backwards man.

not safe.

It’s a relatively cool night. The day had been close to 95°, but now it’s sitting at 73°. There’s a breeze, soft and coming from the southwest.

You walk along the sidewalk, your hands in your pockets. You take a deep breath of the refreshing, slightly humid air. It had rained maybe a half hour ago, and the smell of petrichor remained in the air.

It was pretty quiet. Most people have probably gone to sleep. Only a few cars have driven by you, one of them being a white 240sx with highly cambered wheels.

You needed a break from home. Your uncle is drinking, you aunt is out of town... not some place you want to be. So you decided to go for a walk.

You can hear someone jogging far behind you. Sooner or later, they’d pass you, so you make room by walking closer to the edge of the sidewalk.

The jogger gets steadily closer, and you notice the air gets steadily cooler. You take a glance over your shoulder and note the man in black joggers, white sneakers, and a turquoise hoodie. You can’t see his face.

The temperature gets to the point where you teeth chatter, then the man passes you. Your breath plumes in front of you.

After a few more steps, he stops abruptly. Simultaneously, the breeze ceases. A ringing begins in your ears.

You stop as well, surprised by his sudden halt. You notice you can’t see his breath. He just stands there, apparently frozen.

“H-... hello?” you ask hesitantly.

He twitches, lifting his right foot and putting it behind him. You back up slightly, furrowing your brow.

You open your mouth to speak again, when he takes another step backwards towards you. His movements are unnatural, as if he were stop-motion.

“What... the fu-...”

He moves faster, his arms stiff as poles by his sides. You stumble backwards with a shriek, but he keeps moving frame by frame. The ringing in your ears rapidly increases to an indescribable screeching.

You turn and run, not wanting to find out what happens if he reaches you. You glance over your shoulder to see if he’s following and find his steps have rapidly increased in speed. He looks like a man playing in reverse at 2.5x speed.

“F**k.”

You wrack your brain, thinking of places you could go to lose him. There’s an abandoned apartment building at the next intersection. One of the doors is always unlocked. Maybe you can lose him there.

You skip looking both ways and pound your way across a crosswalk, already breathing hard. You were never a runner.

You hop the low concrete wall around the building and stumble across the overgrown lawn to the door that was always unlocked. It’s locked.

“Oh... please.. no...”

You panic and shake the doorknob, as if actually believing that would do anything.

You back up and grab a chunk of concrete from the yard. You throw it at a window, which shatters loudly.

You climb through the empty window, slicing your hands on the shards of glass on the sill, but you don’t care. The adrenaline pumping through your veins masks all the pain.

You stumble through the room to the hall, then find the stairs and run up them as fast as you can. The air is unnaturally cold.

You’re about to turn the corner on the stairs for the next flight when you notice a turquoise shape descending the stairs two flights above. Your ears ring.

You gasp and turn to run back down, running out into a hall and down it as far as you can go. You slam into one of the apartment doors and futz with the doorknob before it grants you access.

When you shut the door, you catch a glimpse of turquoise. You lock it. A pervasive screeching rings in your ears.

You back away, trembling. You turn and find your way to the bedroom and close and lock the door. You think you’re safe.

Something bangs hard on the door and that’s the last thing you hear. The screeching suddenly stops, your ears actually hurt with the sudden silence. It doesn’t take you long to realize that you’re now totally deaf.

Broken fingers find their way though the gap between the door and the wall. The digits flail around like tentacles, steadily getting longer.

You back into a corner, nearly petrified.

The fingers stretch into arms, and heavily broken legs slither their way under the door. The torso of the man seeps between the wall and door until he stands in the room, facing the door. The air is freezing.

He backs up towards you with the effect of someone pausing a sped-up reversed video with each step.

“Who are you?” you scream. You can’t even hear your own words.

He doesn’t stop.

“What do you want?”

You can’t move.

His arms bend backwards at the elbows and extend towards you.

You feel the breath being sucked from your lungs and darkness encroaches on your vision. You feel your ribs crack in multiple places and collapse inward, massive waves of pain erupting through your body. You feel pressure on your skull as your hands involuntarily clench into fists, then implode with multiple fractures, bones sticking out of your skin.

You slowly bunch up into a ball, agony ripping its way through your entire body. You feel every bone snap in multiple locations. You feel skin tearing, organs rupturing. You feel your skull crack. Then...

Nothing.