/yesod

Tag: shadows

  • dark ride

    I am surprised to see a Ferris wheel looming over the downtown district, pale against the darkening sky. As evening descends, we make our way towards the carnival.

    It is dark everywhere. There are no flickering lights, no music — just the mechanical clack and clank of the rides, the muted murmur of the crowds.

    (This seems ominous now, awake. But at the time, dreaming, it did not seem so.)

    Bright rings of neon dart overhead, flying saucers, small and almost toy-like. I remark to my companions that the adult rides are further down.

    We find ourselves in a queue, jostled by children at every side. At the front of the line I watch a kid climb into a small bucket-like car and rattle away on a track into the darkness.

    “It’s a ghost train!” I exclaim. “I love a good ghost train.”

    I realize I’m speaking in a British accent and make a conscious effort to drop the Doctor Who act.

    At the front of the line, two queues feed into the start of the ride. Everyone fumbles in the darkness, taking turns to climb into the little carts. I let one of my friends go ahead of me and then wait for a small child to take their turn.

    As I’m getting ready to take my turn, a fat middle aged couple shove ahead of me dragging their little pig-faces son with them.

    I step back and watch in amazement as they try to squeeze their combined bulk into the one-person cart. An impossibility, so the husband lays down over the cart and his impossibly bloated wife lays on top of him, her doughy face turned up to the sky. Their son scrambles on top of this quivering bulk and the cart spins off as they lie there like starfish with their limbs out for balance.

    My turn. I do my best to fit my lengthy legs into the next cart. It’s a bit cramped and I consider making a joke about having to fold myself in half but I realize that everyone is waiting for me. So I do my best and soon enough I’m off in my little cart.

    It’s a bit of a disappointment, too dark to see anythIng. I rattle along, vague shadows passing by.

    There is a little pause at a station, where a worker waits before sending me on through the last bit of the ride.

    This point in the ride is staffed by a young woman with long dark hair, her pale skin glows in the semi-dark and her soft voice has a light English accent.

    She flirts with me for a moment while we wait. I feel awkward and self-conscious all folded up in my little cart. And she’s too lovely, I can barely look her in the eye.

    It’s a relief when the ride moves on — the final sequence is a rolling section of track, a child-sized roller coaster. The ride opens up and the sky is lighter now. I coast through a landscape of unkempt hedges and stunted topiary animals as the ride comes to a stop…

    . . .

    The morning after the fair, I wake in a hotel suite overlooking downtown. The sky outside is pale and the light is cold, even harsh.

    The woman from the ride is there, wrapped in a thick white robe. As she passes by the bed on her way to the bathroom, I pull her down to me.

    She protests as my hands slide over her hips, exploring. “I have to take a shower,” she gasps as I slide my thumb into her. I feel her constrict around the base and she closes her eyes for a long moment.

    But then she pushes off of me and heads to the shower, leaving me there to throb with frustration.

  • early morning

    Woken by my daughter early this morning, unable to get back to sleep so I head downstairs to sit in the predawn dark, looking up from my book from time to time as little beads of shadow stream across the floor like dark mercury.

    An hour or so later, I hear footfalls overhead.

    They move through the laundry room to the back stairs. But they do not descend.

    Later that morning, I ask my wife if she got up earlier. She did not.

  • opening night

    …I find myself in the front row, enduring an abysmal production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by my ex-wife.

    It’s godawful. Pretentious and ponderous. They’ve changed the language, modernized all the poetry out of it. And, insult to injury, they’ve added songs, turning it into a musical.
    bogle
    Only Puck holds any interest. Dark and twisted, a spiky clenched fist of mischief scuttling around the poorly-lit stage.

    The production closes with a clueless rendition of You Are My Sunshine — rewritten by my ex to include a commentary on the unreliability of love.

    Ugh.

  • doing the dishes

    …and as I turn to put a glass in the cupboard I startle and flinch backwards from the dark figure standing right at my left shoulder.

    Vague impressions . . . someone looking into my face . . . a male presence about my height but larger, heavy-set almost . . . broad head, the bare suggestion of something there . . . a hat, perhaps?

    And then it is gone.

  • the shadow on the stairs

    Dozing on the couch while the baby has her bath, I dream…

    …and at the turn of the stairs I look up to see a shadow slowly slide down the wall and onto the floor, like a black puddle of oil.

    From this pool, a figure slowly rises — an almost cartoonlike shape of a man, pale eyes like saucers peering out at me.

    It drifts slowly down the stairs, halfway emerging from the shadow on the floor . . . drifting towards me.

    I run down the stairs and through the darkened living room, falling on the floor — my arms and legs suddenly heavy — immobilized.

    I watch, helpless, as the shadow drifts down the stairs.

    And I struggle to free myself when…

  • the pedestrian

    Waking up in the winterdark, I head downstairs. Cold floors and echoes of early morning dreams.

    I pass by the front door and see someone out on the sidewalk, a dark shape bundled up against the cold.

    Halfway to the kitchen, I stop.

    The dark shape picking its way along the crust of snow, another echo in the back of my head. Old, old feelings.

    The shape, slightly too tall . . . too tall and too dark.

    Not a person, no.

    Back at the door, I look one way and then the other. Up and down the street, far as I can see.

    Nothing. No one.