JV Hampton-VanSant

For the briefest two-flame flicker, you consider turning it on yourself.

Ending this nightmare, ending the soul-wrenching anxieties of your everyday life.

It would be so easy.

You raise the barrel, take aim, but your trigger finger sags.

More deboned flesh.

With a desperate, sickened scream, you switch hands.

His shadow twitches, and you aim wildly and pull the trigger.

The barrel detonates with a gunpowder flash and kicks you against the wall.

Your watcher's wolfy shoulder explodes, backscattering tendrils of meat and fuzz into the Rialto's projector light.

But he doesn't stop.

He rages at you with beaming eyes.

All around the Wolfsbane Meadow swirls with technicolor plumes of crimson fury fog.

You don't need audio to feel the low rumble of his growl.

His sharp-toothed maw snaps open and he pounces.

You scream out and raise the shotgun again.

This time your aim doesn't shiver.

The buckshot blasts him square in that projector lens glare, shattering his light.

All around you, the foggy forest cuts to black.

Your watcher drops to his knees.

His werewolf pelt splits down the middle, peeling away layer after layer, falling loose like exercised masks, revealing a lake-bloated killer, a Victorian vampire, a blade-handed nightmare stalker.