From the Shadows

It was a humid night. I sat out on my back porch, looking out into the yard. I sipped a glass of wine, enjoying the breeze from the fan above. Shadows of people began to take shape before my eyes. Some stood there, doing nothing, while others chatted among themselves or acted out scenes. They all did this to capture my attention because I could take them one step closer to becoming alive.

I focused on one of the shadows, a familiar figure I’d spoken to often, though he never appeared the same way twice. Sometimes, he was a young man; other times, he was a child. Sometimes, he wore armor and at other times, rags.

This time, he was a boy of about twelve. As I concentrated on him, he moved to the foreground, and everyone else faded into the darkness.

He stood there with a smile and a sword tied to his hip. Other characters appeared alongside him, including a small dragon.

“Anything new since the last time?” I asked.

He looked down and shook his head. “No,” was all he said.

“What about a name? Did any of the ones we discussed feel right?”

He continued to look down and shook his head again.

“Do you want to talk about the adventures you might go on and what you could become?” I asked.

“We’ve been over this a thousand times. I’m raised in a prison, meet a mentor who shows me a secret path to the water and teaches me how to fish…” he recounted.

I listened as the child went over what we’d already discussed. When he finished, I asked if he wanted to build on his adventure, but again, he shook his head.

“Very well, perhaps another time. I have great plans for you, and I’m sure we’ll figure your story out eventually,” I told him as he faded into the hundreds of other shadows.

Right after the child left, a shadow of a young man jumped forward, brandishing a dagger.

“How about me?” he asked.

“What’s your name?” I inquired.

“Thomas. And I’ll slay the dragon and save the princess… no, the kingdom,” he said, swiping the air with his dagger.

I liked Thomas; I really did. But I looked at him and said, “It’s been done already.”

“But I’ll do it better.”

“How?”

“I’ll do it with only my dagger, or maybe just my bare hands, or… maybe I can train the dragon and become a duo to go on other adventures.”

“It’s all been done,” I said.

He smiled at me. “But not by us! We have something here, I know we do. Maybe I can partner with the boy you were talking to before, and our story can begin. It’s not my time yet, but I know it will come one day,” he said before fading back into the crowd.

I continued to gaze out at the unfinished characters in my yard. I had a sense of who I was looking for but liked to check in on others as well.

There were larger groups with more developed and distinct characters. One group consisted of six people, three ghosts, and a wolf sitting at a large table, talking and playing cards. The characters were well-defined and had clear features. They all had names except for two of the spirits and the wolf.

They didn’t speak to me. They had already shared their story, and it was committed to memory. They waited patiently for the next step, where we would flesh out the plot and create an outline so thorough it could almost be the story itself.

There were other groups, some just as developed. Two characters sat on my porch with me. They didn’t say anything, just looked out over the others. They were nearly complete, solid and nearly as real as I could make them. When I focused on them, I could hear them talking among themselves. Their story was fully told; only the editing remained.

I glanced back at the yard and saw reflections of myself in some of the characters. I disregarded most of them, but not all. A Shakespearean version of myself appeared, and I sighed, disliking this guy. But I heard him out.

“Will you continue to ignore me?” he asked.

“I’m not ignoring you if I’m talking to you,” I replied.

He smirked. “Then let’s write one.”

“Why do I see you as a poet instead of a playwright?” I asked.

“Because that’s what I am—that’s what you want to be.”

“You and I both know that’s not true,” I countered.

“You desire to write a poem or two, or ten. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” he insisted.

“I’d rather create a short story,” I told him.

“No, you don’t. You know it won’t have the dramatic flair that a poem will. C’mon, let’s do the one about your daughter. You know the one I’m talking about—the one where she is taken every night to a place you can’t protect her. To a world of dreams and nightmares where her mind will torment her like yours did to you. Where she will be robbed of her peaceful slumber and spend every night scared of what horrors she’ll endure. Do you remember how it feels? Of course you do; it still happens to you.”

I said nothing and shook my head. In a moment, he was gone, blending back in with the others.

On the porch with me were the shadows of real people—people I talked to and met in my everyday life, people who inspired me to create characters and stories. They only appeared when I thought about them, and even then, they were only figments of my imagination.

That night, I thought of a woman I had recently started talking to. She appeared, sitting next to me, looking around as if she had been plucked from another place and now found herself on my back porch. She looked at me, then at the many characters in the yard.

“What do you think?” I asked.

She nodded slowly, still surveying everything. I could feel her emotions; she was curious, taking in everyone and everything she saw.

A character appeared, making everything else fade away in the yard. It was a male, and a moment later, a female character joined him. They were shadowy, filled with potential, their forms only just beginning to take shape.

I knew right away this was going to be a love story, but I wasn’t sure yet what kind. A wall rose between them, and two different worlds started to form.

The characters from an earlier story I created commented, “Looks like our story, almost.”

“No,” I said. “It’s different. It’s still early; let’s see what happens.”

Worlds began to take shape, one appearing next to the male character. It was grounded, set in modern times. Multiple worlds formed next to the female character, each different. Some were serious, some futuristic, others set in the past. Some were full of fantasy, others full of mystery.

We watched as the characters began to act out their roles. The male sat down to write, and the female began to become what he was writing.

I was immediately interrupted by one of my finished characters. “Really? Another writer? Do you write for Hallmark now?” he asked mockingly.

He was right. Too many main characters in other stories were writers. I needed to adjust. I looked at the woman next to me, the inspiration, but she said nothing. She just smiled and shrugged. The shrug wasn’t particularly helpful, but her smile conveyed confidence that I would figure something out.

I wasn’t sure how far these characters would develop, so I started jotting down the general idea—a man in love with his creation.

I glanced back at the woman and saw that she now had a small world of her own, though it was dim and faint, perhaps implying that she was ill or not fully present.

I continued to watch as the man created stories and built a world for the woman he adored. Maybe she didn’t adore him, or maybe she wasn’t even aware of him. I sat back and watched the characters act out possibilities. The woman became a business executive or a neighbor, someone just out of reach.

The man watched her from afar, using her as his inspiration, writing stories with her as the main character. The story stopped there as if it hit a wall and restarted.

Now, the woman was in a hospital room, unconscious for a long time. Hundreds of wires connected her to machines, at least fifty attached to her head. The man sat nearby, working on his laptop. He finished his work and connected the laptop to a larger mainframe before lying down and putting on a VR headset himself.

This version also hit a wall. It was similar to other stories I’d heard, so I stopped it, knowing it wasn’t original enough.

The characters were becoming tired and tried again.

This time, the woman was a businesswoman who ate, slept, and breathed her career. She debated her life choices, having more money than she needed but no family or friends. These thoughts followed her to a bar, where she sat alone with a drink.

The man—or a man—walked in and sat next to her. She could tell by his dress that his net worth was less than fifty thousand, yet he looked happier than she felt.

“How are you?” he asked with a smile.

“That’s your best line?” she responded.

“Excuse me?”

She shook her head and looked back at the wall of drinks. “Nothing, just thought you’d say something a little more… intriguing.”

“Well, you were staring at me, so ‘How are you?’ seemed better than ‘What do you want?’” he replied, turning to stare at the drinks as well.

“I was wondering why you looked so happy yet so poor at the same time.”

“You have a way with compliments.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m sorry. That didn’t come out the way I meant,” she said.

He turned and raised an eyebrow at her.

She met his gaze. “Really, I didn’t mean it that way.”

A moment of silence passed before he spoke again. “I’m not poor. Maybe by your standards, but I do well enough. These clothes are comfortable. I’d wear them even if I made millions.”

She said nothing for a moment, then spoke. “I have millions. Three apartments, two penthouses on the Upper East Side, and a few cars I never drive. They just sit in a garage.”

Silence overtook them again before she asked, “What do you do… you know, for work?”

He took a drink before answering. “I write.”

“Books?”

“No, articles. I write obituaries for the paper.”

“And that makes you smile like that?”

“In a way. I like to write about people as if they had the most amazing life imaginable. I might embellish the truth a little, but not much. My goal is to make the departed unforgettable, to immortalize them in an article so that whoever reads it won’t be able to forget them.”

He looked into his glass, smiling before taking another drink, then asked her the same question.

“I’m an executive officer for HBNO.”

“Sounds exciting,” he said dryly.

She set her drink down and stared at it. “You have no idea.”

He finished his drink, pulled out his wallet, and left a tip before standing to leave.

“I’ll buy you another if you stay a bit longer,” she said.

“I’m fine, but I’ll sit a little longer.”

“Thanks.”

“So, is there a reason you want me to stay, or do you just not want to be alone?” he asked.

“I’m not sure why. I’m lonely either way.”

They sat in silence for about five minutes. He didn’t order another drink, nor did he try to leave.

“Can you write me a story?” she asked abruptly.

“Come again?”

“Can you write me a story?” she repeated, more slowly this time.

“I don’t write stories. There are millions already out there. RJ’s Books is two blocks away, and they’re one of the largest bookstores in the world.”

“No, I’ve read hundreds of books, and they don’t do it for me. I want you to write a story about me. Well, not about me, but with me as the main character. They don’t have to be long, just short stories.”

“I don’t know. There are thousands of freelance writers better suited for what you need.”

“I’m not asking them. I’m asking you, and I’ll pay. I’ll pay a lot.”

He looked at her for a minute.

“I’m not a storyteller,” he reminded her.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

“How many stories are we talking about?”

She shrugged slightly. “Depends on how much I like them.”

“I don’t know you. I’m not sure I can write a story about you or with you as a character accurately.”

“Then let’s meet for an hour or two a week, and you can ask whatever you need to write each story.”

He considered this. “I might need longer than a week to finish a story, even if it’s short.

She turned to face him. “That’s fine.”

“And how much will I make?”

“Ten thousand per story, plus your time to meet for an hour each week.”

He stared at her as if she had two heads. This was far more than he had expected. She took his silence as dissatisfaction.

“Fifteen thousand,” she added.

He nodded slowly. “Okay,” was all he could say.

She nodded in return. “Okay.”

She grabbed a pen from the bar and wrote her number down on a napkin. “Call me tomorrow so we can set a date to get started.”

He took the napkin, watching as she stood, paid the tab, and left without another word.

He saved her number in his phone, not trusting the napkin to last until tomorrow. Then he got up and left the bar.

I watched all of this play out before me. Soon, everything faded away, and I was looking at nothing but my backyard. I glanced at the girl who had inspired this story, now a shadowy figure, and saw her nod of approval before she disappeared.

“The main character is still a writer,” I heard.

I didn’t need to turn to see who spoke. It was my shadow, an echo of myself, sitting next to me.

“He is, but he isn’t,” I said.

“Can you continue without this bothering you? It’s quite similar to your other work.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back. “I honestly don’t know. But I think it will work.”