Walking With The Shadows

• Bryony Peters, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2015

I walk around the halls of my home. Long halls and big rooms of nothing except the faltering lights and the many, many shadows. I am the light that controls this place, not that well anymore though. The shadows seem to consume me now.

I remember back near the beginning when the shadows would only come occasionally and in little numbers. My home was bright then and I could get rid of them easily, but they were never really gone. That's the thing about shadows they can hide from sight and wait until the right moment before they appear again. Although my light was bright then, I'd sometimes still falter, but I learned how to keep them at bay. As I got better at keeping them away more came and it just got harder and harder until I was where I am now, overrun with them.

The shadows breath down my neck, make my spine shiver and my body twist. They walk around whispering in my ear all the time and overpower me with their words. They creep out of nowhere curse at me and whisper my fears, mistakes, insecurities and reminds me of the things I'd rather forget. Sometime I loses myself and whisper with them, in those moments sometimes days that feel like centuries, my home goes pitch black.

I want to call out, NO SCREAM for help, but I'm shackled by fear. Sometimes I can't even move, my shackles way me down, I go tight stiffen and become an empty shell. Anger at the world and myself for letting me get this way, build up inside me. Desperation fills my very being, until fear over powers it before I cry out for help. I ask myself for help, when I really lose it, I scream please, please, PLEASE... for hours. I ask myself to stitch, glue, STICK my pieces together, so maybe I can feel whole again. I don't even answer my calls.

I walk these halls, and the shadows follow me, crowd me, but yet I still feel alone. Loneliness overruns me and all I want is for someone to make it go away, to fill that void. Sometimes I become so desperate that I try to hold the shadows keep them close, but I just drown in their whispers.

As I walk broken glass crunches under my feet, the glass from the lights I used to control. The lights flames are now erratic, and when they go out completely they burst and scatter glass around the floor. Every so often I fake happiness, my fake laughs echo through this broken place. In these moments the lights flicker bright again, but it's never the same, they always seem empty.

I am a soul, and this mind is my home.