Shadows

It started out innocently enough. Your friends talked about it every so often as a joke, something that happens after you do too many hallucinogenic drugs: Fast-movers, flickering lights, glowing balls - shifting and twisting shadows out of the corners of your vision. Things that you thought were there, but actually weren't. It always sounded amusing, entertaining even - but then you started noticing it yourself, without any /extra/ help.

Of course you don't tell anyone when you first start to realize it. You joke around as usual, ignore it, pretend they're not there - because they aren't, right? As soon as your turn your head the flickering lights vanish, the vague blurs disappear, no trace except the thoughts to begin with. For a while it's like that, and eventually you dismiss it as a trick of the light, or an optical illusion of some sort. Everyone you talk to about it - not that there's many - more or less agrees. So you forget about it.

A few more weeks go by and you notice you've been getting clumsier. Dropping stuff, tripping over your own feet, banging your shins on tables - the usual stuff. It was a problem when you were younger - growing into your body and figuring things out, as it were - but you thought you outgrew that. You take a little extra care moving about the house, making sure to keep the lights on a little later just to avoid running into things. It helps a little. You laugh about it with your friends, ignoring their concerned glances, brushing it off as a belated growth spurt or just one of those things about getting older. Fine motor skills can't last forever, right?

When you misplace your keys for the third time in a row, you start getting a little concerned yourself. Your friends say they haven't noticed you being any more forgetful than usual, but one or two don't reply at all. They were the ones who looked concerned first. You try to get ahold of them to talk more, but your schedules never seem to line up to talk in person, and you somehow managed to lose your cell phone entirely in the process.

A day of retracing your steps and interrogating store clerks only leads to a few odd warnings about identity theft and a growing frustration with yourself and everyone else. It doesn't help that you're beginning to suspect that someone - or something - is following you around. You never see them directly, but you can feel their gaze - the hairs on the back of your neck stand up for no reason when out shopping, or getting gas, or heading up the flight of stairs into your apartment. Your friends advise you to always keep your keys in your fist, to buy some pepper spray or a pocket knife. You do all of the above, just to be sure; The world's been weird lately and, according to a particularly morbid friend, there's as many as 100,000 active missing person cases in the U.S. at any given time.

It buys you some comfort and helps ease the anxiety, but it doesn't fix or change things. You settle into a semi-comfortable routine after a little while, hallucinations or optical illusions and all, and wonder if it wouldn't have been worth it to try the hallucinogens your friends mentioned, if only for comparison. You ponder this late at home one night, all the lights on to banish the flickering shadows in your peripheral vision, and fail to notice your own shadow reaching up through the floor to envelop you. Then, you vanish.

It's all fun and games until it becomes real. Take care out there; The world is a mad, strange place.