My long, spindly legs silently clamber across the crumbling wall of the basement wall as I stalk my prey. A few more strides, and I sink my fangs deep into the side of my helpless victim's abdomen as it uselessly struggles to free itself from my grip. 

But I haven't always been in this hideous body; once, I too, was human. That is, until I reached the nowhere town of Worshire, a desolate place surrounded on all fronts by an eerie forest landscape. Upon my arrival and exploration, I instantly concluded that this would be the perfect town to resume my work.

"See ya tomor'uh, Sam," the last drunkard slurs as he crawls his way out of the old tavern. "I'll be 'ere in the mornin'..." Helping him up to his feet, I guide him to his car before walking back to the tavern, sitting on one of the filthy tabletops and coughing to draw the owner's attention. "Hey, I've never seen you before," he said as he continued wiping down the countertop and picking up beer mugs and shot glasses. "You're the first traveler in months." He moves on to the table. "But I'm just closing down the place, sorry. I'm going to need you to leave."

"Actually, I didn't come here for drinks."

He cocks his head. "Well, then, mister, why exactly did you come in?" Walking over to the door, I flip over the sign so that it displays CLOSED to those outside and lock the door, pulling out a peculiar pocket watch from my coat pocket. 

"I noticed that there aren't any inns in this town, but it's already night, and searching the forest for another place is out of the question..." I begin swaying it back and forth in front of his face, and his pupils slowly dilate before me.

"How about you just let me live here? In the cellar?" He tries to resist, and his eyes twitch, but the overwhelming power of the pocketwatch proves to be too much, and he is completely at my whim. "I'll... clean out... the booze...." A few hours later, the cellar is cleared out, and all of my costly equipment has been set up and is ready for use. 

After a few hours' sleep, I begin my work by setting small traps throughout the forest surrounding the town, strategically placing them beneath trees, in the bushes, and around any holes I notice in the soil. A day of waiting has passed, and I go throughout the area, harvesting the traps of their precious contents, and carefully carry them back to the cellar to begin my work.

The first trap to open contains an angry squirrel, and as soon as I open it, I put down restrainers on its limbs, pinning it against the wall as I pull out my journal from my desk, opening the drawer beneath it and retrieving a scalpel before making the first incision, splitting open the lower abdomen and pouring a stream of blood down into a bowl on the desk I had set up to catch it. 

As its useless screams rang out into the night, I used its blood as that night's ink, and wrote out a long maze of symbols and diagrams in a language long forgotten, one which must never be spoken aloud.

In the silent mouth of my mind, I read aloud as I write, and the lights of the unseen things that go bump in the night illuminated the room.

This work of mine continued unchallenged in the town for weeks on end, work which brought me some twisted sensation of bliss as the pages of the journal grow heavy with the blood of the animals. 

Until, that is, a travelling circus troupe came through town on tour. Apparently, one of their bizarre creatures had escaped from their moldy tent, and found its way between the teeth of one of my numerous traps. At first, I consider returning the hideous thing to its owners, but once I see the painful-looking bumps and bruises covering its wrinkled body, I decide that it would be much better to die for my own ends instead of by their abuse.

Knowing very well that this specimen may be one of a kind, I know that this acquirement must be used much more wisely than simply for the inks of my journal; no, I could use this to extend my knowledge of the World of the Journal by bounds and leaps that would otherwise take me years of hard work and dedication. 

I first clamp it against the table, exposing its belly so I may scrawl upon like I would a piece of paper, my trusty scalpel now functioning as a pen. Opening up the journal, I flip until I reach the section of pages whose beginning is marked by a large illustration of the fractured skull of some otherworldly being which sent a presence even from the surface of the page that sent chills tingling down my spine. I double check one of the passages, and my suspicions are correct; this circus has somehow acquired an animal of the World of the Journal. And to think they were only teaching it tricks!

With surgical precision, I opened each page, scrawling the shapes, symbols, and hieroglyphics onto the fleshy belly of the helpless animal, tracing the trails of blood with my finger and covering its face and eyes with that very blood.

A few moments of later, I watched in shock and awe as the belly of the thing began to rapidly expand, and pieces of flesh and bone forced their way out, shooting like bullets from the barrel of a rifle, rolling down the walls, and leaving behind red trails of slime. A deafening shriek rang out from inside it, followed by a protruding claw which shredded its way through like a thing I had only previously seen in the old horror films I had grown so fond of as a child.

This is now followed by a second claw, a foot clawing through the lower waist, and finally a horrific face. As it finishes the exodus of the circus creature its gaze moves up to me, making full eye contact with a face clearly capable of sanity and reasoning, hideous though it might be. It, no, he crawls across the surface of the table, growing with each step at a mind blowing pace, until when his feet reach the floor, he was of the same approximate weight and stature as I, and we stood there for quite some time, silently observing each other as though staring into some broken mirror.

"You..." he says with labored, chalky breaths, "have allowed me to cross the Threshold between our realms, and for this you shall be given the appropriate reward..." and with that he swings a claw in my direction, and my head hits the wall with a thud, making me black out.