I awoke in the middle of the night to quakes that shook my home. The china figures on my bedroom shelf rattled. When the quakes faded I slowly let my hands uncurl from clutching my covers.

Now that fear had woken me up, there was no chance I was falling back asleep. The clock read 4:30 a.m.. I crept through the darkness; turning on the lights was too big of a risk.

Curiosity stirred in me as I boiled water to make tea. I crossed to the mouth of my small cave and dared to part the ivy just a few inches to view the expanse of the jungle outside. The moonlight glittered on the treetops below. Wind was whipping along the mountain top, howling in the caverns around me. Quakes usually occurred when the family of owls nested at the summit. The only humans who had ever actually seen them were the ones to never return.

I shivered, either from that thought or the wind.

Another quake shook the cavern and a few small rocks fell around me. For a moment longer, I let my eyes stay glued to the night sky. It was full of stars, the Milky Way stretched like shattered glass band across the sky.

I noticed some tree tops shaking in the distance. A large pair of antlers broke through the canopy for a moment before dipping down to disappear as the stag grazed the forest floor below.

I left the mouth of the cave and went back into my little home hidden in the wall of the cave. Once inside, I turned off the stove before the kettle began to shriek. I poured the warm water into a mug and added the tea bag and took my drink to visit Kiki.

Kiki was my Koi fish. She lived in a deep body of water in this cave. My grandmother owned her originally but she was passed down as her life span now exceeded 200 years. Kiki loved my mother but didn't seem to bother liking me.

I sat on the edge of the expansive pond and dipped my feet into the black water. There was another quake and it took me a minute to stop gritting my teeth before taking another sip of tea and setting the cup on the ground. Kiki must be at the bottom of the lake, cowering or sleeping.

There was a sudden and violent shudder that passed through the cave. Large baseball sized rocks fell as a result. A scream escaped me as one hit me in the back and knocked me into the water.

I was submerged into the murky cold lake all at once. A shock shook through my bones. I wasn't a very good swimmer, so I kicked desperately to get to the surface. I had accidentally swallowed water on my way in and my chest was burning in extreme pain as a result.

I clawed at the rocks at the edge of the lake and my head broke the surface after a couple terrifying seconds. I threw my elbows onto solid ground and held my body there just to breathe before I moved again. I was reduced to a fit of coughing and retching as I choked up water. My sounds were loud and echoed throughout the cave despite trying to muffle them in the dirt.

Nearby there were screams, human screams that sounded like mortal peril. As my coughing stopped, they were all I could hear. They were close. Very close. Still inside the water, I clapped my hands over my ears to stop the horrible sound.

Silence for a moment. Then, there was another quake and the grey moonlight coming from the mouth of the cave was completely blocked out.

Something was here.

Without the aid of the moonlight, I was staring into pitch darkness. I couldn't see my hands in front of me.

After a long moment, the creature blocking the light shifted slightly and the moonlight fell around it. It was a fox. Its jaws were twice the length of my body. Its eyes were like two shimmering water wells, black as coal with a crescent of white when it shifted its glance. It's coarse fur was silhouetted at the mouth of the cave.

Its paw made loud sounds as it reached into the cave to swipe side to side. With quick motions, the monster swept my hiking supplies, shoes, and protective totem pole out of the cave to fall down the mountain below. I heard the crashes.

I had both hands over my mouth now. Was I deep enough in the shadows? Could he reach me?

I was too afraid to disappear under the water and too afraid to look away from the fox that was now sniffing around, gusts of air sweeping in and out around me.

The gusts knocked my tea mug over and it rolled slightly, then bounced over rocks down the slight slant toward the mouth of the cave.

The fox froze, looking at the cup and then sniffed again more deeply this time, then locked his eyes on me.

In one motion, his jaws snapped and his neck slithered into the tight fit of the mouth of the cave. His teeth were about my height, long and skinny. They were slightly yellowed from overeating and smelled like rotting flesh. His tongue curled behind his teeth and I could feel his spittle as he snapped and hissed.

His claws were now scratching the earth closer and closer to me.

I screamed, the same scream I had heard in the neighboring cave before the fox had come to this one.

"KIKI!" I cried without thinking. I dove under water as the clawed paw swiped where my head would have been. I tried to push myself down as deep as I could but my body refused to sink.

The water around me bubbled and splashed rapidly as the fox began to claw at the water to fish me out. The bubbles felt like razors on my skin. He his horrible paw, the size of a small car, was nearly missing me each time.

In that instant, a mammoth scaly being pushed against me on its way to the surface. I watched it in shadow above me.

Against my will, I broke surface again to breathe my first breath of air in many long seconds. The fox's abominable face was now at the edge of the pond, grimacing with a wrinkled snout at my Kiki.

Kiki lurched toward the fox, scaring it enough to jump backwards. Kiki whipped around and began to violently thrash her tail in the water facing the fox, sending cold cascades of water toward it.

The fox whined and clawed the earth, going backwards as fast as possible. It disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

I was hanging onto a rock in awe and shock. My body was shaking hard, my teeth chattering in my skull against my control. Kiki was now swimming in circles, in victory. Her calico colored head rose above the surface for a moment, and her giant eye stared out at me.

In a gesture that was almost comical, her corn colored fish lips opened and closed in "OOWOO OOWOO OOWOO" motions a few times before she dipped gracefully downward and disappeared.

A few whimpers escaped me, but the cold and shock prevented me from sobbing.

I climbed out of the cold lake at last and held my bare arms as I went back to my home in the wall of the cavern. I was shaking even after I was dry and in a fresh pair of clothes. The neighboring screams were still fresh in my mind.

As the sun began to rise, I let myself lay on my bed and fatigue began take over. The thought of gathering new hiking materials filled me with anxiety. Fatigue overpowered this, however, and my eyes eventually closed.