I live in an apartment, in an old house, in the backstreet of a small city. I live in that apartment, I stay there most of the time, I work there, I eat and drink and I sleep there. There are also other apartments in that old house and other people who live there, I suppose. I’m not sure about it though because I seldom see anybody. Every day I go down the hall and take the stairway down to pick up letters or papers but I never meet anybody on my way down or back up. Whenever I leave my apartment and pass the doors of other apartments I never hear a voice or music or laughter or any other form of noise that would indicate that somebody lives there. I never meet anybody when I leave the house and the mailboxes are always empty. When I return in the evening or at night I look at the building from the outside but I never see lights on in any other of the apartments nor have I ever seen anybody on their balcony. It seems like nobody’s ever at home and I live there all by myself.

But I know there must be people living there with me in my house. There are names on the doorbells and mailboxes and sometimes I hear steps or the slam of a door. So there should be neighbors. When they hear me coming, they stay in their apartment or go out of my way and hide in the shadow of a corner or behind a fire-extinguisher or some other place. When I pass the doors of their apartments they seem to stop their conversations and telephone calls, switch of their radios and TV-sets and fall silent, till I’m gone.

Once I heard a noise in the hall, I ran to the door of my apartment, opened it and looked around. It was dark but I could clearly see a pair of eyes hiding in the shadows, frightfully staring back at me. I searched for the light switch, when I found it and switched it on there was nobody there, it had vanished, I was alone.

Sometimes at night I hear hammering noises from other apartments. When I try to detect where they come from they suddenly stop. Then they start again when I’m lying in bed trying to sleep. It sounds as if somebody’s driving nails or screws into something. As if my neighbors are working on something, building something. But what are they putting together, what are they building? Is it some kind of machine? And what is it supposed to be for? What’s the use of it? And why are they doing it in secret? Why are they doing it at night? Why are they hiding in the shadows? Those creatures of the night. Why are they living in the shadows? Then I fall asleep.

Lately I notice that I don’t go out anymore like I used to, I don’t talk to people, I rather stay at home, I prefer to spend my time alone. I don’t take telephone calls, never lift up the receiver, don’t listen to the radio and never switch on the TV-set. Instead I stay away from the windows and at night I sit in the dark and look at the ceiling or the blank walls. Sometimes I get up and walk through the rooms of my apartment but when the wooden floor makes squeaking noises I stand still or sit down or lay on bed until the next morning. Sometimes I have work to do, so I get my tools and work on it until it’s done. I don’t think about my neighbors anymore, it’s like they’re not there and at the same time I feel more and more like one of them. It’s the house the connects us. Somehow I switched sides and I’m living in the shadows now. I hide in the dark and I’m slowly becoming a creature of the night just like them, until one day, I will turn into a shadow and when the light finally fades away I will vanish out of this world forever.

And you will hear now sound, you will see no light and you will feel no pain. You will just be living in the shadows.