Barefoot in the street, running on asphalt is like running on a cheese grater. The feet become damaged quickly. Fortunately, the inflammation that will make running (or walking) so difficult tomorrow, were there to be one, has not happened yet, so the boy finds himself with his full faculties. After a short time, under a bright street light, against a quiet street, very late at night, the boy stops, breathless, to see. The roar again. Surprisingly close. And then he sees them, in the direction of his house. Flashing, feline eyes. Maybe 100 yards away, just beyond the last street light. They squint and move in his direction. He stands frozen just a moment, then tries to run. But something has a hold of his feet. He looks down to see a barbed, black tentacle, like the root of an alien tree, wrapped around his ankle and lower leg. An involuntary noise, and he pulls his foot, breaking the tentacle. But then he sees them: the street is lined with them, undulating and growing rapidly toward his legs. Veering into the street around him he runs the other direction from his house.
It happens just before he stumbles into a mass of tentacles, in the middle of the street, he can hear the labored breathing of an animal, coming up behind him. As he positions his body to face up at the coming threat, a program also given to him by his animal ancestors, he suddenly notices that the street has come alive. There are no houses, he's surrounded to the waist by a tangled, moving, soundless mass of tentacles. The trees lining the street, visible in the street lights, bow toward him, bringing the openness in close, trapping him. He sits in the dark between two streetlights but then he sees it. Matted, black fur. About the size of a very large man, running on two legs. Yellow, cat-like eyes. Seeing that it has met with its quarry, and the battle is over, it bounds to a stop on its hind legs, then settles onto all fours. While he can't make out its specific features with the dim light, those eyes are clearly visible. It smells of all outdoors, many such pursuits. Its presence indicates the scary badlands beyond the grocery stores where one must capture and kill what it wants to eat. Kill to survive. The primal growling returns while shiny saliva cascades from its shortened, cat-like lower jaw.
The boy's frozen fear gives way, and he cries, weeping, sobbing openly, heaving in great staccato breaths and muttering incomprehensibly. His arms now held with his legs, only his head is free. There is a moment, we are told by those whom have experienced it, when we know we are going to die, that the terror we feel, or the pain, will have an end, and we stop fighting for our lives. A fly, hopelessly tangled in a spider web, must feel it. A soldier, wounded one too many times for hope has to feel it, too. An antelope, running and dodging with all its might agains the killing-machine cheetah, must feel it when the cat finally sinks its teeth into its trachea, because they go limp well before they would be dead. But not the boy. For he knows. This creature that has come for him, where the world has collaborated in its defense, was only here for one thing.
Suddenly able to speak, but still sobbing, the boy cries, "I'm sorry! Okay? I'm sorry!" Now with slobber and the hardest tears, "I am sorry!"
And the tentacles, holding him fast, loosened their grip. The trees twisted back to a more natural position. The boy fell back onto his back, while the creature, straightening up, bounded away the direction it had come, to wild lands unknown. It had been so simple.
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