18 Feb Gorgon’s Alley

Posted at 11:00h in Beings and Entities, Body Horror, Cosmic Horror and Lovecraftian Stories, Isolation and Loneliness, Madness, Paranoia, and Mental Illness, Monsters, Creatures, and Cryptids, Myths and Legends, Psychological Horror, Rites and Rituals, Strange and Unexplained, Suspense and Thrillers by CreepypastaStories.com 0 Comments

📅 Published on February 18, 2025

“Gorgon's Alley”

Written by Tobias Wade
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).

🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 20 minutes

Rating: 10.00/10. From 1 vote.

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Gorgon’s Alley is not a place you go on purpose. You’ll find yourself there only when you are running away from something else. But there is only so far you can run when you have nowhere left to go, and I was too tired to keep running that night.

I didn’t intend to get a drink at the bar. I don’t suppose the name of the place matters, because all roads lead back to hell. I definitely didn’t intend to take four shots of whiskey, but one by one I whipped my head back and let fire cure my thoughts. I would only need a few more to really start enjoying the Dave Mathews band on the juke box.

Her emerald eyes mapped my body. I needed the courage to be someone else that night. I didn’t want to be in that dim smoke-filled cave, inhaling someone else’s sin. I hated it every time I was here. Just not as much as I hated being home. And I hated getting drunk, and making a fool of myself before these women. Just not as much as I hated seeing myself through my wife’s eyes.

“If you really hate something, it’s easier to stop looking at it than it is to change it,” I told the woman sitting next to me at the bar. It’s not the sort of thing you tell women, but I’m not the sort of person who talks to them much. I can’t believe how young I got married, and how little of life I’ve lived since.

It didn’t matter what I said, my new companion smiled all the same. A perpetual smirk, red lips drawn tight across almost translucently pale skin. My vision was a little blurred, and the smoke in here stung my eyes. She didn’t respond, but only tilted her head and let loose waves of silky black hair tumble over her bare shoulder. As her hair moved, it revealed a silver pendant dangling between delicate collar bones.

“That’s an ouroboros!” I declared, proud of myself for recognizing the snake devouring its own tail. “It’s a symbol meaning —”

I cut myself short. My vision must be swimming. The silver snake on her necklace writhed against itself and twisted toward me. It opened its mouth a little wider, and slid its tail deeper into its body. The woman leaned her head back the other way and let her dark hair cover the symbol once more.

“Life and death,” I stammered. “The cycle of rebirth.”

I stared at where the necklace was hidden for at least ten long seconds before realizing my eyes had wandered down her red dress. It clung to her like a second skin. Like a snake skin, so thin, and tight, and fluid. It would be so easy to hook my fingers beneath those little straps and shed it from her, leaving only the shape of her body behind. I swallowed hard and looked down at my empty glass clutched in trembling fingers. She must have known I was looking, but did nothing to conceal her beauty or turn away.

“I would do that if I could,” I muttered. She giggled softly, and I hurriedly added: “Being reborn again, I mean. I wasn’t looking at your — I wasn’t asking to —”

She laughed harder. I was a fuming storm cloud. But this woman was nothing like my wife. She didn’t blame me for the thoughts I couldn’t control. She didn’t look down on me for being the animal that I was. Embarrassed, I mumbled:

“I would start over and live again from the beginning. I wouldn’t be the same person next time. I would be strong. I wouldn’t let people walk over me — I would be their leader. I wouldn’t waste time running away from things which couldn’t hurt me. Oh no, they would be the ones running away from me! Who are they, you wonder? How could it matter? One look at me, and they would know I was trouble. You can see it in someone a mile away, the way they carry themselves when the world bows down to their whim. That’s how it must be for you, actually. You’re so beautiful, you know. One look, and you’ll have them scrambling at your feet.”

My companion stood suddenly and hastily smoothed her dress flat against her muscular body. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that!” I was flustered. “Please sit down. I didn’t even get your name. I’ll get your next drink. I just want to talk. You don’t even have to listen, you just have to be there.”

She smiled and walked behind my bar stool. I thought she was gone and sighed into my drink. I turned to stone when I felt the warmth of her breath on the back of my neck. Her scent washed over me, the deep forest after a rain purging through my confused stupor. The soft brush of her lips against my skin, not quite a kiss, not quite a whisper, but something in-between. Not quite words, not quite a moan, but my whole body shivered at the sound of her rolling breathy voice.

“I can make you live again.”

She didn’t stay. How her body swayed, her hair capturing the light to steal it from the room as she goes. How her scent filled the bustling place and became stronger after she was gone. How the touch of her lips on my neck burned and froze and left a scar that I wished would never heal.

“I’m already living —” I started to call after her.

But what was the point in lying to a stranger? Here I came to drink, and here I existed only as far down as my chair. But if I was to die tonight, then it wouldn’t be a life that was destroyed. It would be more like a toy that had been used up, ready to be replaced. I slapped a few bills on the counter and stumbled from my perch to follow her through the smoke. I heard someone laughing. Maybe it was at me, the fool who thought he deserved to feel alive. The man behind the bar was saying something too, but I couldn’t focus.

I didn’t understand him even when he shouted. It felt like it was a foreign language, but one so alien that I couldn’t even recognize. Maybe I hadn’t paid enough. Maybe it was a warning about where this road must lead. Maybe the whole bar was begging me not to follow her. I didn’t see any of them anymore. My eyes were locked on the swaying red, that flaming spark which promised to rekindle my soul.

The lady exited through the back door without looking at me again. But those green eyes had seized me once, and never let me go. She had touched me, and that was enough to keep me warm for all cold nights to come. What good was being warm though, when I was frozen for so long? I needed fire to thaw. I needed her, and had enough encouragement to follow without being asked. I stepped out the back way where I had never gone before and entered the alley behind the bar. The smoke cleared from my lungs, and I gasped in the cold night air. I drank in the night like I was dying of thirst, never remembering anything so clean and pure. It didn’t taste like the city air I was used to. And no wonder, because it I wasn’t in the same city anymore.

The road was paved with cobblestones. The buildings on either side of the narrow alley leaned over me so they almost touched to block out the sky. They weren’t the concrete blocks I expected, but rather old brick houses with thatched roofs. The woman in red was gone. The alley was short, and she could have turned either direction. Then I realized why the air seemed so different — I wasn’t smelling the cars anymore. I couldn’t hear their rumble. The scent of freshly baked bread wafted around the corner. I turned around to look at the rough wooden door behind me. It still had peeling paint — the only thing here with any paint on it at all. It was still the same old door which belonged to the world I left behind.

I often think about whether I could have opened that door and gone home. But there was magic in the air, and whiskey in my blood, and I hardly stopped to wonder. It seemed almost natural that I couldn’t live a new life in the same place where the last struggled and rotted on the vine.

“Hello? I said yes! I want to live again!” I nearly shouted.

Where had she gone? I turned from left to right indecisively. A flutter of movement across the alley in one of the brick houses. A pair of wooden shutters slapped open. A scowling old woman wearing a headscarf thrust her head on its long neck like a spear in my direction.

“No shouting!” she shrieked, at least twice as loud as I’d been.

The shrill sound cut through my buzz and left me uncomfortably sober for a moment. I turned helplessly in a slow circle, studying the houses around me. Following them all the way up to where they almost met, and the sliver of stars beyond. I had never seen the stars in the city before…

“Sorry. I think I’ve gotten lost. I was with a lady, and…”

My words faltered as I met the black eyes of the old woman. I would have made the same sound if I’d been a dog and she’d stepped on my tail. I tumbled away, half falling, half leaping, flinging my hands backwards to catch the wall behind me.

I had been facing away from the window and hadn’t expected to see her face. The old woman’s neck had stretched impossibly long like a serpent to coil through the air and wrap around my shoulders, so that when I saw her it was her head suspended right beside me. The long veins of her neck pulsed and twitched as the sinuous thing crept through the air. Her neck must stretch at least fifteen feet back to the window.

I slid down the wall to the ground, trembling. The neck slowly reeled in, growing shorter by coiling and bunching and squirming back into the hem of her black dress. The old woman smiled sweetly, and I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

“The lady in red? Oh she is lovely, isn’t she?” said the kindly voice.

“Yes! Do you know where she went?”

A fool would have been smart enough not to linger here. But I could only aspire to be a fool after my desires have been satisfied. I had been drinking, after all. I wasn’t seeing things right. But I could still feel, damn it. I felt too much to think, and I wanted to be alive more than I feared death.

The old woman only smiled and nodded towards my left. Her smile vanished in an instant, replaced by a dreadful scowl. Her whole face contorted like rubber into a wrinkled mask, a caricature of what she had been. I would have asked more, but I was so horrified that I stumbled away in the direction she gestured. I didn’t look back until I reached the corner. This was no trick of the light. I hardly even felt the alcohol anymore. Her neck really was distending before my eyes, inch by inch accelerating as it threatened to follow me. I dashed around the corner, straight into —

A rough push caught me by surprise and shoved me face-first into the brick wall. I spun, fists raised, ready to fight. But I was helpless against the lurching mass of flesh which lumbered down the street. The creature was a square block, larger than a refrigerator. Waves of fat cascaded down its naked body to ripple smoothly as it slid down the street. It had no arms, legs, or even a neck, and hadn’t turned or noticed me at all. It simply shoved me as collateral damage as the bulk oozed along its grotesque journey. My blood was pounding so loud that it wasn’t until it had already passed that I noticed the thousands of tiny clicks from its innumerable centipede legs which bore its impossible weight.

Beyond the sheltered alley was the street which ran to Hell. There were no cars anymore. There were no street lights, or signs, or comforts of modern life. The only light came from the flickering of a distant fire farther down the street. The buildings were made of brick and stone, almost medieval but for the tortured nature of their design. No two houses looked alike, each warped and leaning in the throes of their personal agony. They were not like those in my world who hid their private torment. The people here, if they can be called that, wore their suffering plain for all to see by the misery of their forms.

No two of the creatures were alike. Each bore some shred of humanity: a leg, or a face, or arms, or eyes embedded within a monstrous body. Some could almost pass for human, until the shadow shifted and webbed fingers clawed the air, or the legs of a cockroach popped into view. There were dozens of the creatures, all plodding single-minded down the street in the same direction. They made no sounds but for their shuffling feet, and lurching bodies, and ugly ragged panting breath. I would have preferred for them to roar and rage like the beasts they were. At least then I would know something like life existed here. I stood in mute shock and watched doors on either side of the street open one by one to release more nightmares into the waking world. No matter what came out of those doors, they all had a common purpose and moved as the current in a polluted river.

But there grew my flower amidst the poison forest. My lady in the red dress walked confidently down the street, mingled among the monsters. Her black hair glowed in the firelight, her long shadow stretching back toward me. She must be one of them. Sitting so close to me, and yet I never noticed. What part of her perfect body was corrupted by this spell? Would I have removed her dress, only to see the silver scales of her necklace running down her sides? Would I even care?

I should go back to the door behind the bar. That door was my only hope of escape, and that’s exactly why I didn’t go. As long as I didn’t open it, then there was always the hope of going home again. But I was so afraid that I would pull it back only to find a leering evil face, the demon world unending. Seeing that would destroy my hope, and me with it. Was that madness? Was I brave, or a coward for going on? Neither I think, because I was not trying to risk or save myself. There wasn’t enough left of me to save. And so I joined them in their monstrous procession, and left my humanity behind.

I did not let my lady in red leave my sight. I stepped out into the street and rigidly faced forward like the others. I shuffled and lurched like them. I thought about chasing her, but decided not to draw attention to myself by breaking ranks. I did not turn my head from side to side, and I do not think they much looked at me. I stayed behind the large block of flesh which ensured my path was clear. It moved quickly for its size, and more than once I heard a squeal or sickening crunch as its tiny legs trampled over a smaller creature in front of it. Like a steamroller, it only had to catch the tiniest corner of someone’s clothing or limp dragging limb before shifting its bulk on top of them and pinning them. Inch by inch they were crushed as the little legs pulled the hulk over them, and what remained dribbled out behind for me to step around.

How much I hated myself for not turning back, even then. But by now I convinced myself that every creature was moving in the same direction. I could not be the only one going the other way, or they would notice me at once. And so on I went, picking myself over the ruined carcasses caught by the monster before me. We made good speed without enduring obstacles, and I was starting to catch up with the lady. Maybe I was close enough — I could make a break for it and join her. Or I could call to her and get her attention. But none of the other creatures were talking, and I couldn’t be the only one. They were all around me now, crawling and slithering, or dragging themselves along the stone with clawed hands. I just imagined myself speaking and all those faces and all those eyes turning on me from every side. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t go on, and couldn’t go back.

All the while we marched down the street and the great bonfire was getting closer. The shapes around me became clearer, but I did not turn my head and only followed the wall of flesh until is stopped. A dark shape brushed past me and I flinched aside. A giant spider the size of a large dog leaped onto the back of the mound of flesh and crawled up it. A teaming mass of smaller spiders pursued it like a cloud of smoke sweeping along the ground. I hopped out of the way and let them crawl up to join what I assumed to be their mother. The larger spider turned and waited for them, and a woman’s face with black leathery skin looked at me from the spiders body. I stared straight ahead, frozen, waiting until the little spiders caught up. They all turned away from me and climbed onto the head of the wall of flesh, positioning themselves there as if enjoying the view.

More creatures began to press in behind me. They grew thick around me, now blocking my view of the lady in red. I would have to press my way through the crowd to find her again. I watched two dogs with patchy hair sprouting from red rubbery skin push their way through the legs of someone ahead of them. There wasn’t enough room for both dogs to get through at once, and they began snapping at each other. This was no warning bark — they sank their teeth deep into each other and tore out great chunks of skin. I decided that I couldn’t make my way through the crowd without one of them turning on me. The press of bodies behind me grew thicker, and there was only one way left to go.

I took a running leap and flung myself onto the back of the wall of flesh. It felt just like human skin, like I was grabbing onto a large man’s stomach. The creature flinched and shrugged massive concealed shoulders as though to drive away a pesky fly. I hauled myself up hand over hand, now catching hold of a tuft of hair sprouting from a deformed mole. I scrambled all the way onto its head beside the family of spiders where I finally had a good view.

The mother spider turned to look at me, and then at the little ones. Up close I could see they all had human features too, especially their eyes which stretched wide like frightened children.

“I won’t hurt you,” I insisted.

The spider with the woman’s face barred needle sharp teeth. She stretched her crooked hairy legs and ushered all the little spiders underneath her. Then she turned away from me to face the giant fire and the stage which the crowd was apparently gathering for.

The fire raged from two long pits which flanked the stone stage. There was scaffolding with ladders above the stage where lights might have been hung in a modern concert. Instead ropes hung from the beams — more like a gallows, now that I thought about it. But where was my lady? I couldn’t find her anywhere in the pressing mass of cursed life. At least there was some comfort that the monsters behind me dispersed, as the fleshy mound I sat on blocked their view of the stage. It was nice not having them breath down my neck. And at least there was still a door somewhere which might open into a smoky room. There can always be comfort found in thoughts, even when the world has turned against you.

I saw the creatures clearly in the firelight from my new vantage. I do not label these creatures into types, for they share nothing in common but their wretchedness. Unique in their mutation, some had two bodies welded together haphazardly as though stitched by a mad scientist. Other’s had no recognizable counter part on our world, and were so warped and bent upon themselves to defy comparison, with rows of teeth running down their spine, or mold and fungus bursting out of their skin like blackheads. In particular I found myself watching a man who looked almost human, except that his biceps which were shredded into ribbons of sinew that somehow still maneuvered his forearms wildly about his head.

It took some time watching to realize he was dancing. The other creatures around him seemed offended at first, but he ignored them and flailed his arms madly, the forearms slapping loosely around to clear a circle around him. His big black boots stomped the ground to music only he could hear, thrusting himself into the air every eight stomps. He opened his wide mouth and shook his bristly black beard as he began to grunt. The circle around him continued to expand, the creatures pressing themselves into each other to give him space. They fought each other as they pushed, biting and clawing to get out of the way.

The stomping grew louder. First one, then another circle began to clear as more creatures joined the grunting rave. Clapping joined in, thomping, drumming to the beat. Something was thrown into the flaming pits, and the fire turned green and soared higher into the air. An explosion of light on stage — glittering dust like gold shrapnel spinning to catch the green light. Thick clouds of gray smoke, and there piercing through the darkness, the red tongue of flame who bound me to this nightmare. My lady stood proud on stage. For her alone the infernal concert plays.

Grunting turns to shouts, and shouting into howling shrieks, primal and beastial yet keeping to the relentless rhythm. The deafening beating engulfed me. I vibrated to my core, my heart and blood only moving with permission of of the beat. Everyone was dancing now, the clearings collapsing into a rolling bodies possessed by the rhythm. I could only compare it to a mosh pit for demons, except this violent dance went in for the kill at every opportunity. The cobblestone dance floor was soon drenched with blood. Red blood, yellow blood, black blood, thick and oozing like molasses from mortal wounds. The colors did not mix on the ground, but pooled together like vivacious oil.

Even the little spiders beside me were dancing. They were winding around the tapping legs of their mother, forming figure eights and chasing each other with glee. Two of them started throwing arms at one another, but a single stomp from their mother put an end to it. The mother must have known what was coming, and brought them up here to keep them safe. That leathery rubbery skin, those beedy yellow eyes, they concealed a mother’s love. I did not understand how love was possible in a place like this. But I looked back to the stage and I saw her, and I was reminded again.

My lady in red threw her head back and lifted her arms to welcome the crowd. They were here for her, but they ignored her, the savage maelstrom their true delight. I was close enough to the stage to see her silver necklace breaking free to slither around her neck. It molted a second hollow silver necklace which tumbled free. The silver shell floated as lightly as a feather onto the stone stage. A third ring of silver fell — the serpent was molting quickly, growing with every moment.

The way she opened her mouth to the sky made me feel like she was drinking. All the blood and violence was nourishing her somehow, and it was feeding the growing snake which tightened around her neck. On impulse I jumped into the air and waved, hoping to get her attention or to warn her. The silky cascade of her black hair tilted to the side, and her emerald eye peeked out at me. She smiled, and slowly lowered one of her arms to point in my direction.

“The human,” she presented me for all to see, in a voice much like: ‘dinner is served.’

Silence by the wave of her arm, so immediate and potent that I thought I had died. I hated the sound, but not as much as I hated the silence. I hated the violence, but not as much as I hated all those eyes turning from their wounds and their victims to stare in my direction. The beat of my own heart still followed the music after it was gone, so loud I felt the whole audience must hear. And when the stomping began again, the synchronization with my heart was so perfect I thought at first it was my pounding blood which filled the arena. They were all standing in place, not fighting, not speaking, only stomping their feet.

The giant blocky creature below me began to creep toward the stage. A sickening crunch below us — all the little spiders ran to the edge to look down. I didn’t need to. I could see that the demons before us were not moving out of the way. They stood and stomped in place even as the little centipede legs seized hold of them and dragged them under. They went without protest, still flailing one arm out to beat the ground to the encompassing rhythm until they were pulverized. The other demons held their place as well, so presently behind us opened a path of devastating carnage, like a road of paved with bodies, pointed home.

Even then I could have leaped and ran. I could have run through the opening and made it back to the little alley before any of them stopped me. I could have opened the door, and found the bar, and gone home to my wife, and that might have been the end of it. But my lady was on stage beckoning me, and this whole world was built for her glory. Who was I not to kneel helpless and pray? I stood tall and beat my chest to the rhythm, and shouted for them all to hear:

“I want to live again!”

I let the monster carry me until I was only a few horizontal feet from the stage, and about six feet above it. I made a wild jump to bridge the rest of the way, landing heavily on the stone. I caught up with the lady at last, and the giant serpent draped over her shoulders, its head resting on top of hers like a glorious silver crown which looked in my direction. The snake was wider around than she was, and at least twice as long as she was tall. She bore its giant metabolic weight effortlessly though, her graceful hand extending in my direction. Her skin was more than translucent in the green light of the flaming pits. Through rice-paper skin I could see the veins and muscle clearly. Was that all I had to fear from her?

My lady raised her arms, and the crowd fell quiet again. Was it my heart I heard still, or hers? I wanted to go to her, or at least to look at her. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from the golden gaze of the silver serpent. Its tongue flickered at me, its motion a mirror of the lady’s arm as she beckoned me. She withdrew her hands, and the lady reached for the straps of her dress to shed it immodestly to the ground. Bare skin, hardly skin at all, she hid nothing from me, or from the crowd which had begun to cheer again. But even so I could not look away from the snake’s eyes. I could not see the lady’s naked beauty, for I was the one who felt exposed.

The golden eyes saw me as I was. Not as the person who laughed with his brothers, while envying their success. They saw the person who smiled at his wife, while resenting every moment. They saw the man who lay awake at night and spun fantasies and lies about himself. They saw me as I really was, who I could not even admit to myself. Every secret, every weakness, every sin, I saw reflected in those eyes. The snake’s mouth hung open, and it seemed to silently laugh at me as though asking:

You want a new life? You have exactly the life you deserve.

A hiss — I thought it was coming from the snake, but no. It was the lady, hissing and scowling, slapping the silver serpent on the side of its head. The snake was like a statue, not turning its eyes from me in the least. She was jealous of my attention.

“Take what you want,” the lady commanded, gesturing to her own body.

Stomping, cheering, roaring crowd. They wanted her. They wanted to watch us. They wanted me to take her, their rage celebrating every thrust. This was her world, and she could take whatever she wanted. She could make me do whatever she wanted. But she couldn’t make me look at her. And she couldn’t make me love her.

I took a deep breath and tore my eyes away from the serpent. I turned around and looked at the roaring crowd of monsters gathered by our stone bed. I looked at the family of spiders, with the little ones cowering behind their mother’s legs. How they needed their mother, how their mother kept them safe: that was love. But whatever the lady could give me would not be love, and I no longer believed she could give me life.

“Don’t look at them. Look at me!” the lady shrieked.

“I have to look at them,” I said, not turning. “They’re the only beautiful thing here.”

A rush of wind behind my head. Let that be the end of me, I would not look at her. But it was the silver serpent hurtling past my ear, lunging from the stage to strike at the spiders.

The mother spider leaped into the air to meet halfway. Crushed in an instant by a single snapping bite. The serpent hardly slowed before lunging for the little ones. But opening its mouth again, I saw the spider still inside, her human mouth with its needle teeth latched onto the serpent’s tongue. The silver beast whipped its head back and forth in rage. The little spiders were still cowering in place, and would be devoured soon.

I rushed toward the fleshy face now pressed against the stage. I climbed over its thick lips and nose, leaping to its square head to pull myself up. The snake was still thrashing about while I gathered the little spiders up in my arms. Hardly breaking stride, I hurled myself into the air and ran from the stage.

For one glorious moment the way was open, with nothing but broken bodies and blood like a red carpet for my escape. But the lady was howling, the crowd was howling, and like the parted ocean closing in, the waves of monsters descended on the open path.

I ran with the little spiders in my arms. Slipping on bloody stones, ducking beneath the wild blows, I hurtled out the back of the crowd. They were fighting again, clashing with one another the instant I was out of reach.

Macabre beyond comprehension, but of one thing I certain: love was possible, even here. If love could exist here in that little family, what excuse did I have not to find those things at home?

I released the little spiders once I was free of the crowd. They didn’t drop away though, but clung to my arms and crawled up along my back and shoulders. The cobblestones weren’t bloody any longer. Round the corner, never stopping, heart locked in the rhythm of the stomping feet. I flung myself into the wooden door with the faded paint.

Dare I face my only hope? I would not be afraid to look and see it disappear. But there was the smoky bar, with the Dave Mathews band still playing.

“Did you find her?”

I was about to hurtle through before the voice beside my ear froze me with shock. The old lady on her long neck, wrapped around my shoulders like a serpent. The little spiders walked off my shoulders and onto her neck, taking it like a bridge back toward her window.

“I found what I was looking for. Will you watch the little ones?”

But the stomping grew closer, and long claws wrapped around the corner of the alleyway. I could not stay.

I rushed back into the bar and slammed the door. Panting for breath, I held my back against it. All the eyes were on me again, but I did not fear their judgment. The horrid bloody mess on my clothing was another matter. I stomped across the floor and exited through the front door without a word. I felt a tickle on my neck, and I spun around, ready to fight. But no one had moved. In fact, they looked at me like I owned the place.

What I really felt was the last little spider crawling on my neck. I scooped it off and looked at it, studying the all-too-human face. I looked back at the door — not a sound, the stomping gone. I wouldn’t open it again.

“This is the right world for us,” I said to it. “This is the life where we belong.”