We are legion; we are many. When we move, we stretch the thin fingers of our wings that send flaps of our sticky skin wide, wide, wide and taut, taut, taut – so stretched and so wide and so taut that we can no longer hold to the surface of the earth and we rise as one, into the air, our wings a flutter of darkness – and we can’t help ourselves; we enter through the open window, we enter through the gap under the door, our wings flutter down the empty chimney and we see, we see everything, always; we see the little blonde girl under the pink canopy of her bed in the room with the yellow-haired doll, the brown teddy-bear with the fluff rubbed from one ear: we see every detail – we can’t look away – and there she is, all alone in her little, lonely bed, and we never blink, so we keep seeing her and it could be any little girl but on this dark night it is this little girl, and we see her face go from a peaceful recitation of her evening prayers – God bless Mummy, God bless Daddy, God keep me safe from monsters – and it’s when she says the word that she knows we are there, that she sees us, or maybe hears the leathery slap of our wings as we fill her room and watch her, watch her, watch her, watch the innocent face pucker into terror, watch the smile fade as her mouth opens to cry for Mummy, to cry for Daddy – surely just down the hallway in their wide, big bed behind the tall, wide, wooden door – to cry for God, but the flapping of our elastic wings plucks the sounds from her lips, and Mummy isn’t coming, and Daddy isn’t coming, and God most certainly isn’t coming, and her eyes become round and wet and big, and water pools in corners and it will spill, it will, but no one will hear it over the beat of our stretchy wings, Mummy won’t and Daddy won’t and God won’t – there will be no lace-edged handkerchief or rough tissue-paper dabbed to her face by loving hands – and we will look and look and look – we have no choice – and we cannot smell her and we cannot taste her: we can only see, but even so we can tell she’s very sweet, this little girl and we will look and look and look, and we will eat her with our eyes.
