u/TheLadyNyxThalia

That first episode still hits just as hard. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.

I remember telling my husband I was afraid.

I felt a bit embarrassed saying so when he suggested we take the shortcut. After all, I could see it was full of people talking and laughing, lights from their cellphones glowing like fireflies. Perfectly safe, he said, not like one of those abandoned parks where no one was around at night.

I nodded and pushed down my worries, told him he was right, despite my gut feeling that something was wrong.

We started on the path. At first, the background sounds of light laughter and pleasant chatter were reassuring.

Then I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. I’d heard these exact same laughs just a few minutes ago. They were predictable, like a laugh track. I pulled out my phone and counted the minutes while listening. There was soft laughter, the indecipherable murmurs of low conversation, a slight pause, then the loop began again, every beat identical to the circuit before it. Easy to miss if you were distracted.

I gripped my husband’s arm tightly. He hesitated, as if he was afraid to say his next words, then whispered, “Have you noticed everyone’s gotten closer?”

In the glow of what we once thought were cellphone lights, the silhouettes of the people in the park grew wider, as if relaxing into their true shape.

One of those shapes blocked the trail ahead of us. Another behind. The others were gradually moving in. We heard a short, sharp cry in the distance that was immediately drowned by laughter. We had to run.

My husband grabbed my hand and took off at a sprint. When I couldn’t keep up, he pulled me on his back and kept running. I clicked the light on my phone and held it in front of his feet so he wouldn’t trip.

The figures were close enough now to make out details. Dark, inky bodies. Enormous, pupil-less eyes. Wide mouths ringed with sharp, needle-like teeth. And a single light, dangling from a stalk in their chest, the perfect height for a cellphone light.

We abruptly spilled onto the sidewalk, on a main street full of people - real people, with real phones, having real conversations.

Behind us, the dark shapes tightened into human forms and retreated into the park where the street lights didn’t reach. The laughter began anew.

In the days since, I’ve tried to make sense of what we saw. My only answer is that I think the things that go bump in the night adapted. In this new world of cell phones and street cameras and urban sprawl, chasing prey in the open was no longer an option.

But the prey could always come to them.