MonstrousMay 27. Darkness

My grandfather's shade killed him. Not a really rare fate where the men in family are concerned. The last time I saw him, his shade was fat, bloated and content as a cat who'd eaten a songbird. He was mostly gone by then. I had waited too long to go visit him. He wasn't shy about letting me know that, of course.

I had "made it out" of my small town. I was in my last year of school. Fall finals were killing me. My own shade had gotten deeper at the time. And to be honest, I didn't want to see him. He reminded me of everything I had grown to realize was wrong with my town, my family. Myself. 

But then my mom called. And my dad. And my brother. He could go any day, they said. I would regret it if I didn't, they said. Eventually the semester was over and I didn't have any more excuses. It would be Christmas soon and I knew I'd be even more outcast than I already was. They were conspicuously missing from the hospital that day, but I'm sure they needed the break. 

Not everyone gets the luxury of one last conversation. I tried to remind myself of that in the room as he wheezed and seethed. I was going to get a degree in the arts. He said he was ashamed of me. My family would say he was too close to the end to know what he was saying. But he did. He recognized me, knew my name. He mentioned my uncle, but only as a comparison. That I would be punished just as he was.

"Papaw," I said, interrupting him mid-rant. My hands were shaking and I wanted to cry. But I knew that would only feed the thing curled up on his pillow. It salivated onto the downy hairs atop his otherwise bald, liver-spotted head. My own shade clung to my back, excited to see its forebear, looking to show off. I felt its fingers digging into my neck. It reached, placing a hand under my jaw. I felt a third grab up my hair in a fist. It tried to puppet my mouth open. It wanted me to tell the miserable old bastard exactly what he was. 

Instead, I closed my eyes. I would have to deal with it. I was staring in the face of my future if I didn't. The shade whispered in images, as it often did when I tried to sleep, about the times my grandfather had made me feel small. How he had made me feel ashamed of myself.

Part of me wanted to know how he felt, to know his death was pacing the room impatiently. If he saw it the way we saw our shades. I really wanted to know how he had let it get this bad. Surely he had seen his shade grow deeper and larger by the day. But I knew his answer, so I didn't ask. Different times. Being raised "right". His own father's liquor-laden fist.

"It could be different," I said. Tears stung my eyes and my shade said to suck it up. In defiance, I let the tears fall. He didn't respond. The TV in the corner was playing a drama. Two men held hands as they talked seriously. My grandfather's eyes narrowed and his shade stared at me, licking its lips. "I won't see you again," I said to him. I didn't want to say I loved him, because he and I both knew those words wouldn't be true. His shade and mine would only relish their emptiness. "Goodbye," I said. I placed my hand onto his, weathered and gnarled as it was and patted it piteously. His shade slithered down his arm and yanked his hand away. He turned his head to look out the window.

I left the room and closed the door behind me gently. I didn't know it yet, but his shade would leave an empty bed by morning.

As I walked to the end of the hall, I saw my shade in the reflection of the elevator doors. It wrapped itself around my throat, constricting, making it hard to breathe. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open as I choked. 

"Excuse me," someone said and it snapped me out of it. I turned to see a new father, a baby in his arms. He looked past me and nodded. I stepped out of the way and held the elevator door open. The father's shade reached down and lovingly stroked the baby's forehead, leaving its mark. The father leaned down and kissed where it had touched, wiping away the shade's smudged fingerprint.