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The Dark


by Javed Hayat


Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the dark rendering him breathless.

A ghostly quiet holds the space within its reverie, and the blind walls surrounding it, a state of panic keeps him cold and his ears wander for a familiar whisper, a sound of curtains heaving, anything at all.


But as the air continues to grow rancid around him, the boy wonders if the tiny door across the wall from his bed is left ajar again, where the wood has lately began to feel warped against his cold groping fingers, making it swollen and hard to close.


A pair of lifeless eyes on a white knuckle face pleads against the dark, against the unveiling of a specter growing in secret, and the long jagged lines now running blind across the flat panel footboard of his bed.
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