Revelation

Logically, Blanco knew he was the one growing, but it still felt like the walls of the room were shrinking in around him. Every living creature grew, from the mice that nested within the walls to the worms that turned into beetles under the floorboards. According to his books, even humans had grown, starting as squirming little bald larvae before finding their bipedalism and learning to communicate. He was fascinated by their growth pattern and wished he could've studied one in real life. A pipe dream of course, even if humans were still alive the chance of one appearing in his room was slim to none. It had been a human room once, but anything he read about them said that humans used these places for shelter, none of them ever seemed to stay in here all the time. Not even humans lived like he did. 

He had been hunched over one of his books one day, using the scarce daylight to read before he was forced to turn the human light on, when he heard something moving outside. He stood up, knowing mother hated when he stayed sitting when she came in. She much preferred when he greeted her properly, anything else felt like he was being ungrateful. He had followed his routine so mechanically that he was facing the door by the time he heard the voices. He froze. There were at least three different voices speaking to each other in hushed tones outside of his door. The board in front of his door began to move, hesitantly like they weren't sure what they were doing. He retreated to the back of the room, flattening himself against the wall as his heart pounded so hard he felt it might burst from his chest. He had heard movement outside before, but for the first time something was trying to get in. He had no idea how to defend himself against the monstrosities mother had told him about, just that they were to be avoided, the entire point of him being stuck in this room his whole life. The board finally fell away and the door swung open.

Three sets of small gleaming eyes shone out of bulky, short snouted faces. Each of the intruders had horns over their eyes, different colours for each of them. A Carnotaurus, Blanco thought, like him, like the ones he'd seen and read about in the books mother brought him. They looked around the room, not stepping inside yet as they scanned the surroundings, squinting into the dark. Finally, one made eye contact with him and gasped.

"Oh! A Carno!" she said, her voice breathy with surprise. The other two followed her gaze and saw him, equally shocked at finding him in there. It calmed him for some reason, knowing they weren't breaking in specifically to kill him.

"What was she doing in here?" the smaller male asked curiously, more to himself than to Blanco or his other siblings.

"Hello there," the larger male greeted slowly, enunciating his words like Blanco might find him difficult to understand, something that inexplicably rankled him, "Do you live here?" The feathered Carno took a moment to respond, so unused to conversing with anyone who wasn't the human in the television or his mother. 

"I- yes I do," he answered simply, settling on the most basic response.

"Ah, we're sorry to intrude," the smaller male apologised, "We were following our mother and trying to figure out where she goes off to."

"We were too small to catch up with her before but now we're on our own she didn't even realise we were tracking her," the female said proudly. Blanco stayed quiet, letting the information set in and spin through the gears in his head. 

"I live here on my own but my mother visits me twice a day. She told me to never go outside because of the monsters out there, they would kill me," he explained, careful to keep his tone neutral. The three Carnos looked confused and moved further into the room.

"Monsters? It's dangerous out here sometimes but I've never seen a monster, have you?" the larger male asked his siblings.

"I haven't," the female admitted, "But... but maybe she wasn't lying, we haven't been in this area before, there could be monsters here?" She couldn't keep the question out of her voice and Blanco felt something dark settle in his stomach.

"My mother is the same colour as you three," he said calmly, "but she has feathers." The three Carnos exchanged nervous looks.

"Our mother looks like us but with feathers," the smaller male said eventually. Blanco nodded like it all made sense, even as his head spun and his stomach threatened to expel its contents. He became aware of how the other three were looking at him, and he wanted to shove them through the door and close it behind them.

"You should go, I don't know when she'll be back," he settled on saying instead. The way the three Carnos hurried to follow his advice just solidified his suspicions, it mirrored the way he had hurried to get to his feet when he thought mother was at the door. He returned to the frayed blankets he used as a bed and looked back down to the open pages of his book. The light was fading quickly and when the door closed he couldn't read the words at all. He stayed staring straight ahead at it nevertheless, thinking alone in the dark.

---

"Did you go outside?" Her first question was immediately accusatory.

"No, someone else came in," Blanco responded, still laying on his bed and pretending to read his book. She was quiet for a moment. "Three of them. They looked a lot like you," he added, letting his words settle in the silence.

"I- what did they say?" she asked, stuttering for what may have been the first time he'd ever heard her do so. 

"Enough," he replied, "Enough for me to know." She was silent again. When she opened her mouth to speak again, Blanco struck. He had no idea what he was doing, really, but he lunged and sunk his teeth into the underside of her throat. She couldn't even scream with how hard he clamped down, just squirmed and struggled against his grip. He was weak, he could feel it in the way she overpowered his ambush so easily, but he had inflicted enough damage in that one strike. She pulled away from him, blood soaking the pale pink feathers of her neck and dripping onto the floor and seeping through the wood. She opened her mouth like she was about to scream at him, but only a ragged wheeze came out. He could see the whites of her eyes as she began to panic, realising she wasn't drawing any air in as she tried to breathe. She tried to lunge at him but her slow movements were easily telegraphed and he stood aside, letting her fall straight onto the ground. She didn't rise again, kicking her legs and struggling until a deep rattling sound came from her mouth and she moved no more.

Blanco looked down at his mother's body, waiting for some kind of emotion to hit him. Fear, grief, anger, nausea even, nothing came to him as he watched the blood continue to pool outwards. He looked over his shoulder instead, at the door mother had left open in her rage. The sun was setting, only letting a scarce amount of light through. He followed the light like it was pulling him along on a line, like it was luring him outside. He had expected to feel something as he crossed the threshold for the first time in his life, but like when he killed his mother, he felt nothing. It was perfectly unremarkable. He looked back to the room where he had spent the last ten years and felt the urge to go back. Not to hide, not to mourn his mother, but to retrieve his books, his video, his blankets. He forced himself to turn away, assured himself that more were waiting for him outside, and took a step forward.