Nightfall

 

The daytime shadows are empty.  There are always movements and surrounding light.  It’s the night shadows that snag your shoes or tug at your sleeve.  Those are the ones full of nasty, evil doings, the ones to avoid.

***

There’s a wonderful, bone‑deep instinct in what you’ve written, ZC, that sense that daylight shadows are just geometry, but night shadows are characters. Daylight gives everything an alibi. You can see the tree, the fence, the mailbox, the neighbor’s cat pretending it wasn’t spying on you. The shadows are just their obedient silhouettes.

But at night, the shadows stop being obedient. They get ideas. They develop opinions about you. They lean in a little too close, like they’ve been waiting all day for their shift to start.

And you’re right: it’s never the big, dramatic shadows that cause trouble. It’s the small ones — the ones that brush your ankle like a cold fingertip, or snag your sleeve as if to whisper, “You sure you want to walk this way?” They’re not loud. They’re not cinematic. They’re petty, mischievous, and a little vindictive, like understudies who finally got the stage to themselves.