Cold.

It is so cold.

Everywhere is cold. In people’s eyes, hearts, the air, and outside in the rain.

He doesn’t like the cold. He hates it with vigor and rage. But it doesn’t matter that much. He’s a nobody. He knows this and he has come to terms with it. It hurts but only barely. After living for an agonizing two hundred years, you eventually have to forget and get used to it.

He catches a butterfly on his hand as the rain pelts down on his umbrella. The steady thump, thump of it makes him trill. He clicks and hums at the blue, majestic creature that landed so softly on his gray and claw like hand and that now chirps back at him. It doesn’t seem afraid or wary of him. It seems fascinated with him. Weird creature. Who would want to look at him?

He claws at his nonexistent nose and feels around the two holes that enable him to breathe. His eyes are white pits upon his head the look into your soul and can see you every lie. They show nothing and give nothing away and they never blink. A monstrosity but it is who he is. Accept it. His face his gray and pasty, scratchy and dry. Hardly worth to look at let alone feel. He gazes at the butterfly once again in wonder. The thing is feeling his arm and dry skin with its own form of touch. He hums again. He says nothing.

He looks. He feels. He sees. He does not speak though. A gray hanky he found years and years ago covers his mouth. It never comes off and he never speaks. Most the time at least.

He allows the rain to splash on his large coat. He finds it comforting. At least the rain knows me and sees me, he thinks. He is not invisible to it just like he is not invisible to the butterfly. The poor innocent butterfly who showed him comfort like the rain for the first time in fifty years. He crushes it. He smashes it between his two claws and twists and turns them until the butterfly is nothing but a mangled mess. Just like me, he thinks softly.

Here forever, he decides. He puts the butterfly in his coat pocket and pats it with a sigh. He suddenly feels happy. A weird emotion that is not common for him but once in a while, especially around this time of year when the weather is still warm enough to stop the snow and yet cold enough to make the grass and leaves turn brown. This is the one time, every few decades, when someone can see a nobody. The butterfly didn’t count because all animals can see nobodies. He doesn’t know why they do but they are nice enough company in bad days. The ones that don’t bark, run away, or screech are at least.

He sees the person far off into the rain and makes another trilling noise of joy. There he his. The person that will see him. His pale eyes can see the red outline of his body that indicates that he is the one. He is fresh and calling for nobodies everywhere. Mine, he thinks.

He walks, more like limps to the red, healthy glow in the distance in a jerky but quick speed. He trills and hums some more. The red figure moves and the glow grows brighter. He can’t take it anymore. He runs, getting down on his hand in a crawling motion, with incomprehensible speed. The glow is still growing brighter as he gets closer.

He passes the person and heard it make an odd noise, a funny noise. He gets in front of it and rises to his full height. He clicks and chirps and wanted to shake the boy in excitement. He can see me, he garbles in his head, he is mine. The boy is a leaf and tries to blow away and trembles. He won’t have that. He grabs the boy to keep him steady. He gets in his face and screeches. It is a happy screech of joy to be able to be seen and to touch but the boy shakes harder. The wind keeps trying to blow him away or something does. The boy slips out of his hands and gets away. He screeches louder out of rage and snagged the boy before he could make it far.

He wants to see the warmth and the love. He wants to see someone see him. He peers into the boys eyes to see cold, fear, emptiness. Nothing. There is nothing for him. There is always nothing for him like always. He is a nobody. Why did I hope, he moans, why?

He pulls the cloth off his face and watches as the boy’s face conforms to terror. His smile grow large, stretching a cross his entire face and more. His millions of fangs extend and his tongue dances out to lick the boy’s face.

He takes of the boy’s head and then his arms. He swallows the boys torso whole. Soon he is gone. It didn’t matter though, he was just a nobody, like him.