— The Shadow That Looked Back
329 Words
The shadow didn’t move again, but the silence around it felt too aware.
Marin stayed frozen for a heartbeat, then another—long enough for the street’s ordinary sounds to drift back in. A bus braking. A dog barking. A woman on the phone complaining about dinner. All normal. All steady.
Only her shadow was wrong.
She exhaled slowly and stepped away from the lamp’s circle of light.
The shadow followed more smoothly this time, but the delay was still there, a thin line of hesitation between her and the thing that should’ve been her outline.
Marin pulled out her phone and opened the camera.
The screen reflected the pavement, the street, her shoes—
—but no shadow.
The actual ground behind her still had one.
The camera didn’t.
A pressure slipped down her spine, cold and curious, as if someone placed a fingertip on the back of her neck.
“This isn’t funny,” she whispered, even though nothing about it felt like a joke.
She moved the phone again. Same result.
Shadow on the ground.
No shadow on the screen.
For a moment she wondered if she should run home, lock her door, pretend this never happened. But pretending hadn’t worked the last time the world glitched around her. Or the time before that. Or the time she found the wrong key in her pocket and the lock still accepted it.
A wind brushed past, dragging the smell of wet concrete and something metallic—like a wire warmed by electricity.
Then the streetlamp flickered.
Just once.
But enough.
Her shadow lifted its head before she did.
Marin’s breath hitched.
The shadow didn’t mimic her this time—it anticipated her, tilting like it was studying her expression.
“What… do you want?” she whispered.
The shadow didn’t answer.
But the ground beneath its feet darkened, deepening into a faint seam—thin, glowing, trembling—like the city was trying, very quietly, to open.
- Writer
