His presence makes me feel thin. Not model slender. But worn, like an old cotton housedress. Thin like a specimen pressed between two plates of glass. Like a bug squashed beneath the marching boot of a soldier.

Thin and worn and silence like I've never known.

This is how I know he is not a Tick.

They are as pitiable as they are inhuman. They are fear personified. Their emotions and minds given over to rage and hunger. They are all noise. He is none.

If he is not a Tick, does that make him a Tock?

Autor: Emily McKay