 All of my co-workers have been complaining lately about how early it gets dark now. At least they have over zoom. Small boxes making small talk about the weather and weekends before our morning meetings. I don't blame them though. Talk like that is easy, structured. I disagreed with my co-workers though. I liked how early it got dark. The nights have become a refuge for me. A differentiation from the days I sit at home, immuno-compromised and still afraid behind the screen of my laptop, always behind a screen. My town is mid-sized. I live alone and I'm used to being alone, so it's okay. The only thing I miss are my walks and seeing as the entire town shuts down around nine. I can still get them in. I leave my house around ten. I leave all my technology and I stay out for up to two hours just wandering the neighborhoods around my apartment and enjoying nature. The streets are empty then, with sidewalks illuminated by dull, buzzing streetlamps and traffic lights cycling through their colors without any cars there to notice. Occasionally, I'll see other people. But any signs of life are usually just nocturnal animals, raccoons and skunks, sniffing and stalking and living their lives in the nighttime as much as I do. Maybe that's where I went wrong. Maybe I considered myself too much a creature of the night when in reality, I was just a visitor in it, a tourist. One night, I met a true creature of the night. When I first saw him, he stood at the outskirts of a streetlamps beam, almost a full block ahead of me. He was difficult to make out, but so was everything else on that night's walk. I'd left later than usual and the moon was just a sliver of a crescent, the sky cloudy with the empty thread of rain. I recognized the corner he stood on, even with it being about a half hour's walk from my apartment. I almost always saw some sort of wildlife there, a wild animal investigating the lawn beside where he now stood. He had a dog with him. I assumed the man was older as he was leaning on a walking stick. I slowed my gait, hoping to avoid him. I don't know if it was based on just allowing them space or some sort of instinctual fear. It felt like the latter, like when I mistake a hanging coat in the dark for a person. It wasn't even necessary. The figure reached down and removed a muzzle from around the dog. It shook in appreciation. From his pocket, he drew out a handful of something and held it to the dog's mouth. The dog lapped it up, its tail wagging. The man had obviously trained it well, and his affection was even evident. He patted its head several times before remuzzling the animal, throwing the rest of his pocket's contents onto the yard. And with a quick shake of the leash, they were off. The dog seemed to be just as old as the man and the way it walked, hobbling with joints that seemed to cause it pain with each step. They rounded the corner and were gone. That would have been it, the end of the encounter, the end of the story itself. If I hadn't kept moving forward, but I didn't stop. I had no reason to. All I'd seen was an old man and his old dog. I made my way to where he'd been standing, not for any particular reason, other than it was the direction I'd been walking. I glanced over at the grass to see what he'd scattered there, and my suspicions were proven correct. A smattering of dog treats littered the yard. But there was something else, not on the grass, but on the sidewalk itself. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't investigated the treats first, but there were dog prints on the cement. Like you see on sidewalks after it's rained or there's a leaking sprinkler. However, these were not the faded gray of water, the ever-evaporating shadow stamps I was used to. But their color was still familiar. It was the rusted red of blood, and it made my own blood quicken. There was a pair of dog prints following the direction the two had walked, smeared in places, like they'd been dragged, becoming lighter and lighter as they continued. The shape seemed off, too, kind of swollen and out of place, recognizable, but only barely. Something must have gotten into its paws. Maybe a rock or a twig, and the old man must have not noticed. I tried following the prints for as long as I could, but the trace of them disappeared after a bit. The blood clotting or them veering off the sidewalks, I couldn't tell which. It made me uneasy. Part of me wanted to go back home, but the other part of me was still restless, still not finished with my nocturnal living. Both parts of me were in agreement, though. I did not want to see anyone else tonight. There's a new neighborhood being developed near to where I was, all vacant lots and construction equipment. I like to go there sometimes, when I really wanted to be alone, like now, so I pointed myself in that direction. It was exactly what I needed. It was empty, an emptiness that had yet to be broken. Shelves of homes that had never been lived in lined my periphery, rising out of the ground like half-finished ant hills. I began to relax, my shoulders slumping after a time of not even knowing I was tensed. There was a big home deep inside the development being built, the model flagship, and I wanted to see its progress. I made it about halfway, enjoying the sound of silence the streets had to them, that only comes when there is no other human around. Until that silence was broken, I don't know what alerted me to his presence. It was like inspiration, one moment there was nothing, and then it hit. The neighborhood had no artificial light installed yet, so I saw the shape of him more than anything else. He was standing on the front stoop of a half-built home, the wooden frame of it creating the structure of a jail cell behind him. His dog sat behind him, almost hiding like a toddler does with his mother. He leaned on his stick and just stared forward at me. Hello. I called out to him. He didn't speak back. He didn't even acknowledge that I'd spoken, just kept his gaze on me, unflinching. I didn't know what to say, so I kept talking. Um, sorry, but I think your dogs hurt. Ooh, Sparky? His voice was rough, raspy, like he didn't use it much. If Sparky's your dog, then yeah, I saw some bloody paw prints earlier, and I think maybe. Ain't nothing wrong with Sparky. He cut me off with a declaration and authority in his voice, then mirrored his own decisiveness. I rescued ol' Sparky here. He was astray, found him out here real late at night and take real good care of him. Don't aboy. He scratched Sparky's head, but the dog didn't move. You want to meet him? He don't bite or nothing. Well, not unless I tell him to. He laughed. A quiet chuckle that told me his joke wasn't really a joke at all. That's okay. I just wanted to let you know. There was a silent flashing in my mind, a fire alarm without the siren, the same one that I've learned to trust in the past. I gotta get going anyway. What is someone like you doing out this late anyway? That was it. This was no longer a conversation. I turned around and I started walking away as quick as I could without running. I expected him to keep talking to me, to yell to my back as I turned it to him. But he didn't. What I did here was even worse. There was a shaking sound, the jangle of a collar and leash, a clicking of his tongue. Come on, boy. I heard him say. I glanced over my shoulder without stopping. He was no longer on the steps, but about 20 feet behind me. The man walked quicker than I thought he was able to. Sparky trying to keep up with him as best he could. The man was still bathed in darkness, but there was something about the way he moved. There was jovial, childlike, like he was playing tag. There were no thoughts in my mind other than to get away. The main road wasn't far ahead, and I knew that once I was there, I could get someone's attention. I started to run. It would be impossible usually over my own pounding heart and intake of breath to hear anything behind me, but my senses felt heightened and it was like I could hear everything. The steps, the jangle of the leash, it kept getting closer and closer, and I was sprinting at my full speed and he was gaining on me. My face burned, my lungs were on fire. I knew I couldn't keep it up forever, but the man seemed like he could. And then, suddenly, it was silent. The sound of his steps behind me were gone. The leash's rhythmic jangling ended just as quickly. I checked behind me as I kept running, once, twice, three times. He was gone. I didn't know where he was, but he was gone. I stopped, my chest ready to explode, searching the area around me. Nothing. I wanted to cry and scream from relief at the same time. But then there he was again. Inches from me. The chase was over. He held the walking stick by the middle, and for the first time, I noticed it wasn't a cane at all. It ended with a knitted plastic, one made to string around necks. It was a dog catching pole. He held it with a practiced finesse, as he smiled at me. You're doing real good. He cooed. I stepped back, but he only took a stop closer to me. I searched the ground for something, anything that I could use as a weapon against him. Instead, my eyes landed at his dog's feet. Only, they weren't dog's feet. They were the right shape, sure, but they were gnarled and bloody infected. They were hands, human hands. The thumbs had been chopped off, and the other fingers were bent at the knuckle and sewn together there, a crude approximation of a dog's paw. Screws stuck out of the front of them, like they were hammering through the back, a replacement for claws. His back legs were stumps, the legs of it tied off on the ends. He kneeled there on all fours, a muscle over his mouth. It was unnecessary, though, because he didn't even try to make a noise. He just stared, eyes wet with tears, his head and eyebrows shaved off above them. Well, looky here, Sparky, looks like we got ourselves a new friend. I told you he was friendly. I think he likes you. Something in me broke. I pushed myself back, and I sprinted out from him, out from the tortured creature on the ground, and out of my own mind. There was a numbing sensation, like I was just watching this all unfold on a screen, like it was on my laptop back home. I heard him try to run after me, and I looked back only once. Sparky wasn't moving. The man was trying to drag him, but he refused to budge. He looked at me, that same mournful look in his eyes. The man hollered and even hit Sparky with a stick, but he still didn't move. And yet, even for all this, he didn't attack the man. He healed. His training hadn't been for nothing. I made it back home, although I don't really remember how. The next thing I remember is a howling sob I let out on my bed behind locked doors, back inside, where I was alone. He couldn't find me here. I was safe. It took me weeks before I could go on a walk again. And the next time I did, it was around dusk, just after the workday ended. I made my way to that street corner, to where it all started. I don't know what I was hoping to find. Maybe whoever Sparky actually was standing there escaped a man again. But it was empty. I stood there for a few moments, wondering what happened to him and the man if it was all just some sort of twisted nightmare. And then a chipmunk scampered by. It picked up something from the grass, and stored it in its already overstuffed cheeks. I leaned in to look, already knowing what I'd see. The yard was covered in treats, and I went back home before nightfall.