The Intruder

He is tall and wrong, pale as the moon that loom over the fields your grandfather once flourished.

His shadow stretches beyond the porch of your house, beyond the steps. His smile too large for his cheek, teeth too many, too straight, wrong and right on all the places people like you shouldn't even notice.

He's one of them, you gathered even in just one glance. Visitors, they called them. People that looks like one but isn't, you don't know much about them, listening to radio is hardly a part of the routine of your everyday life of tending to your animals and checking the crops - all now gone because of how hot the sun had become, scorching heat that melts the gravel beneath your foot, that makes all the animals squeal till none of them are left, dusting crops of corn and wheat till they become one with the dirt.

You supposed there's no use of such hard work if there's no human left to feed now, no trucks to come by every morning, no morning sun to stare at with a cup of coffee in hand - only just a vast land of nothing and the pale man that always stood in your porch.

Some folks comes and go, poor fuckers that has no path to take and no home to come to - though despite of their desperation for shelter and cold walls, none had stay more than a single morning, none had dared to test the risk of the Pale Intruder that stood like a foundation built from so long ago, tall and looming and never faltering.

He comes everyday, carrying nothing but his grin. Making rigid small talk that has your palm sweating and heart jumping to your throat. He doesn't ask if you're alone, he knows you are, but his feet does not come beyond your porch, never did he ask to be let in. He just talks, he watch and watch, and talks, and watch.

He looks at you like you're worth to be look at, like you're the anomaly that shouldn't be there, his gaze soak up every movement you make, as if counting the blink of your eyes, listening for every breath you take, memorizing, learning, soon