Cold Breathe by N.D. Graveheart from the DEATHLY AFRAID Collection

Artwork by Breanna Knoth

She found him as a man before he transformed into a monster. It was a simple date night. While walking her home, she never would have guessed that she’d be running for her life.

It was chasing her now. Long-arms, crooked fingers with sharp nails, a putrid mouth agape, an elongated body, with serpentine eyes on either side of its malformed head. Crawling and caressing against the grime and broken pavement it followed her fading floral scent.

To throw it off her trail, she hid inside a nearby dumpster in a crooked alleyway close to her home. The creature had followed her more closely than she had predicted, and if she had tried to escape into her 3^rd floor apartment, she was assuredly doomed. This dumpster became her one escape, lest she face death tenfold.

In the tenuous cold, a bitter night for a frightful excursion, she sat still and huddled within the stinking bin. The putrid smell of rotting food, a hint of piss and feces, and a slight stench of rusting metal filled the confined space. This metal box was a reverse reverie, stained and graffitied by hooligans. It started to feel like a tomb with a scheduled disposal.

Then, in the bitter winter night she shivered hard, breathing heavily as the creature came nearer. She could hear it scraping, inch by inch. While attempting to keep still in shivers uncontrollable, it approached. But beyond her realization, it saw her breath seep from the lid of the dumpster ...and it slithered in with her.

Cold Breathe by N.D. Graveheart from the DEATHLY AFRAID Collection