05/09/2025
MD 025 - "Never Saw it Coming"
I never minded walking at night. There’s something about the way the city breathes when it thinks no one’s watching—how the neon hum of Rookery’s sign flickers like a heartbeat, and the old brick buildings lean in like they’re sharing secrets. Cherry Street, in the late hours, feels like a memory you’re not sure is yours. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe just the comfort of a familiar route, but I walked slow, like I had nowhere to be.
The street was mostly quiet. A few stragglers lingered near H&H, laughing too loud in the kind of way that makes you miss youth. I passed them without a glance, collar pulled high against a bite of spring chill. I could hear my boots echo off the sidewalk, a rhythmic clack like an old metronome trying to remember the beat.
Streetlamps buzzed overhead. Their glow spilled over shuttered cafes, casting warped shadows across murals and boarded-up doors. Macon sleeps with one eye open, I always thought.
I pulled out my phone to check the time. 2:56 a.m.
Almost home.
I turned the corner at 3rd Street without thinking, the same way I had a hundred times. I didn’t see the thing at first. I felt it—like the air shifted, pressure dipping fast, ears popping. The ground vibrated beneath me, like the earth suddenly remembered how to groan.
I stopped.
That’s when I heard it. A low, guttural thud followed by a wet, snarling exhale. My head whipped toward the sound just in time to see movement—massive, reptilian movement—rip through the darkness.
Eyes, gold and ancient, locked on mine.
A scream froze in my throat. Muscles turned to concrete.
The last thing I saw was teeth—serrated, prehistoric—and the silhouette of a beast that should’ve been extinct, its massive tail cracking a parked car in half as it lunged.
And then, just silence.
Macon would wake up to crushed pavement and missing persons reports. But not me.
I never saw it coming.