Skitter - Part1

Something formless stirs...

A-Frame Cabin - 6x6 ink and marker illustration by Skives.

Skitter Part 2

Skitter Part 3

This morning at sunup, just as my mind was shifting into a glitchy waking state, I became aware that I was not alone.

There’s a sudden absence of sound. Something is moving, and then it stops, aware perhaps that I have just become aware of it. Must be in the room then, but if so, I can’t see it.

This should be frightening, but it’s not. I’ve been here long enough to know that the oddities and anomalies living in this place are, as the saying goes, mostly harmless. For a few seconds though, while my waking brain undergoes a shift change, the lizard handing over control to the human, my scalp prickles with a momentary impulse to ick my way out of bed and flee.

But I don’t. I just lay there, corkscrewing deeper under the covers. I watch dust motes float around thin shafts of light leaking through the window shutters, I listen to the wooden roof stretch and settle as it warms in the sunshine. I do all the things a shitty writer would describe a person doing in such a situation, until a growing need to piss outweighs sleepy cosiness, and it’s time to arise.

The bed creaks as I sit up and behind me, in a dark corner of the cabin, something reacts. The sound is difficult to describe. Imagine a thing that was already still becoming stiller. If coiled potential can have a sound, that’s what I heard in a dark corner of the cabin behind me. The sound of sinews stiffening.

Hmm.

Traumatic experiences can be avoided here, for the most part, by quickly recognising you are in the presence of something odd, then making sure you are not between that odd thing and where it wants to be. Mostly harmless is not a passive state, it requires passenger participation to hold true, just like the wilderness. There, find yourself standing between a bear and her cubs, and be mauled to death. It’s the same deal here, with the oddities and anomalies.

Very slowly, I swing my legs out from under the covers and stand up. The air between my back and the dark corner of the cabin seems to vibrate. I walk forwards, naked buttocks unclenched in a way I hope communicates peaceful intent, until I reach the cabin’s stable door. I unlock the top latch and push the door open, allowing a wide arc of sunlight to sweep across the cabin floor. There’s an explosion of movement and I see something formless streak across the floorboards, it bends the light like a shock wave moving through air. Before I can turn away, it leaps, or levitates over my shoulder, and hurtles out the door. I hear it skitter across grass and stone, then plunge into the woods with a hiss of displaced foliage.

An anomaly then.

My buttocks, which had involuntarily clenched, relax. That was a lot to process before coffee and a cigarette.

Welcome to another day in paradise…

Skitter Part 2

Skitter Part 3

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