As a child, your parents always told you that shapes in the dark at night were just shadows of the trees and the streets and the birds, nothing more.

They told you so many times that nothing lurked in your room, and slowly, as you grew older, you began to believe them. The shapes were just there, at night. They were not watching; they were not waiting.

As a teenager, your parents laughed at you when you woke in the night, screaming even before you fully woke up at the shapes in the dark.

You knew nothing was wrong, but you couldn’t help thinking that the shapes watched you diligently, each and every night. You couldn’t help but imagine them creeping closer and closer in the dark.

As an adult, the shapes in the dark cast shadows so short that you knew they were close, too close.

You never told your husband about the shapes in the dark, ignoring them each day just as you had been told to do, all your life.

You wish you had.

The shadows have reached you now.

You’ll never scream for help again.