In Defence of Shadows.

*The following is a translation by a Shadow Whisperer who is cataloguing the life and times of the cities “Light Negative Entities.” She is an intuitive skilled in the art of Shadow Communication.

Good evening dear human. I believe your custom of greeting is such and so I honour it. It is my pleasure to talk with you today - a first of its kind, I am told - and made possible by the unique talents and abilities of the Shadow Whisperer.

My thanks and eternal gratitude go out to her.

For starters, can I say that we as a collective find your ways of greeting and communication in general, quaint and somewhat laborious. In your own vernacular you seem fond of “banging on about two fifths of fuck-all." We, the shifting, creeping and bleak, if capable of laughing would, perhaps, squeeze from our sullen depths a rattling, derisive cackle or two.

For this I apologise. In the interest of Humano-Shadowian relations, you understand.  

Have I been too blunt? Shadows are by nature, direct and succinct in our ways of expression. We are given to surliness and do not suffer fools gladly. I hope, in the account that follows, I have commented on your existence without causing offence. This monologue, you see, is of a personal nature and akin to your “confessions” given in small, sweaty booths to a hidden authority whose languid demeanour - and occasional fits of snoring - stems from a long, liquid lunch at “The Jig and Gallows.”

A bit of dark, Shadow humour there! Ha ha.

But I digress. Let me explain a bit about Shadows, how we communicate, and how we regard our collaboration with humans within the cities vast and towering magnitude.

“Hello” for instance is, like most of our correspondence, transmitted via a brief merging of our elongated bodies, much like your handshake, whereby we exchange information that is contained within the inching, discontent of our darkness.

It’s true, we as a rule are not the most sanguine of creatures. I believe your home spun saying is “we are not happy campers.”

    This has something to do with following you all around like the thin, vestiges of puppies; of being so dang "life lite" and playing spectral, second fiddle to the vibrance and solidity of forms.

We are the smoke to your fire, the night to your day, the silence to your song.

The thing with us is that most of us are very, very old - perhaps ancient is a more apt word - and we long to be released from our crypts of disrepute and isolation, into the realms of acceptance and Light. One gets tired of stretching out under pale, gaslight glows and hearing the screams of sirens, robberies or murders; or the two am, tin-lid crash of slithering, wailing cats; or following a grim flaneur around in the rain, as they pull up their trench coat collar, before committing some class of heinous skullduggery.

  I know there are harder gigs for Shadows, but for as long as I can remember I have been cast from the long, curling stoop of a wharf’s jetty light. Due to the somewhat isolated and disreputable nature of the wharf’s location, I see faces droop into fearful masks as they meander along the boards in this dreary, liminal zone between land and water. The sight and smell of fish heads, entrails, oil slicks, and assorted discards big and small, do nothing to alleviate their discomfort. They look up, mesmerised by the eerie, flaxen light, then down and along my length as if in dreamy calculation of our intrusion into their nocturnal ramble. As a rule we Shadows do not inspire within humans a great trust, respect, or appreciation for our stark beauty; or the role we play in giving scope and poetic resonance to the night-scapes of cities, forests, halloween pumpkins, or moon landings. We are, on the contrary, bemoaned as “creeping”, “dark”, “gloomy” or a hundred other synonyms befitting our reputation for associating with villains and desperados. For example: "He tried in vain to atone for the terrible things he’d done in the Shadows." As far as that goes, we are just innocent bystanders and usually lie low and turn a blind eye to the nefarious events that unfold within us. You may be surprised to know that The “Code of Shadows” forbids us to rat on anyone who commits a wrong doing within our precinct - and believe me, as a long time wharf resident, I have witnessed things that would curl your teeth. It is a strange edict, really, for who are we going to inform even if we could communicate in one of the many, baffling human languages. Within the "Code of Shadows" it is also written that it is forbidden to cause injury to a human being. How, I hear you ask, can a mere Shadow possibly do harm to a living soul?

But this, as you say, is where it gets interesting.

We are old and cunning and are not to be messed with.

We have our ways.

Yes...we most certainly do!

I first met her one halloween night, as the city resounded with the laughter of children being led around the wharf district, and its ragged assortment of cafes, brothels and seafood restaurants. She was with her mother who carried a large bag bursting with goodies, presumably collected on their rounds of trick or treating. Poking out of the bag was a posy of colourful flowers - roses and tulips and other specimens I had not encountered before. The girl was about seven then, and as the two of them approached the jetty, she let go of her mother’s hand and bounded towards me and the light fixture of which I was an extension. There existed a community of twenty or so of these tall, drooping lamps along the jetty's length, yet she made a bee-line for me as fast as her little legs would carry her. She stopped under the lamp and smiled down at me. She was wearing a floral dress with a fuzzy, emerald overcoat complete with matching gloves. Ringlets of golden hair burst out from a witches hat's, light squeeze. Her shoes were black and curled into little, elfish circles at the toes.

  ‘Hello’ she said.

 I was so used to people ignoring me and taking my existence for granted that I didn’t reply, thinking she was talking to the light, or one of the many barnacles that clung to the jetty’s, greasy columns.

  ‘Hi’ she said again, ‘are you o.k?'

  ‘You can see me ?’ I asked, hopefully.

  ‘Yes of course,’ she replied, ‘can’t everybody?’

   ‘Well, no,' I stammered, ‘you are very special.’

The child smiled and whispered so her approaching mother wouldn’t hear, ‘we’re going to be the bestest of friends.’

 ‘I’d like that,’ I told her, as her mother took hold of her hand and lead her away back down the jetty, not before placing the bouquet of flowers against one of the railing posts. The little girl turned back to smile my way, as they disappeared into the buzzing swarm of festivities - and were gone.

Shadows do not experience time in the same way that humans do. We are part of the “Great Dark Collective" that exists to provide sanctuary from the light, and the restless activity that occurs within its domains. Our father is the stillness of night, our mother the fallow of winter, our deities the renewal of sleep, decay and death.

And so I waited within an inky, quiet resting as people came and went in ambling parades of soft, cautious chatter.

Next Halloween I listened as the feverish bonhomie of celebrations erupted within the city. Laughter and yelling and the pop and crackle of fireworks. I had been wondering all day if the woman and the little girl would show up. I felt unusually surly and anxious, and it was not a feeling that I - a Shadow used to loneliness and the swirl of awkward feelings - was comfortable with.

Then I saw them strolling up the jetty walkway. And just as I hoped, when the woman bent down to place the flowers against the side, the little girl broke free and ran over to where I lay - a Shadow wearing a big grin on the inside of nowhere.

The next year she came, and the next, and the next, and it was always the same...the mother placing the flowers against the upright and the little girl running gleefully towards me.

One year the celebrations were in full swing as I waited expectantly for them to show up.

Then I saw a lone figure, carrying something in its hands, walk slowly up the walkway. I want to say, as the girl materialised out of the gloom, that she ran towards me with a joyful hop, skip and jump. But I could feel her sadness leaching out into the cold night air, as she bent over and placed both posies of bright flowers against a post.

Then, as she walked over to where I lay, I saw that she was no longer a girl and had grown, like they all seemed to, into a coded seriousness that squashed the radiance of childhood like the dimming of a lamp's, bright glow.

'Hello' she sighed to no one in particular - and as she leaned over the railing I could feel that she could no longer see me; and as she stared down at the murky water, that she had disappeared into that dark, restless place that swallowed most of them, sooner or later.

Then I noticed a massive figure coming towards us down the jetty. He strobed slowly - and with a dreadful stealth - under the jetty light's; disappearing and appearing, getting ever more large and menacing until he was within talking distance of the woman who, when she finally saw him, stood bolt upright, her sweet face looking drawn and afraid.

You have a saying I believe that goes, something like: "Then everything went as quiet as a church mouse." And so it did, and when the man made a grab for her she broke this silence with a wild, desperate wail. The man flung her around and put his meaty hand across her mouth. She kicked her heels back and he groaned, before turning her around again and forcing himself against her thrashing body, his mammoth head darting back and forth as he tried to press his mouth against hers.

All this time I was screaming for him to STOP! STOP! STOP!

Then, seen only by me, a ghostly figure appeared on the jetty. He was middle aged with the kind of tummy that had been coddled within a biblical temptation for beer, pies and chocolate pastries. He was dressed in a tawny overall from which chequered sleeves, rolled up to the elbows, appeared. He wore a tangerine beanie striped with blue and green bands, and in his hands he carried a fishing rod and a tackle case full of accessories.

He looked down at me and instantly I knew he was the woman's father, and that he had suffered a heart attack while fishing alone, and had toppled, headfirst, into the water. In the same instant he asked me to help him save his daughter.

The Code of Shadows decrees that no harm be done to human beings.

This is true.

However, I also believe you have a saying that goes, something like, "Well...Fuck That!"

I summoned all the discontent and angst built over the long epoch of my suffering, and channeled it towards the lamps sullen, amber light. If you were to perform the same action your face would collapse into a tight ball of crinkles, wrinkles, pucker and pout. When the light exploded the shards rained down from the dark like sharp, twinkling confetti. This was enough to distract the giant and he let the woman go in a reflex of suprise. Then, part two of our plan swung into action as the fisherman, having greased the jetty floor with ectoplasmic bait and brine, materialised before the man waving his arms about as he shouted, cussed and roared. The goliath was startled into a slippery, backwards lurch, and as he toppled over the side his head made perfect contact with the lower decking edge, knocking him unconcious. The behemoth then exploded into the water before proceeding to drift quietly down into the cool, wet depths where crabs and fish of all shapes and sizes, awaited him.

Years went by without any sign of the woman. The authorities replaced the lamp and I found myself, after a brief holiday away from the wharf, back to it and spread out in anonymous grief upon the jetty floor. I could understand that to return to a place like this, after the events that had transpired, would be fraught with trauma and pain. Never the less, I dearly missed the once a year dose of connection and happiness that her visits afforded me.

So I waited...but still no sign of her.

If you were me then you went to your bedroom, locked the door, and curled up on your bed in the foetal position - and cried your little heart out. Of course, being a Shadow, I simply lay there beneath the curling lamp and tried to forget; watched the humans come and go, the sun set and rise again, the events of life drifting unheralded before my eyes.

Then one wild halloween, as the night exploded with bursts of firework and sparklers, she came back. Amid the laughter, shouting, and sounds of joy and amazement, she appeared like a phantom out of a swirling mist. She walked calmly towards me, holding in her right hand a large bouquet of flowers; in her left was a little girl's tiny paw who, as her mother stooped to place the posy, ran to me as fast as her little legs could carry her.

She was dressed in a skeleton costume, her white face artfully dabbled with black, transforming it into a leering, boney skull.

'Hi' she said sweetly, 'why are you crying?'

If you were me then your throat grew as lumpy as a cheap lasagne.

'It's a long story' I said, 'maybe one day I will tell it to you.'

Well, here we are twenty years later sitting across from each other at your lounge room table, and as I occupy the alluring Shadow cast within a Jack-o'-lantern, you write down the words as I dictate the wonder of our shared story.

I dedicate this to the lineage of amazing women who could see beyond the veil and into my deep, dark soul. I would like to particularly acknowledge my dearest friend and scribe, known affectionately as "The Shadow Whisperer," who took me into her home and provided me with a dim room lit with Pumpkins and lanterns - a sanctuary where I can rest my weary, insubstantial head. She continues to assist Shadows everywhere to find their voice and tell their unique story.