The Shadow

It was about 6:00 in the evening in January and Timothy, fifteen, was walking home from a friend's house. The sun was setting and Timothy could see street lights coming on one-by-one around him in his suburban neighbourhood. In the low light of the setting sun and the not-yet-illuminated street lights above him, he stepped in a puddle of slush on the icy sidewalk and was infuriated.

You see, Timothy was already having a bad day. In class, his English teacher gave the class homework to do for tomorrow on top of the book report that was due on the same day, his math teacher still hadn't handed back last week's tests, and to top it all off, Timothy had just had a big fight with his friend, Aaron. Aaron had the gall to accuse Timothy of stealing the cookies out of his lunch every day for the past week! How dare Aaron think Timothy could do that? And this wasn't even the first time he had accused Timothy of something like this. I mean, it was true, but still, why did he think it was appropriate to wait for hours before saying something? It couldn't have seriously mattered to him after that long.

And now Timothy was walking home from Aaron's house cold and with a wet foot.

Not long after stepping in the slush, still fuming, Timothy spotted a strange dark figure standing in front of a fence about five meters ahead of him. It had recognizable legs, arms, and a head, though it was not in human proportions. The thing was about Timothy's height but much more broad and muscular. Timothy froze. He had a tendency to scare easily at night. He strained to see the thing more clearly in the darkness and thought he could make out dark fur and big claws. He began to slowly walk backward, but the creature got larger, as if it were walking towards him.

Timothy thought for a moment that it might just be a shadow, but that thought was interrupted by the sound of snow crunching behind him, and still afraid of the dark figure, Timothy leaped backwards. He felt something grab his arm and violently pull him to the ground.

Timothy doesn't remember very well what happened from this point forward. He recalls seeing a small, white creature maybe 30cm tall with dead eyes that quickly ran off into the snow, and he thinks he recalls walking the rest of the way home and immediately going to bed.

What he remembers well from the fall is how it felt. Not the pain from his arm being yanked or from hitting is head on the ice, but a different kind of pain that can't really be attributed to any one body part. As if his soul were collapsing in on itself.

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