text: Something I have always been. As in, my memory begins at the beginning of all, or at least my own memory of it. I have been since the earth was hot and turbid. I have been since the great beasts roamed and stomped their way across the new land. I have always been. I have been since your species wore fur. I discovered you while you were still small, tiny creatures scrabbling about in the mud. Perhaps I was growing tired of eating the little scrabbling creatures and you looked like a novel snack. I snatched you up and I haven’t looked back. I take no pleasure in eating you, you do taste good and meet my needs, but I take no pleasure in the kill. I don’t fiddle around with you. I kill to eat. You used to have sounds to describe my presence, small squeaks that evolved into grunts. Eventually you gave me a name, I don’t recall what it was. I did delight in the concept of a name though, nothing had ever had a name, you invented them. You used to tell your young stories and warn them about my presence. I was the dark. There were many other creatures that made you their meals as well. Large cats and bears, sometimes you killed and ate each other. That always left you with a strange flavour I didn’t care for. I often moved on to another group when you began to turn on each other. I was very amused when you began to make up stories of invisible friends to explain your misfortune and misdeeds. You couldn’t accept the true nature and cruelty of existence, you gave pain and suffering a personality, disease became a punishment. I could never understand why you continued to hurt each other, and blamed invisible forces, saying you were called by your “gods” to hurt one another. I often became sickened by your treatment of your young. They were often the ones sent into the darkness to placate your gods. Certainly not me. The young hold no nutrition, small and lean. My intentions were not to torture or harm you, but one must eat to survive. My meals became easier when your numbers grew. You fought and killed each other over territory and shiny rocks you seem to think hold value. You piled into towns and crammed yourselves together for fear of me. The hairs still rose on the backs of your necks when I crouched nearby. Your cities became cesspools and disease ran rampant. Those were lean years for me. Although your dead lay in the streets the fetid stench of rotting flesh drove me away into the wild. I fed on the old foods, the creatures you forgot about, you called them fairy tales. I wandered around this earth for many years leaving when your wars became unbearable. My hunting ground grew smaller as you razed the forests in the name of progress. The earth was dying and your progress and technology ate the air and water, the earth began to fester. Ever so often a plague would knock back your enormous numbers. The creatures and I could no longer hunt you safely. My contribution barely scratched the surface of your rampant breeding. You breed so often that you could not feed or care for your young. The young ones died in the name of your animal urges. It still disgusts me. Your species has such knowledge, but no self control. You’ve forgotten my name now. Your stories no longer include mine. You may think, are you the devil? No, you made him up to explain away your hate and misdeeds. Nor am I the vampire, wearwolf, wendigo, or ghost. Those are just more stories to rationalize your diseases and disorders, from before a time you knew about the tiny ones. Yes, I have long known about your “bacteria” and viruses, we old ones have knowledge from millions of years of wandering. I still hunt. I take from the edges of your cities, only what I need. You don’t notice. Someone simply vanishes, never found. I never waste a morsel. I grow weary. The air tastes of poison and the water burns my mouth. I still walk in the darkness. A small part of your ancient brain recognizes my presence. It raises the hairs on your neck and a feeling of dread passes over you, you call it a “gut feeling”. It’s a memory from a time where you knew my name. You still do, some of you hear a whisper in the wind, and hear my name. They call you “mentally ill”. I watch you, you could be dangerous. If the others start to listen to your call, it could result in my capture. I whisper in the ears of your children, they wake from their sleep with screams. I warn them about the dark, not me, but others of your species that lurk there, predators. You seem to allow the torture and pain of your own kind, the animals and I watch in horror. We are hungry. I am the only one of my kind, I am an anomaly. I have no name I call myself. I have always been, and shall always be,in the darkness. I continue to feed on your putrid flesh. I wait for the day you change into something else, something aware, maybe closer to my own awareness. I am here, in your darkness. You’ve forgotten my name.