Icy rain, propelled by swollen gusts, beats upon the cracked, dry earth, tanned from the long summer. Now is time for change. Green to yellow, to red, to brown. Finally to gray. Ready for the rebirth.

A single patch of ground remains dry, a desert surrounded by a flood. At its center stands an isolated figure. He is hard to see, shouldn’t be there, will not allow the eyes to focus. But he is there nonetheless.

He waits.

Legend tells of a creature that stalks the early fall, ripping the young from their mother’s breast, leaving aching vacancies that can never be filled. He is a horror, a ghost story, a suggestion planted by older sisters into younger brother’s heads to grow into nightmares. Closets held fast by tilted chairs. Nightlights left burning.

Yet he is no legend. He is truth.

We do not like truths. They are inconvenient. They scare more than the lie, than the legend. The nightmare is real.

He waits.

To a passing motorist creating tidal waves that crash into sidewalks, a brief illumination casts a silhouette of a tall figure in a long coat, shielded by a large umbrella. We have all seen this. We know this figure. It is normal, mundane, not worth mentioning or recalling later. When the police come knocking, when tearful appeals are made on the evening news, when the unthinkable is discussed, picked apart, empathized, over coffees and sweets and indulgences that dull the senses, between idle chit-chat of vacations and hearsay’s and bake sales, that lone figure will not appear in the mind, will not be offered as a solution, not recognized as the bringer of agonies to a small town.

Not forgotten. Never remembered.

What no one sees is that he has stood for three hours and fourteen minutes in the same spot, immobile. His eyes have not left the glow of the single illuminated window on the first floor of the ordinary, average, frankly boring house. He waits.

He waits for the light to be extinguished. For the last occupants to make their way upstairs, to brush teeth and expel fluids, to make one final check on the one they claim they hold so much love for.

Claim. Pretend. Act like they think they should do for their audience. Do what is expected - cry when they should, dote when they should, be proud, be boastful, dream of their future. “Oh, she will be so beautiful.” “He will be a doctor I am sure.” “An honors student, I am so happy!”

Yet when the precious little gift, the wonderful prodigy returns home and the audience is out of sight and attending to other matters, then the act falls away. The truth lies waiting, like he waits, hidden below the surface, itching to get out. The monster prowls within, pacing in its cage looking for the opportunity to be free. You see, it must be free. It must feed. And the child cannot stop the feeding, and the partner turns a blind eye in case the monster feeds on them instead. The monster and the coward.

CRASH!

A broken glass.

THUD!

A discarded pair of shoes tripped over.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Joy interrupting a moment of quiet.

That is all that is needed. A sliver of a gap in the monster’s prison and it is free, wrecking havoc and turning a place of love into one of hate, of terror, of fists and of screams and of starvation and of ridicule and of threats and of pain.

Always pain.

Yet tomorrow the pain is forgotten and the child has not learnt the “lessons” that were taught last night and again the monster is loose and again the world turns to hate and again comes the pain.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Until one day, this day, when the figure arrives to wait. When the pain becomes too much for the child and something deep inside them breaks, something fundamental. A heart without love serves no purpose, and with no purpose it dies.

The lights are out. He waits. Twenty more minutes. Thirty, just to be sure. Now is the time. Time to take away the pain and replace with an eternal rest.

He steps towards the house.

Tiny rivers of fall rain swallow the last remains of the summer.