[ WP ] In the dead of night a young girl meets an intimidating man with severe scarring . After the confrontation the man is the one who is afraid .

She glided through the night air without the merest whisper of any sound. Her dress dragged along the ground behind her, surely entangling and shredding itself upon twigs and rocks with every step, and yet it seemed as pristine as her porcelain skin in the light of the full moon. 
 
 He watched her approach with his one good eye. Depth perception was a far-flung memory, of course, but despite this she seemed to jump straight out of the scenery - as if she and the world were in separate realities. There was *she*, and there was *everything else*. 
 
 What was she doing out here? This was a place for the forgotten, the shunned and those who wanted out of modern life. It had been his home since... the accident... and barely anyone had traipsed anywhere near his shack in the intervening decade. But here she was, practically skipping with glee through the ancient forest, miles away from anything close to civilisation. 
 
 She was heading straight for the shack, indeed as if that had been her intention all along. He could now make out the features of her face. Never before had he seen a child that looked so... angular. Two razor-sharp lips sliced their way beneath a nose that could have taken his other eye out for good measure, had she so desired. Her eyes, piercing through the moonlight, were topped with eyebrows that carved their way across her brows like shards of blackened metal. She was made of corners and vertices, and looked like she could have sliced you in half if you so much as touched her. 
 
 He drew back the curtain and hid as she neared the shack. Thoughts raced through his head at thunderbolt speed - is she lost? Has she seen me looking at her? Am I imagining things? What if she knocks on the door? 
 
 She knocked on the door. 
 
 She knocked on the door again, thirty seconds later, unfreezing him from the sheer horror that had overwhelmed him. What do I do? he thought. I ca n't cope with company at the best of times, especially with someone who looked as... strange as she did. 
 
 Another knock. 
 
 I'm going to have to scare her off. Man up, make myself look big, get her to run away. I do n't care if she's in danger, I just want her to *go*. 
 
 He opened the door. 
 
 The face she was presented with would have caused some degree of consternation to those with the most robust of stomachs. How anyone could survive with what, in essence, was only half of a face was a mystery to most, but he persevered with it somehow - call it bloody-mindlessness. It was certainly a sight that caught the girl off guard, or so it appeared. 
 
 `` Oh!'' she said with an air of surprise that, had he been paying attention, he might have detected a hint of some other hidden emotion behind. 
 
 `` What do you want?'' he said, with the truest possible false bravado he could muster. 
 
 `` Can I come in?'' she asked. She truly looked remarkable close up, like a papier-mâché model of a girl that had been gifted the power of life. 
 
 `` No. Now go away!'' He tried shouting, but he had never been a particularly fierce person, and in any case the damaged caused in the accident meant that his vocal chords had seen far better days. 
 
 `` I want to come in!'' she said. 
 
 `` Well, you ca n't. Now scram!'' 
 
 `` If you do n't let me in, you'll regret it.'' Something at the back of his brain noticed that this sounded less like a threat and more like a statement of fact. The rest of his brain overruled this thought, though. 
 
 `` Try me!'' 
 
 `` Please let me in, Mr. Half-Man!'' 
 
 What? Mr. Half-Man? The sheer cheek! 
 
 `` GO AWAY!'' he screamed as loudly as he could, before slamming the door in her face. That had not been an enjoyable experience. It had stirred up emotions that he had not felt in several years, especially anger. He had often thought that the accident had been the best thing to have happened to him, as it finally gave him an excuse to be a recluse, to shun the rest of society and live his own life by his own terms. The little girl, if anything, had confirmed these beliefs - if she could make him feel that furious, then the thought of everyone else in the world pointing and laughing at him... it did n't bear thinking about. 
 
 He had also felt uneasiness, felt fear and uncertainty. He'd last felt those after the accident, when he was in hospital and the nurses were all telling him how brave he was. He could tell that they were lying out of pity, but he also knew that no-one in the real world would be unkind. He would have to leave his old life behind and start afresh, and that at the time scared him no end. He resolved back then to never get himself into a situation where he would feel that way again. 
 
 And yet, here he was, unsettled by a strange apparition that wanted in to his world that he had spent so long creating. He did n't like this one little bit. 
 
 He especially did n't like the knocks on the door. She was still there? 
 
 The knocking continued for a while. He slowly realised that it she was not going to give up anytime soon. He had to open the door. 
 
 She was still stood there, and turned her head to stare directly at 
 
 `` Why are you still here?'' he asked, panicked slightly. `` What do you want?'' 
 
 `` I did warn you,'' she said calmly, and then... she unfolded. 
 
 She spread and swelled as corners of her face unpleated, the ruffles of her skirt smoothed out as the fabric reapportioned itself, her arms extended and fanned out. A maelstrom of origami exploded in front of him. He was overwhelmed, falling backwards into the shack as he tried to get away from the chaotic unfurling of whatever was happening. 
 
 He regained his senses, and looked outside. It looked like she had finished unfurling... but she was n't a *she* anymore. She was now an *it*, and whatever *it* was did n't look particularly inviting. Nothing with that many spikes ever tended to. 
 
 It opened a barbed mouth to speak. 
 
 `` You have failed the test, Mr. Half-Man.'' When it spoke, the syllables cut through the air with no reverberation, no distortion - it spoke, and you heard exactly what it had to say. 
 
 He tried to reply, but found himself paralysed. This ca n't be happening. 
 
 `` You could have tried to protect me, Mr. Half-Man. But you did n't.'' 
 
 `` I...'' he tried to say. `` I...'' 
 
 `` I am what happens to those that do n't get protected, Mr. Half-Man.'' 
 
 `` Y-you...'' 
 
 `` You shall remember me. I shall make sure of that.'' 
 
 It sliced through the air towards him. He struggled, but in an instant he was enveloped in a tightening shroud of tautening, strong yet almost ethereal membrane. It had practically cocooned him. He struggled against the constrictions, but it was of no use. 
 
 `` Help me!'' he tried to shout, but was unable to. It tightened its grasp on him some more. 
 
 And abruptly... he was awake. It had disappeared, vanished in an instant. He was on the floor of the shack, but seemed to be OK. It must have been a dream. 
 
 Was n't that how the old cliché worked, he asked himself as he regained his senses. You have a bad dream, you change your ways, you suddenly become a nice person again. Well, I've lived through too many horror-shows of my own for that bullshit. I'm going back to the old me, and there's nothing a poxy origami girl can do to stop me. 
 
 He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. His half-face returned his look. But so did the other half of his face. The paper half, twisted into a scowl of hatred in direct contrast to the look of horror now present on the fleshier side.
