Creeping Darkness

Creeping Darkness

         I was terrified. I couldn’t possibly run anymore. My lungs burned horridly with each racking sob and my heart was bursting from my chest. So, I lent into the grim shadows against a crumbling brick wall. The moss, clinging to life on the bricks and moor, was feather soft against my damp back and orange lamplight played eerie shadows across my face. Between sobs my lips had been whispering a prayer from my childhood. I had been running for fourteen days. No food. No rest. No Peace.
         A minute went by… nothing. I had found myself relaxing against the wall, my muscles turning to liquid and melting away from me.
         Everything was going to be fine, I convinced myself, I was going to be alright. My eyelids had just begun lowering me into an swirling abyss of sleep when I heard a rustling from the tangle of bushes just feet from me. As my eyelids slowly opened they spilled a single, silent tear down my cheek, and my body solidified once more and tensed again, my heart working overtime.
         This is it, I'd thought helplessly, after all this he is finally… finally going to… kill me. I had tried to stand shakily and face him, but my just legs collapsed beneath me. Just do it quickly, I had thought miserably, better the world by killing me.

         It was a raging night 13 years ago, and Ellis King lay on her deathbed, face pale, hands shaking. Her terrified four-year-old daughter didn’t understand what was happening to her mommy and was horrified by the lighting taunting her from outside her bedroom window. Mr. King was out for a drink after long hours of soothing his wife’s fitful babble, so the little girl wobbled into the room where her tossing mother lay, before crawling into bed with her, snuggled between two pale, languid arms and drifting to sleep. Ellis smiled feebly and simply kissed her daughter's rosy cheek before drifting away. During the night Ellis King died.


         I turned my head toward the bush expecting to feel the stabbing of needles on my feverish skin, but was staggered when it did not come. My sobs slowed as my heartbeat returned to it’s normal, lagging pace and I let out a groan, wondering why he was taunting me so. I managed to pull up my last reserves of strength and kick out toward the bush.
         A small black shadow streaked through the leaves, around my foot and away into the night. It was a damn cat. I had thought, trying to let out a small chuckle that came out as a wheezing cough. I lent my head against the supple moss holding fast to the wall as black spots fluttered my vision. Air deprived and exhausted, I released myself from consciousness.


         My whole body was burning. It was as if someone had lobbed me into hot tanning bed in my sleep and I had spent the night there. My eyes flickered open and I felt a searing pain shoot through them. Every inch of me ached, itched and burned. I had to get out of this sunlight, maybe travel through a shady wood.
         Oh how I loathe the daytime. I despise it with a passion, with a burning fury. I resent it more than anything else in the world. I am slowed and hindered; my hunter is in his element.
         I shakily stood, and every muscle in my body screamed for me to halt, to give up, to lie there until he comes to finish me off, but I plowed on, until I was upright, panting against the wall.
         I looked around and felt my eyes grow hot, tear and then stream, but just blinked and pushed on, shoving the wall away from me as if it was something vile. I stumbled about like a wasted bum for a few minutes; skin still sizzling under the condemning morning sun. Minutes slipped by, but at last I had ultimately gotten my legs to function. Finally, I squinted around until I located the sidewalk and set off for a opaque place I could hopefully travel through without grilling.


         Little Sara King woke the next morning to deep earsplitting sobs. During the night the rain had stopped pouring and the clouds in the early morning sky were none but friendly cumulus. The four-year-old crawled out from between her mother’s arms and sat down beside her mourning father.
         “What’s wrong Daddy?” She asked in her sweet toddler voice, patting his broad arm with her small chubby fingers. “Why are you sad?” He looked up for only a moment, his puffy, red eyes meeting her innocent chocolate brown ones before he cradled his head in his massive hands once more. This will not do, he thought as he spiraled downward, lower and lower into the pits of despair and insanity, I cannot look at her without seeing my dear sweet Ellis.
         Hours passed and they sat, father and daughter, desperate and questioning, beside the bed of their once bride and mother.


         I walked for a good ten blocks before fully regaining my vision, and even then I didn’t look up much, just hurried along, head bowed, gaze cast down. To the average human eye, I looked like a typical wasted dropout. I was clothed in a black jacket, worn with use and pants in the same neglected condition. On my feet were pair of old, dilapidated sneakers, which were once blue, but now colored a faded gray. My hands were stuffed in my pockets and my hood was over my head, protecting my face from majority of the daylight. One could, however, still see my long, limp black hair dangling from under my hunched hood and the occasional flash of my all too pale skin.
         As I wandered I passed by many people. Busy, tired, working, hungry, bored, so many. They all passed by me without a glance, many, all heading somewhere, all of whom knowing where they should be minutes from now. All, in just another of the numerous ways, different from myself.
         I wandered like a lost child in a supermarket, knowing not where I was nor where I was going, but going all the same.



[Work in Progress]