Monster
Even Darkness could not conceal its breath, hot and sour and foul as a rotting corpse. It followed me, through empty rooms and corridors, through streets bathed in cold blood. Shiny. Red as rust and dripping entrails. The stench stuck to me, after I scrubbed my skin for hours. It seeped into my pores and oozed back out, like pus refusing to leave a wound. I screamed and ran. I tore my hair out and hit at the shadows until my body was nothing but a battered, broken, beaten mass. Only when I looked in the mirror did I realise that the only monster here was staring straight back at me. Photo credit: "Monster in the Mirror", by Ramirez Coiva.