Record of a Night Too Brief

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What was that itch on my back? I wondered. And then I realized that it was the night—the night was nibbling into me.

It wasn’t that late, still only twilight, but the darkness seemed to have collected just above my shoulders. A black clump of it had fastened onto me, eating away at my back.

I wriggled, trying to shake it off, but the night clung fast. When I tried to rip it off with my hands, it floated away, as vapour, and I couldn’t grasp it. I grabbed at a patch, where it was most intensely black, but immediately it dispersed, and another black patch swirled up somewhere else.

The itchiness became unbearable. I scratched frantically. The more I scratched, the more the darkness ate into my back, and the more the darkness ate into my back, the more I itched.

Unable to stand still, I broke into a run.

Immediately, I was running as fast as a horse. I thought, as I ran: you get faster when the night starts eating into you. Roads, pedestrians, signs, all fly by, retreating into the distance, like scenes through a train window.

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