Canary

Everyday I run past him he’s wearing a different face. Crimson basketball shorts this time, focused, intense and panting heavily from multiple lay ups. The next day cobalt shorts that look slightly too baggy and he’s grinning, laughing even as he glances down at his smart watch. He was bright and handsome, all primary colors with the world in his large lake blue eyes. I wonder who he’s messaging and feel something like disappointment.

Today I notice him again. Sitting this time on a small weatherworn bench in our misty complex. Tears glisten in his eyes as he places his hands on his thighs, sweat highlighting his furrowed brow. I stumble in my step to steal one more second of studying his face when suddenly his eyes flick up with intensity. I keep still, no reaction just my dark eyes burning into his.

This is probably pretty creepy to him and I expect him to awkwardly look away. But he doesn’t. Just stares back, letting a tear softly start in his left eye. He blinks it away. I open my mouth as if to ask why but instead turn quickly on my heels and take off into the soft morning light. The sun had barely broken through the persistent murky cloud cover as I jogged toward the shore. I breathed in air flavored with brine from the nearby turquoise waters as a fresh breeze surrounded my sweaty skin.

Morning is safe. There are never attacks reported in the morning, in the daylight.

It’s now the weekend and the clouds are cotton candy painted with orange streaks playing in the light of the setting sun on the horizon. When I see him, I slow down my pace and curse my traitorous legs for following an impulse I can’t help. He’s in a vibrant cerulean suit and tie and it surprises me; in fact it tells my pulse to quicken. He’s sitting again. A plain brown work bag at his side in which he has one hand on, frozen in thought. A handsome upturn of full lips highlight a face I see in my dreams as he catches my eyes yet again with his and holds them captive.

I never run at dusk, I thought I could avoid you, yet here you are.

He lifts a hand up, fingers splayed in a wave and mouths the word, Hi.

At first I don’t react, persistently aware of the darkness of night creeping towards us. Where we live the recent attacks have been concentrated. Attacks no-one survives.

Why is he out right now? Doesn’t he know better? Don’t I know better? I lift a tentative hand back and smile, my breathe catching in my throat as he stands and strides towards me. Is this a chance with you? I must not take it, but I find my legs rooted to the gravel beneath me.

“You never run in the evening,” his statement takes me by surprise, his voice a deep rumble that causes goosebumps to form on my bare tanned arms. His scent of lemongrass and something heady jolts my senses.

“I-yeah I was just trying something different I guess,” I offer, wiping a drop of sweat from my brow and glancing nervously around me. There’s an awkward silence in which he searches my face.

“Hmm, well the morning was probably better. The bodies do seem to be piling up…and by the beach…,” he says and gazes past me towards the shoreline, the sudden fear making his features tighten in the receding light.

I follow his gaze and suddenly a wave of dread, icy and sharp washes over me. My hands start to shake and I clench them into fists, the panic rising like a rip tide to pull all my composure out to sea.

“You-you should not be out right now either, please stay in, I-,” I blurt and a tremor cuts my sentence off. Pin pricks of sinister disquiet trail up my spine. I can’t explain how, but I just know.

He looks at me in confusion, brows knitting together as he shifts uncomfortably and brings a hand up to rub his dark brown beard. A deep uncontrollable self loathing seizes me, combining with the panic in a feeling I itch to immediately start running from. I try to fight it, slap it down, tell it to please care, give it anything it wants. Anything but him. The creature stalking these shores wanted him. I could sense it.

“I have a late business dinner tonight… I’m going out but I’ll be fine,” he says pulling away slightly. I couldn’t blame him, what was I doing?

“Just-yeah sorry, it’s been a scary last couple months living here,” I try to play it off but my words have a tremor to them. His expression softens and he smiles kindly, making my heart flutter.

“I get it, trust me…Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” He gestures to the courts behind him. In the fading light the shadows start to play tricks in the tree line beyond. A movement here, a crunch of branches there, the night quickly closing in. My heart was not only pounding but skipping beats, my breath coming fast the more I tried to hide it.

“I’ll be here,” he says assuredly and turns away, blinking a few times as if he wants to say more but decides against it. I watch him walk towards the street and can’t help but let out a huge stammering breath. A haunting grief comes over me. A feeling you wouldn’t think to feel for a stranger.

If he were, in fact, a stranger.

I almost wish it were true. I managed to keep my distance in the last city we were in together. Hiding you from the part of me that mattered most. Yet here I was in this moment I’ve wanted, the pull I couldn’t deny, a war within myself that could only ever go this way, yet it was fought all the same.

The attention from the creature was unwavering, like a cat circling a canary cage. I could change the trajectory couldn’t I? I had control. I warned him! There was hope.

The night called to the creature.

The change was a surety permeating through the air, the shift imminent and I begged, pleaded crawled on the floor of my apartment thrashing fighting against the beckoning. After all this time I still battle to contain the unwavering power. Even if it always found a way out throughout the decades.

You cannot have him! I gasped.

The scales had tipped, the pull and strain too heavy for the creature to ignore. A power that showed no mercy towards me, yet needed me to bleed its presence into the physical realm. I’d been feasting on the mundane but starving for what really fed my midnight soul.

I couldn’t separate from the darkness. I was the darkness.

The air greeted my senses first of ocean air, dirt, and foliage as I awoke on the bedroom floor. My eyes slammed open to light filtering in, casting soft yellow rays on torn fingernails with dried soil caked underneath. The alarm clock by my bedside had been going off for some time, the usual 6am well past and I shot up from the floor to the bathroom.

The mirror revealed a disheveled naked form of long blonde hair tangled and dirty, a few fresh angry cuts and bruises covering my torso arms and legs. I trembled violently, a side effect amplified by what was at stake. Realization slapped me in the face and I froze. No blood. There was always blood.

Had the creature listened to me? Perhaps a different canary had satisfied the darkness. Did I matter after all? I always told myself I did but when it counted the most the failures still stained my shadowed soul one blaring news headline at a time. Dressing in my running gear I ran faster than I ever had before, ignoring sore legs and a stammering heart trying to beat out of my chest. I turned the corner, the same picture I’d seen morning after morning coming into view. I felt a sickening split of light and dark, creature and human, hope and despair.

The court was empty. And so was I.