It moves like a shadow you can’t quite catch, slipping between walls, over fences, under streetlights. You feel it before you see it. The faint rustle, the subtle shift in the air, a whisper in the corner of your mind.

It grins . . . oh, it always grins.

It knows you. Every routine, every route you take, every place you hide. Nothing is safe. It enjoys the chase, savoring the quickening of your pulse, the sharp inhale when you hear something that shouldn’t be there. It shifts its shape when it pleases, sometimes human, sometimes something . . . impossibly wrong. Every form, every face, is a promise: it’s closer than you think.

Your footsteps echo. Its laughter echoes louder, though you swear no one else is around. Hallucinations flicker in your vision, familiar faces twisting into grins too wide, eyes too bright. It whispers your doubts, your fears, every memory that makes your chest tighten. You try to run, but it’s always a step behind, always patient, always waiting for the perfect moment.

It doesn’t need to strike.

Not yet.

The hunt is the pleasure. The panic, the scrambling, the way you think you can lose it; it feeds on that. And when it finally reaches you, when it slips out of shadows into your path, it tilts its head, that monstrous smile stretching impossibly, and it asks, softly, like it knows everything: “Did you really think you could hide from me?”

It moves again, silent, relentless, because fear isn’t enough.

It wants everything.