You (flash fiction)

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.