A man spends more than a decade of his life going around like a blindfolded person. For days that later turn into years, his life follows a painful monotony. When he finally becomes self-aware, a portion of his whole existence seems to him like a patchy, vague, and distant dream.
During that dream-like period, even when he was awake, many of his actions did not register in his memory. He was like an instinctual organism, reflexively responding to stimuli.
When the man was a boy, he first felt an alternate presence inside him. It was like an echo inside his head that narrated or commented on his actions or, at times, calmed his fears.
At first, the boy could not tell if he was going crazy. What were these noises inside him?
At first, the boy was indifferent to the noises, which seemed like a distant buzzing inside his skull. But with time, as he grew older, the boy started to pay attention and distinctly recognized that the noises turned into voices. His life would no longer be the same.
One sunny day, midmorning, around his sixteenth birthday, it all made sense. While chatting with a close friend, this one abruptly stopped their conversation.
“Dude!” he said. “Your shadow is on the ground”.
The boy reflexively looked down and saw an elongated, dark image of himself on the ground.
At first, it was entertaining to make the image move left or right, in and out of his body, at his command. It was the closest thing to power.
A few moments later, however, the boy began to get annoyed. It seemed that the shadow was mocking him, mimicking his moves. He sat, jumped, twisted, and even lay on the ground, and the shadow appeared to duplicate his actions with mathematical precision.
The boy rightfully concluded that the shadow had a life of its own and was menacing to him. The shadow was trying to make a prisoner out of him.
One of the newly found voices then popped into his head and commanded, “Step on it!…kill it.” The boy could not resist the command.
The boy jumped to stomp on the shadow, but to his surprise, the shadow got smaller, evaded him, and folded toward him instead of disappearing.
The boy got angry and forcefully stomped the pavement several times to no avail. His friend, surprised by witnessing the boy’s actions, burst out laughing and left him alone.
As expected, the boy’s shadow did not disappear; instead, it was staring at him now.
One of the boy’s voices then said, “You see, you did it!”. The boy, puzzled by the comment, turned his head in the direction from which the voice was coming.
“There’s no hiding it,” said a second voice. “We know what you did”.
The boy, now understanding and disheartened, fell on his knees and started crying.
“I didn’t mean to do it!” he said. But to his surprise, the shadow, like a consoling companion, got smaller again, folded toward him, and held him in an embrace.
The boy, who later became a man, knew then that there was nowhere to hide or escape.
He understood that the shadow was an extension of himself, an indestructible repository of his dark thoughts and deeds, which, like an indelible stain, would accompany him until the end of his days.
P.R. Thompson
April 25, 2025
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I must have missed thiis piece; it really pulls the reader in with its mix of dreamlike imagery and psychological depth. The way the boy discovers his shadow..and eventually realizes it’s part of him…feels like a powerful metaphor for coming to terms with the parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore. I especially liked how the shadow shifted from playful to threatening to almost consoling, showing that our darker sides aren’t something we can destroy but something we have to accept. If anything, you could make the voices a little more distinct from one another, so the tension inside the boy’s head feels sharper, but overall the story captures that unsettling but universal journey toward self-awareness really well.