Shadowloss - Part 3/7
Thin hopes
This is Part 3 of “Shadowloss,” a serialized novella about a man who loses his shadow. If you need to catch up or refresh, find:
[Est. reading time: 6 minutes]
By the end of the day, after checking myself into a hotel and talking to my sister, I had successfully convinced myself that my shadow problems were phantom manifestations of the real problems I had been avoiding in my life. Thea told me I had made the right decision to leave, and that she could connect me with a good lawyer.
“What do I need a lawyer for?”
“To help with the divorce...” She didn’t say “obviously,” but it was in her voice.
“Okay slow down. I haven’t decided anything yet. I should talk to her first.”
“No, you should talk to a lawyer first. You may not want to live in that house anymore, but it’s by far the most valuable asset the two of you jointly own. I love you, Reg, but your brain is a sad soup right now, and you need to do what I’m telling you to do. Ok?”
“Fine.” Honestly I was grateful to let go of the ball for a minute. Or, more accurately, to continue not picking up the ball.
I spent most of the rest of that day dodging Kat’s calls and channel surfing in the hotel room. And OK I’ll admit that’s a pretty good summary of the several days that followed. The best thing that came out of that time was that my shadow stuck around. At least during the day. I slept through all the night hours, and refused to leave my bed anytime it was still dark and I happened to be awake.
And then I was ready to get off my ass and figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My 30th birthday was still eight months away, which might be just enough time to get something real going before my 20s were all gone.
Of course I didn’t need to leave the hotel room to get to work — wifi worked just fine. But I needed the air.
When I left, it was early enough that the shadows were still long on the asphalt. Except mine. Mine wasn't there.
I froze. I waited. I nervously looked around, flinching at any movement that might have been the return of my AWOL companion.
I must have stood there, eyes straining my peripheries like someone with locked-in syndrome, for a good twenty minutes. I don't know. People came and went, but I was too busy feeling terrified that my own shadow would sneak up on me to notice if any of them stared.
A heart can't race forever, it turns out. Either it slows down, or you die. Instead of dying, I calmed down. Not a lot, but enough. Without taking another step toward either my car or the door of the hotel, I pulled out my phone and called Thea.
"It's gone," I said, trying my best to keep the panic out of my voice.
"Calm down," she said. I must not have been doing a great job. "What are you talking about?"
"My shadow. It's gone. I'm looking at where it should be, and it's not there."
"I'll skip the part where I tell you that's crazy. You know that. So..." A high-pitched ringtone signaled she was trying to FaceTime.
Oh. Good idea. I answered.
"Show me what you're talking about," she said, sounding extremely patient.
I swallowed, and flipped the camera around.
“All I see is asphalt,” she said. "I'm not sure this is gonna work.”
"Hang on," I said. At the very least, this ad hoc experimentation was helping to calm me down. I swept the phone’s camera around my feet.
"OK..." Thea said, squinting at her screen. "So there's the Sun over there, so your shadow should be..." I aimed the camera away from the big bright spotlight in the sky.
"Weird," she said after a few seconds. "But what if you -- maybe get closer to the ground?"
I got on my hands and knees and did my best to cast a shadow with my hand in view of the camera. But there was nothing there. I put my hand flush against the still-cool blacktop and there wasn't even the dark outline of shadow you'd expect to see beneath the skin.
"Oh my god," she said. "It looks like bad CGI. How are you doing that?"
"I'm not doing anything!" I shouted. If my actions up to now hadn't attracted a couple of stares, that sure did.
"Reg, if you're trolling me right now--"
"I am NOT trolling you," I hissed. "I'm fucking terrified."
"OK," she said with a tone of finality. "Sit tight. I'll get the next flight to LA. I should be there before the daylight's gone."
I blinked. "What?"
"Is this real?"
"Yes--"
"Then I have to see it in person. Don't go anywhere." And then she hung up.
You probably have a lot of ideas about what you would have done in that situation. Maybe go grab some strangers to get third party validation. Maybe call a shrink. Or a physicist. Or the FBI. Whatever. You aren't me, and you weren't there. I was pretty sure I was losing my mind, and when I wasn't actively talking to Thea, just being outside to witness the strangeness of not having a shadow was unbearable. So I didn't talk to anyone else, and I didn't call in any experts. I went back and hid in my hotel room with the curtains drawn.
Thea was my last lifeline to sanity. I would wait for her, thankyouverymuch.
And while I waited, I Googled. It wasn't helpful at all. I found lots of stuff about vampires not having reflections, including people who claimed they *were* vampires and could prove it by, you guessed it, not having reflections. This was all bullshit, naturally. Camera tricks, most of them transparent. I let a lot of my time got sucked down Internet k-holes reading about various anime plot lines and old folklore. It did not make me feel better.
Because I was not one of those people who wanted any of that shit to be real. Especially not the stuff I was reading about. I had gone along quite comfortably under the assumption that when a human being dies, that's it. One and done mortality. But if my shadow could UP AND WALK AWAY, that suggested there might be things going on that were very far outside the scope of my existential comfort.
So I waited, uncomfortably, for the imminent arrival of my sister, who I hoped could somehow fix this. Whatever this was. And I sure as hell didn't dare let myself wonder too much about how she might be able to do that.
Thin hopes are like that. They don't hold questions very well.
If you’re enjoying this story, how about inviting a friend to read it along with you?
Thin hopes indeed! It is relieving that someone else not only knows and believes it, but sees it as well. But now what!
FINALLY someone else is let in on it! Exciting!