It's September!

Yeah. I know. Where the hell did the year go?

I have no idea either. If you find out can you let me know? Anyway....

To celebrate the unofficial start of spooky season, enjoy the following short.

 You feel it. The change in the air. Lifting the fine hairs on your arm.

    Thick, heavy blackness settles over your home. Impenetrable, weighty, unyielding to the only light source available. Shadows jump as the candle flame dances frantically in the draft.

    Each sound, you scrutinize. Each shadow you beg to make sense out of. Your mind reeling as you try to take in everything with your eyes.

    The charged feeling in the air moves your hand to the back of your neck. Involuntary shivers wrack our body as your eyes lock on a shadow in the corner.

    Undeniable pressure dents the skin of your arm as invisible fingers clamp down on your flesh. Icy cold races through your blood, the pain, sudden and intense as you body tries to fight. Gossamer threads separate us this night.

The thinnest they will ever be.

Transparent and razor sharp.

    Against everything, you pull your arm away from the grasp of what could only be described as so cold it burns. Red welts in the shape of long fingers raise as your body still tries to recover from the touch.

    Bony ribs imprison pounding muscle that thunders in the suffocating blackness. With one last frantic stutter, the candle is snuffed our, giving explicit permission to the hands to return.

    Ice forms under the skin of your shoulder. Frozen hair, brittle cracks as ghostly fingers twirl strands that shatter into oblivion. Frigid air on the back of your neck leaves trails of dread down your spine.

    Spindly fingers encircle a wrist, numbing the tendons, slowing movement as another dreadful touch ices your thigh. So many hands.

    With each one comes the cold realization that flesh is only temporary. Shadows lack substance, yet the cold is a driving force. Drawing everything to stillness. Slow movements, lacking function needed to maintain body temperature.

    Breath, each subsequent one slower and more shallow than the one before.

    Eyes blink under the weight of frigid grazes. The effort, herculean in and of itself.

    Any energy left to movement extinguished, just as the candle light had been. No more dancing shadows. No more warm embraces. Icy muscles and impossible movements.

    All warmth has been leeched into the air. the last few breaths a struggle. lungs that crackle with ice crystals, as those slender fingers wrap around your heart.

     The still air.