He gasped deep lungfuls of oxygen.
“The Shadow!” he rasped. “The Shadow! Beware of the Shadow!”
He turned quiet after that, slipping unconscious.
I checked he was breathing and laid him in the recovery position.
I ran back for my phone and called for an ambulance.
The Shadow? I thought.
It was nighttime.
Shadows were everywhere.
But those weren’t the shadows he was referring to.
Neither of us would fully understand his warning for quite some time to come.
Ras
The screeching of metal roared in my ears and I could hardly think.
I wasn’t sure I was even capable of thinking.
Searing white light blinded me and I couldn’t even recall where I was or what I was doing there.
And in the single blink of an eye, the bright lights and rushing roars disappeared in an instant.
The bleached white of my vision gradually faded, picking out the sharp angular corners of cheap desks and plastic round-backed chairs.
I was five years old and I was at school.
I stood at the front of the class and everyone was staring at me.
I clutched my favorite thing in the whole world—a cuddly toy called Jirax.
I was meant to give a presentation about why I liked him so much.
“Tell us about how you met Jirax,” the teacher said helpfully.
I felt the eyes on me, judging me.
No one clutched their toy close the way I did.
I shuffled foot to foot and wet my lips with my tongue.
I looked them each in the eye, and when I opened my mouth to speak, I felt the words right there, fully formed and ready to be birthed.
But the words wouldn’t come out.
They were trapped on my tongue and wouldn’t allow themselves to be born.
I tried again.
My lips moved but no sound came out.
That’s strange, I thought.
Even in my dream state, I knew something was up.
I tried again but once more, the words refused to become audible.
Then I noticed something even stranger.
My classmates stared, unblinking.
A couple at the back froze in place while they probed at their favorite toys’ inner working parts.
“I think something’s wrong,” I wanted to say, but once again, the words never escaped my lips.
I turned to the teacher.
She aimed her pleasant smile down at me, her lips curled and eyes crinkled with kindness.
I waved a hand in front of her face but she still didn’t shift her eyes from mine.
I clicked my fingers and still got no response.
I reached out for the teacher and gently tapped her on the leg.
She felt as hard as wood beneath my soft fingertips.
Terrified, I clutched Jirax closer and shuffled back to my seat.
Were they playing a game on me? I wondered.
I hoped not.
I didn’t like being the center of attention.
I peered around at my classmates.
They still hadn’t moved a muscle.
“What’s wrong with everybody, Jirax? Why can’t anyone move?”
When I looked down, I found Jirax was gone.
I jerked back and teetered on my chair.
Had I dropped him?
I leaned down and checked under my desk.
I peered around for his fluffy white fur but saw no sign of him anywhere.
“Has anyone seen—?”
I looked up into the eyes of my closest friends but their chairs were empty.
Shocked, I bolted up onto my feet and found no one else in the classroom.
Empty seats lined rows of irrelevant desks.
Then, a creepy white mist seeped into the concrete and papers pinned to the walls, turning them fuzzy, then invisible.
My heart hammered in my chest and I backed away.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?”
I could feel the tears running down my cheeks as the mist encroached further, blotting out one desk after another, closing in on all sides.
I leaped back, shuffling into the middle of the room.
I looked up at the emergency fire escape but it’d already been subsumed.
“Please! Don’t eat me!”
I spun, frantic, as the last vestiges of the memory were erased one fine line at a time.
It washed over me.
I peered down at my hands.
They turned translucent before fading away altogether.
I peered at the cloudy whiteness that surrounded me on every side.
I was a ghost’s consciousness floating in this world.
White walls on every side like I’d been swept up in a blizzard.
It’s okay, I told myself. It’s okay. I can figure this out. I can…
The thought broke apart beneath my fingers like breadcrumbs.
What’s going on? Why can’t I remember any…
Another thought evaporated like water moisture in the atmosphere.
I turned and ran on silent footsteps.
I no longer had feet and couldn’t feel the ground beneath me.
Was I really moving?
Or just jogging in place?
The thought evaporated and I forgot what I was doing.
I hadn’t entirely disappeared.
Not yet.
I was still alive.
I could recall my early memories.
The mist couldn’t take that from me…
And then it did.
It swept over each of my memories, and there were more than I thought.
Many tucked away in the crevices of my mind, never to be remembered or recalled ever again.
An enormous database experienced only once, each one a fragment of who I was.
The mist chipped away at it piece by piece.
One after another…
Playing with Klop back home and him licking my face…
My mom in the kitchen, cooking something sweet and tasty.
I reached up to grab a piece of it…
And that too was swept from my mind.
I need to stop thinking of these memories, needed to think of nothing so I could preserve what remained of myself.
But I felt it wiping my past from all existence, like a robber in the back room.
It didn’t matter if I was thinking about them or not, they were still disappearing one by one.
Startled by the accelerating speed, I reached for them, clutching them tighter to my chest than I had ever held Jirax.
My father with a big grin on his face, reaching into his transporter for the present he bought me…
I eased up onto the balls of my feet to see it the moment he brought it out…
He held his hands out, grasping something heavy in them…
But his arms were empty.
I reached for the invisible gift, to feel it, touch it, recall something about it…
But it was already gone.
I tried to speak.
The words came out as mumbles.
I’d
