“Stupid Faeries!”
I was sitting in my room, attempting to write yet another paper on A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was going at a snail's pace, much to my chagrin. The paper wasn’t the hard part, it was one of the most accessible and interesting subjects in the class but it was such a pain to please the professor. I stretched away the sleep and glanced at the clock next to my bed. Barely midnight but sleep was gnawing at the back of my brain with a vengeance. My sleep schedule had been ruined ever since I moved back home. The campus was barely half an hour from home and it was so hard to stay focused on school with a party happening in every other room around you. I didn’t have much interest in under-aged drinking or shirking my studies.
I looked past my clock and starred at my reflection in the mirror. My grandmother’s bright hazel eyes stared back through gray rimmed glasses perched on a slanted freckled nose. My mop of chocolate colored hair hung just past my shoulders in haphazard waves, the ends tinted with green and purple, something my family repeatedly complained about. It was a delectably irritating point of contention between my family and I. They were still very old fashioned, like most people in town. They held to the old ways, back when marriages were arranged and based on advantageous statistics, not attraction. Most of the time they just prodded at me with questions like “Oh Patricia, how are you going to find a husband if you look like that?” before shaking their head and making that infuriatingly disappointed clicking with their tongue. I was happiest, hiding away in my room, surrounded by books. In retrospect, I guess I was just a failure at being an interesting teenager.
I shrugged away the thought and turned back to my work. I was almost at the halfway point when I heard the noise. The sound bounced around me, settling as an abrasive ringing in my ears. It sounded like an old computer trying to dial into the Internet mixed with the sharp static from a radio. I looked out the window for whatever had made the noise. The streets were dark and motionless, a soft breeze moving through leaves and thin branches in the front yard. Our black lab, Mitchie wasn't barking and he barked at everything. I popped my head outside of my room and called down to my parents. There was no response. Normally, this wouldn’t have been so strange but between my overly cautious nosey mother and my alarm dog, the static in the air shouldn’t be only thing keeping me company in the dead of night.
I felt the panic bubble up inside me, filling me up. My tongue turned to sandpaper and the hairs on the back of my neck rose slowly, sending a shiver over me. I swallowed hard and ran back to the window. Mitchie's dog house was vacant and the gate was still closed. Maybe he was in the back yard. I tried to rationalize my fear. Maybe I had fallen asleep and dreamed the noise. It was then that my eye caught movement in the corner of the yard beside the dog house. It was a shadow, tall, dark and lean. It crept out of darkness from the other shadows shifting. Its mass took over my vision, stretching out as if to draw me in. It didn't take a normal shape, the details flat and colorless. But it moved nonetheless. It was walking, something I was trying hard to process. I couldn't find what was casting the shadow and there wasn't even enough light for such a dark and striking shadow to form. It stopped a few feet from the porch and seemed to look up at me. The room buzzed around me, my name spiralling around in, trapped in the static.
My heart pounded against my chest, growing tight. The sound stopped as quickly as it began, fading away like it was being sucked back into the silence.Watching the shadow move closely towards the house, I tried to move, to scream, to do anything but watch it disappear into the house. Something finally connected in my brain and I ran towards my door, not sure how I would defend my parents from a shadow. I made it down the stairs in enough time to see the shadow seep into the house through the cracks in the door. My parents were sleeping in the den, cuddled up on the couch, the soft glow of the TV resting over their blanketed shoulders. I looked up as the shadow man took complete form again. It was a black void of color. It moved and shifted but there were no eyes, no mouth, nothing that could be used to describe this thing looming in front of me and my parents.
Panic started to bubble inside me, filling me up. My throat burned as I realized I was screaming. I closed my mouth quickly, the sound echoing in the room, my tongue turned to sandpaper and the hairs on the back of my neck rose slowly, sending a shiver over me. The sound bounced around me, settling as an abrasive ringing in my ears. It sounded like an old computer trying to dial into the Internet mixed with the sharp static from a radio. I tried to untangle myself from the covers, succeeding with a loud thud as I fell out of the bed. Walking to the window, I looked for whatever had made the noise. The streets were dark and motionless, a soft breeze moving through leaves and thin branches in the front yard. Our black lab, Mitchie wasn't barking and he barked at everything. I popped my head outside of my room and called down to my parents. There was no response.
Swallowing hard and I ran back to the window. Mitchie's dog house was vacant and the gate was still closed. Maybe he was in the back yard, I thought, trying to rationalize my fear. Maybe I had fallen asleep and dreamed the noise. Turning to crawl back into bed, a movement outside caught my eye. In the corner of the yard beside the dog house, there was a shadow, tall, dark and lean. It crept out from the other shadows shifting through the darkness. It didn't take a normal shape, the details were flat and colorless, but it moved nonetheless. I couldn't find what was casting the shadow and there wasn't even enough light for such a dark and striking shadow to form. It stopped a few feet from the porch and seemed to look up at me. The room buzzed around me with whispers of my name trapped in the static.
The sound stopped as quickly as it began, fading away like it was being sucked back into the silence.Watching the shadow move closer to the house, I tried to move, to scream, to do anything but watch it disappear into the house. Something finally connected in my brain and I ran towards my door, not sure how I would defend my parents from a shadow. I made it down the stairs in enough time to see the shadow seep into the house through the cracks in the door. My parents were sleeping in the den, cuddled up on the couch, the soft glow of the TV resting over their blanketed shoulders. I looked up as the shadow took complete form again. It moved and shifted but there were no eyes or no mouth, nothing that could be used to describe this thing looming in front of me and my parents.
Glancing back over my shoulder, my parents seem ignorant of the bizarre danger. I contemplated trying to shake them awake but was afraid that any movement my draw attention to them. I backed away, the shadow following my steps, mirroring my movements. I could feel the buzz in my brain, telling me to run. My brain was trying to force me to be rational but the only thing I could think of was hiding but everything seemed too dark. Light, I needed more light. I turned on my heel and ran, not eager to look behind me and see if it was following. I made it to my room without anything grabbing me or appearing in my way. Grabbing my flashlight, I turned on all my lights and lit candles as I found them.
The seconds ticked by with excruciating detail as I thought of all the possible explanations. The room grew warmer as I waited and my mind began processing. Nothing could explain this away. My back was pressed painfully against the corner. I ached to have Mitchie there with me. To cling to his soft silky fur and warm heart beat. Maybe he was outside, hiding too. If only I could see him, it would make it easier. The yard was still dark and deceptively calm. How many more of those shadow things were hiding in my yard, behind the stretching expanse of the tree trunk's shadow? The thought made my stomach flip uncontrollably. The air behind me crackled sharply. I slowly turned, mildly resigned in my fate. It was there, slowly slipping into my room, over my pile books that acted as an ineffective barricade.
I frowned at the thought that my last day on earth would be in my bedroom, in my ratty grey pajamas, with unwashed hair and a belly full of brownies. I wouldn’t make it to Monday, to my dull and dry early morning lecture on Shakespeare. I wouldn’t argue with Janice, the over achiever continuing education student, or lend a pen to Carl, the quiet intern who always managed to forget his. I would never find out if he was trying to find an excuse to talk to me or if he really was that absent minded. I wouldn’t get to hide in the cafe on campus, listening to sad teenagers read poems about rainfalls of tears while I sipped on mint tea, and thought about how I would run a bakery one day. My life would be wrapped in the darkness of this thing.
Backing away from the door, I tried to think about escape. I was on the second floor and there was no way down that didn’t include a few broken bones or bruises. I shut my eyes but the idea of the unknown pitched my stomach into my throat and my eyes snapped open. The form was almost complete. In the bright of the room, I could see inside of it. It was a swirling mist of thick black, deep blues and muddled purples. It was growing denser, more detailed. I could see the limbs with black stretched over it. As it moved closer, the lights in my room dimmed. It was as if it was sucking the light out of the bulbs and absorbing it. The darker the room became, the more detail I saw. It was adjusting to the light, much like my eyes tried to in the bright of the morning.
I felt myself walking towards the form, my fear coiled around my brain like a cobra. I wanted to know, to touch, to see what it really was. The creature reached out towards me, its fingers moving towards my hand. It was cold and hot at the same time, like a snowball with a molten center. Our fingertips touched and I felt a calm wash over me. I let my arm fall back to my side and it did the same.
“You aren't going to hurt me, are you?” I heard myself say.
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