“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?”

“Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light.”

“The sleeve covered its appendages well until it reached outward to Grady. Instead of a hand, several dark green and black-splotched tentacles spilled out of the sleeve. They snaked through the air toward Grady’s face. They glistened in the early morning light and long strands of a mucous-like substance dripped from them and clung like shiny webs to its robe.”

“But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.”

“BEYOND THE MIST, the darkness and shadow, he waits, reaching out through a veil of gossamer threads—‘yourfuture,’ he whispers, ‘your destiny’.”