As a child, they menaced from under his bedroom door as his father’s boots stomped angrily outside in the hallway. And on windy moonlit nights, moaning branches thrashing against his windows.
In military school, sunlight at the back of a stiff, scared plebe.
Later, as an eviction specialist, from the tall pile of orders he signed without reading.
Now, at the nursing home, the shadows had begun reappearing
Painfully arising from bed, he pulled the shades, switched off the light, and locked and barricaded the door.
They would not get him again.