They look like people

03

I was in a nightmare. The thing I was looking at, was a nightmare.

Its six legs made of curved bones were tightly holding on the street lamp post and the vertebrae tail with the dart was loosely balancing in the air, making the grotesque silhouette looking scorpion-like. The orange light shone directly on the pale skin of the upper body.

Skin?

My eyes were transfixed in horror, unable to look away as much as I wished for. Morbid fascination lead my gaze along the bony curves of the upper body belonging to a woman. The fragile outline of her collarbone, her pitch black hair flowing on her bare shoulders like ink, the smooth transition of her hips into the six ebony legs... Everything of her was vicious, predatory.

I need to escape. I need to escape. I need to escape.

My body was constricting me, my skin was too tight, my chest was oppressed by the weight of terror... I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think-

"You don't deserve to live." The creature spit through her jagged teeth.

I staggered on my feet and my legs almost gave out under me. I had the feeling that millions of little ice needles were piercing my skin, it was so cold...

A crimson drop of blood fell off the bony tail, near my shoe. I bit so hard on my shivering lips that a metallic taste spread through my mouth.

The black eyes of the woman looked into mine. Her six legs changed position and she glided further down the lamp post with a shrieking noise. I was internally screaming, my inner voice was shrill, desperate, hopeless...

"You don't deserve to live." The woman repeated, but not with the same silky voice. This time, her voice broke one the last word, cracked like Rachel's neck under her blood-drenched tail a few minutes ago.

And what seeped through this weakness was not anger, not coldness. It was so much sorrow and grief that could literally feel it like she had threw it at me in form of a rock. I stumbled, my blood roaring in my ears, while the monster got closer and closer to me.

The helplessness of her tone woke something in the darkest part of my soul. The part that usually felt like there was missing something, but I didn't know what. The part that was constantly aching in nagging pain. That pain deep inside me that had let me know all my life that I was different, but a difference that even I couldn't understand nor explain.

That part had just shifted, like a dangerous animal in its sleep.

It was the fear that set me running. Fear of the monster? Fear of myself? I didn't know, probably both. One moment I was standing frozen in front of the woman under the orange light, in the other moment I found myself blindly racing down the road, wrapped in utter darkness.

There's no hope to survive the night anyway.

Behind me, a shrill shout of anger reverberated itself in the night, followed by snarling.

Oh god, I wasn't fast enough, I had only a few-

Before I could think of anything else to protect myself, I was violently thrown to the side. My head and my back crashed against something hard and vertical, to be soon followed by the rest of my body. A red veil covered my eyesight. My head was intensely throbbing and pain was unfurling in my limbs...

Panicked thoughts flew through my mind, but I couldn't grab them, everything was so blurry...

Did I hear another snarl? Was it the faint sound of six legs made of bones that were making these noises?