She’d only been following the tiny scrap of hope that he wouldn’t be able to findher, but the fact that he had was far less than surprising. Now it was just the pair of them, and allshe had left to defend herself was a knife.“What do you want from me?” she demanded. She hated how small her voice felt. “Why do . . .what . . .?”“Can you hear it?” he murmured. Now that she had completely nowhere else to go, she froze onthe spot as he edged closer. “The drumming. Can’t you hear the drumming?” He closed his eyesand inhaled deeply. “I’m so hungry. Starving. I want meat, I want thick fresh juicy slabs of redmeat, gristle, blood, fatty chunks of meat.”A few teardrops gathered in her eyes, briefly blurring her vision entirely. Within the moment sheblinked hard in an attempt to clear her eyesight, she felt the weight of her body leave her feet andcome crashing down on her spine. She was trapped between the pavement and her own knifewhich had now been turned to point at her instead. The blade sat at her neck, already pressingdown hard enough to begin to break the skin.“Wait! Please!” She gasped for air, not daring to move. The harder his hand pushed against hercollarbone, and the more firm the knife became against her neck, the more difficult it became tobreathe. “If it’s food you want, or money, or shelter, or anything, I don’t care, j-just don’t hurtme!” she pleaded. “Please . . .”Her breath caught as a sudden force was pushed at the knife. She wasn’t sure if it had brokenthrough her skin or not, but presumed not judging by the fact that she was still alive, and conscious,and mostly breathing.Then he laughed again. That laugh, that hauntingly emotionless and cold laugh.And then it all stopped.For a second, it felt like everything had stopped, time itself. The man collapsed, his body becominglifeless without a single warning, and the knife fell somewhere to her side. Trembling, shepanickedly shoved his body aside and sat back against the opposite wall of the alleyway, her headresting against the damp, moss-covered bricks.With her sleeve, she quickly wiped away the little trace of blood on her forehead and, with a littlesigh of relief that she felt no injury on her neck, turned back to the body in front of her. He wascompletely still and, although she saw the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, that wasthe only visible sign of life left.Whatever that was, it wasn’t human. It had to have been, but it wasn’t. Regular people don’t glitchinto transparent skeleton creatures, and have the agility of vampires, and attempt to quite literallyeat peoples’ flesh.Now she had two options: leave the thing to quite possibly die and act like nothing ever happened,or follow through on the deal she’d proposed in a state of terror and take the injured thing back toher apartment . . . · · With a thud, his limp body fell rather unceremoniously onto the bed in the spare room. Thecurtains were still drawn, which she figured she’d leave that way. She hesitantly removed his shoes

and placed them on the floor and then felt at his neck for a pulse.There it was. A rhythmic thud.Or two.She quickly removed her hand from his neck. With a shake of her head, she convinced herself thatthat had just been a regular heartbeat at an odd angle. There was . . . always a small chance that hecould be human, that this homeless-looking, Harold Saxon-resembling guy could just be a regulardude on drugs. That could explain his ramblings, his deranged laughter, and his general madness.As she shuffled him further towards the center of the bed to prevent him from rolling off, shepaused as she reconsidered all of this. This man had attacked her in the street, hungry for . . . herflesh, apparently. So what was she doing? Wouldn’t the police have made more sense?But there had been something genuinely desperate in his eyes. Behind that predatory danger, she’dnever seen someone so tired, starving, and weak in her life. It was similar to how she imagined astarving lion would act in the path of a gazelle.The only difference was that any sane gazelle would steer clear of the starving lion at all costs.Mora glanced back at the knife that was now laying discarded on the floor. Still, if this bizarre planshe’d thought up at the last minute were to backfire, she had an option that could save her life.She very reluctantly stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. Her hand lingered onthe door handle, but after a few seconds, with a barely determined look, she let it go and strodetowards the front door. · · The moment she stepped in, she dropped her shopping bags, her eyes wide and her jaw slack. “Iwas gone for 30 minutes!”All of the cupboard doors in her kitchenette had been flung open, yet the shelves were barren.Empty food packets, ranging from bags of pasta to sauce and flavour packets, and even the paperdish of a frozen lasagna, were strewn across every surface and all over the floor.And in the center of all of this mess was none other than the man himself. He leaned against theisland with a large pot of raspberry yogurt, which he was in the process of drinking down as if itwas water. Part of her wondered whether she should show him where the cutlery drawer waslocated.“Yeah,” he agreed. It was the first time she’d actually heard him talk at a regular tone. He lickedthe yogurt from around his mouth. “You were.”She spluttered a few incoherent syllables. “Couldn’t you just wait? I bought you three chickens andfour large steaks, and I’m pretty sure Tesco wouldn’t bother to give me a refund on all that!”“Literally no one asked you to do that,” he reminded her cruelly.Without giving her a chance to react, he took the shopping bags she’d dropped and began to unpackthem in what remained of the kitchen, although he only managed to remove one item beforedevouring the steak in his hands like an absolute animal.“So . . .” She slowly took off her coat and hung it up by the door. “For as long as you’re eating

something that isn’t the flesh straight off of my bones, I’m safe . . . right?”Between bites, he replied with a scoff. “Please, if I wanted you dead now, you’d be gone. Well, notcompletely gone. Just the bones left. Oh, I’d have that succulent meat all to myself, all of that flesh,soft red meat –”“Keep eating your steak,” she interrupted him quickly. To her mild surprise, once the distraction ofthe thought of . . . eating her . . . was removed, he got straight back to his food without an issue.She cautiously walked towards the island on the opposite side to him and picked up a bag of steakflavoured crisps, in which there were only a few measly crumbs remaining. “Who are you?”At her question, he briefly paused, smirked a little, and then continued to eat.She raised an eyebrow at his wordless response. “I just don’t get it. You look like Harold Saxon.Scratch that, you are Harold Saxon. You must be. And I keep seeing your skeleton. Like, throughyour skin, and trust me, that’s a lot more unsettling than it sounds. You’re not human. London’shad alien encounters before, so it’s not impossible. You want to eat me. And you're in myapartment. Eating an entire steak from Tesco that’s supposed to serve 3.”“Technically you brought me here,” he corrected her. “Why?”“Why?” she repeated him. “. . . Hey, I’m not the one on trial here!”He laughed at that, but while his tone of voice had earlier changed to something far less venomous,his laugh certainly hadn’t. But it took her a moment to realise that his mouth wasn’t even moving.The noise was in her own head. Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw were flashing images ofhis face, his laugh, all barely comprehensible. She forced her hands over her ears and squeezed hereyes closed, but nothing seemed to allow her to be free from that face. That laugh.The laughter increased in volume further and further, louder and louder, closer and closer –“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!”With a sensation that was akin to the feeling of something being torn away from her brain itself, itstopped. She found herself pressed up against the cold floor, with her dark brown hair in alldirections and her glasses lopsided. Her lungs heaved for air, her stomach churning, desperate toempty its contents.When she finally managed to properly raise her head herself and look up at him, he wasexpressionlessly watching her. What remained of his food had been left on the counter.She grimaced as she sat up. “Just eat your chicken,” she muttered, “you alien bastard, and don’tmake me regret helping you.”Interestingly, he didn't hesitate to do as she requested. There was something strange going on, butshe had a feeling there was a lot more she wasn’t understanding . . .“The chicken was alright, Mora,” he commented like some kind of professional food critic as hewiped his gravy-covered hands with a tea towel. “Maybe a little on the overcooked side, and rathertoo seasoned for my palette –”“Hold on,” she interjected. “. . . What did you just call me?”“It says so on that little nametag on your apron. Why? Not a fan?” he asked her with a mockingpout. “I could have used an array of other words to refer to you. Many come to mind after you

knocked me out in that alleyway –”“No no no,” she cut in. “Hold on. I didn't “knock you out”. You passed out in the alleyway. Youjust fell on top of me like a ragdoll with the weight of an elephant. I had to wriggle out fromunderneath you.”He rolled his eyes. “Details. Anyway, I was so certain that you preferred the name Mora to Amore,but I suppose Amore will have to do.” Leaving her too stunned to speak, he began to walk back tothe spare bedroom with the only remaining chicken but, as he walked past her, he murmured in herear, “Next time you have guests around, I highly suggest keeping letters with your full legal nameout of reach.”Mora watched him leave until the door closed behind him. She pinched the bridge of her nose andshut her eyes.“What the fuck have I done?”Chapter End NotesSo chapter two. Okay. I know, I know, maybe Mora’s actions don’t make any sense toyou (I agree, she’s completely irrational), but I never said she was going to beparticularly bright, or good under pressure, or any kind of positive role model, here toteach you a valuable life lesson about friendship and harmony . She just wants to dowhat’s right, and needless to say, you can tell that it’s not something she’s too good atwithout putting herself in the direct path of danger.Also, I just love the thought of the Master absolutely sticking around a human andsharing an apartment, not because he needs to or feels like being nice, but for the solepurpose of being an absolute domestic pain in the arse.And things in this don’t make sense. I’ve left some details ambiguous, some behaviourunexplained, some events unknown. But let’s be honest, what kind of story would thisbe if I answered every mystery and question immediately as I went? There’s more tothis than meets the eye . . . if that’s even possible. You'll just have to wait and see.Anyway, thank you for reading, stay safe, and ily lots!

The Master RaceChapter NotesSee the end of the chapter for notesNeedless to say, sleeping wasn’t an easy feat that night. She’d gone to bed at around 10, ensuringher bedroom door was locked before she slept, but with an absolute psychopath living on theopposite side of the wall, rest wasn’t exactly going to come easy. No matter how much she tossedand turned, and opened her window for some fresh air, and turned on her air purifier, and bundledherself in blankets, and took some flu medication, nothing quite seemed to do the trick tosufficiently allow her to relax.That was what led her to that moment in time. She was sitting in front of the TV in the living roomwearing her pyjamas, with a dressing gown to keep her warm, and fluffy socks since her floors hadno carpets and had a habit of becoming unnecessarily cold during the night. Her legs were gatheredup beneath her on the sofa, and the remote in her hand. The screen was so bright that it completelylit up the otherwise pitch black room.“. . . And back to the disappearances that have been reported across West London over the last 3days. Already 27 people have been found dead, all of whom were bizarrely discovered as nothingbut a clean skeleton. Warning: Some viewers may find these images disturbing.”“Ooh, yikes.”Mora had known that he was there, but she’d attempted not to acknowledge him in the faint hopethat he’d leave her alone. But no, instead he was perched on the armrest beside her like a childawake from a nightmare.“You know, my mum texted me this morning,” she told him. “She told me to stay away fromtrouble . . . And yet somehow I feel like I’ve gone and done the opposite.”“Nothing wrong with a bit of trouble to spice up your life every once in a while,” he replied with ashrug. “Actually, that wasn’t supposed to come out so sexual –”“Who are you?” she demanded.He rolled his eyes. “Boring you, am I? Well, Miss Calabrese, since you asked so rudely, my name . . is The Master.”A long pause followed. Clearly he’d expected a reaction far greater. All he received in responsewas a condescending pat on his knee as she got up to leave, leaving the TV still on and the remotein her place.“Your god complex is like nothing I’ve seen in my life,” she responded quietly. · · The next day, Mora found herself at work for longer than she’d initially planned. However,regardless of how busy she found herself, especially with the growing number of customers asChristmas quickly approached, the fact that ‘The Master’, as he’d called himself, had vanishedwithout a trace just that morning honestly unnerved her. However, she may not have known him

well, but she certainly did know him well enough to realise that he wouldn’t be leavingpermanently, especially if she was providing him with as much food as he fancied. Still, that didnothing to ease her nerves.At around 6 that evening, she arrived back at her apartment with as much KFC as she could buywithout gaining weird looks, and some groceries to top up her empty cupboards again. However,the moment she stepped in, the takeout food was taken straight out of her hands and to the kitchen.She yelped in surprise, this time resisting the urge to drop everything she was holding. “Where didyou go?” she questioned. “You vanished this morning!”“Aw.” He pulled a mockingly soft face at her again, rummaging through the KFC bag andeventually pulling out a party bucket. “Did you miss me? Oh Amore, how sweet.”“Next time, give me some warning if you’re going to vanish into thin air and show up again hourslater,” she snapped. “It’s common courtesy. And call me Mora."By the time she’d joined him at the island, over half of the bucket of chicken was already gone,with a growing pile of bones on the side. “Uh-oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “Someone looksangry.”“Not today,” she grumbled in irritation. She swiped a small portion of fries from the bag for herselfbefore they could all be eaten. “I have questions, and if you don’t want me to kick you out of thisapartment right now, you’ll answer them.”Again, the corners of his lips turned up into a slight smirk. For once, he actually placed his fooddown like a sane person and waited until his mouth was empty to reply. “Go on then,” he urged herjovially. He rested his face in his hands with his elbows on the table. “Quiz me!”“Who are you?” she asked him.“The Master.”“No, I mean what’s your name?”“I am The Master, although you may just call me Master.”“What are you?”“Ooh, racist, and here I thought you humans were getting more progressive,” he quipped. “I am aTime Lord.”“So not human?”“Nope.”“And why should I believe you?”“Because I have no reason to lie to you. You’re already aware of the fact that I’m extra-terrestrial,and this Earth rock or whatever is far from homely.”“Last note,” she added, narrowing her eyes. “Why do you look so much like Harold Saxon? Howcan you be him?"He stared at her for a few seconds. His mouth began to form a grin. He laughed. And then helaughed some more. And within the space of a fraction of a min

Lovable Sadist Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/36292291. Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive .