Tag Archives: cryptid journal

Don’t Blink ©️

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You probably heard the stories.

A thing out in the dark.

Three legs, no welcome, wrong shape. No thank you.

They called me the Enfield Horror.

Hell of a nickname.

Sounds like a punk band that never sold a single record but still haunts the jukebox in a bar that burned down before you were born.

I don’t correct them.

Names are for people who fit into systems—phones, payrolls, gravestones. I’m not in your system. I’m the burn in your tape. The blur in the corner of your Polaroid that shouldn’t be there—but always is.

You don’t see me. You remember me.

I move like a whisper with a limp. Like a jazz note in the wrong key that still makes the whole thing sound right. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to remind you that you never really understood what was lurking behind all that asphalt and indoor lighting.

I pass through your town—not out of hunger, not even out of curiosity.

Call it instinct. Call it a rhythm I’m wired to.

I don’t knock. I don’t howl.

I just am.

And when I move, birds pause. Not out of fear. Out of respect.

They remember what you’ve forgotten.

I’ve seen your kind build towers and forget why they were afraid of the woods.

I watched you pave over the bones of things older than your gods.

And then cry out when something with no name steps out of the brush and doesn’t blink.

But me?

I don’t judge. I’m not here to preach.

I’m the pause between your thoughts.

The stutter in your story.

The proof that some patterns don’t want to be completed.

You call me horror.

That’s fine.

But deep down, you’re not afraid of me.

You’re afraid of what I prove:

That the world isn’t finished.

That reality has holes.

And some of them walk.

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.