You know there’s no way out

You finally come home after a long day at work, you want to rest, you need to rest, but that can’t happen, and you know that can’t happen because you know that’s when it comes, it comes at night.

You open up the fridge, inside are two cuts of meat, leaking and bloody across the shelf, you know why they’re there, you know that one is for you and one is for it, the bloody meat must be there for when it comes, and it always comes, it comes at night.

You take the bloody meat from the fridge, you know the time is soon, you take the meat for seasoning, but this time with something special, you take the meat and then from your pocket you cover the meat in poison, it will be there for when it comes, for when it comes at night.

You know the poison works, you’ve tested it countless times, the neighbours cat is missing, those lost ducklings at the park, and larger bodies nobody would miss, you needed to know it worked, and it has to work for when it comes, and it always comes, it always comes at night.

You descend to the basement to where you always find it, there’s still time but not much, the room is dark but it must be, if it sees your reflecting that’s the end, and every wretched thing you’ve done would have been for nothing, it cannot be for nothing for when it finally comes, it’s last will be tonight.

You sense the room is shifting, a shadow taking form, you know the time has come and you can feel it on your skin, you remove your clothes with haste, you mustn’t be afraid, but you are afraid, cold and alone and waiting for the beast that comes at night, clawing at your sanity, the beast will come tonight.

You cannot make it angry, you’ve seen what it can do, ripping throats and pools of blood, slicing claws that glide through flesh like a malicious sickle, and you know it likes flesh that’s raw, but you know it likes best a heart still pumping, to sooth the beast inside, the beast that comes a night.

You know the chains won’t work this time, it’s strength keeps growing and growing, you know this is your final chance to kill the beast that lurks in your shadow, you know all this because you are what comes at night, and there’s no other way out, you are what comes tonight.

You’ve tried to fight it for so long, but your infliction is not so easily cured, you know what it’s like to lose yourself in that primal euphoria, you know that it can’t go on because you’re starting to like it, you know it must end, and it must end one way or another, might you the beast end tonight?

You know the horrid feeling of ripping limb from limb, but it’s like a craving, you know that man flesh tastes better than anything else, and there’s only one way to get it, you know that insatiable pang for inflicting pain and ending life, that fear instilled in others at night, you are the beast that hunts at night.

Your skin tears and your body breaks, contorting on the cold stone floor deep inside the basement, you feel your mind transforming, you take true form and only have one need, an endless thirst to hunt and kill, but what has the beast been left?

You know you sometimes find it here, waiting, a morsel as tribute from your other, a piece of bloody meat to begin your feast, the bloody feast of night.

End the beast? Or embrace the beast? Do you take the tribute?