Behind the Shadows

She never meant to hurt a soul with her little white lies. She just didn’t want to disappoint

them, she couldn’t. That is why when questioned of her value, she had to expand from the truth

of what they’ve earned to what that should be earning. It’s the same difference as making a

promise and making it happen in the near future. That is why when asked about her

“families wealth and riches that they owned”, she had spoken of “ all the gifts received

from [her] parents and their riches”,

without feeling guilt or remorse for not speaking about the same father that struggled to

make a living for her family. Her parents deserved those riches more than anyone.

While riding home on her bike she kept pondering on what she had said to her classmates

before,

“Of course, my father gives me a gift every Sunday! How dare you even think

otherwise!”

She tries to keep reminding herself ‘I had no choice, I had no choice’. She snapped out of

her thoughts when she started smelling the scent of planted pine trees and a piled up landfill right

next to a farmhouse that reeks of manure. She’s made it, back to her old, small town of

Szentendre. She follows along the bumpy and cracked roads that lead her to the very edge of the

compact township. As more pine trees and dark forested areas come into view, she saw right at

the end of it all her own small humble abode. As she peddled closer, she drove her bike closer to

the edges of the road, a trick she learned while taking herself to school as time went by.

She stuck to a very precise routine, she would arrive home, waste no time to get inside,

set herself up at the dining room table, then started on her homeworks until her parents arrived

home from work. She ALWAYS kept the same routine, it kept her less stressed knowing it was
something that she could control and make perfect. Today though...everything about today was

different. Instead of heading straight inside in order to “not waste [her] time on trivial matters” as

she would call it, something made her hesitate. At the corner of her eye, she saw a glimpse of

some moving creature within the dark forest nearby her house. The sun was near to setting, as it

took her quite some time to travel from her school to her home by bike, so she couldn’t exactly

make anything clearly out. But what was so conspicuous was how she had seen that creature

from somewhere before. Not something that would live in that forest, but something she had

seen in her dreams before, something so familiar to her. As she had finally torn her eyes away

from the bizarre forest, she had felt a chill that slowly ran down from the top of her neck to the

bottom of her spinal cord. Something wasn’t right. As she stood there feeling watched, she

decided to quickly rush inside and brush the abnormal event off, going on with her schedule.

As she had dropped off her books on the dining room table, she decided to get a

refreshment from the kitchen with her being so parched. As she had walked back from the kitch,

which was separated by the dining room with just one wall, she had immediately noticed

something was wrong. She had placed her books on the right corner of the table, straight up and

down, in a perfect line, and now it was placed an inch off from where it was before, being

slightly slanted to the right. She looked around frantically, eyes scattering across the whole

room. Surly this sounded insane, but she had always put her books in a perfectly straight pile,

and there was no way that she had skipped over the routine this time, that would be impossible.

While still being on edge, she decided to sit and just start working on her homework, surely this

was all just her imagination playing endless tricks on her. As she finally sat down and started on

her homework, she heard light, faint tapping on the window behind herself, but as she quickly

whipped her head around, nothing was to be in sight.

 “Hello? Is anyone there?”

She said as her voice was shaking, barely being able to cough out the words..

As she had turned back around slowly, careful not to miss anything, she had seen a light

shade of grey go past the corner of her eye and she jumped vigorously. Then she had let out a

light chuckle, realising that she was terrified by her own shadow. She looked carefully at the

shadow that followed the movements, fascinated how she could be scared by something she had

total control over. She was smiling brightly until she saw it. At the tip of her pinky, her shadow

stopped moving. She stood up hectically, as the chair she was once sitting on was now slammed

behind her against a wall. Her shadow did not budge once while she was getting up, and she only

had one constant thought that was going through her brain at that moment, she needed to run and

she needed to do it now.