Black Forest

Attack

The Facility: Thursday: 5 p.m.

In the darkness, nothing spoke. The soft hum and blip of machines occupied the ward. Quiet nights were hunting grounds: where dreamers reached their deepest, wildest, strangest dreams, and things went bump in the night.

The creature had almost run out of fuel. Last night it climbed into a teenager's mind and was left dizzy, space-sick from the relentless noise, the persistent marching tin soldiers and loop after loop of the same imagined moment – the sleeping boy showing up to fight without a sword; the girl, with wicked dark eyes, laughing from afar.

Tonight, even the machines had stopped singing. The humans in starched cotton trousers had gone home and the strange bright white lights had clicked off. No more screaming. Yet.

A child whispered fears from the bed below, curled into a pillow and running through a fitful dream. Blood pumping slower by the moment. The creature was drawn to the magic here – this small white-haired boy who pretended to be a soldier, a man wearing metal striking down foes.

Careful now, it climbed down the wall. Dim blue glow pulsing from deep inside its veins. Vivid light heightened as it drew closer to the dream, bathing the hospital bed, already hovering six inches off the floor. It was almost unbearable.

Unhinging its jaws, it drew in, preparing to funnel into the air, through the conch-shell ear, feed off the strange, wild –

The child opened his eyes.

For a split moment, it saw what he sees: the past, the future: a man in a wrinkled white shirt signing papers, a woman with calloused hands rubbing his shoulder. Useless, human things. These humans. Trying to control what they cannot see and fill the gaps of what they can with reasons and theories and things.

Just before the child screamed the creature disappeared, and all that was left was darkness.

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