The Creepening

The walls closed in like blackened, charred slabs of midnight. The stench of burned memories and collapsed dreams filled one nostril, while the scent of cramped overpopulation filled the other.

Her legs were aching to the bone from the meters ran in old school shoes that had long since passed their expiration. The foreshadowing of blisters were beginning to form on the soles of her feet and the back of her heel, but there was no stopping.

Even as her school uniform picked up streaks of filth, slashing across her skirt as though the mud were a knife’s edge, she ran. Through poorly lit alleyways, past darkened doorsteps, she ran. The cruel din of laughter followed her, taunted her.

She knew giving them the chase they wanted only made it worse, but this wasn’t about knowing. This was about fear. This was about the kind of absolute terror that comes from the core of your being, near the chills of your spine, and creeps sickeningly, and electrically, throughout the rest of your body.

This was about pits of unknowing turning into black holes of insecurity in your lightened stomach. This was a primal disgust, beyond the pampered pleasantries of modernity.

She heard the sounds of those old school shoes bouncing off rough outdoor concrete. It was a dull thump of rubber on rock that barely registered through the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. And then she heard “it” once again, high and exaggerated: “Meeeeoooowwwww...”.

That was the worst of it, the meowing. It made her feel cold, despite the sweat dripping down her back, covering her forehead, and matting her hair. Not even a humid Manila evening, with the stones of the city still hot from a barely set sun, could make her feel warm as that mocking tone resounded off the buildings.

Naturally, it was always followed immediately by the sounds of her tormentors. Five spiteful, mocking laughs of five exceedingly awful girls carrying a bag full of nightmares.

The green and yellow plaid of her skirt seemed to blend with the shadows surrounding her feet as the edges billowed around her legs.

Her breath hurt in her chest and burned in her nostrils. Breathing came in short gasps; she had already run so far and so long. The flickering of the streetlights matched the shallow rapidity of her gasps as she reached a crossroads of the tiny arteries of foot traffic that wind behind the houses.

In this city, half the time you’re as likely to end up at a dead end as you are winding back to a main road. This thought crosses her mind again as she remembers all the times she had casually looked at Google maps, wishing she had memorized at least a few sections, life-saving sections.

She didn’t really know where she was or where either of the two nearby paths would take her. She certainly didn’t have time to think about it.

To the left was an even more poorly lit path than the one she had come from. Some seemingly centuries-old concrete houses sat like squatting stone giants, allowing only a sliver of a walkway between themselves and the foul-smelling, fenced-in, canal behind them.

To the right was a more open road, big enough to get a motorcycle down, and better lit. It looked promising until she heard a different set of voices and laughter coming from this direction.

These were older voices, drunken voices, men’s voices. Undoubtedly they had a bottle of beer on the table and a group of adult males too drunk to do anything but laugh at her, were they even to acknowledge her.

She didn’t see another path.

Her hands fell to her knees as she tried to bend over and catch her breath. How long had she run for? Her mind raced trying to determine distance as her nostrils flared sucking down air in tandem with her mouth.

A trickle of blood came down the center of her thick, pinkish bottom lip, bitten as she had run. Her light-brown cheeks were flushed red from the effort she had exerted. Her hair, with natural tints of red and brown, was stuck to her back- where her towel had been- and strewn across her wide forehead.

Her thighs ached. Her calves felt almost like they were going to go tight and cramp up. She wanted to stop, to hide, to rest. Until she heard it from directly behind her, high, mocking, sing-song, “Little monkey, we have a surprise for you...”

Her blood runs cold. Her spine stiffens instinctively and the power of fear fills her every limb once again. Her light brown eyes go wide with terror at the thought of what she would see if the pack behind her catches up.