Tomorrow morning, I will be found dead in a back alley. I will be found wearing a too-small fleece vest over my blood-soaked tee shirt, alongside shorts and sneakers that are just as ripped apart. My body will be covered in scratches and slashes and bites, no longer bleeding without any blood left. But I don’t know this yet - I can’t see the future. I have enough uncertainty in my present as it is.
Here I am, getting ahead of myself. Typical Andrew Dennis behavior right there. I can hardly keep my events linear sometimes, you know. Hallucinations and all that, or maybe I just have a shoddy memory when it comes to linear sequences.
Tonight is an ordinary evening in urban mid-April. I am walking through the park, surrounded by squirrels with their glowing red eyes. I’m not scared by this - they’ve never jumped out of the trees to attack me or anything, so as terrifying as they may look it’s normal to me. From what I’ve heard, other people can’t see them. They call me crazy sometimes for bringing it up.
Anyways, here I am in the park, surrounded by squirrel eyes as I walk along a rough gravel path littered with cobblestones. I cross the bridge over the river of burning oil and leave the park through the rusted-open gate. My destination is right across the street, the glowing neon sign of what is currently the Witches’ Cauldron but is most often a pharmacy. It’s where I get medication for dealing with what I see. I take the medication because it makes the horrors go away for a while.
There’s an old man in front of the Witches’ Cauldron with a slash mark on one side of his face. He’s slumped against the wall, bleeding from his neck and groaning in pain, and I can’t tell if he’s real. He certainly looks solid enough, but with that kind of injury, he won’t last much longer if he’s a real human being. I don’t particularly care whether he’s real or not. Either way, I’m not going near him.
A weak voice floats towards my ears. “Son… here, son…” It’s coming from the direction of the old man. I pause. “Over… here…” I can’t help it - I follow the voice back to the speaker, who looks up at me with one blind hazel eye. Vision or no vision, this man’s picked me to hear his last words, so I might as well listen to him. But if he says something bizarre, I’m running for the hills.
“Son… careful… the um-” he coughs here and continues. “-they’re coming. For me, I… I’m sorry. Don’t stop… don’t stop running…” At the end of the statement, he collapses. My eyes go wide, but I shake off my shock - he was probably a hallucination. I could look away for a few minutes and he’d be gone. I turn and walk down the street, away from the pharmacy, my medicine forgotten.
I don’t know it yet, but that’s my second mistake of the night. The first was leaving my home to go to the pharmacy in the first place. Then again, I’m out of medicine, so I think that leaving my house is something I had to do tonight unless I wanted to see day-terrors at work tomorrow.
The shadows twist around my feet as I walk. They snap and snarl like feral animals, but I know that they aren’t real. When I step into the lights cast by the buildings I pass they hiss and shriek and recoil. If they were real, why wouldn’t anyone else notice them? I laugh as I walk in the moonlight.
I realize, halfway back to my house, that I’ve forgotten my medicine. Maybe that encounter with the old man really did throw me for a loop, considering I don’t normally forget about my medicine when I’m going to the pharmacy. I turn around to retrace my steps towards the pharmacy and realize I have no idea where I am anymore. That’s worrying - I don’t normally get lost. Thanks to my hallucinations, I always keep track of where I am, because the landmarks can shift at any time.
I spot a glowing sign out of the corner of my eye - it’s not a hallucination because it illuminates its surroundings too well in the dark. I’ve learned to tell the difference at night. The sign for the City Zoo throws red light on the ground and trees, and I laugh because this is a landmark I recognize. I know where I am now! Unfortunately, the pharmacy is nowhere near here, and the fastest route there is through the zoo in the dark. It’s a shame it’s not open at night.
I sneak into the zoo without incident. This is my third mistake. Many of the animals are asleep, but the unusual presence of a human at night is enough to wake some of the lighter sleepers. The hissing and squawking of the animals mingle with the sounds made by the shadows and I can’t tell what’s real. In my panic, I don’t notice the shadows shifting - all I care about is getting out of the zoo and to the pharmacy.
I’m lucky to leave the zoo through the right gate, the northmost gate that points roughly in the direction of my pharmacy, but in my panic, I think I’ve let some animals loose. I navigate around the chasm in the middle of the street and run like my life depends on it. I think there’s a rhinoceros chasing me - I keep seeing its shadow on the walls running after mine.
An animal howls in the distance. I don’t know if it’s a wolf; it sounds too high pitched. A bat swoops down on me and I duck, not sure if it’s real but not willing to risk it with a rhino after me. How much chaos have I inadvertently caused by taking a shortcut in the dark? All I’m aware of is the pounding of my heart and my footsteps as I race towards my destination.
I take a turn in the dark and find myself on an unfamiliar road. I was thinking it was the right turn, but it’s not the shortcut I thought it was - it’s a dark alley between two shops. I can’t turn around because I’m cornered by wild animals, and I can’t keep running because there’s nowhere to run to. If this is my end, then it’s not a dignified one. I turn around to see what I’m being hunted by.
There’s nothing there. No rhinoceros, no bats, no howling canines. No animals in sight. I almost can’t believe it - was that all hallucinations? A snarl comes from the shadows and I jump. I can’t see what made the noise.
A wolf steps out of the shadows, large and strong and black-furred with soulless eyes. Two others join the first from out of the darkness. I can’t breathe, my heart is pounding in my chest. The wolves growl at me and I can see through their bodies.
They’re living shadows. They’re living shadows, these predators, and I am their prey.