The Nearness in the Dark

The wall quivered like wrinkled skin before a twitch.

Outside, the vervain shuddered as if something with a windpipe brushed past.

Finger patter of rain drifted down on the zinc.

-

Pillows lay where they had been flung, like stitched figures waiting.

A hinge whimpered.

Curtain breathing.

An airy tug. There. Before my shirt dropped.

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A clump of hair sped past, BLACK, a breath that wasn’t mine.

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The switch clicked like teeth closing.

Something in the rafters lowered its weight toward me.

A pinch at my nose, as if pricked by the roots.

A sneeze snapped loose something that wasn’t mine.

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My mouth felt filled with TEETH.

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Heat prowled my spine like a mouth breathing close.

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It crossed me once. Enough to stay.

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The dark dulled everything I shouldn’t see.

A thin light pulsed behind my eyes, then spread.

My foot crushed a tuft of stuffing, still warm, as if a hand had just let go.

Not mine. Not from this house.

-

My inhale pulled a second breath through me, warm and wet, not my own.

-

The door sagged darker, turning like a revolving door of darkness.

-

I curled into myself; the air tightened around me like pores widening in cold.

My hands locked around my knees.

Exposed.

A weight rose off me, but not away.

“Yours,” it whispered, thin as breath without bass.

“Let me in.”

-

“No,” the word hoarsed out.

I pushed at the air.

It pushed back with the firmness of a palm.

Outside, blended caw warped into a wahw, then an awh

-

A sound changing shape… as if trouble found a new mouth.

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It rose before I did.

Behind me.

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Behind you.

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I almost saw it

A smear of movement bending the dark,

Swirls around my glasses, silvery and slithering.

-

Its breath rasped and circled, but stayed just out of view.

-

A forehead pressed close, or maybe the air only leaned.

I felt slotted into place, held by unseen nails.

As long as breath held me here, something moved with it.

A whisper circled inside my skull like hairs around my ear:

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“Don’t belong. Not seen. Behind, always behind.”

The light cracked on.

But who ever turned around.