C:\>A Quiet Night

It was already dark out when I found the beast lying in my bed. "Rest now," it said, "you have earned it, and you must be so very tired." I knew this beast, and the reflection of yesterday's sun in its eyes whispered to me that this was not its first bed of the night. And whether I ran or went toward it, I knew I would not see the sun of tomorrow.

I wasn't scared, because I knew the birds would sing the same as they always did, throats warmed in spite of my absence. But the weight of evening's broken peace nags even the Earth's boldest creatures, the silence a covenant at the border between night and day. That perfect stillness that drew me forward and lulled my battered breath was sacred to me, and the sin of a struggle and a bloodied scream at that hour would not weigh on my shoulders. I said to the beast, "the day was long, and there were many battles lost. But I have the will to face at least as many or more, and I will have at least one victory."

What a curious creature, I thought, whose bones rumbled the floors and whose heart I could see was shielded in silk. It had come for an easy meal, and was surprised by my fire. "But the shadows have grown long, child," it crooned inside my head. "There is peace in oblivion, and surely you don't really believe the strength you need lives within you."

The thing they don't tell you about demons is that they warp the universe and all its dimensions around them, space compacted to a tomb of delirium and time dripping like ancient glass. They also don't tell you that you'll want to believe it, want to do as it says, its size doubling with each step toward the mattress. You'll think you should be its dinner. After all, it has earned it, and it must be so very hungry. With crystal eyes and bitter tongue, this beast knows you, and it knows the threads to pull to make you crave its terminal embrace. If you would only just...step...forward...

Its teeth were already at my throat when I found the seam of its mask. Even as my tears surrendered themselves onto the sheets, the truth of the beast's facade posed a question whose answer burned the tissues of my lips and fingers. I gripped tight the edges of its disguise, and as I pulled the scream it gave was not of pain...but of sorrow.

I stared into the void that remained. It stretched beyond the bounds of the bed, of the room, of the building and the Earth beyond. The beast's lament echoed like the tainted memory of a fever dream. "Never rest," it said, "for I will be at your heels always." In the disfigured darkness, just as the beast seized the wind and rode as mist out of the window into the fragile quiet, I caught the flick of my own eyes as it went.

I learned that day that there lives a beast for every soul, and it is with us from birth. It is the parasite within, the whisper in the folds of our brains that draws us toward the final dusk. But if you have seen its true face, then you too know that it can only feed on willing flesh. For we are the beast, and we are no strangers to a fight.