Goodbye My Somber Shadow
Chapter 1 - Reluctant Rebirth
Author's Note: I wrote this years ago when I was a different person, and left it virtually as is. I should have published it long ago instead of hoping to add more to this chapter.
The dream fades… and he fades from the dream.
The colors run awash, and bleed off the page of his mind. The droplets drowned upon a fresh, black canvas—the portrait of his entirety… the place where he lies deep beneath the surface… sinking. He in black and white, he: devoid of color… his skin as dark and dull as the sands from his graying dream.
The dream fades… and his muffled existence emerges into the world of now: an infinite dark, empty and surreal. He closes his eyes, unready, weightlessly unwilling to surrender, succumb… to let loose the painless wish of solace that slows his descent from the outer nightmare… yet…
The dream fades… finally carried off and away, far beyond him… submerged in the shifting spiral he sails before drifting into the inevitable deep.
Collapsed are the days of the dream,
Returned reluctant…. where
Awakened from this
Silent surrender
He is reborn.
…
.
Crack. Shatter.
The heavy hammer stands poised, cocked… ready. Raised high, it strikes the sparked primer with a decisive crack, and from the blast of black and dust—he finds himself broken at the bottom.
As most good stories, it begins at the bottom.
"Where the fuck am I?"
On his feet, clad in a polish of onyx-shade shoes, he dusts off the gray remnants clung to his black suit without word, fixing the sharp strands of ebony hair—slick, soaked by his dramatic plunge and shadowed over the downcast stare hidden beneath. His white, collared shirt rigid, his silk, black blade of a tie pointed downward: a numb clock's hand, unfazed, unchanged from his fateful plummet.
Beneath him, scarred and stained upon the weight of his image lie a razor thin bridge made of a milky white glass. The bridge, a reminiscent sliver of moon, shone translucent like crystal. Light from within its layered glossy glaze flowed warm and gentle—a current left with little resistance until his infringement fractured its enchanted weave with the spoiled taste of bitter charcoal. Looking intently into the bridge was like peering into an impossible puzzle—a broken mirror with a charred reflection, its glass walls cutting the hand hopelessly trying to fix the changing image. This bridge, the only source of light, was the last that kept him from slipping into the unknown. Standing over its edge, death seemed more settling than diving into the gaping abyss. Maintaining his balance between dark and light—black and white, his gaze worked its way away from the bright and trained itself ahead.
Out from this world of nothingness—where the bridge was left finished, bore a path that he had chosen and accepted. This path: a cold and unforgiving street, advanced out of the fictive awakening: straight, direct, into the horizon without twists or bends. The street, its blackened surface hardened and constructed over the unseen sands of softened earth, cared little for what it paved over—only concerned to where it led. Out there, down that forge of road, he knew full well it would direct him to his targeted destination.
Take your time. Don't be afraid…
The voice he heard was whisper-like, kind, yet soft and mysterious, silent enough to be imagined as the voice trapped in one's mind: his own.
Hearing the voice forced him to maliciously do the opposite, there was nothing more to waste his time. Walking down that luminous bend, cracked, crumbled—tainted from his wicked existence, he left it in pieces to pursue the road to realism. Step by step, a great distance beyond his point of impact, his last proved to be most difficult, thereafter, his shadow, like him, became a statue lost in time and thought.
Suspended in a flood of pictures, echoed through a faint song of stories, the subconscious surfaced to memory—a dream of a boy relentlessly chasing a dear, departing shadow. His eyes turned down upon the dimming bridge, brooding over blurred, faded words, before looking away—back toward the road so resound and corporal.
"Dreams are nothing but false images—foolish fantasies that bear no meaning nor serve any purpose," his voice was absolute, clear cut, and cool: a martini, black and white without blur of doubt—void of emotion, sterile, much like the realm his breath seeped into.
And beyond unapologetic words, he would see to his inevitable departure.
"Wait!"
His step nearly irreversible, his mind carved into the stained, slate road, was stopped.
On the opposite edge of the existence, far across the darkening stretch, was the sound of a ghost he once knew, a phantom locked away in a carbon casket—its undesirable tune compelling him to look back, and pleaded not to ignore its dull ring to black.
"Please don't go!"
Logic spoke louder. Exit was far more important. His head sank, hung low, with eyes lost deep below, to an ounce where a lucent link once glowed, weakened to a hue he knew too well.
"Don't leave!"
Caught in the cataclysm he created, crawling from the calamity—the chaos he caused, was an act he could not shroud nor guise from the dissolution of lucid and undrowned, a tide that pulled him back and drew his sight beyond the reach of his shadow.
Take a look back. Back at your shadow, forever following. Gaze deep at that trailing path; a flood of pictures and songs of stories whisper of memories both terrible and tender.
"It's… "
A great white door stands opposite to the bleeding shadow haunting its hallowed steps. And from its twin gates—an unworldly visage, lie a door left unclosed. Unclosed, unlocked, opened to outpour a bridge of silky white that sheeted his sentenced—his well-deserved decline to invisible depths.
"…impossible…"
And from those hallowed steps... holding the door half open was a boy believing he could save worlds, and rescue all he deemed irreplaceable. He hailed from beyond the light, bracing between the arching entryway with all his might… the doors kept parted, broken under his will. With one final clamoring force of strength, push of power, heave of heart, the grand gate flew free.
Someone from behind, someone from his shadow chased after. Hasty footsteps digging up tarnished shards, up from the forgotten dirt-dimmed glass—a glimmer of an undying resolve to catch up… a short, slim figure in jaded, foggy white racing after.
The door slowly began to shut, like a calm current slipping into the sea. And rising away from its pearly outstretched arms dashed a boy over the aching archway. Unwilling to submit, his life to commit, he chanced darkened expanse and challenged the overbearing tide. But shortly thereafter, his rise had not fallen far, far from where the two worlds divided, diverged and disconnected... The world was split in two, pieced merely by seams, sundered by the sound of an echoing descent that rattled to the core: an acrid awakening. Splintered and smashed at half-mast, a dose of the bridge left broken shattered beneath the boy. The boy fell sharply into a pitch mouth gnawing at his ankles. Reaching upward, he summoned the final fragments of his strength, calling forth his blade. The great key formed in a flash of magnificent brilliance, its limits clinging to the remnants of a snow crystal wing stretching the weight of worlds. Metal ridges bit into the fraying bridge, sending tears of white shrinking into the daunting depths. He was a key's grip from oblivion's embrace, dangling from a weeping edge.
From afar the other stood detached. His mind was locked with images unanswered—visions vanished once shameful eyes swept open. Traces of remorse left sunken, coated in crumbs of a lingering longing.
Words from writer: Writing in this dream-like manner was intentionally ambiguous/confusing much like awakening from a dream. It also takes a great deal of time. The plot for this chapter was already written out, however seeing as the time it took to get this far... I doubt it this whole epic tale would continue.
