Hunched over and naked, walking in the empty street. Warm night ruins distance. A bedroom window closed with heavy curtains. Edges are light -like morse code. A pattern of movement. Silence in the street.
Drain water in the supermarket. It was the storm, they said. Happens every year. Workers barricaded themselves in aisles, armed with mops and buckets and folded out cardboard boxes. Patrons staring over mush into a forbidden land, submerged, hemmed in by cake boxes, cereal packets and yellow signs. Underneath them all, the dead with soaked hands. Pushing, listening and waiting.
Why must that light always be on? There are no children afraid of the dark. It is not a hall or passageway in a busy home. So why must it be on? Because if it were switched off, the hissing and clawing would come. The things on ceilings and hidden in boxes would twitch and stretch upward and outward. The things in the drains would swim up into bathtubs. Long arms would appear under beds, only to grab thin ankles at sleepy hours.