Tag Archives: creature psychology

Creature of Habit ©️

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I wake before the sun stirs. Beneath the water, time moves slower. It hums. The deep currents are my lullabies, the distant screams of the jungle my clock. The world above is already moving—monkeys cackling, birds shrieking their joyless songs. But I remain still. Eyes open. Heart slow.

The light pierces the surface around mid-morning, stabbing through the canopy like a hundred silver knives. I don’t fear the light. It’s the eyes of man I avoid. They come with nets and tanks and chemicals. They smile when they kill. I never smile. I’ve never needed to.

By noon, I rise.

My webbed claws pierce the silt as I push off the riverbed. The weight of water is my armor. I drift past garfish and the bleached bones of past intruders. Once I watched a man drown—he didn’t know I was watching. He splashed. Cried. Then went still. I didn’t touch him. Didn’t need to. The water did my work.

I break the surface just enough to taste the air—humid, rot-sweet, alive. The jungle is a furnace. I smell every reptile and mammal within a half mile. One of them—a jaguar—is watching me from the bank. Smart. He doesn’t drink yet.

I crawl onto land briefly, feel the dry world peel at my skin. The sun cracks my scales. I hate it, but I need to know. Need to see. They were here yesterday—men with cameras and steel traps. The woman was with them. Her scent still clings to the reeds.

I saw her swim once. Not like a fish. Like a flame. She didn’t belong here—too soft, too pale—but she moved like she was born in water. I followed. Close. Quiet. I reached out… and she screamed.

They fired guns then. Hit me in the shoulder. I bled black into the lagoon for hours.

They’ll be back.

By dusk I return to the cave. My cave. Carved by ancient floods, hidden behind a curtain of vines and lies. Inside are bones. Fish, men, birds. I don’t eat the men. Not usually. But sometimes… when the river runs dry and I smell nothing but gasoline and deceit…

The night comes fast in the Amazon. Shadows stretch and finally fold. I breathe in the quiet. Down here, no one remembers what I am. No one tries to define me. I just am.

They call me a monster.

But I only kill to survive. What does that make them?

Tonight, I rest.

Tomorrow, I rise.

And if they come back…

I’ll be waiting.

Elegy for a Goat ©️

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I wake just after dusk, throat dry like the desert wind, heart beating slow and deliberate—like a drum echoing across the empty canyons of time. I am not a man. I’m not quite a beast. I am… an idea. A whisper they tell around campfires when the tequila’s nearly gone and the fear starts to taste sweet.

They call me Chupacabra. They don’t know what that means. Not really.

I crawl out from under an abandoned trailer on the edge of nowhere—rusted, forgotten, beautiful in its ruin. The moon greets me like an old lover, cold and luminous. I crack my neck. I smile. I vanish into the mesquite and shadow.

I’ve got a thirst. Not just for blood—but for something pure. Something that pulses.

Goats tonight. Maybe. But I’m hoping for a taste of memory.

See, I don’t hunt like some rabid thing. I glide. I observe. There’s an art to it. The ranch down the hill is humming with tension. The animals are uneasy. The boy’s been drawing me in the dirt with a stick. Maybe he dreams me. Maybe I’m his imaginary friend. Or his warning.

The goat sees me. Doesn’t run. They never do. I whisper to her—soft, apologetic, like a gentleman at the gallows.

“Forgive me, darlin’. But you knew this was comin’.”

One bite. No pain. No mess. Just… relief. The soul surrenders. The blood sings. And for a moment, I remember… something human. A church bell. Laughter. The smell of peaches in a Georgia orchard.

Then it’s gone.

I disappear before the sun creeps back across the horizon like a nosy neighbor. Back to the dust. Back to the dreams of the fearful.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow I might let them catch a glimpse. Just a flicker in the trees. A shadow on the fencepost. Enough to make ’em wonder if the legends are true.

Because I am the truth behind the legend.

And baby—I’m still very much alive.