The man without a shadow doesn’t talk very much. In fact he doesn’t say anything at all. He sits in your periphery and nods along as if he’s part of your story, but the entire time he has been hiding between the words. The man without a shadow hasn’t been a background character for long, but when you first notice him it’s impossible to not keep looking for him wherever you go. His presence feels off, his being feels unnatural, his image sits in the picture as if he is operating at a different frame rate to the rest of the movie. But once you see him it’s impossible not to think you see him everywhere, like he’s watching you, studying you, haunting you.
The man without a shadow is sat opposite me at the table as I speak. Unblinking and unphased about me telling you this. His stare reaching into my chest and squeezing my lungs like bellows. He hasn’t said anything yet, he’s just sat there, no shadow, no cast from the light above us, no definition on his hands or fingers, no greys or absence of light dancing across his skin. He appears illuminated by nothing, a focal point for no-one. The people around me don’t notice him, they pay him no attention. They continue with their conversations, with their drinks and their anecdotes, whilst I can’t fathom concentrating on anything else. With no highlights to give his face any features I can only see two grey exhausted eyes sunken into a featureless mask of white. A thin wicked smile across what would normally look like lips. No wrinkles or creases or lines, a perfectly smooth and terrifying face that continues to only focus on me. He puts his hand across the table and touches mine. His touch is frozen, a distinct absence of any humanity. And I remember.
I heard about the man without a shadow at a work event over a year ago. A rumour or an urban legend, one of those things a co-worker would talk about when the conversation about work had inevitably run dry. Someone I hadn’t really interacted with before started speaking of the man without a shadow. I don’t remember seeing this man again after that day, I can’t even picture his face as he told the story. Regardless he went on about how he had started seeing the man without a shadow everywhere, how you never knew if he was really there, but you could sense that something was off. That it started with seeing him at a distance, in the corner of your eye, like a spec floating across your retina that you could blink out of existence. But as time goes by, he gets braver, he gets closer. First you might think you see him in the rear-view mirror as you drive down a street, then you may see him in the supermarket or town, but quickly he’s with you, in your house or sat at your table. I remember this now. I remember this as his thumb caresses the top of my hand and the shock of his unreal touch sends waves up my muscles and into my heart.
His grey cloudy eyes bore into mine, without feature or detail it’s impossible to see what emotion is painted on his face, but I have never felt more seen before in my life. I watch the black of his retinas pool and dance within themselves as a memory, or a series of memories, fire into my vision. I have seen him before. Months ago, so long I couldn’t recall what day it would have been. I was on the train to work, I heard my station get announced on the loudspeakers and closed the paperback I was using to kill time. I put the book in my coat pocket and stood to leave, throwing my backpack over my right shoulder. I briefly glanced down the carriage as I like to do on days when I am feeling overly sentimental about things. I like to watch the faces of people and imagine their stories, I like to wonder what their days entail, what their problems are, what the world has cruelly thrown upon them. As my eyes dart around the passengers, I caught a glimpse of a face. A void and empty visage staring directly at me. As soon as I noticed it, it was gone. I shook it off as my caffeine-free brain only demanding that I get that first coffee of the day. Then weeks later, I had been sat in a bar with my friends, mindlessly chatting about inconsequential matters that only existed to fill the silence between people with little in common. I pretentiously swirled the wine around in the overly large glass resting in my palm and looked out of the window. Against the crowds of the passers-by, he was impossible not to notice. A mistake in the fabric of the day, an obvious and terrifying omission of normality. What I now know as the man without a shadow was watching me even then. Then last week. I sat at home watching television alone. My brain faded with the nonsense of the day, the television only providing an excuse to still be awake. As I started to feel my head titling as sleep smothered the day, I heard a gentle tapping on the window behind the television. The blinds were closed so I had to leave the comfort of my chair to investigate. I turned the TV off and approached the windows. I could feel every hair on my forearms reach for the ceiling. A bead of sweat fell from my hairline. The air felt thick and wrong. I knew opening the blinds was a mistake before I even did it. I went for the chord and pulled violently and exhaled a pitiful scream. Nothing. Just the dark of the night and the view of my front garden. I sighed and pulled the chord again to reset the situation, to pretend that nothing had happened, that I hadn’t overreacted to nothing. I turned around to finish my day and ascend to bed as my entire body felt like it was falling forty stories. In front of me, his eyes tearing into my very being, was the man without a shadow. Standing in my living room, the light casting nothing from him as if he wasn’t there. His hand reaching out towards me slowly and carefully, my body stuck in the moment like the room was filled with glue. As his fingers met my forehead and slid their way over my face, caressing my nose and lips, a scream held itself in the well of my throat. His fingers playing on my neck as a crude smirk drew where his mouth should be. I blinked and he was gone. The air in the room back to normality, the very idea of him like a haunting memory. How had I forgotten all of this until now? How could I not remember the terror, the all-encompassing nothing of him.
I return to my body; I return to myself and look over the table to where he was sat. A vacant space greeting me, like an artwork missing its main character. I exhale as if I’ve been holding my breath my entire life. My heart rate begins to slow. The sweat drying on my shirt collar as the room returns to normal. I search the bar for any sign of him, but his absence is deafening. I see people glancing at me and turning away, in disgust or confusion or maybe both. The way they looked at me was the way I had first looked at the man without a shadow. Their agitated eyes casting over me in judgement and revilement. I place my hands on the table as I stand up to leave and a feeling of repugnancy swims through my brain. I stare at my hands, the digits glowing and out of place, like images hidden behind layer after layer of television static. I turn them over and over trying to find a crease or a line or a shade of reality within them. But my hands no longer have a shadow.
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Thanks for reading this weird little thing. I have been drowning in ideas recently and not had the motivation to put them into words, like the creativity has been sucked out of me. This sense of ‘nothingness’ has overtaken my life in the last few weeks and becomes most prevalent when I am in a social situation. That’s what inspired the above, the feeling that I am unwanted in all conversations, that my presence sucks the joy out of any room I am in. This isn’t a pity party and I am very much dealing with this with my therapist, but I liked the idea of creating something that took this feeling and gave it a face, or no face if you will.
Loved the line “A mistake in the fabric of the day” and really enjoyed reading this one 😱