Thomas Whyley Poet Prose

The Shackled hour

I rouse from my nocturnal torment, with a hazy amnesia of the terror that just filled my head.
With stalwart conviction
d I purposefully open my eyes to view my surroundings—

Yet the room seems wrong,
a shadowy figure peripherally mocks me.

I make a futile effort to turn my head and look at my foe.
Invisible iron shackles make me a prisoner to my own bed.

The air thickens, syrup-slow, pressing lungs that forget how to rise.
My tongue lies dead behind clenched teeth; no scream can climb the throat’s sealed well.

It draws nearer—
not footsteps, but a thickening of darkness,
a subtraction of light where light should not be taken.

No face, only the suggestion of one:
two hollows where eyes should burn,
a mouth that is only absence smiling.

It sits at the mattress edge,
weight without mass,
and the springs do not groan.

I feel the cold seep in—
not from window drafts,
but from the place where its hand almost touches my chest,
hovering, deciding.

Heart hammers against ribs like a trapped bird,
each beat loud enough to wake the house,
yet silent to the world beyond my skull.

Time stretches thin,
seconds become centuries pinned beneath its gaze.
I count them in pulse, in panic,
in the slow drip of sweat that cannot fall.

Somewhere distant, a streetlamp flickers—
proof the ordinary night continues.
Cars pass. A dog barks twice.
Life moves on without me.

And still it watches,
patient as stone,
as if my fear is a wine it has waited lifetimes to taste.

Then—
a tremor, faint as a moth’s wing.
The iron softens.
Fingers twitch once,
a small rebellion.

The shadow tilts its head,
curious, almost disappointed.
It begins to thin,
edges fraying into smoke,
receding like ink pulled back into the pen.

I drag one breath—
shallow, ragged, miraculous.

The room rights itself.
The lamp glows ordinary amber.
The figure is gone,
leaving only the memory of weight,
the afterimage of absence.

I lie still a long minute,
afraid to believe I am free,
afraid the next blink will summon it back.

Outside, dawn is considering the horizon.
I turn my head—
at last—
and the room answers with nothing
but silence,
and the slow, grateful rise of my chest.

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