The monster

 

I slowed my pace, feeling icy coldness seep into my bones as I heard its footsteps behind me. The darkness closed in around me like an iron vice - it always did before it struck. I quickened my step again, heart pounding in my chest. It kept coming, slowly, inexorably.

Finally I stopped and turned to face it. Its form coalesced out of the gloom, a towering monolith of formlessness that loomed over me. But I didn't back down.

"You can't catch me," I spat at it. "I've run too long."

It lunged forward in a burst of speed I tried to move around, dodging and weaving to avoid its grasp. Until finally, exhausted beyond endurance, I collapsed in a heap on the ground.

It loomed over me now, its formlessness towering above mine. I looked up into its faceless void. "Why do you flee from me?" it growled.

I met its gaze with defiance.

Slowly, it reached out with one long, shadowy tendril and wrapped it around me, pulling me inexorably towards the heart of its being.

Layer upon layer peeled away, each revealing some new depth of anguish and torment. Sorrow as vast as oceans, anger that burned hotter than a thousand suns... And then, at last - pain.

Not just any pain, but the purest, most searing agony I had ever known. It was both exquisite and torturous all at once.

And in that moment of epiphany, I saw it. Saw what drove me to run so long, to hide from the truth. Saw that which I had always tried to escape.

I looked up into its face - or what passed for one. My voice barely above a whisper: "What is your name?"

The darkness regarded me for a moment longer, then spoke in a voice like pure anguish in my mind, it gave a single word: "Grief."