Shadowman
The Shadowman taunted me from my bedside, rousing me from a fitful slumber.
"Someplace," he whispered within my head, his voice a caustic measure of certainty, "down below..."
In frustrated desperation, I turned away, onto my side, my face seeking a cooler part of the sweltering pillow. Upon a last corner of refuge, my puffing cheeks found a more comfortable portion of the cushion. But this cramped section, already iced over by my nocturnal sweat, was only a minor refuge from the infernal heat that burned from within.
"Someplace, down below," the Shadowman said, with paradoxical clarity, "Never, Never ends."
I could turn away, but I could not hide.
Not from the Shadowman.
Not this night. Not any night.
Not Ever.
Slowly, I clicked my cotton tongue across the backs of my stale teeth. So desperately I wanted to turn to the glass of water on the bedside table. Surely it would already be warm from the endlessly pumping furnace and, yet, still remain a cool treat for my parched lips.
But such relief would require me to turn in the direction of the moonlit windows upon my wall. And that was where He resided, tucked firmly between the slanted blinds, just barely concealed from view.
That is where He stands, night after endless night, watching over me through the darkness, begging at my soul.
The one I can Never escape.
The one I call Shadowman.
In the overheated darkness, my thoughts begin to turn toward dawn when the silhouettes of an extended eventide dissolve with the evanescent sparks of sun. The salted lids of my eyes begin to flutter as my consciousness miraculously falters, seemingly to oblivion, as an uncomfortable solace overcomes my cluttered thoughts.
I begin to dream of a golden brown pasture, upon a rolling sea of hillsides, with bulging green trees far in the distance. The sky is a perfect blue, an orange-burnt sun rising far in the distance. It is infinitely serene, deep, and pure.
Far too pure for reality; far too infinite for my own rational thoughts.
"Never...Never ends," I hear my mind desperately repeating to itself.
"Never Never ends." Like the opposite of eternity, the thought has no tangible meaning, yet it continues to persist.
"Someplace, down below, never never ends."
The thought persists, in the strange way that dreams sometimes do, while my once beautiful pasture of pristine glassy nature has given way to a dark and lonely corridor.
Lined upon the walls is dark old wood, stained, with a rotting stale carpet beneath. Suddenly my dreams have become filled with the ascendance of my childhood home.
To be sure, this is a foreboding turn amongst the play of my mind, for this remains the dark tunnel of my youth.
Yet, somewhere below, a soothing angel calls. "Mother says it's time for supper," the Angel sings with a demonic twinge in her throat. "Come on down. It's time for supper."
Suddenly, I'm a little boy again, maybe eight, but no more than twelve. And I'm peering with trepidation down the spiral staircase. Something is there that I know I must confront, but know I can't. I wish to God I weren't so small, that someday I will grow up large to defeat these puerile fears.
But just as I realize how large and useless I've become, I see the Angel's face, blue with fatigue, peering around the corner to look up at me.
"Mother says," my sister says, "to come on down." Her eyes are red, as if she were crying, but her unmatched lips look crusted and velvety.
Suddenly, remembering it all, if for just a bare moment, I turn away. But she continues, drawing back my nightmarish gaze.
"It's time for supper," she says, and turns to conceal her face. A whistle comes through with her frosty breath. "Mother says..." her voice trails off with a dying whistle.
At the bottom of the staircase is the monster I fear - the monster I once craved, even though I always knew of its potential destruction: the monster of power, the monster of my life, the monster of The Shadowman.
"Somewhere, down below, the darkness never sleeps," He says.
The Shadowman Never sleeps. Not here, at least.
Not Never.
The thought, rattling around within my skull, jerks me awake with a sudden start. Like a phoenix that turns to ash at the start of every mortal day, this one always rises once again, returning to me each night and Never, Ever, departing.
"Never Never ends," the Shadowman says, his voice dissolving into wisps of faded mist, assuring me of his existence.
The Shadowman's pulling overtime tonight, I think, my sluggish head recycling useless dreams, as I decide to climb from my coffin and crawl out of bed.
With practiced care, I keep from facing the backlit window, avoiding He who remains.
He who will Never end.
My feet find their mark upon the rough surface of the side carpet, carrying me erect, while my fingers intentionally avoid the switch that will flood the room with the dim, and unnatural, yellow light.
In its' stead, I follow the rag-lined path towards my office. There, my sole fortitude is my solace that He cannot bear to follow my uncharted path.
There is a place where the Shadowman never sleeps.
Not here, at least.
Not Never.
Not Ever.
Because, Never, like Ever, Never ends.
-Plunderer
Wallingford (2005)
We take on challenges that matter with people who matter in situations that matter.