a/n: Just a little fic-let I wrote in attempts to get me out of the creative rut I've been stuck in these past few days. Review please.

I passed one just the other day as I was walking home from school. A sewer drain, filthy with debris from the street and languid rainwater. Curious, I stopped before it and bent down, making sure to keep a safe distance, lest a hand reach out and snatch at my ankles.

As I peered into its depths, I imagined all manners of creatures staring back at me from the darkness. Creatures far worse than the mere crocodile or mutated family pet flushed down the toilet. Creatures with vivid, yellow eyes and large, bat-like ears. Square noses with flared nostrils. Hugely grotesque mouths, full of fangs and dripping with saliva. Creatures hungry for more than the normal trash that happens its way to the sewer.

I swallowed, but could not look away. The sheer blackness of this hole in the curb had transfixed me. All the thoughts of what could be lurking just beyond the little slice of light that held the darkness at bay. All the monsters, ghouls, and creepy-crawlies that could reach out their webbed and clawed fingers to grab me at any moment horrified and fascinated me so much so that I couldn’t disengage myself from it.

The more I stared, the more I believed that I could actually see these creatures and that they could see me as well. Instead of straightening up and continuing on my way home like I should have, I got down on my hands and knees, not caring what strange looks I acquired from passersby. I was now practically neck-deep in the darkness of the drain.

“Lose something?” came a female voice from the outside.

I didn’t answer.

“Did you lose something?” I could feel a reassuring hand on my shoulder as the woman stooped down next to me, but I still didn’t respond.

After a few moments of silence, she made an assenting noise in the back of her throat and stood, her shoes clicking on the pavement as she walked away. I was too engrossed in the darkness to care whether she thought I was a freak or not. And maybe I was a freak. I was halfway in a sewer, after all.

But why settle for only halfway? There was more to the darkness than that little slip visible from the street. Much, much more. The darkness wound its way beneath the streets in never-ending tunnels and alleyways of utterly delightful blackness.

With a smile on my face, I slipped silently into the drain, leaving nothing but my backpack behind.