Let me paint the picture for you.
You are heading home,
walking alone down a cul-de-sac, the dark outlines of the trees shadowing the rows
of houses, as if projections secreted into fell solidity by the darkness. The moon is haloed in a clutch of
diaphanous vapour, suspended in the firmament like a crystal ball held in the
pale bony death-hand of the night.
Your
footsteps echo out before you like lost words in the halls of judgement, the
lonely reverberations of wolf-song. Suddenly your skin creeps, as if picking up a signal through the darkness, as if your flesh
is folding up along the scaffolding of your bones, breaking in violent waves of skin
and fat and nerves, rippling in the memoried fix of sensation.
You
feel you are being watched. You’re sure of it, in fact, as if a pair of eyes
are burning in the back of your skull. You recognise that your footsteps are
now twinned with the faint pitter-patter of another’s. Your heart drums loudly
in your chest, like a prisoner beating on the casing of your ribs, prying them
loose.
As you
come to the close of the cul-de-sac, approaching the yellow glow of the
lamp-lit alley, the footsteps quicken. You stop, breathing shallowly, the presence lingering behind you. A cold
hand reaches out steadily and grips your shoulder. You turn sharply, the hand recoiling, and the shape shrinks back. You
don’t recognise the face, and it doesn’t recognise yours. A scream rises to the
top of its throat. But you cut it off just short of its forming that
primordial shrill.
You are
the monster in this story.
