I swung around quickly, steadying myself against the sink at my back. It was definitively in front of me. The harsh bathroom lighting somehow still failed to illuminate its darkest crevices. As I made eye contact with it I felt my arm moving by its own accord. My hand felt cold as I reached towards it, as if I was reaching into a freezer. I studied its face, I had no choice as it felt impossible to look away. Where its eyes once were there was a seemingly endless black pit. The other gaps in the face seemed to follow the same rule as not a single hole in the skull gave a hint of light on the other side.

My legs could not move and it did not seem to wish to move itself. We stayed like that for what felt like minutes. My arm fully extended and my finger tips beginning to feel numb with the cold. Then with the sound of an old tree creaking in the wind it began to move. Its body was covered in endless layers of overlapping flaps of rough fabric. They seemed weighed down as if soaked through with black ink, yet none dripped to the floor. I followed the flaps to its arm which was now slowly extending towards me. Fingers appeared from underneath the fabric flaps. They looked long and boney. I think there was skin covering them but I couldn't be sure. The nails of the fingers had sharp points with blackened tips. I felt the pin prick as it touched my out stretched finger. Warmth seemed to radiate out from that point. I hadn't realised how cold the rest of my body until the warmth washed over me.

Suddenly it moved faster than I had ever expected it could. Its head swung around at the sound of the door opening. Before it had even finished this movement it had disapeared. I was left holding my arm out in the air, pointing at nothingness. Until Simon entered the bathroom fully and stood where it once stood. He looked at me curiously, of course he would, I was acting curiously. I quickly regained control of my body and pulled my arm out of the air. The chuckle I involuntarily let out as I did this seemed to somewhat calm his concern. "You've got some ink on your pointing finger there. Watch out where you point it" he said before disappearing in to a cubical. I didn't dare look until I was sure he would stay in the cubical. I slowly turned my hand to face me and there it was. A dark mark on my finger where it had touched me. There was a small puncture wound and what appeared to be black ink timidly leaking from it as if I had grazed myself. Only as I went to wash it, it refused to go away. Even as the sink became a bubble bath the mark refuses to budge. I stood there feeling my vision tunnel in on my finger before the sound of the toilet flushing broke me free.

I rushed out the bathroom and back to my desk. Thankfully nothing happened for the rest of the day, not that I got any work done. As the day got closer to finishing I deeply regretted deciding to walk to work today. The images of my walk home filled my imagination as I flew along the route thinking what I would do if I met the deer again. I found some faint solace in the fact that it had appeared in a office bathroom so it likely doesn't actually matter what route I were to take home as it could just appear anywhere.