Just a Minute Too Late

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before —Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven Just a Minute Too Late Those inky shadows, follow me, cleverly devised in the corners of my inhabitation, without an invitation. They invest their horrorfest, sinking into the midnight hour, draining the color, blinding the truth, bespeaking of consequences of staying up just a minute too late. Is it too late to make a run for it or will the wall to wall rug, be pulled out from under, revealing the form of something alien, one which my mind can’t fathom, a phantom, miasmic apparition, a trick, a trap, a rapparee of Poe? A human silhouette, a living doll, a dark screen, abominable creaks and “hoo”s, flickering bulbs, a hidden troll… More light, bright enough to raise the dead, until the catacomb-storm deadens the source where you stand, or sit…don’t blink… you’ve fallen asleep…again and again waking up with a start, then to a voice from an unrecognizable throat, perhaps, the house speaks all by itself. Silly me, I wake up. The rug’s been rolled back in place. Only birds tweet, but nonetheless that relentless silhouette’s still on the wall, playing it straight…deceptively so.