Part Five: The Fear Outside

The House That Shadows Built

I woke up with a stabbing feeling, a sound I felt, the screeching of braking a train on the tracks. Awake but unable to move I knew that the Fat Man was in the room with me. I could smell the putrid dampness of his skin. After a moment my body suddenly let out all the coiled up tension and I sat up in bed screaming with a dry mouth. On my mattress was a greasy black handprint.
Once awake my mind was full of thoughts. How unprepared we all were, hunter gatherers searching for the migration patterns of a grazing animal in a world dripping in information, sweating patterns. Our brains were primitive calculators overstretched. They had to evolve. Some managed this alone of course, by will and effort, but others required manipulation.
We kept the windows covered so that none of the shadows escaped...
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