Shadowloss - Part 1/7

Bad things come in threes.

Welcome to the first part of the first story published in the Dispatches from Inner Space.

At the end of each part is a link to the next one, so you shouldn’t have any trouble following along. As you read, feel free to comment on anything and everything. I respond to it all.

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OK, on to Part 1 of “Shadowloss.”

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[Est. reading time: 6 minutes]

It started out as a really bad day.

Sudhir, an old friend and also technically my boss (which doesn't keep me or anyone else from calling him Suds), leads me into his office and pulls up a video on his computer. Doesn't say anything. Just sits me down and spins his laptop around so I can see the screen when he hits play.

The video shows Kat, my wife, getting out of her white 2019 Acura in the driveway of a house I don't recognize. Then it cuts -- yes, CUTS -- Suds had done actual editing on this thing -- it cuts to a shot outside one of the windows of this house, presumably, framing my wife with a man I don't recognize.

You can guess where it goes from there.

I should go back a little bit, though. About a week before this, Suds had pulled a chair up next to my desk and said hey, what's going on. He wanted to know why I'd been distracted, missing deadlines, showing up late. You know, just being a shitty employee. He had every right to ask. We were a small team, a new company. Easier for big corporations to absorb that kind of slack, but I was probably costing us real money.

Anyway, I told him what was going on. Kat had been doing night classes (or so I thought), leaving me to take care of the Odies -- the three black labs named Cody, Brody, and Jody she had acquired in the eight months since we'd been married. I didn't like dogs. For the record, I still don't like them. I'm not an animal person. The concept of owning another big organism has always struck me as irredeemably weird, not to mention a literal shitload of work.

So it was that -- taking care of those damn dogs -- but also it was a general feeling of disconnection and loneliness. Sure, call it depression. The year before we got married, we bought a house together, big enough to start a family. Then came the dogs. And now it was just me and the Odies, and Kat was either at work or at school, and it was a lot of house for just one person all the time. When I wasn't chasing untrained K9's, I was watching movies or playing PUBG, and sleeping way more than it seemed like I should need to.

I didn't get into all that with Suds, of course. It would have been unprofessional. And whiny. But I guess I didn't need to, because he told me, straight up, point blank, "Kat's cheating on you."

I looked at him like he was crazy. Because I genuinely thought he was.

But that was last week. And now I'm sitting in his office, watching videographical proof.

And then, as the walls and floor and the foundations of my life melt away, Suds spins the laptop back around, slaps it shut, and gets that iron stare back on me.

"Also, you're fired," he says.

The pure incredulity of this moment escaped me in a single, heavy puff of laughter. "What?"

"Now you're free. You can do whatever you want. Live wherever you want. Fuck whoever you want."

I shake my head. It's hard to parse meaning out of regular words. Kat is cheating on me. I'm fired. I'm free?

"What?" I said again, uselessly.

"Reg," that's my name, pronounced like peg, "you're stagnation station over here. Your marriage is over, your job is over. I'll even put a bow on a real nice severance package, but if I have to see you staring aimlessly into a spreadsheet again, I'll put a bullet in my brain. Get out of this building and figure out what you want your life to be. Because it can't be this." He punctuated the last word by putting his forefinger directly down on top of the laptop he had just closed.

Next thing I know, I'm in my car, leaving the parking garage, and not even knowing which direction to turn. Like, literally, do I go right, toward Orange Grove, or left, down Del Mar? This is embarrassing, but I don't actually remember what I picked.

For a good hour, I just took random turns. Until eventually I decided I didn't feel like driving anymore, and pulled over next to a big old growth park.

There's almost no such thing as bad weather in Pasadena. That's why they shot so many American Dream suburbia movies in this town. Ninety five percent of the days, you're gonna have some sun. And there's plenty of shade trees here, too, which is better than you can say for a lot of places in LA.

I sat down under one of them. Just right on the grass, sunlight kaleidoscopic around me through the leaves above. I became determined to follow my friend and former boss's advise.

Kat was cheating on me. I tried to be mad, but something like relief tricked me out of it. I realized that for a good number of months, I had blamed myself for my loneliness. And before you go pointing out the oversleeping, and the video games, and whatever -- that stuff didn't start until at least a few weeks after Kat started her "night classes."

Not that I was some ideal husband. I could have brought home flowers more often. I probably complained about work too much. Part of that was hoping she'd talk more about her job. It didn't work. At some point, she had become a master of monosyllabic conversation.

So that's what what I was doing when it happened. I was litigating the failure of my short marriage, trying to assign blame as accurately as possible, when I noticed I wasn't alone. Next to my blurry shadow among the shifting patterns of sunlight in the grass and dirt and roots, was another blurred and broken shadow.

I looked up to see who was standing next to me, but there was no one.

I looked down again. The leaves broke up the sunlight, but the form was unmistakeable. According to the patterns of shade, I had company. But there was no one close by, no one else but me under that tree. It was a warm day, but I shivered real good. And when I looked back at the ground, it seemed like maybe my shadow had moved, that maybe it was a little closer to the ghost shadow visitor.

With another wave of goosebumps rippling down my neck, I raised my hand. For a two solid, chest thumping heartbeats, my shadow failed to mimic the movement.

And then it did.

And as I watched, the other shadow glided through the leafy splashes on the ground, until it melted into the shadow of the thick tree trunk nearby.

Hand still raised absurdly in the air, I divided my suspicious staring between my own shadow and the ground all around the trunk of the tree, trying to spot an interloper sneaking away.

But there was no one else there. And my own shadow was back to behaving exactly as it should. I kept watching it, as I got unsteadily back to my feet, feeling very much as though my outline on the ground was staring back at me, like a faceless reflection in a dark room.

Shaking, nauseous, I rubbed my eyes, took several long, deep breaths, and came to the only reasonable conclusion available to me. I had just suffered two major life blows, in quick succession, and my mental health had become destabilized.

I probably needed more sleep. I hoped I didn't also need professional help, and a prescription for lithium.

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