Arianna Kanji
It’s four in the morning. I can tell by the thin ring of light peeking just atop my silver wrist, an illusion crafted by the alarm clock shining slick on my nightstand. I say nightstand vaguely; in reality, it’s nothing but a crude imitation of such, built from scraps of wood found at garage sales and piled into trucks. Some people call me charitable, others call me cheap—neither works, for I’ve recently discovered that I have no conscience and an awfully particular amount of money. No, I’m merely a rich fraud with some type of deep itch within my bones, the sort a craftsman gets while gazing at his government-issued gun. The need to build has been, quite ironically, stuffed between the gears of my mind, wearing them down until they’re far ricketier than they should be.
I’m not supposed to be up at four in the morning. Actually, I’m not supposed to be up at all. But I am. In the dead of night, the alarm clock flickers with a reddish hue. I taste copper on my tongue but can’t manage to speak. In this apartment, with checkered walls and peeling paint and bills piled up on the counter, there is no point to saying anything at all.
Nobody’s said my own name in ages. Sometimes I forget what it sounds like.
The hyper-relatability of my position cannot be overstated. Waking up in the middle of the night is unrealistic for a generation that goes to bed at one. Five am is too late. Three am is too early. But it’s become a habit to watch those lights flash behind my eyes, calculating the perfect time to wake.
Three more hours. That’s all I need. Soon four will become five, then six, then seven, and the sun will slip onto the sky, dwarfing the glow of my phone screen mere feet away from me. The reliability and excitement of knowing and never realizing will vanish. Mundanity will replace it, as it always does. Mindless repetition of pre-rehearsed sentences.
I stand. The sheets ruffle against my arms as I do so. Soft. Billowy. It was bold of me to assume that money can buy sound sleep. Though mulling over ever-growing thoughts feels a whole lot nicer on satin sheets.
At first, I do believe it’s just a shadow. Nothing more, nothing less. The bright halo of my door frame, traced by pools of light just beyond my reach, is casting something dark against the foot of my bed. It's not deserving of even a passing thought. I’ve seen shadows before. I’ve spent so much time awake that my movements have begun to imitate theirs.
It moves. But shadows aren’t free thinkers. They’re tethered spirits, bending only at the will of those who created them. My eyes adjust to the darkness.
It rises. Like waves on the shore as the day wanes on. Like flipping through family photos that chronicle the years. When it does so, it pulls my surroundings. Only the outline of something solid peeks through the darkness of my bedroom wall. Blinking eyes are nonexistent. Just like its arms. Just like its mouth.
“Hello,” I say.
It doesn’t respond. Maybe social norms are different, down in the realm of shadows. More things to do, less things to say. Not quite enough time to do both. Maybe they don’t have conversations down there. Maybe they have nothing except silence, the whistle of the wind through tree branches, and the pitter-patter of little feet on soft ground. There would certainly be no light. Nothing except the dark expanse of shadow stretching over the crowds like the wings of a pearly moth, fluttering in the airy breeze. A gym class parachute, if you will.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” Again, no response. Nothing but the slight tremor of pointed fingertips as I reach for its tightly drawn skin. I have no skin. It pulls back, and shadows split apart into flickering pieces. Bits of flesh against concrete after a particularly nasty fall. “Why did you find me?”
Instead of responding, a deep chill runs up my face. An ice cube, maybe, sliding across my cheek like chilly water on dirty plates. Skin.
"Well, you got that right.” So it knows something, at least. That’s good.
Yours. Pale.
“Thank you for noticing?”
Are you ill?
I scoff. “No.” How it was unfamiliar with skin but knew about illness is beyond me. Bright, pearly eyes blink down at me, mere rings with gaping holes where pupils should be. Upon closer inspection, the circular hoops seem to be-
“Are those my earrings?”
It gazes back, uncomprehending. Actually, no. It’s aiming the hoop eyes down at my chapped lips. Skin. Broken skin. Broken, open skin. A puzzle. With some of the pieces missing.
Well, that’s a new way to describe my lack of lip balm. “Did you steal my jewelry?”
In response, the figure raises two little flickers of darkness up to the circles and pops them out. They fall with a clatter onto the wooden floor, bouncing near the tips of my toes. Oh. Okay. I pick them up and examine them. My jewelry box used to be in my room, but I moved it. I forget why. I look up at it. It looks back.
I walk to the living room. I’m using this term incredibly loosely because it’s about as patchworked and hastily put together as the majority of my furniture. Two crooked tables stand askew against the walls, collecting dust on their broken legs; the movers hauled them in with no regard for their ornate craftsmanship and unloaded them the wrong way around. Of course, that might also have something to do with how those tables are made for country manors, and this is a one-bedroom apartment in a city with mold in every crevice. The carpet is yellowing, and crumbs and bits of Legos are left over from the single mother who used to live here with her child. I saw something—something akin to pity—ruminating behind her eyelids as she handed me the keys after a particularly sketchy real estate deal. Through the dried baby spit collecting on her cheeks, she told me that moving out for the first time was always hard.
I wonder if the shadows were the reason she left in the first place.
The jewelry box is sitting on the ground next to a disfigured lamp with the shade thrown off. It’s small and light, almost like a feather as I clasp it in my palms. The two earrings are slipped rather hastily into the little pocket at the top. I’m too tired for this. I want to go to sleep.
Your eyes.
“Yes?” I raise my eyebrows.
Dark. Hooded. Diseased.
I scoff again. So that it notices. Okay. “You woke me up.”
Oh. A pause. You’re too young to be alive.
“What?”
Or too old to die. Or too kind. Too tired.
“To die?”
No.
I find after exactly 20 minutes that shadows really do like to talk, as long as there is a reason to. And only in small, short, contracted little bits. Like a speech robot with a fear of sentences or a wandering poet who keeps stumbling over good, well-hidden lines. For about five minutes, there’s mindless silence as I walk down the hallway, but then there’s an absence, and it’s only until two minutes later that I realize it has vanished.
You don’t tend to notice the way your shadow leaves you. It’s part of how they’re designed. It's as though it’s a four-year-old boy who doesn’t yet know why all his clothing fits too tight or his hair is never done up like his peers. But then you pick up a book or turn on a light, and it shifts. Disappears entirely, sometimes, or maybe draws just a little bit closer.
What is that?
“A book.”
But why?
“Do you not like books?”
It shakes its head. Sounds are better.
So we listen to music. Something classical, until it begins to fade into the background of the darkened living room and we switch to folk. Some lines about wind and sails pass me by, and suddenly I’m back in my bedroom, nursing an aching wound in the side of my head. Nothing bloody yet, though. So I made it, then. I made peace with the demon, and it’s letting me live another day. How very nice, as nice as the ice cube chill of the breeze on my shoulder.
The red cherry scream dies on my lips. My legs go limp. If you were to press a needle into my skin, I would feel neither a bump nor a bruise. Sometimes, at 4 a.m., thoughts are really ridiculous. If I were to sink to the floor, thousands upon thousands would step over my weeping body with no regard for the dirt on their shoes. Even less regard for the one with two bloody noses and dark circles around her neck, concrete cracked against her shuddering fingertips. Perhaps that’s what’s happening now. I’m stepping over my ruined carcass on the way to something much darker.
I find it leading me back to my room, though I’m not aware of when I left it again. As it settles me into my bed and draws the covers up to my chest, its noiseless footsteps retreat behind me. All around, the muffled sounds of laughter continue. A young boy celebrates his eighteenth birthday with a trip to his old apartment. Parents with nothing but strings tied around their fingers. Am I merely an observer? A child at a birthday party with a balloon and a needle? Yes, my dear. If you wish.
When I wake up, the peeling paint, yellowing carpet, and flickering shadows are gone. Stole away my soul along with them. My heart beats empty in my ribs.
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