The owl of the cold night

It’s two o’clock in the morning. The early risers head to work as they usually do. The moon is still behind the transparent clouds and the air is still biting the bare skin of those who refuse to cover. Their pale, discoloring skin from the cold blends into the night. The motionless atmosphere slowly begins to form into a venomous texture filling our lungs, our brains, and our senses. The ache in our veins isn’t tempting us to fall sideways off the cliff our home is built on, but the night owl on the gleaming branch stares intently at me, coaxing our minds with honeyed words to fall to our end. Its beak slightly opens, baring the teeth that look horrifyingly human-like. Monstrous teeth that threaten my sanity begin to get closer before the owl, the evil suffusing the atmosphere with its venomous breath, looms over my frozen body, chuckling darkly.

Slowly, an image of a figure showed itself from the night owl’s blood-stained fur with its form contorting in the most horrific of ways. Ribs pierced its gentle skin; while its head slumped on one shoulder with its mouth gaping open. In horror, the screaming emitted by it impales my mind as it inches toward me, causing my still heart to pound. The palpitations of my heart remind me that fear is one of the main emotions I have been experiencing in an agonizing loop.

“Isn’t the sky lovely?” I’m asked by the owl in a strained voice that is intensely menacing and intimidating. There's something about it that provokes my horror in an unwelcome way, causing my mind to go into overdrive as I retreat away from it to keep my skin intact. Almost as if one touch would quickly disperse a person into grains of ash, it seems threatening, extremely lethal.

In the midst of a searing throat, I can barely breathe before I struggle to reply in a hoarse voice I must have acquired only through initiation. I struggle to make sense of it. “What sky?”

“With a sky so lovely,” the owl continues, ignoring my response, “it’ll stain red by you, and that’ll be a shame to see. A night so beautiful is a night worth hunting within. The sky feels hungry, dangerous, and yet, you look like you’ll become the one that’ll corrupt it with your soul.”

The owl, so devilishly terrifying, widens its smile and points to the moon without looking at it, decreasing the temperature as the clouds become denser, thicker ― impenetrable. So breath-taking that my lungs weaken from the density, unable to inhale the poisonous acid any further.

My quivering legs, affected by the cold, begin to move.

Indistinguishably walking away from the cliff I froze on, I walked deeper into the night, which was closing in on me. Despite my best efforts, I have found myself ensnared inside a perplexing maze in my mind that seems to be getting narrower every time I take a step. My destination remains the same regardless of how I try to breathe, blink, or walk. After all the twists and turns that haven't led to anything, I am getting exhausted. So exhausted that the temptation is getting harder to ignore.

Does all this daunting foolery just serve as a complex trick to throw me off course on purpose? Who is prohibiting me from leaving? The owl? Exactly what are they trying to achieve with this? To prevent me from crossing over? What’s there to hide?

The steps become heavier. The moon becomes smaller. The ground… It becomes soft.

The sudden fall of my body knocks the remaining air out of me, leaving me defenseless on the hard, cold ground. Prepared to be hunted by the night owl.

But before the owl can stoop down and take a bite out of my flesh. I blink.

It’s two o’clock in the morning. The early risers head to work as they usually do. The moon is still behind the transparent clouds and the air is still biting the bare skin of those who refuse to cover. To merely protect themself from the true nightmare of the night.

“Isn’t the sky lovely?”