Dear Yuri,
I wasn’t going to share this with anyone but we’re running low on air and I have to break the seal. Something is coming. It is outside so we stay in here, behind the glass. Amorphous, faceless, it shape-shifts, so that you couldn’t arm yourself with a mask and gloves and grip it in a stranglehold. It would slip like quicksilver and pool around you. Yet I have seen it. Did you ever look through the spy-hole in your front door to almost see a dark figure waiting? I think it is like that. At night, when it is too dark to see, it takes form.
Yesterday, a woman was fined for screaming at her window. A banshee! Silas read to me, rolling his eyes in the glow of his screen. I gasped for some extra air and held on to the table, which has expanded to hold numerous deliveries and teleconferencing and interactive home-based learning. Then there was broken plate everywhere. It had spread to all the dark corners and my hands shook to sweep there. I saw the shards shift and reform, only to fracture again in my grasp. She saw it too.
After dark, I turned off the lights, opened the curtains and sat by the window to wait for my eyes to adjust. Opposite is a park. The streetlights stop at its gates and through the long gloom of its entrance, something emerged. At first, almost imperceptible, its wavering form seemed to assume the shape of the trees or a figure hunched on a bench. Then it drooped and pooled on the road, now the shadow of a dark mass stretching, reaching outwards. At the pavement, it reformed and drew into itself, rising until, under the glass, it raised its head.