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The figure is slender and ailing; the limbs are too long, the thorax too thin and the back broken into an acute, painful kyphosis. The head hangs from a neck that juts out of the torso, taught like the wing of a bat. The skin is gangrenous—putrefied black with undertones of red and brown. It's callous, shrunken and cracking over the moving joints. It stands on legs pointing outwards, knees slightly bent, unable to fully extend its legs. It moves its head and joints slowly, but takes fast steps—a paradoxical difference in speeds that creates a bloodcurdling discrepancy in my mind, setting off every instinctual alarm. The long arms extend far, easily reaching me, and a strong grip finds my shoulders, keeping me face to face with it. I can feel each spindly finger against my skin, just barely painful but not quite. It leans in, closing the distance between us, and looks me in the eyes. It's panting, with an open mouth and lips drawn back over teeth—too many of them—in a breathless grimace. Its humid breath hits my face, hot and acidic. All this effort—all the hours of stalking behind drawn curtains and all the peering behind the edges of walls—just to ask me one question. One that it repeats over and over again, like a manic episode that consumes its very being, tormenting it. Its grip tightens as its desperation overflows, drowning me in pure terror. It asks and I do not answer. Its eyes are wide, lidless and ever-startled, as if it couldn't believe what it was seeing, couldn't fathom how could I not have an answer to a question so simple—me, of all people. I feel pity well up inside of me, amid my horror. I feel guilt. I feel sorrow, so much of it that it swells up inside my throat, forming a suffocating lump. I find hot tears blurring my vision, streaming down my cheeks. Why can't I answer its question? I want to say I'm sorry, so very sorry. But I can't find the will, can't command my tongue, can't move my lips. I'm sobbing, gulping air and letting out the ugliest of noises. I'm inconsolable. I'm so impossibly, wholly and deeply sorry. But it's already too late. The creature howls its question in tandem with my hollow moans, a debilitating synchroneity that pushes me to the edge of lunacy. No human has ever been as sorry as I am. My heart stops. Then it beats again. Then it stops, then beats. It stops and beats, stops and beats, and I can't do anything but wail. And all I hear is the creature's simple question.
"Why?"