We Do Not Perceive It

As he had for decades past, Hector knocked on our doors to hand deliver us our morning papers. A sweet old man, he continued working well past retirement age because he simply loved the opportunity to share small conversations with all the citizens of our quaint village. Before it all started, his love of small talk was an endearing trait. But now, it would become his most dire flaw. “Quite the commotion last night, huh?” he said to us. We responded with silence. We all knew the rules, including Hector. His eyes widened, his mouth gone slack. We watched the blood flush out of his face, stricken horrifically pale. He had realized his mistake, and we said nothing. We knew the rules. “I’m sorry. I’ll be on my way now,” he said. Grim. Quiet and breathy. Hopeless. We replied again with silence, unwilling to test its limits. He had been right. It was louder than usual last night. It had been so long since it last fed because we got good at pretending it wasn’t real. We got good at pretending people had not disappeared, had not been torn into ribbons of gnashed flesh and viscera by the disgusting toothy maw of that horrid thing. We got good at not mourning. As long as we never acknowledged it, it left us alone. It just lurked at the edge of town, waiting for someone to slip up. We could see it there sometimes at night. Listening. We dared not so much as gasp, swallowing our fear lest even the slightest hint of it be enough to let it know we perceived it. It was the roofer that Thomas hired from out of town to fix up his tavern that would finally invite it back in. We could not tell others the rules without breaking them. He told us that he had heard about the disappearances. He asked us if we had ever figured out what was happening. We responded with silence. That night, it finally got to feed again. It was so hungry. It was so loud.

We watched out our windows as the pure black of night finally settled in. We watched as the swarm of tiny eyes, only slightly less black than the sky that they penetrated, and the innumerable jagged teeth drifted toward Hector’s house like a violent, writhing cloud. We watched the long, ropey limbs lash into the ground, pulling chunks of the earth out as it crawled through our streets. We watched one of its arms, long and barbed like a thick, pulsating rose stem, crash through Hector’s window and rip him out of his own home. We heard his screams as the barbs sawed through him, his organs spilling from the massive tears in his body as he thrashed about, helplessly trying to escape the thing’s grip. We watched it swallow his eviscerated body whole. We watched it suck the blood out of the dirt. We watched any trace that Hector ever existed completely disappear. Then, we watched the creature retire to the shadows.

The next morning, Alice delivered us our morning paper. We said nothing. We understood the rules.

Author: K.Z. Staska

Originally appeared in Black Hole News: Communication, June 2026.