I was walking home. The streetlights were turning off; daylight was still not on.
The shadow of my body fainted until, at one moment, there was no more. I thought of Peter Pan. What losing one’s shadow could mean. Colors were vanishing too; a picture of reality in black and white.
I heard steps behind me. Started to walk. The faster I moved the more they would run. The sun was about to rise, I knew it; but why did it take so long?
Nothing would change, for when light in plain sight comes, no monster disappears.
The big voice covering all the others, the voice of a politician, to protect from fear and defeat, and from fear of defeat, inside my head was telling me to focus. Why would people be afraid of darkness? Why would they rather see the sins of this world, than ignore its brutality? Why would they want others to watch their own offence?
That big voice was submerging me of questions, of doubts, of time.
A much smaller hidden voice, coming from the back of my head, was trying to speak. She waited until a crack in the first one’s argument interrupted. Quietly she said:
- Run. Don’t turn around. Run until your lungs are filled with so much air to hurt, to burn. Take out your keys and put the larger one between the middle and the ring finger.
The sun, finally, broke up in the sky. Silence. Strong of my sight, I turned around. No one. Those steps were nowhere but in my head. My shadow appeared again, first feeble, then more and more compact. She rejoined me, just as the steps following disappeared. She walked as I walked; she ran as I ran.
For every dark hour the fear of mine was hers, frightened of losing her body, my body, her reason to exist.