The Shadows

With the death rate nearly non-existent the population went exponential. It was an explosion, a rapid climb towards oblivion but we found a solution – sleep tanks glistened full of those who chose a way out, for now. Stacked high they formed walls and the walls grew. Citadels of the sleeping arose. Most left the planet and ventured into the stars, needing space and resources and the sleepers slept.

Jungle vines crept upon them and swallowed a world that had almost imploded. A remnant population known as the Keepers stayed to guard and protect and awaken those who slept at the a lotted times. But they soon forgot their purpose and the cities of sleepers were lost to nature – a new world arose, knowing of those who had left but not why they had stayed.

Then it began, it the core and heart of our civilization the city of Gloam, my home. It was the pulse in the night time, that moment before the dream engulfs you, then it was that the shadows would appear, reaching too us and whispering. The dreams would tumble onto most before they could jerk awake from fear and the dreams were of strange worlds.

For most people it became just a normal part of life but for those like me, it became everything. Down at the hospitals, wards became lined with those who refused to sleep and those who had refused to wake. The world of the sleepers and our own began to mesh.

I was never good at sleeping, pain kept me from the sounder deeper levels and my fait was to slowly go insane. I would have vivid dreams where I felt the world around me, so realistic and… solid. To help me I had been trained to know my own mind, to be able to reach into my own dreams and direct them.

When the shadows came I could not direct them, they petrified me and I would jerk awake and watch their outlines fade. But this only served to increase my decline and I slipped into the waking dream state of the sleep deprived. The shadows began not to fad and I walked in the corridors of the hospital, my canes clacking in support as I skittered as fast as I could from my over lit room to the day room and back again. I made sure I was as far from the walls as possible, for there the dark hands of nothing would reach through to me.

But each day they was ghostly outlines in my periphery and each night they grew stronger. Around the time the hospital decided that I could keep my light on at night, the whispering started. It seemed to hit my inner ear and echo to a painful swell in my chest. It was a forlorn moan in the night, a rabid hate and blinding anger, and bewilderment. These emotions where threaded together and slammed into me one after another. I recoiled from them.

I could not understand the words but the meaning was clear. I lost my mind and tried to hide within my own head, the shadows would not let me. The nurse came with calming sleep inducing drugs. I would have no rest through, now I was trapped and they loomed there, solid as me in my dreamscape and I knew they could inflict pain.

I tumbled through dream after dream until I landed on the roof of a pyramid, it was glass and within it emaciated bodies slept, skin wrapped around bones and a glittering darkness pervaded what should have been a clear glass like substance. A young woman stood next to me, eyes big and wide and hair shimmering in shades of blue and pink undulated around her as if she were swimming under water.

She spoke and I could hear the sorrow but I could not understand the words, her nostrils flared in irritation but she held out her hand. She was not a shadow like the others, and this was a pleasenter dream than the others that had chased me. I took her hand.

She smiled, triumphant and harsh, we began to sink through into the sleepers body within it’s dark crystal cacoon. I tried to pull my hand from her’s, she held fast. I felt I would suffocate but struggle as I might I sank down through and into the structure of dreaming bodies.

We passed through the sleeping catacomb into the belly of the structure and there a dying machine lay, lights blinking feebly and the screens encrusted with fine tendrils of some microbial life, eating the system away from it’s core. We walked hand in hand, her gesturing to diagrams I could not understand. I knew this to be real, a sharing of thoughts if not a physical actuality, our footprints left no marks in the dust.

I felt a history unrolling within my mind, in pictures and words I could not speak and then I was drifting upwards and through the pyramid of not death once more. But there was no sky now, just loam, the dirt was thick and smelt dank but up I rose, through the ruins of cities long gone, their foundations and floors – rocky rubble beds, up and up and out and I was standing in the woods.

I looked up and the light glinting through the trees and I recalled being brought there as a child. I wondered on a gravel path it lead to the city, back to the hospital and the bed I knew I was a sleep within.

I had to awake, I had to tell of the sleepers beneath and I had to do it without sounding mad. It was a relatively easy task in the end – everyone was plagued by the shadows in the walls. I never thought for a moment that perhaps we should leave them to their tombs.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Posted: Friday, June 13th, 2014 @ 2:05 pm
Categories: Flash Fiction.
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2 Responses to “The Shadows”

  1. Jason Warden Says:

    I liked this story. A very solid effort with good storytelling and unique idea. I did find a few typos, (it for At, caccoon, ect) No big ones, but a little distracting if I’m being honest. Cut those and I think you have the start of something special.

  2. admin Says:

    Thank you so much – I will do an edit 🙂

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