Being Watched?

The draft of the room begins to change,

A subtle shifting in the static air,

As if the geometry of space grew strange,

And carved a hollow out behind my chair.

I have not heard a floorboard yield or creak,

No breath has brushed the fabric of my sleeve,

Yet certainty is absolute and bleak;

It requires no logic to believe.

It sits exactly where my sight falls short,

A permanent eclipse upon the blind,

Navigating paths of cold report,

An inch beyond the borders of my mind.

If I should step, it mimics every pace,

A perfect shadow cast without a light,

It matches me in rhythm and in space,

But stays forever anchored to the night.

The tension thickens like a rising frost,

It tightens up the muscles of the jaw,

A heavy ledger where the mind is lost,

To an unwritten, unnegotiated law.

I glare into the mirror on the wall,

To find the glass is empty and serene,

But looking straight ahead is worst of all,

For then it populates the space unseen.

My pulse becomes a frantic, rhythmic drum,

A warning broadcast to an empty room,

I wait to see if any form will come,

Or if the air itself will just consume.

Nothing is proven, nothing can be shown,

No footprint left upon the dusty floor,

And yet I know I do not sit alone,

Beside the heavy, double-bolted door.

The phantom mass behaves just like a weight,

That presses down between my shoulder blades,

An unseen hunter lying low in wait,

Within a labyrinth of shifting shades.

It does not need to manifest or strike,

To strip the comfort from a quiet space,

The terror and the certainty alike

Are sculpted by the absence of a face.

I turn my head—a violent, sudden snap—

The corner clears, the shadows smooth away,

I find myself inside an empty trap,

Where everything is normal, dull, and gray.

Yet as I turn my eyes back to the front,

The heavy gravity begins to grow,

The unseen thing resumes its silent hunt,

More real than any shape the light could show.