I heard a story once
about a man that took children in the night.
Did he eat them?
Murder them?
Whip them to drive the great engines of Hell?
I always imagined him pulling a bloated cart down twilight streets
wobbley wheels
husky hollow breaths of the ageless
Were the bodies in the cart?
Was anyone brave enough to look?
... or were they in some phantom hole where his heart should be?
The old folk say you can see him on a pale night
skulking in the edge of what you thought you saw.
Flitting and darting between your paranoia,
insisting on his breach into reality.
He is that foul breath in a still room.
That cold brush against your neck.
He is under every crack
crevice
and dark hiding spot you were too afraid to check before bed.
How do you even get that job? Shuffling silently down cold night
reaching through windows
digging through beds
and into still cribs
Wrapping boney, dry fingers around plump, wriggling legs
placing a stiff hush over tiny lips
What depraved nightmare birthed such a hollow, faceless butcher?
And why
always
the raspy
clicking
shuffle.
And the smell of old rags...
musty
parched
dirt washed
Scratching against the floor
hungry for more.