Scrawlers

This is the one hour I'm always awake. I've slept all morning before. Spent an evening in, dozing. But I never miss 3:00am.

My parents say they could set their watches to me growing up. 3:00am feeding time. 3:00am story time. 3:00am breakfast time. A paper route was perfect, the lumber yard even better.

Something dark draws me to that wee hour of the morning. That sounds crazy, I know, but it's thirty years now, every morning, awake at 3:00am. That doesn't strike me as coincidence.

And it scares me some.

My brother told me there were many kinds of ghosts.

"The only one you need to worry about are the Followers. You know when you're standing in a dark room convinced there's something behind you? Followers."

His voice trailed off. When it came back it was fainter.

"They're usually harmless, but if you're stuck with them for too long you go crazy."

Fainter still...

"Some people claw all the skin off the back of their neck trying to get rid of them."

Silence. Then the lights went off and he locked the door behind him.

Icicles hang like spindly glass fingers from frozen gutters.
Snow blankets things like the mower, the good summer Adirondacks. Frozen in time. A long time ago.
This is my view, from the ice-etched kitchen window.
Where I am frozen, too. Hands on sticky tile, covered in dirty dishware.
What’s the point?
Boot prints still echo in the snow, up the path to the mailbox.
Where the envelope came.
Not so long ago? I can’t remember now.
I just know that this view is getting monotonous. Cold.
And the handgun’s nickel-metal finish is now warm against my hip.

I went there at night only once.

I needed an escape and my clearing in the woods promised some respite. I lay on my back with the black sky above me and found the night unexpectedly thick with silence. My mind raced to find something to fill the emptiness. When I was younger, I would imagine creatures or madmen in the darkness. Now I couldn't even summon those childish frights. Without the familiar stimuli of the daytime, I was lost in an overwhelming darkness.

I'm not sure I will ever find my way back.

She is a problem-solving platypus.

She uses electroreception to detect nearby humans and lets out a low growl. Her call summons a male platypus who strikes the human with a venomous spur on the rear of his webbed foot. After the human is poisoned, it falls into the shallows, vulnerable and afraid. The female platypus slaps the human's face with her tail again and again until it's unconscious. Then, her little baby platypi brood feed on the poisoned, beaten, unconscious human as it breathes its last, gnawing its flesh with their cute little duck bills.

She is a problem-solving platypus.

A chair. A desk. A computer screen and keyboard, waiting, waiting.

What does it take? When will he show his true face? Ever? Not today. He sits, glumly, lamenting lost enthusiasms. Lost youth. The clock ticks.

Tomorrow, he nods. Tomorrow he will screw up his courage and begin. Today, there are vegetables to buy, a meal to plan. Children to give that false courage, that lying face. But yes, tomorrow, he will begin.

How hard can it be? After all, he's read so many.

The bells toll five. He rises, turns to leave. Yes, tomorrow he will begin.

"Wait. Hold on."

"What?"

"Don't open the door. Leave it."

"Huh? Why?"

"Don't open that door!"

"Why on earth not?"

"I've just got this feeling."

"A feeling, huh?"

"You don't know who or what's on the other side!"

"Seems to me that's a perfectly good reason to open the door."

"No! Stop, I'm warning you."

"What is with you?"

"I'm scared! Scared! Please, I'm begging you not to open the door!"

"All right stop it, I've had enough of this. I'm going to open the door, so just relax, okay? ... God... ..."

"What is it?"

"A bear."

"You SEE?!"