The Unknown

19 Jan 2020

Today’s prompt: “Alfred Hitchcock said that a mystery is not knowing what will happen to a bunch of guys playing poker; suspence is when only you know there’s a bomb underneath the poker table. Write about a banal event, but start by introducing something that will change everything and that only the reader knows is coming.”

You lift your coat from the hook. Pull your right arm into its lined sleeve, then jostle the coat until your left hand finds the other opening. Adjust the coat over your shoulders and button it down.

the deep the dark

You reach for the roll of plastic bags in the junk drawer and tuck them into your coat pocket. You pick up the leash. Daisy tamps her paws in excitement.

the creeping dark

You fasten the hook to Daisy’s collar. She rushes to the door and whines in anticipation.

unseen it comes from the shadows

You open the door and step into gleaming sunlight. Daisy struggles at the end of the leash, stretching the muscles in your arm.

unseen it lurks unseen it seeps it roils it billows

Daisy reaches the sidewalk and turns right to follow your regular path.

far from its realm it hastens its speed riding the wind

Nose to the ground, Daisy sniffs the edge of the neighbor’s yard, thoroughly, meditatively, then squats to pee in the grass.

tendrils feelers reach out like fingers grasping at worlds beyond its own

And as if she’d never paused, she’s off again, straining at the leash.

the deep the dark the creeping unknown

You traverse your familiar neighborhood. The house with the yellow arched door. The house with the overgrown front yard. The house with vines creeping up the chimney. The house with the plum tree.

it ripples the surface of a lake it burrows underground

Daisy stops tugging and wanders onto a plush green lawn. You tear a plastic bag off the roll, lick your thumb and forefinger and rub them against the bag’s edge to open it.

it winds itself into root systems it spreads into leaves into bark into cattails along the riverbank into blades of grass it is everywhere

You scoop up the dog poop and knot the end of the bag. Daisy is already yanking her way forward. You keep walking. Two more blocks, then you’ll turn back.

and now it coalesces it pools it shifts all its cold dark being into a black something in needly boughs

You duck your head as Daisy propels you along below the giant spruce.

with darkness with screeching it floods from its hidden perch it swarms around warm flesh it buzzes with hunger it seethes with malicious joy it is the unknown devourer it leaves nothing behind and then sated it melts back into the trees into the roots into the ground into its own realm

Daisy runs off, her leash attached to nothing.