Pulling a cigarette from a brand new pack after the lucky, is a feeling that can only be compared to watching black coffee slowly change into the light and sweet dependency that by now runs through my veins after drinking it once a day for the past ten years.

With a lit cigarette in one hand and a tall iced coffee in the other I create the image of the typical college student, so now surrounded by a cloud of made from the combination of smoke my own breath in the cold december air I move forward dragged by my feet and a need to get to the studio building before it closes. I cut through an ally to feel the cold quiet that seems to hide in these passages between buildings. Ten feet into the ally I press the hot red cherry in between my pointer and my thumb and throw the bud on the ground. My eyes follow the bud to what looks like less than a foot from the pavement the shadows move gathering and thickening. In the time it takes me to blink a hand made from swirling shadows is holding my cigarette bud. The phantom hand begins to rise from the ground pulling the shadows from behind garbage cans, and from under the parked cars at either end of the alley. The only thing I can think of in this moment that this looks like contents of a lake being pulled into a water bottle,but there's no bottle.

The rising hand is now a full and muscular arm. Then as fast as the hand appeared the arm stopped rising. The arm is now just still, a statue holding my bud. I bend down and slowly pull the bud from the shadows hand,Then gently like this disposed carcass was now the holy grail I slip it into my jacket pocket.

It's now dark the street lights are on, and I am making my way back to my apartment O on the now icy streets because living on campus sucks and much more expensive than finding an apartment would be. When once again I am surrounded by the merciless cloud of my own

creation, a new red cherry burning between my fingers, the event from earlier drifted into the area of our mind where we store the impossible things we could never wrap our head around like Jesus or imaginary numbers.

I am once again near the center of the ally when press the red hot cherry in between my pointer and my thumb and squeeze, the light dying with the smoke. I push the bud between the tip of my pointer and the inside of the knuckle on my thumb and push it away the action flinging the carcass six feet from my shoes. Once the cigarette bud left my fingers it is plucked out of its downward trajectory by the shadowy arm, which now stands three feet taller than myself and perfectly proportional

The arm is shivers and like a demented hand puppet from the depths of Tartarus is cookie monster gobbles down the cigarette bud, the bud swallowed the hand turns to look at me. Now the moment is catching up with me and I notice for the first time in our five minute exchange that I have moved forward six feet so that I am now right on top of this immense arm.

The arm slowly bends and the hand hovers right above my right shoulder and begins to do some kind of dance, well the only dance that I imagine a nine-foot arm made from shadows could do. After what felt like a lifetime passed the arm is now a statue next to me fingers a breath away from the pulsing vein in my neck.

A thin whisper made from a thousand voices falls from its fingertips “ you got a warning, wasn't it clear” then in seconds the arm is melting the shadows now a puddle surrounding my feet. So sufficiently terrified and confused I try to walk away but feet don't seem to be getting the message staying firmly in place in what should be called the puddle of doom. I get one look past where the arm was erect from the ground to see a car fly bye. When the puddle shivers then in I feel what could only be described as teeth dig into my calf and begin to pull me into the apparently deep recess of my doom.......