Shadow of Light

Written by Giles Stuart

Dad set down the glasses, making a “clack” in time with the amplifying weather. Drawing my attention to the windows, the hail pelted the panes of glass, scuffling dull the last bits of light as it disappeared behind the mounted ridge, leaving a purple disco effect in the room—the last taunt of twilight before nightfall.

“I had a nickname for you as a little girl. Do you remember?”

I didn’t risk dampening his spirits. I was still unsure whether or not he would last the night. Frank was in terrible shape in life, death hadn't done much to stymie the bloat. I could see his entrails fighting the bits of shredded fat and skin cinching together haphazard lumps of muscle and fat. The smell was sweet, rancid with decay. I was happy I’d taken after my mother.

He reached for a glass and slid it across the counter old-timey like a Spaghetti Western bar-keep. I had to catch it to keep it from sliding onto the floor. “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” His eyebrow curled up as if I’d asked him to remove his spleen, and I was afraid of snuffing out the flickering flame of a man I saw in front of me.

But to be honest, I didn’t know what was happening inside of me. I wasn’t about to tempt fate—I’d learned that things could always get worse. He was in the beginning stages of detox and I couldn’t tell if he was quivering with anticipation or thirst. We can’t stay here very long with only a third of a quart of whisky, I thought.

After his second and third glasses of whisky, ‘the shakes’ turned immediately into ‘the sways.’ It was bizarre, but I realized he was scared. Not of death, or of running dry, but of me. I scared the shit out of him. We were both fresh corpses beginning to rot from the middle out.

“I don’t remember, I’m sorry. But if I guess correctly you have to answer my question.” He shrugged in compliance, convicted in his chances of perpetuating one lie one more day. I had been sorely suspicious since leaving the camp that I had been duped. I couldn’t place my finger on it at the time—it just felt like the more I tried to trust, part of my brain (or whatever my thoughts were now) wanted to file away some information in a place saved for my most frightened and selfish monsters. I’ve made it back from death once already and I can do it again. If there was a way out of this subterranean mirage of a world, I was going to find it.

Here, the days didn’t have a sun, nor the night its moon; just the shadow of a sourceless glow, with its ability to invade every nook and cranny it touches. We’d found ourselves awake in a cave, we’d made ourselves a shelter near the mouth, but when the rains came the water washed away most of our scavenged belongings and made it impossible to stay there. We had to leave the makeshift camp. ‘Camp’ was a generous expression, it looked more like those teeny tents pitched in those pictures of refugees in the Dust Bowl or miners in the Gold Rush. Our only choice was to leave the cave in search of recognizable shelter in this mirror world. So we headed North toward the mountain pass.

It wasn’t the real world. The colors were off. It did share some likeness with the real world, however, the constellations were the same, meaning that cardinal directions still dictated the view of the purple imposter view. We found what looked like our old house and took shelter before the weather turned.

“Little Star,” I said, seizing the riddle from the air. It writhed in my fledgling intuition. He was pleased that I had guessed for the same reasons he’d found it energizing to bicker with me just a few moments before. The conflict, like the liquor, fueled him.

“Alright! You win. But one more quick question before yours… Is Little Star old enough to have a drink with her old man?” I felt grown for a second, till my inability to control my eye roll got the better of me.

“Uhh...Little Star is turning into a Red Dwarf. And really I’m good, thank you.”

“Alright, alright dead girl’s too good for a toast to her Pops…”

“Okay, you good now?”

His hands went up around him in surrender. “Go ahead…”

“Why don’t I remember going to that ice cream parlor with you, Dad? I don’t remember coming home from that trip. I just woke up in my bed a few days later. Mom just told me that I almost died but that I was okay now, nothing could hurt me, and that you’d be away for a while… I just began to think you left. It didn’t upset me till I left you at that campsite. It was just too much we didn’t really speak in life, but what? Now we are supposed to be pals forever in the afterlife? I needed space, and still… I felt guilty… So I came back.”

He took a moment, trying to gauge how sobering this moment actually was to him, but I measured that he was just playing the math in his head, seeing if his buzz would maintain where it was if he continued.

“You’re right. I guess I can be here for you now, or at least tell you the truth. You weren’t out for moments, not even minutes. Eury, you were dead for a whole day.”

I almost said it was impossible—if it weren’t for the fact I was standing in the doppelganger of my childhood home in an equally-depressing landscape to match.

“So I what, I just popped out the morgue high on life and formaldehyde? Come on, Dad.” I had about had it. Postmortem, I would have thought I’d been one of those flowy, lyrical ghosts, but the longer I stayed dead the more impatient I became. “Do you want me to leave you in this rotting sneaker box?”

“No!” he said. “I’ll go on.”

I felt cruel but not before I felt ready to know.

“The way I remember it… I—your mother calls me one afternoon: I was supposed to be there for your appendix removal. She hadn’t gotten the hatchback yet so you guys were gonna take the bus there and I was gonna pick you up and take you home. Your mother even said if you were awake I could take you out to ice cream after dropping you off. I get a call that you’re not doing so hot.

“Doctor gets on the phone, so I know it’s serious. But I was right in the middle of a job, but it wasn’t going well—that’s not true, I was trying to rip my boss off, we were knocking over—I realize I’m fucked. Your mother makes it clear to me that I’m fucked, the money I was gonna make I owed her anyway. Fuck! It’s fucking cold in here ah—I was fucked, maybe never gonna see her again. Now you—I just snapped. When I got to the lobby, I headed up to where they were keeping you and I saw your mother sobbing, trying to push straight through a guy who must have dwarfed her by two feet. I knew this was my last chance she’d ever see me in jail and was going to jail for a long time or, worse, forever.

“So I get between this guy and your mother. And I say what’s the problem, who are you to keep the mother of my child away from her kid. He said he was from the organ donor dudes and I lost my shit. There was some technical position between the dead organs and the living. And no one—no one showed me a dead kid. At that moment I was still a parent. It is a biological imperative, as a human being, for any! Any living thing between me and my child should be prepared to meet its maker on that day… So I said to this man with his clipboard, ‘Are you good at your job doctor? Because I’m real shit at mine,’ drawing my revolver—only had two bullets left, but I’m telling you now it’s hard to carry on a conversation with a magnum in your face. No wonder Clint Eastwood was such a shit actor, his Bronson was just that big.”

He was losing me, but I knew we were skirting the edge of bullshit and I needed to steer clear of Niagara Falls if I was going to get any substantial info out of him.

I lent him my last tear because it was sad. For the rest of the story, we wept every once in a while when it really hurt. I thought these tears weren’t for one another, they were our non-existent relationship.

Frank went on. “We sat on that hospital bed, your limp body between us and told stories, the three of us, stories that we’d abandoned sharing with one another years ago. For...I don’t know how long. I remember his screams going on for longer than I thought a doctor’s would at a hospital. Some time after the screaming, your mother and I decided that I had to go. When the police would arrive, they would take the both of us. So we decided that I would take you to your favorite places—shit, being dead was more illegal than chaperoning one. I asked your mother, ‘Is there a wish you’d like to make upon our Little Star? What would it be?’ She said just that you’d bless us with one more starlit sky, sprinkling stardust in our eyes so that we sleep easy, free of the memory of a disappearing star. And that’s what I did. That’s how we ended the night together. Neapolitan crusted to the corners of our mouths.

“They found me pretty quick, there was a standoff, I’m not proud. Headlines weren’t kind, in the joint, they called me ‘Gepetto.’ Told the cops I kidnapped your mother and took her hostage, and forced her into your room. Drove you to see your programs, then took you to ice cream. That way she wouldn’t get in trouble. I’d probably never see her again, but if I did...we might share a word or two. Didn’t see you come back, I’m not sure where it happened. I spent the night thinking you were, well, stardust.”

I missed life. But the hopelessness in his voice showed me how to mourn my wasted potential. I missed my boyfriend and my car, and there were just a few too many things that hadn’t paid off yet. I supposed that’s how everyone feels when they die, unfinished. In a way, we both had a second chance. So I grabbed my father’s glass and sloshed a few sips into the cup meant for me. Frank wiped the tears from his face, raised his glass, and scooped the drink down his throat, washing the snot from his upper lip.

It wasn’t ideal but it was warm enough to get us through the night. And when the sun comes up we’ll start again. It won’t be glamorous but we’ll scratch our way back. It’s either that or stay here and start anew. The choice was for the morning and we could use the respite and celebration. “To see tomorrow,” I said. We found some extra blankets in the hall closet and made a small fort in the living room. It was the best way to keep warm, but it was also a first for me and my dad.