For a while now I’ve been seeing things change when I approach them. A sort of short range second sight into the supernatural. The effect’s a bit like pying with transparency yers in an image editor. I might try to approach a horse and then notice four extra legs and a barbed tail fade into view, or see a vulture’s eyes start sparking with lightning as it looks up from its roadkill at my passing car. And while it usually happens with animals, just the other day I bumped into this woman on the sidewalk. One moment she was wearing a pin beige turtleneck dress, and the next it was fading into a sleeveless bck jacket revealing tattoo-covered arms and ripped pants with jagged knives strapped to the sides while a billowing bck cloak and floating chains writhed behind her. Then she passed me by and was normal again, but I think she knew I knew.

  The strangest time there was nothing there at all to begin with. I was walking in an empty park just before sundown when this creature — humanoid from the waist up and octopus-like from the waist down — appeared in front of me, crawling towards me on its human arms while its tentacles dragged behind. Maybe I should have tried to see if it needed help, but I ran.

  I’ve learned to back the hell up when things get weird.

  All that is to say: I know the supernatural when I see it, and that girl who just kicked your ass after you wouldn’t take a hint and back off? She’s as human as they come.