That stapler on your desk how do you know it’s real? Touch it. You can feel it. Someone is watching you from behind your neck prickles. You can feel it. Now that we have the physics out of the way I will tell you where it usually lives: it lives in the walls.
Blood like a sunset after a sandstorm.
It’s not the bleeding out it doesn’t feed on death it’s the bleeding it eats fear.
When there’s no fear it waits if it gets hungry it makes sounds in the wall and the people living there get scared and it eats a little. His father is out a little boy wraps himself tighter in a leather jacket squeezes his eyes shut tries not to hear the sounds. It feeds.
It was born yesterday it’s five thousand years old it’s Mesopotamian it’s older than mankind it’s the original predator.
A man drives around the city picks out a girl and she has to get in he has sex with her he has pills for it she is dumped out past the railroad tracks beyond the chemical plant or she resists and her body is. Either way she’s scared and it feeds. It lives in the car the police can’t do anything about the man because he’s connected.
There is a concrete building where frightened men are stored in individual cells it feeds there sometimes. Sometimes it runs low in the streets and alleys in the air raids it looks like a shadow until it finds someone huddled taking shelter underground a whole group in the dark waiting for the sirens to end. A little girl asks her mother, What time is it what number is the big hand on how long until we go home? Her mother feels she is being watched.
One place there are five stories concrete-slab construction bullet holes mostly pock the ground floor and around one window on the third floor six families used to live on each floor until others came gave them money moved them further out to a safe compound on the city’s edge. Now two men live in each unit most have guns and other equipment and aren’t so scared but some still are but feeding is not so good. Some hear the sounds in the walls see the shadows in the alleys and say Chupacabra which is wrong but when they say it feeding is better for a while.
Out on the balcony one stands he has no guns he talks to a satellite he needs a clear line of sight to point his antenna at the stars. He dictates something into the receiver speaking slowly he transfers data he uploads images he has a camera.
He has less fear when the one with the guns is with him feeding is good when he is alone it doesn’t even need to make sounds in the walls. He is different and worth watching.
It is very quiet observes some time passes the man packs goes somewhere washes rides a plane somewhere else a military transporter he takes a pill to relax another pill to sleep because the seat is hard his luggage is piled by his feet and it is in his luggage going with him. It is very quiet going where it senses endless fear the feeding the feeding there will be.