Satan Spawn

I’m still getting the cold fingers of terror crawling up my back.

It was a week ago when this woman of indeterminate age, this woman with the flowered, pink bonnet, this woman whom I would wager an age-guess, based solely on general decay, of 145 but for the obvious ambulatory qualities she displayed, this woman limped past my car on a rainy afternoon.

This woman with the apple-sized bonnet-knot hovering in front of her panting maw – was she gasping for air? Gnawing on her bonnet-knot? Gnashing her teeth? – this woman had eyes of black; not pupil-black, or iris-black, but absence-of-white-black...black-black, like a convex void of nothingness.

Mouth agape behind a possibly-chewed bonnet-knot, this woman looked at me with those demon-eyes...and again, and again, the devil herself staring into my car, filling me with horror and bewilderment, an unblinking affirmation that I had unknowingly committed some base-level wrong, and that she alone knew it was me...

As I sat at the intersection, unable to complete my turn because of the varied complexities and flawed ratios involved in dealing with this woman’s distracting visage, a crooked math-problem detailing the effect of an external-oddity on functioning motor-skills, this woman with the night-eyes looked back at me twelve times.

I counted.

Fear twisted down my arms like coils; a single rivulet of sweat ran down my nose; I hadn’t done anything but stop at my stopsign in a particularly suave-fashion, but I felt as though this woman was one look away from unleashing all manner of hell on me.

Obviously stunned, it took a helpful horn-blast from the irate Jeep behind for me to tear my eyes from this woman’s form that was gently fading into damp silhouette.

Perhaps it was my tried & true lifestyle-choice of Over-Caffeination + Lack of Sleep = Propulsive Paranoia...or perhaps, in West-Hammertown, I was visited by the Spawn of Satan.