Borders

Crouched down, my cheek resting on my bare knee, I draw the line in the sand with my finger. My eyes are focused on what I am doing although my mind wandered through memories of doing the same as a child…but the reasons were always so much more innocent. I stand quickly, closing my eyes as I wait for the resulting dizziness to subside. After a moment I look out over that line at the ocean that spans across my view- bold, blue, and glassy, the sun sliced in half as it sinks beneath the horizon. I sigh. I stoop once more and make three more lines before the sun sets. I am nearly out of time. Every night I wait until the last possible moment to make my box. The last possible moment before the sun sets. The last possible moment before It comes.

I make sure the lines are unbroken. That they connect fully in the corners and that the sand has not shifted. Every night I do this. Every night once I am reassured that all is as it should be with my drawn box, I sit in it. Legs carefully crossed. My wrists hanging limply over my knees. My eyes closed in a light slumber.

As with every night, It will come. I used to jump when I first heard Its limping heavy tred over the sounds of the gently crashing waves. Now I simply wait, unmoving and trying to stay in my doze. Hopefully someday I will be able to sleep through the whole thing, not having to give up my precious day time to fitful sleep with dark dreams.

Some nights I never open my eyes, but pretend to sleep. I know It still knows I am awake. It growls in the darkness. It hisses right outside my box and I can smell Its rankness. And some nights I do open my eyes and watch It. I watch It watching me. I stare into the red hideous weeping orbs with no sign of humanity behind them but still harboring that intense cunning. I am no longer really fearful of it. Although I do occasionally have nightmares and I am loathe to even describe it. All I can say is that It embodies everything gone wrong in a beast. Everything gone wrong in a human. It smells like a combination of decay, musk, and feces. It crouches next to me some nights and it takes everything I have not to retch.

Tonight, in my box, I wait for Its nightly visit. It grows late, the moon high in the sky above me glazing the beach in silver. I doze.

I wake with a start, momentarily unsure of where I am. In the first heartbeat I realize that I am still within my box. In the second I realize that my foot slipped in my slumber and that my toes grooved a small trail across the line to the right of me. In the third I realize that It is crouched behind me, closer than It has ever been before, Its hot fetid breath tickling the raised hairs on the back of my neck…