I open my eyes and it is all dark around me, a blurry dark where dreams and furniture coalesce; Silhouettes before the window, their contours smudged. Outside, fluttering bat-wings beat spastically against the air, plunge and swoop with blinding speed; outside the window, a world, sharp-edged and pulsing with haste, racing to survive this night, another night. Mine are the sleepy shadows, the warmth of the covers, the dull heat of you pressed against my back, your breathing. The world outside might have dropped away. I would not know.