Don't Breathe: Part II

PART II

Parasites are fascinating creatures. They don't kill the host immediately; that would be inefficient. They burrow into the soft tissue, drink the nutrients, and use the body as a vehicle to reach the next meal. They turn the host into a shell, a hollowed-out husk of a human being, and when the marrow is dry, they discard the skin like a piece of wet cardboard.

The newsprint is shifting. A few months ago, the reports of "communal disturbances" were buried in the back pages, tucked between gardening tips and obituary columns. Now, the ink is bolder, the headlines wider, screaming about The Return to Greatness in a font that should feel like a warning to more people than me.

The commuters scrolled devices, their eyes glazed to the LCD with dull contentment, as if the encroaching darkness was merely a change in the weather they’d been expecting. I watch them. I observe the way their knuckles are whitening. The way aggression is no longer a flicker, but a steady flame.

Across the street, a young man is meticulously scrubbing a dark stain out of the sidewalk with a toothbrush, humming a tune that sounds like a funeral dirge played at double speed. He doesn't look up when the light changes, nor does he flinch when a car clips the curb inches from his hand. He is waiting for something, a signal, a scent, or perhaps just permission to stop pretending he is human.

He looked at me then. For a second, our eyes locked. He didn't recognize me, but he recognized something in me. A kinship of the void. He smiled, a big, unnatural thing, and for the first time, I saw the red scarf, wrapped tightly around his neck.

Something terrible is out there. In the way the birds no longer sing; in the way the dogs have all stopped barking.

They know.