The Stillness in the Corner
He woke sometime after midnight and saw someone sitting in the corner.
The figure did not move.
For a few seconds, neither did he.
Then his eyes began collecting details.
The shoulders were hunched. The head seemed lowered. One arm hung strangely at the side.
He listened.
Nothing.
That made it worse.
If the figure had shifted, coughed, breathed—anything—there would at least have been something to understand.
Instead, it waited.
His heart began beating harder.
Perhaps the person had been there for some time.
Perhaps the person had been watching him sleep.
A floorboard creaked somewhere in the house.
The figure remained perfectly still.
It heard that too.
He pulled the blanket closer and watched the darkness until every fold seemed deliberate, every shadow part of a body.
Eventually, pale morning light reached the room.
First the head disappeared.
Then the shoulders.
Then the arm.
On the chair lay his coat, thrown there before bed, one sleeve hanging towards the floor.
He stared at it for a while.
Nothing in the room had changed.
Only what he had believed about it.
Fear needs very little evidence once imagination has supplied the rest.
