everyday is halloween

shadows

last night was the first chilly night of the scary season.  i like the windows open to the clement air.  i am also a self confessed night owl.  because i am the last one in my house to bed it is my duty to make sure the doors & windows of the house are locked & sealed.  & the cars outside locked too.  the days are shortening.  night arrives sooner each evening enveloping my little patch of the universe in umbra.  & we keep the house darker too.  cozier.  the house lights are dimmed.  the nighttime world is a universe onto itself.  often, i see critters, like opossums & raccoons, march out into the darkness & do what it is they do.  

the darkness is its own sound.  i can hear the oceanic tides of the nearby freeway.  a car door opens.  footfalls on the sidewalk.  the mewing of a cat or the bark of a dog.  not much else.  i am up till two or three in the morning.  i watch videos & movies, read, write.  then i get sleepy.  i shut down my laptop.  check my phone for messages.  i close & lock the windows.  make sure the vehicles parked outside are locked too.  check the doors as well.  

i do these things out of habit.  i am on autopilot.  our cats know my routines too.  & ignore me.  sometimes i am in a hypnogogic state.  between wakefulness & dreaming.  last night was the first chilly night of the season.  i was near shivering as i closed the windows.  i noticed shadows outside the windows.  there are always shadows outside.  i noticed mine too as it dutifully followed me from room to room.  my shadow seemed unusually longer too.  i chalked that perception to my sleepiness & that it seemed darker outside.  no moon to help light the streets?  i don't know.  i was too tired to check the app on my phone that gives me astronomical data.  i was too tired even to go the old fashioned route & simply walk outside on my porch to look up at the sky. 

i went to the bathroom without turning on the light.  i stepped up to the toilet & looked out the window that is located right above the commode.  i watched the trees of our neighbors.  the trees looked like darker cut-outs of the night.  everything was in shadow.  as i was pissing i noticed something odd.  the shadows appeared to rapidly shift back into their familiar positions.  like school children falling into line after recess.  & just when i looked back down to the toilet all the shadows in the bathroom seemed to swirl suddenly back into their familiar places too.  

did i see that?  did i simply imagine the shadows moving into their patterns?  i was deeply sleepy.  i did an internal shrug, shut the bathroom window, flushed the toilet & returned to my routine of cutting out the lights in each room.  back room.  kitchen.  front room.  etc etc.  but when i got to the front room to turn out the light i looked to my left.  my shadow was not where it should be related to the angle of the light.  my shadow was just not there.   

still, i got the fobs for our vehicles to make sure they were locked.  when i looked outside at our cars the shadows swirled like an old-fashioned dream sequence in a 1960s TV show when the scene swirls to indicate the transitions between dream & reality.  i rubbed my eyes.  again, the shadows all seemed to be running back to their original positions.  & my shadow?  it was still not beside me.  but outside in that massing swirl something made a b-line from across the street toward my front yard then to my porch then thru the front room wall & then back to its original position in the shape of me.  it was there before i turned out the light, & my shadow moved when i moved toward the bedroom. 

boo