Anything could happen, the closer to town you get. The closer to the factory. It’s better living under the bridge. You would even if you had a choice, but that’s probably a lie. The world beyond feels wrong. Infiltrated. The world beyond isn’t really the world, would eat you alive given the chance. Not enough ways to know what’s still out there, beyond the bridge.

The train’s rare harsh call is half myth now. As rare as hearing an owl. Most of the owls have left, and the mice apparently loved the owls so much, they left too. Whatever “left” means. Nothing good.

It turns cold, like autumn nights used to be, the chill finally reaching you. The landscape having a dream of the past.

You cocoon into your little self-made corner, pile another dirty layer over yourself. Half hidden from the others by an overturned chest of drawers, a mound of plastic sheets, and molding clothes. Journal buried deep in the morass for now, until it’s safe. Wary, you keep peeking out, half expecting the creature to have followed you back to the tunnel.

You can’t shake the image of the eyes in the water. That gaze.

<<Demons had lived in her town forever, staying to the shadows. But now they had come in numbers from another place. She was sure of it. Demons and drones, and who could tell the difference? Still she was left picking the worry spot on the back of her left hand bloody. Left picking at the feeling she would never be safe.

The demons favored any sort of shadow, slipped into view undercover. More and more took the form of strange men. People who looked like people, but were not. People who should belong, but didn’t. Sometimes the new demons brought peculiar animals, on leashes. Animals that looked like dogs but didn’t move like dogs, more like people crawling on all fours. Or with fur with odd reflective qualities, so that as they hunched past certain surfaces, they seemed to disappear.

If she talked about the demons, people thought she was crazy, because they already thought she was crazy because she was homeless. Or they’d pretend she hadn’t said anything because they didn’t want to think about it. But she knew better than anyone: She grew up here, if more as ghost than citizen. Too many disappearances, and with each, more gaps in the world. In memory.

Sometimes the demons appeared and other people ceased. That made her wonder if she had become delusional. Or had been that way all along. Other times, anger: That others couldn’t see what she saw. Or, worse, she wondered if they did see the demons but kept it to themselves.>>

- 6 -

Across the river, on the opposite bank, at dawn, out of mist … appears a pale, ethereal man. Angular. Skin so clear veins stand out like tributaries.