Reflection

She had made a mistake. A big one. Massive. Gargantuan?

Lora shook her head and smiled, knowing very well that she was trying to cheer herself up by taking things out of proportion. Still, it might have been a bit of a mistake.

She remembered the day well when she decided to pack things up and move to the countryside. That day, again, she had been overlooked for a promotion. Why? She had no idea. Her managers had never said more than that they believed person x or y was better suited for the job. Never any clues as to what made them better. Never any points for her to improve on.

Lora thought it was probably her introverted nature that had made people even forget that she existed. She didn’t shout for attention, didn’t interrupt people or talk over them in order to get her point across. Her work had always been done when needed. She had arrived on time in the morning and had left when her time was up in the evening.

“Unremarkable,” Lora thought to herself. That’s what her life had been like. It had been both boring and frustrating.

One would think that life in the city would have at least helped with the boring part, but Lora had found that she didn’t like it. Oh, when she had been younger and had lived in the suburbs, she had looked at the city with wide eyes, longing for the day she would live there. But the shine of it had quickly worn off. Her apartment had been small and in an old building. There had been drafts during the winter that made certain the apartment never felt warm during the coldest days. And then there had been the constant noise of cars and people. Even at night, it had never seemed to stop. Whenever Lora had gone to visit her parents, she had found herself relaxing in the quiet of the suburb.

That, too, had contributed to her decision to just leave it all behind. She’d started daydreaming about the countryside, about idyllic views and birdsong. About long walks and watching the stars. About a cosy little house surrounded by trees.

It had taken time to get it all arranged, of course. Especially financially wise it had been a bit of a nightmare. Not to mention her parents’ protests. Stable job equals stable future, and so on. But she’d forged ahead and now found herself where she’d wanted to be: in a small town on the countryside.

There was only one thing she’d forgotten along the way. A small detail. Namely, she was afraid in the dark. Which was why she was now trying very hard not to panic as she walked up the dirt road to her new home with only a flashlight for illumination.

She hadn’t always been afraid of the dark. Most of her life, yes, but not always. The day that particular fear got instilled in her was still sharp in her mind.

She had been about six years old. At that age, she had spend a lot of time at her grandparents’ place. They had lived, and still lived, at the edge of a rural town, running a small, local farm next to their part-time jobs. As a child, she’d been delighted, running around the farm and looking at all the various animals. Her grandfather allowed her to help feed the chickens and pick beans from their stalks. Lora had wonderful memories from all her vacation time at her grandparents.

One evening, dinner had been ready and her grandfather nowhere in sight. Her grandmother had asked her to go fetch him in the barn. It had already been dark outside. Because it hadn’t been far, her grandmother had turned on the bathroom light so it would shine on her path through the bathroom window. There had been a small stretch of trees between the house and the barn.

Proud of being asked such a job and with the way lit from behind, little Lora had toddled her way towards the barn without a worry in mind. That was, until two glowing eyes had appeared in front of her.

Little Lora had screamed, turned, and quickly fled back into the house. Her grandmother had frantically asked her what had happened. Of course, she had immediately understood that what little Lora had seen was merely one of the many cats roaming the area. Still, little Lora had been inconsolable, refusing to go out again to fetch her grandfather.

Ever since that day, Lora had been scared of the dark. She imagined seeing glowing eyes everywhere. And even though she was now a grown adult that knew very well that she’d merely seen a cat’s eyes reflecting the light from the bathroom window, the fear it had instilled in her was impossible to get rid of.

So trailing through a forest with only a flashlight and herself for company was somewhat of a nightmare for Lora. That the people of the village had warned her against doing such a thing didn’t make her fear any better. They’d told her to always take the car, even if she loved hiking. She didn’t want to be out at night. Lora didn’t quite remember why she’d gone against their good advice that day, but she was a scatterbrain and had probably convinced herself she would be back in time anyway.

Well, she wasn’t.

Something snapped in the woods to her right and Lora jumped in fright. She turned the flashlight, frantically scanning the forest line, but saw nothing. She let out a shaky breath. It wasn’t far anymore. She was almost home. Almost.

To keep her mind occupied, she thought of the other rules the villagers had tried to instill her. Maybe not the best choice of topic but too late. Now that she had started thinking of it, there was no way back.

Either way, she remembered how they’d told her that if she heard someone calling her at night from outside, no she hadn’t. She wasn’t allowed to reply to it, let alone go outside in search of whoever it was. There was also the rule to keep her windows closed at nigh, no matter how stuffy it got and no matter if you had screens. You wouldn’t want anything unwanted to crawl inside, now would you? More practically, they’d told her to put locks on her outside garbage bins. That wasn’t anything occult but merely a way to keep the animals from strewing garbage all around your garden.

Lora sighed in relief when the final bend in the road loomed in front of her. She really was almost home now. She was looking forward to locking the forest out by grabbing the romance novel she’d been reading and snuggling on the couch. Her cat, Minsy, a stray she’d adopted about a day after she’d arrived, would probably jump up on the couch to join her. Lora frowned. After she’d filled Minsy’s food bowl, that was.

With a relieved sigh, she turned the final corner and shone her light to the welcome sight of her house. She was met with two big, glowing eyes, right next to her still unlocked garbage bins.

Lora froze. Her breath hitched as sheer panic coursed through her. Thinking she would feel better if she at least knew what kind of animal she was dealing with, she moved the shine from her flashlight away from her front door and towards the garbage.

She didn’t think anything could make her even more scared than she’d been seeing the eyes but there she was, nauseated and covered in cold sweat, too scared to even scream. Not that anybody would hear her.

The thing standing next to the garbage bins wasn’t like any animal she’d ever seen before. She instinctually knew it wasn’t an animal at all. It was … something else. It was spindly, all long limbs and thin body. Its hind legs were longer than the front ones, which looked more like arms than legs to begin with. She didn’t know how tall the creature would be if it stood up. She didn’t want to know. It would probably reach higher than her house. And its head. Its head was a thing of nightmares. Skull-like, with a muzzle and two large, round eyes. Its muzzle was hanging open, rows of sharp teeth visible within.

The monster shifted and Lora finally snapped out of her frozen position. She screamed, high and shrill. A sound she didn’t even know she was capable of making. There was a growl from the monster and, having lost all capability of rational thought, Lora turned and fled.

She ran. She ran like her fear had given her wings. The flashlight danced in her hand, barely illuminating the road in front of her. Behind her, she heard a scrabble and the obvious sounds of the monster chasing her. Lora had never been an athletic person but the adrenaline in her body pushed her forward. She ran like she never had before, mentally calculating how far out she was from other people and already realising she would never make it. Too far. Everything was too far away.

She tripped and fell hard on the dirt road. Her knee landed against a rock, both her hands were scraped and her flashlight rolled away from her. She tried to scramble up but her knee gave out on her. Frantically, she tried again. She had to get up. She had to keep running. The monster was coming. It was right behind her. It was right there!

With a scream, Lora woke from her nightmare. The sheets were tangled around her legs and in an echo of her dream-induced panic, she kicked and struggled until her legs were free. She screamed again when lightning flashed, surprising her and eerily illuminating the room. She turned on her bedside table light.

Thunder boomed and it was oddly soothing to her nerves. It explained the lightning. It explained why the wind was wildly whistling around her home, causing things to rattle outside. The oncoming storm had probably been the reason for her nightmare. She’d always had been able to predict when they were coming. She blamed it on the change of air pressure.

A mrrow had Lora looking at the end of the bed.

“Minsy?” she questioned. “You want to come up on the bed, girl?”

She smiled as the tabby cat jumped up on the bed and stately walked over. Lora petted her a few times before crawling back under the sheets. It had only been a nightmare. Such monsters like the one in her dream didn’t exist. She’d probably been listening a bit too much to her favourite myths and legends podcast.

She turned off the light and snuggled into her blanket. With closed eyes, she reached for Minsy so the cat would curl up against her. Lightning flashed, once more illuminating the room. Already half-asleep, Lora didn’t notice how the shadow of her cat wasn’t that of a round ball of fluff, but something with spindly legs and a spindly body.