Dark Corners

Creature of the Night

I wake up, in a cold sweat. Another nightmare. The kind of nightmare that leaves your heart racing for longer then necessary. I look around, willing my eyes to adjust to the dark that swallows the small apartment. My mother, and her boyfriend came home sometime in the night. They sleep soundly on the old mattress on the far wall, nearest the front door. My mother's boyfriend's dog, Rudy, raises his head from the foot of my mattress, as if to let me know he's there.

"Hey, buddy. How ya feelin'?" I whisper.

Rudy grunts with the effort of an old dog, and chooses to lay closer to my side. I pet him on his favorite spot, my hands still shaking from the dream I'd rather forget.
I am restless, and I need a cigarette. A habit an eighteen year old, should never have.

With a low moan, I rise from my worn and sunken mattress. I slip on my old leather sandals, and step into the fridged cold. It is still dark, with no promise of sunlight until nearly nine a.m. Not too unusual for Alaskan January. Though, the one thing that stuck, was the warm dampness in the air. I shrug it off thinking im still damp from my nightmare, with shuttering hands I light my cigarette.

Half way through my cancer stick, I freeze. Not because of the winter air, but because of the silence. The eerie, deathly silence. The kind of silence one might hear in the deep mountains. A silence, no one in modern society might experience. The quiet, only death confides in.

I turn to the right of the apartment's sloping steps to snuff out my light, when I see it. The reason for the stars to hide, the reason for the wind to go damp with fear. The reason, the world around it goes quiet, as if to warn the prey...their end is near.

Again, I freeze and go silent. This time, though, my shuttering stops. Instead, only dread fills my body. Like a dead weight, filling my own muscles with molted iron. Pure fear cementing my feet to the steps of hell.

Around the corner of the apartment complex, not even five feet away, a creature fills my vision. The creature, like none I've seen ever before. It's face is skinless, with ivory bone with an unusually long snout, coated in rotting muscle and flesh. The flesh is adorned with veins and ligaments, making a spidery wet webbed effect. The rest of the body is hidden behind the yellowing, pealing walls of the apartment. A speck of hope embers in my mind. The creature is looking forward, into the vacant trash littered parking lot.

My mind now entering survival mode, I thought, "If I hold absolutely still, the creature won't notice me."

"How naive of you."

I gasp in terror, as a very human male voice enters my mind.

"You think you can outsmart me?"

The voice chuckles, low, and inviting. The smooth voice of imminent death. With not a moment of warning, the creature's head cracks to the left and makes eye contact with me. It's eyes, immence dark holes of nothingness, bore into my soul, burning me in the winter air.

"W-wha-" Is all I manage to wheeze out. The pain, worse then anything I've ever felt before. The creature's power, now pinning me to the cold door of the apartment. I scratch at myself, willing with all my strength to be free of the creature's power. Yet to no avail.

With nothing else to do, I give up. I let my body slump against the door, sliding down it's freezing frame. I look up at the beast, and flinch. Standing up at it's full height of almost nine feet, it seems to ooze power. The power, of a true monster. It's frame, seemed to be too small for it's wide wolf like skull. It's shoulders and hips were wide, but slimmed down to his limbs. His limbs, were long, and unproportionate to his body. His hands incredibly long, thin, and sharp. Like his face, his body was mostly bone with ligaments and mummified rotting flesh holding his tall frame together. Like armor, tree bark lined his chest, waist, and legs.

A low cackle arose from deep in the creature's throat, shaking his entire frame. He stepped closer, taking small steps. Seeming to enjoy my pain and fear.

step...

Four feet...

step...

Three feet...

step...

Two feet...

step...

"You've been fun, but I've got things to do. Do tell, me... Have you been good?"