I feel I should make a record--though the trauma remains raw--while the details are still fresh in my mind. To set it in record, now, before true memory blends as it always does with the altered and revised memories which are a natural consequence of accessing a memory again and again, in various circumstances and as new memories distance the reality of the event farther and farther from the present moment, and from the truth of the account, close as it can be rendered. I should.

Yet every time I set forth to put ink to page, something balks me. Perhaps it is as simple as the uncertainty of where to begin. Perhaps it is the fear that to recount these eldritch horrors will draw up from me the wellspring of unspeakable dread and terror I have managed to suppress so far, but with an admittedly tenuous grip, almost like a gutshot man clutching his belly to prevent that red stain from sitting and his life fluid leaking out. Or perhaps it is simply self doubt, a lack of confidence in my own abilities to adequately convey the sense of what it was to be there, in the flesh, in the moments when it all transpired.

No matter. If this thing is to be done at all, a beginning must be chosen. So I choose to begin with a metaphor. I suppose it's as good a place to begin as any other. I begin with the sensation of goose flesh, the hairs raising on the backs of my arms and the back of my neck, the wholly singular sensation one experiences when confronted with the movements of a creature from the uncanny valley. A thing the mind instinctually recoils from. A thing that should not be.

Picture a man walking along a beach near sunset. He enjoys the feel of the sun and breeze against his skin, the sound of the waves gently rushing towards him and receding, the scent of the saltwater in the air, the feel of the sand between his toes. Something catches his attention, something slight and nearly missed, but once glimpsed cannot be unseen it ignored. Some tiny anomaly, but it works his curiosity, and he has no choice but to investigate. He approaches guileless and incautious, having apprehended no cause for trepidation as