Creature

     The naked figure crouches low to the ground as though trying to hide in the short stubble of the freshly harvested wheat field. Her hot steamy breath wafts out in a white mist between lightly parted lips as she exhales gently into the chill fall air. The crisp coolness of the night envelopes her body in a silky blanket of frigid darkness.

Alone in the center of the field, she rises up from her crouched position on the ground to her full height. Pale face reaching for the sky, she watches as the moon dances out from behind a bank of slowly roiling clouds to bathe her in its eerie white glow. A cold breeze tickles across her bare back, making her shiver, catching her long flowing ebony hair and teasing it up into the air like the swirling skirts of a dancing lady.

From a far distance her form is breathtaking, surreal beauty as you would expect it to appear in a nymph or a fairy that you just discovered, real and in the flesh. Glimpses of pale flesh through a cloak of thick shiny black hair that trail down to her knees teases with a promise of what this creature might look like up close; an exquisite being that has just walked flesh and blood out of the mists of myths and legends.

That is, if someone were present to witness this creature from a distance far enough to leave details to the imagination only.

Up close her appearance is different. Very different.

All alone in the field, not so much as a field mouse dared to invade on her solitude. Even the crickets would not have made a sound had they not been already slumbering from the cold.

Turning slowly like a broken carousel, wobbling slightly, face to the sky, she raises her arms like elegant featherless wings as she turns. Barely moving, she turns slowly, silently, ethereally. Turning and turning in one spot, ever so slowly quickening her pace. Faster and faster she turns, spinning like a slowly winding up top.

Faster and faster she turns, trampling the wheat stubble beneath her feet to a flattened nest. Faster and faster she turns, dizzily, spinning wildly; face reaching for the sky, staring down the moon and the stars.

Faster and faster she turns, a wild shrill cry erupting from her throat, getting louder, higher, as she turns faster. It is a bone chilling, spine tingling shriek of someone who has just lost everything that ever had any meaning to them. All at once, devastatingly; all loves, hates, needs, wants and thoughts; the high wailing howl of death.

Silence and stillness crashes into the field at once when she suddenly stops still, silent. Her dark eyes blaze with such intensity they should have glowed in the silvery light of the moon. Violence fills that heated glare. All the rage, hatred, fear, and loathing a world could hold fills those all too human eyes at once.

Breathing heavy, her breath rushes out to meet the cold night air; a cloud of mist roiling out like the dust from a battle field as hot moist breath clashes with the freezing air.

Her face twists into a demonic grin of hatred, a death's mask. She drops to sit on her haunches, unable to stand any longer. She is not accustomed to being able to raise herself to more than a low crouch due to the limiting confines of the cages she was cruelly kept in.

On hands and feet like a four legged animal, she flees. Racing from the field with a surprising grace and agility similar to a long legged lanky wolf, her hideousness is momentarily bathed in the moon's glow. The long flowing hair is not a wondrous mane of human hair, but a scraggly pelt of longish dirty fur covering much of her body as well as her head. Bald patches give her the appearance of an animal with mange.

She is a creature that walks on two legs with a human-like body and very human eyes, with the face of a creature spawned from a cesspool of genes not of this world. Lesions, welts, and deformities twist her body and features into a Frankensteinian creation. Hideous. Evil. Terrifying.

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Frightened, she cowers in the little crawl space under the stairs of the house on the edge of the woods. The darkness of the night is a small comfort to her. She has already discovered that her senses are keener than most of the creatures she has encountered so far.

She raises her head alertly at the sudden sizzling sound in the distance. An acrid smell she can't identify that makes her nose tickle drifts to her on the breeze.

What can this be? What are those two-legs gathered in a large herd across the open space up to? Is it dangerous for her? They don't act like they know she is here, but her experiences have taught her these creatures cannot be trusted.

There is a popping sound on the ground on the other side of the open space. Something leaps into the sky with a shrill whine.

Curiosity takes over where fear climaxed. She cocks her head, listening, scenting, and watching.

Suddenly the sky explodes with an earth shattering crackling boom, and a flash of bright colorful lights.

She cowers lower to the ground, screaming in terror, eyes wide. Her nostrils flare with the pungent smell, her night vision is shattered by the bright blinding light. Blinded by the colored spots that dance before her eyes, she strikes out with a hiss at a foe that isn't there.

Another pop and hiss, and a shrill whining cries up through the sky. The sky roars with another boom as more lights erupt in the sky, the ground beneath her trembles with its shock. A dazzling array of white flashes and dances in the sky as it falls back to earth in a bloom.

She screams again, trembling violently.

Hairy four-legs from all sides begin barking and howling.

She recognizes that they too are crying their fear.

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