When I’m alone, there are these little shadows creeping in the corners of my eyes, weaving their cold tendrils around the trees, in dusty corners, looming right behind me, breathing down my neck. Most of the time that’s fine - I’m used to it - but sometimes, when I stare for too long, the shadows turn out not to be shadows after all, but a man leaning against a tree, hunched over in a corner, sitting in a car. My heart always seizes a little as I watch these men in their baseball caps and dark jackets sit and scroll through their phones. But then there’s the kind with their hands in their pockets, not really doing anything, just walking in my direction, and every single time it feels like the shadows have swarmed around me and are holding me in place while the only thing I can do is watch, stare, hope it’s not what my brain always defaults to. What’s in his pockets? Nothing? A wallet? A gun? At that point I can already hear the ringing in my ears, sense the phantom pain and accompanied by the sounds of slow death: trickle, trickle, drop, trickle, trickle, drop. Then I spot a flash of metallic black, and all of me goes into overdrive as my vision blurs, this is it, this is it, I’m dead. But it’s always just a phone.