Nocturnal

The Hidey Hole

Rex paced.

There wasn’t much space to do even that; it only took ten steps to cross the room. A damp cold put a moisture sheen on the stone walls, making them reflect the candles that lit the room. The place looked like it had started out as a crack in the rock, then had been chipped away at to make room for a bed, a bookshelf, a table and a chair.

A skull sat on the floor in a corner. A human skull. Maybe someone had put that there to see if it scared him. It didn’t. There were gouges in the skull’s face bones, like someone had scraped at them with their teeth.

Moldy books sat on the shelves. To pass the time, he’d tried to read one called On the Road, but he’d only made it five pages before the spine split and page six crumbled when he tried to turn it.

He didn’t want to read, anyway.

There were no clocks, yet somehow he knew the sun had already set. He could feel it. His whole life he had felt tired and sluggish during the day, had trouble sleeping at night. He’d always felt exhausted at school, felt slow, like the world was slipping by him in a way he couldn’t understand.

Well, now he knew why. The day was made for sleeping. Night was the time to hunt. There was a word for creatures that lived at night and slept during the day — nocturnal.

Rex paced. Sly would be back soon, and he would take Rex home.