The Lovely Shadow

by Cory Hiles

  Slurp—drag…slurp—drag…I could see the shimmer at the edge of the shadow. Slurp—drag…slurp—drag…I could see color inside the shimmer; white.

  Slurp—drag…slurp—drag…The shimmer faded and was replaced with an indistinct humanoid shape; more white showed.

  When the beast finally came fully out of shadow and into the light, I screamed. For when I could see the beast clearly I saw that it was far more terrifying than the tentacular blob I’d envisioned earlier. It was my mother; but not entirely so.

  The torso and face of the beast belonged to my mother. It was wearing her wedding dress, but where two legs should have protruded at the bottom, there was, instead, a huge tentacle. The tentacle was a sickly greenish grey color and as thick as my mother’s waist at the point where it exited the dress.

  It did not taper much as it progressed towards the floor, but where it met the floor it bent behind the beast, and then tapered sharply until it ended in a point, about five feet behind it.

  The beast propelled itself forward like an inchworm, pulling the back of its tentacle forward, arching the middle, and then pushing itself forward.

  Every time the center of the tentacle left the floor to arch upwards, it made a slimy, sucking sound, and as it pushed itself forward it made a dragging, scraping noise. It left a slime trail behind it as it moved, like a slug.

  Four tentacles extended from its shoulders—two on each side taking the place of arms. They were all the same color as the leg protrusion, and roughly the same diameter as my mother’s arms, though much longer. Each arm tentacle was about four feet long and clutched tightly at the end of each tentacle was a rolled up Playboy magazine.

  The mother-squid-slug-inchworm hybrid kept moving towards me until it stood right between the two Snoopies. My mother’s face, which sat atop the beast, was puckered into its normal expression of hate and anger, but her mouth wasn’t puckered; it was mouthing something silently, just like the Snoopies.

  I stared all three beast’s mouths for a moment and was finally able to pick out what they were mouthing; “POISON”. All three of the monster’s mouths were in perfect sync, silently chanting the word ‘poison’ over, and over.

  They all stepped towards me in perfect unison and broke their silence. “POISON,” they shouted, “POISON, POISON, POISON, POISON.”

  I began trying to push myself through the wall again, but was still having no luck with that endeavor. After about thirty seconds of them shouting at me audibly, they suddenly stopped.

  I quit scrabbling against the wall and looked at the trio in front of me. They all took one more step towards me and the beast that was half my mother spoke to me in a sweet voice.

  “Johnny,” she said, “do you know what happens to little boys who look at smut?” The beast wiggled all four of the Playboys it was holding. “They end up poisoned and dirty, just like their worthless fathers, and then they have to go live in the dark,” the beast continued.

  When the beast said “dark”, the two Snoopies quit pumping their fists and instead held their paws out in front of themselves, slightly apart. Between their paws, the air looked as if it was beginning to swirl and darken, and condense. The darkness condensed more and more until there was what appeared to be a solid ball of dark, the size of an eight-ball, hovering in mid air, and spinning lazily between each of their paws.

  All three beasts began chanting again, but this time their chant was “DARK, DARK, DARK.”

  They all took one more step towards me and were now only about two feet from me. I shrank back from them as far as I could, into the stone wall.

  The two Snoopy’s raised their paws above their heads, the levitating balls of dark travelling with them, and then thrust them forward, releasing the balls of dark to slam on each side of me against the stone wall I was trying to melt into.

  The balls of dark made a muffled thump as they shattered against the wall, and darkness began to run down the wall as if it was made of fluid. The darkness began to spread out across the wall, growing bigger every second, absorbing the light around it like a black hole, and I knew intuitively that if I touched that darkness, I’d be drawn into it and trapped in it forever.

  I started to scramble away from the wall, but the mother-beast slithered forward and swung all four Playboy wielding tentacles down on me, striking me with the magazines in four places at once, and knocking me backwards into the dark.

  I half expected to hit the wall, but was not really surprised when I felt no resistance where the wall should have been, and instead felt as if I were tumbling into a pit. The inky darkness began to pour over me with a physical weight like water as I tumbled downwards. I was screaming as I fell, but over the sounds of my own screaming I could hear three voices chanting;

  “POISON, POISON, POISON” echoed through the darkness from somewhere above me.

  When the darkness finally engulfed me fully and no more light could be seen in any direction, I quit screaming. When I quit screaming, the dream ended and I slept through the rest of the night without dreaming.

  CHAPTER 8

  I woke up the following morning sometime after sunrise. Grey light was filtering down to my bed area from the bright golden stripe at the bottom of the door above my head. I needed to pee again, but decided to empty the washing machine first. For one, I wasn’t sure how many more washings in a row the towels that were in it could handle before disintegrating, and for two, I was still mostly naked.

  The dryer was empty, which was nice, since it made quick work of unloading the washer. With the clothes moved, I hopped up on my stool and did my business. I decided not to start the washer for just one little pee session, but decided instead that I would wait for bedtime to do. That way I could fall asleep to the noise of the washer rather than the imagined noises of the monsters in the shadows.

  I closed the lid and hopped down. When I landed on the floor I winced. My body was still pretty sore from where my mother had beat on me, and even more sore where I’d beat myself falling on the stairs. The fingers that had been dislocated on my right handed were still swollen and sore, but they were immeasurably better than they had been prior to resetting them.

  I surveyed the parts of my little prison that I could see in the gloom and tried to figure out what to do. I figured I’d try the door on the off chance that my mother had unlocked it during the night.

  I made my way carefully up the steps and tried the door…locked. I had suspected it would be. I tried knocking a few times, but there was no response. In frustration I kicked the bottom of the door and stubbed my toe.

  “Damn it, ouch!” I hollered out loud, while silently thinking ‘well, that was brilliant, you dummy, wanna try it again?’

  I briefly considered hollering out for my mother to see if I could play on her sympathies enough to let me out, but the thought of actually asking her to help me left a metallic taste in my mouth and set my emotional dial to ‘pissed off’.

  I sighed deeply and made my way back down the stairs. I plopped down on my back on my mattress and crossed my hands upon my breast and stared up at the cobwebs in the rafters. I knew I had to think about my relationship with my mother, in light of the fact that I now understood that she was crazy, but I didn’t want to. I knew that things would never be the same between us, and I wasn’t sure I ready to face that.

  I decided to think of other things. I tried to visualize Joe’s face and remember all the times he’d tickled me to tears, or ruffled my hair while saying “What’s up, Squirt?” But those memories just made me sadder and lonelier than I’d ever felt in my life.

  I lay there mourning my brother for a while, shuddering with the force of my tears, but making sure to cry silently. I could not bear the idea of my mother hearing me cry, giving her the impression that she’d somehow defeated me.

  The conscious knowledge that I didn’t want her to hear me, and the reason why, forced the issue of my mother back into the front of my mind, so I quickly pushed it away again by thinking abou
t Katelyn, my mother’s only friend before I was born.

  I had never actually met Katelyn. According to Joe, the morning after I was conceived my mother called Katelyn and let her have it with both barrels. She blamed her for leaving her at the bar unattended. She accused her of setting up the whole encounter with my father. She called her every filthy name she could remember, and made up a few new ones, just for good measure.

  She made sure Katelyn was well aware that she was no longer considered a friend, and threatened her with bodily harm if they were ever to cross paths again. I marveled that if my mother was that upset the morning after the encounter with my father, she must have really gone nuts when she discovered she was pregnant.

  That line of thinking, of course, dragged my mother back into the light of my conscious thinking and I decided that I must finally surrender my mind to the ugliness that had come between my mother and me.

  I considered my mother’s illness first. She was insane. She couldn’t help that. I should be forgiving, but as I lay locked, nearly naked, in the darkness of the basement with a bruised body, sore ear, and swollen fingers, I found forgiveness to be beyond my reach.

  I knew in my heart that I should be empathetic, but I also figured it wasn’t going to happen, so I figured I should try to understand exactly how I was responding. I didn’t have to think long before I understood that I was angry. Not simply angry, but really, really pissed.

  I had never done anything to her to deserve the treatment I received from her—never. I had loved her unconditionally, accepted her tortures, and forgiven her countless times as I tried to win her affection. I decided that I was not going to do that anymore. I was done being the victim.

  I chewed on my anger for a bit and tried to imagine a way to get even with my mother, but quickly realized that I didn’t want to get even, I just wanted to get away. I had no intention of letting her torture me anymore and would do whatever I had to do to stop her in the future, but I didn’t want her to suffer, I didn’t want her to be paid back misery for misery.

  That line of thinking led me to wonder about my feelings for my mother; whether or not I still loved her. I guessed that I did still love her, but I was never going to trust her again. I no longer wanted her to love me; I only wanted her to leave me.

  I figured that she would let me out of the basement soon enough, and when she did I would leave. I had no idea where I would go, but I figured anywhere would be better than her home had been of late.

  As I came to peace with the fact that I still loved my mother, but didn’t like her, and didn’t want her, my anger faded and I was able to find some semblance of forgiveness. I could forgive, for the Sickness took her against her will. I could even feel a certain level of sadness for her—for what she had lost—but I would never forget.

  Forgiveness settled onto me like a warm blanket, fresh from the drier, and warmed me from the inside out, bringing a certain level of peace into my heart that I hadn’t had in a long time. I smiled contentedly in the gloom.

  As I was still lying there, basking in my own magnanimity, the drier buzzed, making me jump nearly out of my skin, and causing an instant flash of pain throughout my broken body. I got up and dug my clothes out of the dryer, leaving the towels behind, and dressed myself.

  After dressing, I decided to occupy my time for a bit by picking my mattress up and setting up my chair in its place. That chair was damn comfy, and the process of setting it up gave me something to do besides sitting and staring at the darkness at the back of the basement, wondering what evil horrors might be hiding back there.

  I glanced involuntarily towards the darkness and remembered staring into the darkness in my dream, looking for the shimmering beast. I shuddered, and quickly diverted my attentions to tearing down my night-time accommodations in favor of my day time ones.

  I pulled the mattress out of the way, and leaned it up against the side of the stairs. I found my chair and set it up. With my chore done, I decided it was time for some breakfast.

  I moved over to the rack and searched out a box of cereal. It turned out to be my favorite; Lucky Charms. I carried it back over to my chair, where I sat and ate it dry, sucking on the marshmallows until they dissolved. When I’d eaten my fill, I realized from the pressure in my guts that I was going to have another biological receptacle problem soon.

  I had no problem peeing in the washer, but I wasn’t about to hang my butt over the opening and crap in there. That was my source of drinking water for crying out loud! I looked towards the dark side of the basement in dismay. I knew I had to go find a bucket back there; a prospect made even more terrifying after my dream from the previous night.

  ‘How much can one kid take?’ I thought forlornly to myself.

  I just stood there beside my chair trying to summon up enough courage to enter the darkness. My belly burbled. That was all the motivation I needed to get moving. I had just got clean pants back on and had no desire to soil them again so soon.

  I took a deep breath and cautiously shuffled out of my circle of dim illumination and into the inky blackness. The dark side of the basement was like a whole other world, separate from the one in the light, but somehow connected to it by an unseen force that held the two worlds together and kept them from bursting apart and spinning uncontrollably out into the far reaches of the universe in opposite directions.

  I had remembered seeing in the past, a couple old five gallon buckets near the place that I had grabbed the mattress the previous night, so I headed to that area, got on my hands and knees, and felt around blindly near the floor until my hand hit a bucket.

  I grabbed it as quickly as I could and started crawling backwards towards the light, dragging the bucket along. I was feeling rather proud of myself for having braved the darkness and not let my imagination get too carried away.

  Just before entering the light, while still figuratively patting myself on the back for my bravery, something leapt up from within the bucket and clawed my hand as it scrabbled for purchase. I screamed a crystal shattering scream and flung my hand away from my body violently, throwing my bucket back into the blackness in the process.

  I was backpedaling towards the light as quickly as I could, shrieking like a banshee the whole way. Whatever had clawed my hand was now in my pant leg, near my left calf, scratching me as it scrambled around. I kept screaming and crawling as fast as I could. There was no way in Hell I was going to mess with whatever evil beast was in my pants until I was safely in the light.

  I reached the light in a matter of seconds and immediately started beating at my leg with both hands. It hurt my right hand something fierce, but in my terror I didn’t care, I just kept slapping myself.

  I beat myself silly for about five seconds or so before I saw a small grey mouse flee out of my pants leg and scurry across the floor, back into the darkness. I was still screaming and slapping myself, even though I now knew what it was that had tormented me. Eventually my screams turned into a kind of sobbing laugh, and though I was still slapping my leg, there was no real force left in the blows.

  It was a tiny little mouse that had scared me half to death. The idea struck me funny for some reason, and that was what turned my screams into laughter. I think the fear and shock was what caused me to cry while I was laughing.

  Once I had settled down a bit, but before I could stop and think about what it could have been that scratched my hand and ran up my pants, I crawled back into the darkness as quickly as I dared and felt around until I found my bucket again.

  I dragged the bucket over by the washing machine, just to the limit of dim visibility, and tried to hurry up and get my pants undone. My bowels were threatening mutiny against me at this point and the need to hurry was pressing, to say the least.

  I got the pants down in time and squatted over my bucket and did my business. Although I thought that I had been clever up to this point, I realized as soon as I had done my dirty deed that I had not thought this process through completely. I had nothing t
o wipe with.

  I thought for a second and remembered the dryer full of towels. So I shuffled over there with my feet as far apart as I could get them with my pants around my ankles. I made it to the dryer without incident and dug around until I found a small washcloth in with the bigger towels.

  I used the cloth to clean myself and got my pants back up. Then I wondered what I should do with the cloth. I didn’t want to throw it in the washing machine just yet because I still needed to get water out of there and the idea of doing that with a poop soiled rag at the bottom of the tub struck me as just a little bit gross.

  I likewise didn’t want to leave it on the floor for fear of accidentally stepping on it in the dark, not to mention that I didn’t want my dark world to smell like an outhouse if I could help it.

  I sighed…I was going to have to go back into the dark on a guerilla raid for more supplies. I needed the picnic basket that I knew was back there. I also wanted to find some canning jars I could use to stockpile water, and hopefully a lid for my potty bucket.

  I stood there staring into the darkness for some time, telling myself that there were no unspeakable monsters lurking in the dark, but my courage kept being usurped by the memory of the horror that hid in the dark, just out of sight, in my dream.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Johnny.” I said aloud. “You’ve been back there before and the worst thing you ran into was a tiny mouse.”

  My voice sounded strange to me in the quiet darkness, and my imagination immediately began trying to convince me that something in the dark was going to answer my not so convictive argument.

  Wanting desperately to not hear that response from the dark, I kept talking out loud.

  “There you go again, Johnny; being stupid. There is nothing back there but mice, and maybe a bug or two.”

  As soon as I said the word ‘bug’, I knew I’d done a great disservice to my bravery. At once my memory brought forth an image of flesh eating beetles I’d once seen on a nature show; Dermestid beetles, they were called.