Abscess // original ficlet
Walking in the park, almost twilight, and your eyes feel oddly heavy. You’re not sure why you came, after all, it was bound to have been another one of those goddamn stupid fucking pranks she plays on you for no fucking reason you can fathom, but still.
Here, waiting. Hands are numb, almost cold but not quite, and you think to yourself, really shouldn’t be like this.
Your hands? (midsummer evening, soft breezy twilight, it might even be a valid question) Why you’re here?
But you leave the thought aside. Cast it away, or at least want to, like the pebbles underfoot you could pick up and throw away into the water and maybe it’ll skip a couple of beats and skim the surface before it sinks in, drowns.
Never really much good at skipping pebbles, you weren’t.
Bring your hands up to your mouth, encircle, breathe into them, and it’s still not fucking warm enough. You squint up at the sky, watch the twilight fade and watch murderous red and ember-bright orange seep into the edge of the water.
Event horizon.
Still waiting, still waiting, still waiting.
Where are you, fucking damnit?
Alone here, just the green and the twilight around you. You turn around, and keep watching. Green fading to something dark, shadows creeping in and crawling under, over, around, in between, nestling comfortably into all those little crevices you couldn’t possibly see.
Breeze continues, and you feel the breeze whisper past your ears, watch it rustle the leaves and the branches and the shadows sway too, like living things. Lovecraft had a word for it, but it doesn’t come to mind. Just the sensation, tickling your skin. The feel of the dark, the shadows nestling in, burrowing almost, like the tendrils of a vast, unwholesome, wriggling thing, and before the image comes to mind you turn away and lick your dry lips.
Water’s going dark, sky’s blue-greyish and fading deeper into black. You really don’t want to be here.
Bitch, you think unkindly, narrow your eyes some more and against your better judgement turn around and gaze into the dark green one more time.
The lamps don’t really help. Good for marking the walkways, sure, but what about the in-between places, you wonder? What about those abscesses where the light just can’t reach?
Lick your lips again, clench your hand into fists (damp), and try to breathe.
Did you really think that all this time, thinking and wondering about the dark, watching and waiting and wondering about the horrors that lurked in it, the festering, neverending night that lurked within, that in all this time watching and wondering and fearing, that nothing would stare back?
Yours fists clenched, you try to breathe and shut the thought out.
Breathe, once, twice, thrice.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Breathe.
And wait, and hope that nothing is staring back when you open your eyes again.
And wait.
And wait.
And don’t think, of those thousand eyes, staring back….