Shadows

     I was very imaginative as a child; a gift I am glad I have not kept as an adult. When my mother had tucked me in and the lights had gone off, I would stare at the ceiling before going to sleep. In the darkness of the room, and the bits of light left in my eyes, I would see thousands of different shapes dancing across the ceiling. I saw dogs padding across a field, baskets floating down rivers filled with ducks, people talking to one another, or looking off into the distance, and even a marching band parade. I could change the shapes to fit whatever vision I wanted, a game that I played nearly every night. It was mostly enjoyable.
    The problem came when I began to see things that I didn't want to. Visions of people staring back at me, crouched in the corner of the bedroom. My mind began to wander outside the confounds of 2d characters on a simple ceiling background and found itself creating 3d ones in the room around me. From a shadow created from a bookshelf, I would see a small girl, watching me. I ended up spending many nights in my mothers bed, peering fearfully around me.
    Not many of the visions lasted more than once. By the time I turned seven years old, I simply stopped engaging my mind in that direction. I no longer saw the scenes that plagued my mind at night. Except for one.
    A tall, dark figure standing near the doorway. Never moving, just watching, with absolutely no distinguishable features of any kind. Even when my family moved houses, the figure followed me; showing up near the entrance to whatever room I slept in. I was absolutely terrified of this figure. The only way I was able to sleep at night was to not look at it and pretend it didn't exist. I didn't have a name for the figure at first, but at some point I decided that it was death, my personal death, waiting to take me to the other side. I never knew when it would inch from the corner of the room to my bedside to take me away. But it never did move.
    During my early adolescence, I forgot this figure existed. After some tumultuous experiences and relationships within my circle of people, I didn't have time to pay attention to a childhood nightmarish fantasy. It wasn't until I was nineteen that I recognized it again, stoic in the middle of the room. But, strangely, I wasn't terrified this time. It was always there, an absolute truth in the midst of life's ephemeral lies. Something I could hang onto as things fell apart, an anchor to keep me guided. I knew that even if I was entirely alone in the world, stuck in a dumpster in some degenerate alleyway, that death would be there, waiting to take me away from it all. The medicine for the ills of living.
    I watch for it every night before I fall asleep. As it statically creeps closer and closer every time the sun goes down. I am comforted by it, just as much as I am repulsed. It is what it is. And there's nothing more than that.

June

He's back.

disgusting.

My father.

The man who got my mother pregnant.

The stupid bitch is, of course, overflowing with joy.
She doesn't even see a reason to acknowledge me anymore. Not that she ever did in the first place.

I was just a link. A broken one, yet the only one left.

He's just lazing around, drinking beer and smoking pot, leering at the neighbors daughter.

He won't even look at me.
Well, yeah.
Let's just ignore things that are a nuisance for you, shall we?
After all, that's how you've lived your whole life so far, why stop now?

From what I've heard here and there, he's only here because he ran out of funds for his "home business". I bet they ran out on cigs and prostitutes.

Hah.

This is stupid.

That retarded cat hasn't even shown up.

What the hell is it doing?

Slacking on the job? 

I've waited this long for something to happen. I can't stand it anymore.

I'm sick of her sitting in my room, staring at the empty goldfish bowl every time he happens to go out.
I guess even she knows what he's doing.

I mean, yeah, it's all normal.

It's just, I mean...

Weren't you supposed to save me? 

Anthony

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a superhero.

In my seven year old brain, it was the only thing worth being. For hours, I would sneak-read the marvel comics my older brother had collected over the years.

Older brother? Oh...right.

It's not as though I especially love life, but...

"It's time you woke up..." a sobbing voice told me, gripping my hand.

Who? Who?

I'm sure he was like that too. At least at one point. Wanting to be a superhero. To be right.

So, why? No matter how hard I tried to understand, it didn't matter.

Wanting to be a superhero...that desire hasn't changed after all these years; if anything, it's grown stronger.

But perhaps, the motivation has changed.

I just never want to feel that helpless ever again.


bzzt. bzzt.

My eyes snapped open. Snatching the phone that was about to fall off the edge of the bed, I hastily turned off the alarm.

I stared at the cellular device in my hand before shaking myself out my reverie. My head was pounding with an oncoming headache.

What a sickening dream I had just had.

June

I've been having nightmares.

They're nothing big, really. I'm up somewhere really high, looking out some sort-of arch at the night sky. An airplane flies by, the sound echoing in my ears unnaturally loud as though I had never really listened to an airplane before. And then the city lights down below suddenly blend together like a dissatisfied artist wiped his hand across his landscape in anger. I always wake up in a cold sweat. It's extremely real.

...I think they started when the cat disappeared. That was a few weeks ago; he just suddenly stopped coming over. The few days before then I noticed that when that blasted clock tower woke me up at 3 am, he would shimmer really brightly; practically lit up the whole room, and then disappear. When I say "disappear", I don't mean that he just went back to his typical "invisible" state, I mean that the meager shining reflection of the moon he let off would disappear, that the weight at the foot of my bed would be gone, and nothing would be left there except for the darkness of the room. It always creeped me out, and I was relieved when he returned the next night, except when the same thing happened. Eventually, he just stopped coming back at all.

I'm not worried, I mean, I am, but...Maybe it's gone for good? You hear about them going to the after life in movies and stuff, after all. It's already been a year, hasn't it, since I wrote in here? I guess I've gotten pretty used to having him around, probably too much, really. There's hardly any stability in life, but there's even less in death. When you're alive, you could be gone at any time, but you plan for the future and you are there in the present. But when you're dead, you don't even have a future. You're already gone, but no one can tell where you go after your already gone. At least you can tell the living.

Rectangles in the ground, 6 inches deep.

Anthony

There's a smallish clock-tower next to where I live. It's pasty white, landing straight in the middle of a field that has the pitiable excuse of a park to keep it there. I go on walks there every once in a while to avoid the stress of my daily life, not that I have much of an excuse of one. Of course, I go there at night to avoid the people, and the curious looks they give me. Maybe if I had a dog, or something, I would have more of an "excuse" to go on a walk by myself. But I already have enough on my plate with Giovanni, and my apartment doesn't allow dogs anyways. It allows cats, strangely enough, however. I have a hunch it's because the land-lady is a lover of them. Her name's Loraine, and she's fond of orange juice, which is the first thing you find out about her, as she lugs a can of it with her everywhere. She's a nice land-lady to have, loose but strict at the same time on the rules. She does have a judgemental side, however, that makes me avoid her.

But about the clock tower.
It rings every night at exactly midnight. To be exact, it rings every three hours before midnight, where it stops for the night. It used to ring all through the night too, until the neighborhood complained of losing sleep, for which I am grateful. The other night, Campanella was on my desk (as I could tell from the mewling and the things moving from his irritated swinging tail) demanding to be let out. I'm pretty sure the thing can walk through walls, but he still demands me to let him out by opening the door. Who knows why. Maybe because he wants to annoy me. Well, he's succeeded. Anyways, I was doing my best to ignore him when midnight struck, and the clock-tower started ringing from far away, and he lit up, like a Christmas tree; the cat I mean. I was able to really see him for the first time after he had died; all white and shining like the reflection of light off of tinsel. It took me aback. After midnight had passed, however, he was the same-old invisible though. The same thing has happened the past 3 nights since, and I've reasoned that the reason I've never noticed him do that before was because he always made me let him outside beforehand. I've been wondering if the clock tower has anything to do with this, or if it's just the time. I'm pretty sure the time Campanella died was not midnight on the clock. Maybe this is just one of those things that happen without an explanation. Who knows. But I think I'll go check out the clock-tower later this week.

I've also been having nightmares since then. 

June

I've always hated cats.
Their "high-stead" behavior has always grated on my nerves. They slink around like rats, acting cutsie for random people to give them food, and then abandon them and move on again. I swear they're all laughing at us behind our backs.
When I was a little girl I had not yet awakened to my knowledge of my hatred of them. I innocently approached the cranky neighbor lady Loraine's cat "Lacie" to give it a pet. The animal jumped on my seven year old head and deeply scratched my cheek into 3 sections. Not only did I get hurt, but Loraine was right there in her yard, reading her newspaper in a purple hamock, drinking her orange juice. She just stared at me indignantly, without coming over to help.
If there's something I hate more than cats, it's the people who love them.

But, fast-forwarding, this cat just won't leave me alone.  I'm talking about the invisible animal thing that I was writing about in my last entry(was it already several months ago?). It stole my goldfish, remember? I didn't know what it was at first, but I've decided that it's a cat. It's been creeping into my room(I'm not sure how, since I close the window, and there's nowhere else it could have gotten in, maybe it goes through the walls?), and curling up with me when I'm sleeping. You can't tell it's there though, except for the weight, and the way the fabric is flattened down. It's not completely invisible, however. It shimmers sometimes if you catch it in direct sunlight(really indirectly though). I've tried to drive it out by throwing pillows at it, and dancing like a madman in my room to scare it, but it's persistent. I've pretty much given up by now. The pillows just go through it, anyways. I wonder what it's doing here. I hope it's not sucking my soul, or anything freaky like that, but I digress.

I find it in my room most mornings, but it always leaves by evening. Since I never really leave my room anymore, I've been tracking down the dates I find it, and the time it leaves on those dates. This has been going on in this yellow notebook, where I had pretty much given up keeping a diary in except for that one entry two months ago. Sorry. Here's a few entries from the beginning of November:

Date:     time:
11/1       9:12 am
11/2       8:57 am
11/4       9:32 am
11/7       noon
11/8       1:32 am
11/14     7:47 am

Conclusion: they have no pattern whatsoever.

Conclusion: I have no idea what the heck this cat is doing here.

Question: What am I supposed to do in a situation like this?

Anthony

It was a Thursday in April. I remember because I had taken a glance at the calendar before I had went to bed and thought of how I was born on a Thursday. Not in April, obviously; June. But I remember thinking that. So I know it was a Thursday. But I don't know which one it was.

I had lost track of the days, and the date, and even my sense of time was withering away. I am usually stuck in a vortex of nothingness, and there are times when I have even felt like I have lost myself in the abyss there. It was three in the morning when I thought to glance at the clock, and like a ghost I decided to pull the covers over my head. I could smell the odor of my own sweaty laundry covering the floor, and the film of rot in the air from the dirty dishes. Stale chip crumbs crunched under my bare feet, and I didn't even bother to brush my teeth; I just collapsed from exhaustion, and something else, onto my bed. I breathed in the scent of the musty green sheets, and felt the filth of my life hover over me in the darkness.

I was a few minutes into dozing when Giovanni jumped on my bed, simultaneously snuggling next to me and waking me at the same time. I fetched my hand out of my covers and gave him a scratch on the head as he purred. And then I heard from my deep underwater ears a scratch on the door. Grumbling, I climbed my way out of my sheets, and navigated through the dark to the back door. I turned the handle of the unlocked door, and opened it a slit, expecting Campanella to walk through with his tail all proud and prancing in the air. After a moment of seeing nothing, I gasped and swung the door open to see who was there playing tricks on me at three in the morning. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, but with the door entirely embracing the thick blanket of darkness and the slightly rustling plum tree to my left, I could see absolutely no one. My confusion rose, and with it, my fear, and I was left with my hand stuck cold to the door knob, unable to move. My eyes swung back and forth for any movement, and my ears pitched into the night for a single sound. But my eyes found it first, sitting at my feet. The sliver of moon came out from the clouds, and I stared at the thing below me. It was a sketch, an outline, a reflection of moonlight on an invisible body. I watched it stare back at me, as though introducing itself once again to me as what it was. The plum tree rustled in my ears; how many days ago had I buried the cat in it's roots? My head instantly soared to the clouds.

But introductions were over, and Campanella moved swiftly and silently into the open doorway.