The clock hums past midnight,
and the house forgets how to breathe.
Every light loses courage,
every wall remembers its cracks,
and the night grows teeth.
I stay awake
not because I want to,
but because sleep has learned
how to run from me.
That’s when my shadow stirs,
peeling off the floor
like wet paper,
stretching itself taller
than I ever could be.
It no longer copies me.
It anticipates.
It waits.
I pretend not to see
the way it tilts its head
just after I do
a fraction too slow,
a fraction too curious.
It begins to whisper,
a sound like fingernails
dragging through sand:
“You feel it, don’t you?
The others watching.”
I swallow hard,
eyes refusing to climb
behind me.
My shadow steps sideways,
a movement I never made,
placing itself closer to my bed
between me
and everything crawling in the dark.
“You never sleep,”
it says,
“because you know
night is not empty.”
I hear shifting
not loud,
but present.
Thin breaths,
mine and not mine,
rising and falling
out of sync.
My shadow flattens itself
against the door,
as if blocking something
on the other side
or keeping me
from leaving.
The walls flicker,
the air stiffens,
and the darkness
leans in to listen.
“They like you awake,”
it murmurs,
“so they can see
your fear moving.”
A chill folds around me.
The lights go out
without permission.
I feel my shadow’s hand
cold, ink-like
rest against my shoulder.
“I stay,”
it whispers,
“not to haunt you…
but to keep the worse things
from finding your throat.”
Its voice deepens,
hungry, protective,
almost desperate:
“But tonight,
they are closer.
Don’t blink.”
Silence tightens.
Something scratches
the floor under my bed
slow…
delighted.
My shadow stretches larger,
its shape warping into something
with too many edges,
too many limbs,
too much hunger.
I cannot move.
The darkness
has hands now.
As the last thin strand of light
is swallowed,
my shadow hisses:
“If you sleep…
I can’t help you anymore.”
So I stay awake,
heart pounding
like a warning bell
for ghosts to follow.
And every night since,
before the world turns black,
I check the floor
to see if my shadow
is still flat…
or waiting to rise again
and speak.
And in the dark, I wonder is my shadow keeping me or something else?