Something Wicked This Way Comes (9C)

Something is coming. Something only I can see,one of the few who possess the sight. It goes forth from the crypts below the city like a snail changing shell. It creeps its way from the skull-lined walls, past crumbling corridors to an abandoned subway station. Slowly, it picks up a rat and bites on it like a nutcracker. A poor hobo has had the misfortune of facing him---now this terror walks the streets in the hobo's clothes. It makes its way to my street. Only old Miss Bolton's cats seem to be aware that he is a wolf in sheep's clothing. They glare into his hollow eyes, defiant. They will not back down, they will not bow down to this thing, for man he is not; he is a monster. He cannot bear the insolence they show him, conqueror of death. He extends his deathly fingers out to them. He is death, Lucifer, Beelzebub in the eyes of the cats. Yet the cats are too quick, they evade the grasp of destiny. The light posts blink on and off, afraid of what they might see. Then the cats prepare to retaliate against this terror from beyond the grave. They are a flash of lightening as they pounce upon the abomination. Then, darkness engulfs the street. I hear some scattered meows and then, silence. I smell rotten flesh, the nauseating stench slowly surrounds me, and light-headedness invades me. When the light comes back on I focus my now blurred eyesight to see beyond the window only to find the necromancer's hollow eyes beginning to glow red in my direction. The world fades away as I listen to his macabre laughter. Rodrigo Ponciano Ojeda