Dancing in the Midnight Mist
Submitted by Belle DiMonté
Submitted by Belle DiMonté
St. Louis, Missouri
The mist. It terrified me. It would often come at night during wretched, drawling storms, unfolding over the dark prairies in the wilderness near my house. I would avoid going outside during those times; something in the way the mist would curl and bob around the lights on the neighbors’ houses, the way the sky would look so bloated and raw—it scared me senseless. But one night...oh, one night...I, a foolish teenage girl, did venture outside to taste the air and the wind. I climbed the hill to the empty fields near my backdoor. I was immersed in mist. Completely engulfed, swallowed in it. I could not see. Could not hear. Just—mist. And then this furious pounding began to rise in the ground beneath me, like a drumbeat. I felt the rush of feet and hands all around me. And I broke into a mad run for home. Once there, at the backdoor, I looked over my shoulder, trembling all over: and I plainly saw, dancing beneath the pool of light made by the nearest neighbor door-lamp, a small, hooded figure with a huge nose. It looked like an elf or a gnome, or maybe it was just a ghost out for some fun, and it did not see me; it only danced, danced, hands aloft, without a care in the world. I lingered on for at least five transfixed minutes, staring, watching its hypnotic, self-absorbed dance. Needless to say, then I rushed inside as quickly as I could.
Belle DiMonté
Co-Editor, Into the Willows
An Ezine of Fantasy and Fey Verse
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