THE EVIL OF THE THING was evident in its scaly body, which looked like it was made of coal, as its skin was a matte black, with gray tainting its scales here and there like rust, and its dull-as-mud brown eyes gleamed from wetness, rather than malice or any other emotion. Its jaws opened and closed almost soundlessly, saliva dripping from the thing’s sick black gums, and every so often it would hiss, and sniff, and stick out its tongue in a gesture similar to a dog’s panting— but it was much more menacing than a dog’s panting.

Gwendolyn huddled behind the edge of the wall in the passageway, her sweat stuck her long blonde bangs to her eyebrows, melded her white bandanna to her forehead, and her clothes stuck to her skin, even as her shoulders heaved silently with the effort of breathing in and not screaming out.

She could only hope and pray that the thing didn’t smell her, that it wasn’t small enough to fit in the joint between the part of the wall that jutted out into the corridor and the slim doorway, and that it wasn’t playing games with her and didn’t plan on eating her.

She knew, of course, that the thing wasn’t real— it couldn’t be real, the way your dog was real, the way the feeling of cold water on your face in the morning was real— but the thing seemed to exist, it was there, and it hated her, with a passion and rage that nothing could match.

Thus, the only real questions in her mind were whether or not there were more things just like it, and whether or not it would eat her regardless of a pack or its solitary state— and whether it or others like it had eaten her younger brother, Taliesin.

The thing nosed the air a few more times, obviously sniffing, hissed, with its mouth opened wide and its tongue hanging out and curling upwards, lost interest and lumbered away.