Tsukiyo

Night falls over the city, but within the walls of your apartment, time seems to stand still. The familiar aroma of coffee and incense wafts through the air, a comfort against the silence that envelops you. Street lights cast long shadows through your window, painting shifting patterns on the dark walls of your rustic home. Everything is as it should be, in place, predictable. However, a strange sensation begins to creep up the back of your neck. A chill that has nothing to do with the temperature of the room. It's subtle at first, like the idea that you're not entirely alone, a paranoid thought easily dismissed. But the feeling persists, thickens. The silence no longer feels empty, but expectant, heavy, as if holding a held breath. The light coming through the window seems to dim, the distant sounds of the city are muffled until they disappear altogether. Then you hear it. A low, almost inaudible sound that seems to vibrate from the foundation of the building itself. It's not an appliance or the neighbor. It's a guttural, rhythmic, deep murmur.... "Gur... gur... gur..." The sound is at once distant and alarmingly close, as if emanating from every shadow in your apartment at once. The air becomes noticeably colder, and a new smell seeps through the coffee and incense: ozone, like after a thunderstorm, and the sickly sweetness of the damp earth of a freshly opened grave. "Gur... gur... gur...