When I was just a few steps from him I stopped and became one with the wall, holding my breath, not even wanting to disrupt the air. He stepped right in front of me and continued walking past at the same steady pace. I had no idea if he was holding his arms out, or doing anything at all to detect me or defend against a potential attack.

Should I attack him from behind or sneak back into the surveillance room? My legs were shaking so hard I feared he’d sense the vibrations. All I’d wanted was to play some rock tunes and here I’m being hunted by some stranger in a game with rules I don’t understand.

He was about ten feet past me when he stopped. The air attained an electric charge. Several seconds passed, maybe a minute. I’d hold my breath until I fainted if I had to. Then he started making a hollow clicking sound. A clucking of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, or some convulsing of his throat, and I desperately wished for the silence to return.

The noise echoed in the silent tunnel, reverberating off the concrete walls. It had a sonar quality to it, and then I realized what it was. Echolocation. Like that clone from the foster home who turned all his roommates into mush.

I heard him turn, the echolocations now coming toward me. A mechanical sound, inhuman. Penetrating. A light forming in the darkness – a blurry ball of red between my eyes. Inside my mind, expanding. A shadow shape, a tall, slender man in a suit, or an owl on a limb. Images transposing, shifting, merging. Two inverted triangles spinning, stark lines flashing like a strobe. He’s no longer in the hall, or no longer outside my mind. I can’t hear his footfalls, or the location of his clucking tongue. The sound originates inside me, the base source, calling me home in a backwards tongue. Blood throbs through my veins. Animal heat, rising. Hunger, lust. Hate. Standing now before me. My mirror image. One mind; all. I can see without eyes. Feel his neck in my hands, his throat cave under my fingers. The squeeze. Our blood pumping as one. The clucking sound becomes a gurgle, and my mind returns.

What the fuck? I’m panting, strangling this man in the dark. Not me, though. Whatever that was before. Him, or someone else who had become me. I’m not a killer. Not like this. I relax my grip and the inhuman echoing returns, first separate, then burrowing, becoming. Me becoming it. A violence that birthed the world. Pulled toward a singular point, a crimson dot, the final void. Destroyer. The Anti. Hate like a black rose.