Unhappy New Year

Then that tall thing in the darkness interlaced its fingers and flexed them until its joints snapped as loud as firecrackers. It proceeded to crack the others in its overly-articulated fingers one by one. Shadows cast by an unknown source of light on the far wall seemed to show those hands like the legs of an impossible boney spider wrapping itself delightfully around a fly caught in its web. My feet were gritty and frozen. That’s how I found out it had taken my shoes.

This Year Marks Another Shadow Spring

My grandfather remembered the last Shadow Spring, he told me it happened when he was just a boy. 108 years old and he shared his recollection with me as though it had happened in recent memory. He told it as spry and coherent as he’d ever told me anything.