Dear Reader,
Halloween is a time for ghosts and goblins, costumes and candy, friends and fear. It’s a time when it’s ok to knock on strangers’ doors asking for candy, a time when adults make up stories to scare the kids silly. Stories that give you the heebie-jeebies. Stories that make you shiver. Stories that make you scream.
But, dear reader, what many do not know, is that not all of these stories are pretend. They happened not so long ago, and the ending is hardly ever Happily Ever After.
Some of these stories you know. Some, you don’t. Some happened in this very room.
Yes, my dear, dear, friend. This very room.
And it all happened one year ago to the day.
This story is not for the weak of heart. In fact, I advise you to put this story down and go trick or treating instead. The things you will hear today will not be forgotten for a long, long, time….

That morning, there was no sunrise. No light.
Much like today, the day was bleak. It started with rain. Not the kind of rainbow rain that makes you want to tug on your galoshes and stomp in puddles. A rain that fell lifeless.
Then, cold. Not the kind of refreshing cold that makes you want to don your gay apparel. A cold that seeped in through your raincoat and chilled you to the bone.
It was not a good day to talk to me. I doubt anyone would try. Frogs had died in my mouth, and my hair looked worse than one of our fore fathers’ wigs. It was the vines outside sleeping beauty’s castle, and even if your sword could cut through them, my face was frozen in an expression that would make Medusa cower. I wanted nothing to do with my fellow people. Maybe I could just close my eyes for one second…
An earsplitting scream awoke me from my daze. It ended abruptly, leaving me shivering in my seat. The silence resounded all around me, trapping me in a bubble of claustrophobia. I was sinking… sinking…
A hand came out of nowhere and gripped my shoulder roughly. Another came and covered my mouth, stifling the shriek that was begging to escape. I kicked and bit, trying to twist my way out of my captor’s grasp, but the hands were unyielding.
A deep, gravelly voice came from the darkness.
“Do not struggle. I am ten times more powerful than you shall ever be, you would cower at the very sight of me. My colleagues and I do not wish to injure you...”
At this the voice paused and breathed out. The voice dropped down to a whisper and dragged the next sentence out slowly.
“We only wish to kill you.”
I drew in a sharp, ragged breath, and the hand on my shoulder moved to my neck and tightened.
Tightened.
Tightened.
The voice spoke again.
“I am powerful in ways you could only dream of. You could be dead in seconds, and no one would hear your screams but me as I ring out your neck like a dirty dish towel. I am going to kill you, and you! You, dear girl, will become my dinner.”
A finger from the hand that was clutched around my neck lifted, and scratched me with its long, yellow, nail. Blood poured from my wound, standing out against my pallor.
I screamed. What was this horrid, horrid, thing that was about to eat me? I needed an answer just as I needed to live. I wasn’t going to get one, not tonight.
The hands dragged me slowly backwards, down, down the stairs, leaving a deep purple trail of blood behind me. The hands dragged me all the way out the door, and to an alleyway lit only by a single, lonely, lamppost. I stumbled backwards, my breathing labored.
The monster turned towards me and I let out an involuntary gasp. Its skin was pasty, sallow, and its nose was simply two slits in the center of its face. The eyes themselves were as large and red as a tomato, that is to say nothing of its mouth. Its mouth was huge, the size of a small human, and every surface inside it was covered with fangs, fangs that were yellow and decayed, fangs that had been worn down to a stub. Fangs so white they actually sparkled.
“I am Izimu.”
The voice boomed.
“And you are dead meat.”
With that, the monster leaned towards me and grinned a wretched sort of grin. It bared its teeth and lined up his largest fang with my heart, set to make the killing blow.
The tip of the fang sank in, breaking the top layer of skin. Blood gathered and pooled around it.
The monster bent over, ready to kill…