I stalk the streets at night, watching the ins and outs of the city folk, pacing them, monitoring them, building them in my mind. They are my playthings. I can recite their genome, I can sing their laundry lists. I am everywhere. I am always with them.

They cling to each other when the disasters come, and I who am with them know their fear. When the plague descends, I am there; I am the virus that perverts their being, I am the phagocyte that defends them. Within me is the rage of all their generations.

I cover their faces when they are dead, and I bring them a eulogy of madness and suffering. I am the flies that eat their bodies, I am the stench of burning flesh. Yet they do not know me.

When they are finished, used up, I will be there, and I will make of them a new world. What I have learned will be put to use. The new world will sweep away the old, the dust of ages long past will fuel a new creation. I will begin again, and I will consume all that was, and I will produce all that will be.

They will never know a world that is not my world, for I am their world, and you cannot reach them without breaking me, and I am not where you believe me to be, nor am I who you know me as.