I was never fond of the dark. Just something about it made me uneasy. Maybe it was because I never knew what lurked within.
I was walking early one windy morning. It was about a seven mile walk, about three o'clock in the morning: the witching hour.
I could see the Patriot Highway in the distance, flanked by the bright orange and white sign of Whataburger.
The street lights threw moving shadows upon the sidewalks and road lanes.
Flickers of movement, but I could care less. I just focused on walking, listening to Two Steps from Hell on my phone. After a while my phone died. I'd forgotten to charge it yesterday, again.
There was silence, save the early-day birds and chirping crickets. The wind rustling the dead, road-side grass and weeds.
I heard wings flap, probably a startled bird.
I saw what looked like a tall woman walking briskly toward me upon the sidewalk. Her clothes were ragged and flapped in the wind, as did her near-translucent hair.
When I reached her all that was there was a drainage ditch. No woman to be seen.
I walked under the highway and saw two men using pool nets to scoop out pigeons from their roosts on the highway's support pillars.
I saw feathers still attached to the bones, dry flesh stretched across the corpses. I walked past birds with broken wings and twisted legs. They looked at me with one plea in mind, "Put me out of my misery!"
I felt sad for the pigeons. A piece of my soul tore away as I euthanized them, one by one: eight total.
The two men looked on in drunken confusion rather than sympathy.
As I walked upon the darkish intervals of Hercules Avenue, I saw the tall woman, again.
She was beckoning me toward someone's backyard.
I climbed the stonewall.
The woman was gone.
There was a pool in this backyard, and, beside it was a hollow tree. The house itself looked devoid of furniture, light, and life. The tree creaked eerily, beckoning me just as the woman had done.
I walked to the pool's effulgent edge and gazed at my reflection in the near-stillness of the water.
I marveled at the ribbons of cool colors dancing within.
My reflection stared back at me, his head cocked to the left, like a curious dog.
Fear constricted my mind in its cold tendrils. I could not move! I watched as my reflection transformed into a demon with a burning-blue skull, a Djinn.
The Djinn's hand broke the water's surface, and reached toward me. All the while the deathly grin cracked the charred skull.
My body refused to move as my yells for help went into hissing, bubbling silence. Soon, the light began to ebb from my eyes. My vision began to convulse.
Soon realization hit me. I tried to muster the strength to yell for help once again, but to no avail.
Soon darkness embraced me.
