Today Is A New Day

The world was different when I woke up.

No one else seemed to notice, but even the sky looked different, ominous and orange, as pedestrians trekked to and fro beneath it.

There were new sounds, too, a constant wailing grind, like some damned soul if their lungs had transmuted to steel.

Most striking of all, though, were the shadows. They were everywhere, visible even in the dark. They crawled over every surface, every person. They enveloped the faces of everyone in the street, their blank, white eyes staring out, obscuring the human features beneath.

Terrified, I checked my reflection in a store window. My features were still visible, still familiar, my eyes my own. No shadows.

I reached out to grasp a shadow drifting by on the wind. It eluded me, fleeing from my touch. I turned to a passerby, asking them if they saw the shadows too. Their white eyes gazed at me in bewilderment, a wild laugh escaping from their lips as they ripped clumps of hair from their head.

The laughter echoed and was picked up in turn by every creature in the street, reverberating between humans, pigeons, dogs, even the rats in the gutter. The sound became deafening but did not end. The shadows swelled like flames feeding on kindling, dancing wildly in the breeze.

It was the sound of a world that had lost all reason. I fell to my knees in despair.

In the kingdom of the mad, only the sane man is truly mad.