The Comfort of Shadows – T.J. McIntyre

The Comfort of Shadows

by T.J. McIntyre

Jason screeched when the shadows first stepped out from under our desks. I turned and looked at the expression on his face. He was pale, very pale. For once, I was left speechless, which is very unusual for me. I spent all day every day making outbound sales calls. Talking was my job, my passion, my very livelihood. I owed everything I had (which, granted, was not very much) to my ability to talk a good talk. But when the shadows appeared, there was nothing at all I could say.

I just watched.

My shadow sat down in my chair. It adjusted the height of my seat (my shadow was a little bit longer in the legs than I) and picked up the shadow of my phone. After my shadow fingers dialed the phone, I heard myself — or at least a shadow of my voice — begin to talk. The sound made me sick. It mumbled the words; there were imitations of laughter and false pathos. My shadow banged down the phone, wrote some invisible notes with the shadow of my pen, and then raised my shadow arms in a triumphant V.

My shadow had made a sale.

After this, I decided to go home for the day. There was no point in sticking around; my seat now belonged to my shadow. There was nothing left for me to do; my shadow was doing my job without me. I thought perhaps I could share the seat, but the very thought of sitting on my shadow made me feel uneasy.  It looked so solid. No woman should sit on her own lap. That would just be weird.

Outside, shadows crawled all over the world despite the bright summer sun. They were unafraid, no longer lurking in dark places, no longer using us to shield them from the light, no longer tethered to objects, people, or animals that had never really appreciated them in the first place. They owed us nothing and this terrified me.

Jason followed me as I started down the street to my car.

“Wait up! Gerri! Wait!”

I stopped and turned. He looked different without his shadow trailing behind him. The shadow of my car drove away without me. A shadow of a bird crossed the ground, but there was not a bird in the sky. My stomach grew uneasy. It was just so unnatural.

“How ‘bout it, Jason?” I asked, commanding my voice not to reveal my discomfort.

“What the hell is going on?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Where’re you going?”

“Home, I guess.”

“Mind if I come with you?”

I sighed. I didn’t really want him to come over to my place. My cat, Jasper, had been up all night mewling at the window and sprayed my wall. (I knew I should have had the little bastard fixed.) Even though I had worked hard and scrubbed the wall this morning, the scent would still be there, and the dirty dishes were piled high. My place was a stinking wreck, and I didn’t want that to be my coworker’s first impression of how I live.

All the same, he was terrified. In truth, I was feeling a creeping unease myself.  The more I thought about it, the more the thought of facing my apartment alone terrified me. What would it look like without shadows? Would my shadow be there waiting for me?

“Sure.” I tried to say it with my calm voice, but the single syllable rose out of control near the end. “If you want to,” I added hastily, focusing on controlling my pulse and tenor. 

I clicked my keychain and unlocked my beige Taurus. Jason ran to the passenger side, opened the door, slid inside, and slammed the door shut behind him. As soon as I had my legs inside the car and closed my door, he slammed the button to lock the doors. He crumpled into himself, pulled his knees up to his chest, and closed his eyes.

I moved the rear view mirror to check my lipstick (the hue looked too bright without any shadows, and my face seemed too pale), adjusted the mirror so it focused on the road behind us once again, and twisted the key in my ignition.

“Seatbelt.”

Jason peeked over at me. “Huh?”

“I said seatbelt. I don’t drive with anyone in my car unless they wear their seatbelt. My dad treated trauma patients over at the state hospital. I went to visit him once. If you’d seen where he worked, you’d be the same way. Now put on your seatbelt.”

Jason nodded, sat up a little straighter, and buckled his seatbelt.

“Thank you.”

“No problem, but what does it matter? You saw what happened. You can see what’s going on.”

I shrugged and began driving. “You know the old saying: Safety First.”

Jason looked out the window, and then pulled his legs back up and buried his head between his knees. He mumbled under his breath. He might have been praying.

Not even the buildings cast shadows by then. The glare on the road was so sharp I had to put on my sunglasses.

#

Jason moved in with me directly afterwards. He was a stinking pig (even worse than my cat when it came to spraying things – you’d think his mother had never taught him the basic tenet of “if you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a neatie and wipe the seatie”), and perhaps the most awkward lover I had ever taken, but it still beat being alone, I guess. Especially those first few nights. The moonlight was so bright.

It took some time to adjust to this new world of autonomous shadows. I suffered occasional stabs of fear, but having Jason around, I forced myself to keep my composure. I would never give into panic in front of another human being.

“Never let them see your weakness.” That was my dad’s motto, and he beat it into me growing up. He never ceased telling me how hard I would have it, how “they” would want to beat me down and keep me docile and domesticated because of my sex. I never figured out who “they” were, so “they” became everyone. I always loved that Pink Floyd song, “Us and Them,” but for me, “I and Them” would have been a more fitting anthem.

Jason once said he loved me, and I think he may have really meant it, but I never loved him back. All the same, to make him feel at ease and keep the peace (he’d annoy the crap out of you when he was upset), I told him I loved him, too. I controlled my voice and did it in such a convincing fashion that, for a moment, I believed it to be true myself. 

#

I went back to the office from time to time. My shadow was always sitting there, mumbling away, making sale after sale, each time raising her arms up in the air. Every week when I checked my direct deposits, my commissions grew larger and larger. I had never been so successful. My productivity tripled. I took comfort in the knowledge that my shadow never left my desk. Had I worked twenty-four hours a day instead of eight, I could have been every bit as successful.  At least, that’s what I told myself.

But late at night, when I couldn’t sleep because of Jason’s snoring, I wondered: could I have sold as well as my shadow?

Based on Jason’s direct deposits, his shadow was doing nearly as well. This was amazing as the real Jason rarely sold any accounts at all without my help. His shadow was approximately six times as productive.

I ran into my manager one day, and he’d never looked so happy. He was nearly skipping down the carpeted halls. He nodded at me as I walked by. “Great work, Gerri. Keep ‘em coming!”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and turned down into a stairwell. That was enough for the day.

My insomnia worsened, and I found myself staring blankly more and more. The popcorn ceiling above seemed too bright without any shadows, like the bright side of the moon on steroids. Every tiny crater existed in a fully illuminated state. I’d try to shut my eyes, to block out the unending light, but all I could see were the backs of my lids without the comfort of shadows. I was haunted by my own flesh every time I shut my eyes.

And, always, my thoughts would turn to her, my shadow. I knew she was at work right now, sitting in my chair, using the shadow of my phone, and making sale after sale while I sat here staring at the ceiling wasting each and every precious heartbeat of my sad excuse for a life.

I tried. Lord knows I tried not to be jealous. Why should I be? Our shadows kept Jason and me living in a comfortable existence. Jason was even able to pay off his student debts entirely while still managing his half of the rent and power. All the same, staring up at the ceiling when sleep would not come, I would admit to myself that I was jealous. It was simmering, always simmering, threatening to boil over.

#

Jason only left my apartment once after that initial visit. He went back to his apartment to grab a few things: his Playstation, a scratched-up acoustic guitar, and a few pairs of natty jeans and t-shirts. This one trip had almost been too much for him. He told me he was never going out there again, said everything was too bright.

I knew what he meant, but I still thought it was pitiful. He was pitiful. How could I have ever meant it when I told him I loved him? Did I mean it?

He was terrified of the shadows, too. He kept the blinds closed so he did not have to see them moving around outside. He constantly tried to kick away Jasper’s shadow as it rubbed up against his legs. That never worked. I told him all he had to do was pet the shadow a second and it would go away. That’s what I did, and it worked. But he couldn’t bring himself to. He refused to accept how the world had changed.

So imagine my surprise when I found him in bed with my shadow.

I let him live with me for four months, always let him watch his stupid action movies, stopped watching my favorite shows, and this was his way of thanking me?

Creep.

“How long?” I asked, not even trying to control the rising rage in my voice. I hit the wall. “HOW LONG?”

My shadow continued to slither beneath the sheets and moan. Jason’s flushed face increased my anger. I picked up an empty beer can from the dresser (I always hated the way he left beer cans all over the place), and threw it at the bed. The can flew through the shadow and hit Jason squarely in the forehead.

He jumped to his feet, clutching the sheets around his waist. “Ow!” He rubbed his forehead where a perfectly round circle was forming. “Calm down.”

“Calm down? Calm down? What the fuck are you doing with her?”

He fell silent. He knew I knew exactly what he was doing with her. I could still see a tiny rise beneath the sheets held tight around his waist.

Without the sheets on the bed, I could clearly see my shadow. Her legs were so much longer than my stubby little things. I thought of her sitting at my desk, doing my job, stealing my man, and stealing my life. She writhed and arched her back. She growled and I could hear the pleasure in the shadow of my voice. Then, suddenly, she stopped. She stood up and faced me.

I glared at her.

My shadow regarded me. She seemed to be gloating. If there had been a face, I know it would have been smirking at me.

Angrier than I had ever felt about anything in my life, I grabbed out my keys from my purse, lit the little LED light on my keychain, and watched the shadow dissolve.

I thought it might have screamed as it disappeared. At least, I hope it did.

I told Jason to get out. I never wanted to see him again in my life.

#

While I never saw Jason again, I did see his shadow. In fact, his shadow followed me home from the office one day (once my shadow was out of the way, I resumed working and found myself more productive than ever). Jason’s shadow moved in with me, and we’re together still. His shadow is elongated in so many ways, in so many different places. When it embraces me, I feel at peace.

Unlike Jason – who always whined, who always feared – his shadow is strong and silent, and he isn’t afraid to pet Jasper’s shadow.

We spend a lot of time on the couch together. Jasper sits in my lap, Jasper’s shadow sits in Jason’s shadow’s lap, and the cats purr together in stereo. Jason’s shadow always lets me watch whatever I want to watch on television, and he never leaves empty beer cans on the furniture.

I lean my head in the crook of Jason’s shadow’s shoulder, and I can’t remember ever feeling so comfortable, so loved, and so normal. 

---

T.J. McIntyre writes from a busy household in central Alabama. His short fiction has featured in numerous periodicals including recent or forthcoming appearances in Moon Milk Review, Stanley the Whale, M-Brane SF, and Innsmouth Free Press as well as in numerous anthologies. In addition to writing fiction and poetry, he worked with Fantasy Magazine as an editorial assistant and lead interviewer and contributes to Skull Salad Reviews. He sporadically runs his own publication, Southern Fried Weirdness, which features strange southern fiction and poetry. In addition, he maintains a blog, Southern Fried Shorts, which features a free piece of original flash fiction every other Friday.

© 2011 All rights reserved T.J. McIntyre.

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