The Reckoning

She saw it clearly.
Pearly black, creeping by the back hedge. Not hog, it edged towards the compost heap, paused by a log then slowly, deliberately, turned it’s hairy head, stabbing the night with burning laser eyes.
Then it was gone.
In the library next day she searched in every way to find a clue, a true description of the creature, but it didn’t seem to feature in the world of natural history. A mystery. She hurried home.
She didn’t see the thing all through the Winter into Spring,
or through the lazy Summer days.
In praise, she took her medicine, but then again, she wondered if the remedy was poison in a manufactured package, yet reluctantly, she swallowed it at recommended intervals.

And so, eventually, the brazen light began to lose it’s fight and vivid greens succumbed to rusty browns and reds as steadily the days unfolded shorter, and she chortled as she grew a little older.

The scratching noise was quite a shock because she’d double locked
the doors and windows, so the cause of it was baffling although it seemed to muffle through the floorboards.
She called the water board to try to find the origin, and then she sent for pest control. But on examining the evidence they couldn’t find a thing.
“It isn’t rats or mice,” they said, while trying to be nice,
“are you sure that you can hear a noise at all?”
She sent them all away in her dismay, and wondered why the scratching and the pitter-patter happened only when she listened on her own.

And then one night she heard it.
Faint at first but rising to a terrifying squeal so very near, so very real she feared the evil sound would burst her ears.
Her first reaction was to run towards the door before the demon sensed her terror, but quite suddenly, the screaming turned to silence and the atmosphere to cold and very still.
She saw it, perched upon the window sill.
It sat with glaring, staring eyes and fangs that dripped with frothy bile, it’s razor claws held ready, paused to strike.
It saw her fear. She heard it clear.

‘I am the fiend of every dream,
I am the counter of the deeds
I am The Reckoning’

They found her dead in bed.
An overdose, they said.