I woke up all of a sudden. That damn alarm had gone off.


    The alarm of dark places.


    I struggled to go back to sleep. And when I did manage to, it was a restless and disturbed sleep.


    The day after, I woke up knowing something terrible had happened. It was a weird awareness. I knew it for certain and yet nothing tangible could actually justify it.


    I was walking in the streets, gazing at the buildings that were stretching upwards, gazing at the offices that were hanging between earth and sky... and I was seeing things.


    Shadows.


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    Anxiety was slowly and relentlessly taking over me. I was always more on the lookout. Every slightest noise at my back would make me jump. I would turn and slice the air with my look. I was convinced that, by checking everywhere, I could save myself.


    Save me from what?


    I didn''t know either.


    And so I would turn, I would turn on lights everywhere and I would sleep with a lamp on, when I could fall asleep.


    I would live my days with the terror of the night, of the moment when I''d have had to close my eyes and I couldn''t have guarded my surroundings. The moment when the world wouldn''t be under my control anymore. But mostly...I would live my days, terrified of hearing it again, ringing and resounding in the void.


    Wrong.


    The alarm.