There’s a reason no one is out when the streetlights flicker on. The Shadows lurk, waiting for the sun to vanish so that they might run free in the town of Angel Dome. They live where there is darkness. Be it the darkest corner of your closet or the cool shade under a tree.

            The Shadows love the greasy light that the streetlamps emit. Only then do they show themselves to us, to bask in that horrible glow. A Shadow stands tall at 6 ft and maybe some inches (no one dares get close enough to measure). Their skin boils and oozes and occasionally a pustule will burst with a pop, dripping red goop onto the streets, where it hardens and sizzles. Its oily white eyes see all, though their pupils are only pinpricks of black. When it opens its mouth, foul brown sludge slops down its front, mixing with the black tar that is its skin. Only when its mouth empties do you see that it has no teeth, nor anything recognizable as a throat.

            They eat us. Many have done so. Eating the foolish children that dare to hunt them. They hunt us. Retching, they cover you with their thick slime. That brown sludge that stinks of rotten guts and smashed brains. It burns. It burns you, and you can feel your skin sliding from your bones. It’s a painful death. A painful process. Soon you are only a puddle on the ground of melted skin and bones. Then they walk over you. It’s how they eat. Their goop slurps you up, since you are now just a human soup. They absorb you and continue on, blending back into the shadows. There isn’t a trace of you left.

They live solely to kill us. To extinguish the human race so that they may cover the world in darkness. So that they might come out to see the day.