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The shadow is unavoidable and seems to be appearing with more frequency--only, now, sighting it is accompanied with an explainable wave of anxiety and stress. It plagues you, and then--finally, for just a moment--the shadow is in front of you and you can make out the details: someone important to you, that you’ve lost. Maybe it’s someone you haven’t seen in a long time and lost contact with, someone who has passed, or someone you just can’t quite place but feel connected to--you see them, clearly, in front of you. You cannot touch them, and you can only make out one word that they say. They will not respond to anything you do or say; when you blink, they are gone. The shadow does not appear afterwards, but you feel a residual presence as flickering anxiety throughout the day.
She just couldn't get rid of it.
What had started as a mild convenience had taken hold and transformed into something that made her feel sick to the stomach. She wasn't one who suffered from anxiety but if this was how it was meant to feel then she wouldn't even wish it on her worst enemy. Everything was starting to give her a sense of paranoia, she was getting much more flustered and scattered brained didn't quite cover her thought process right now.
The sense of order and control she was used to had fled from her person and with it came a type of stress she had never experienced before. To say she didn't like this feeling was an absolute understatement. How did anyone live like this, how did they cope? She knew people did manage to exist in this world with these feelings, but she couldn't exactly hunt one of them down and ask how they did it.
Her day had been going all right up until that point, but at some point between her morning coffee break and three o'clock, she'd been struck down with this.
No matter where she went, no matter how quickly she walked, it was there. Every which way she looked she could see it; to either side and behind her, against her neck, near her ears. The sensation that it was simply there never left her and she was at the point where she was sure she might need to ask for help. That being said, how did you even begin to broach this subject and who would even believe her?
Yes, sorry... but a shadow is stalking me. No I'm not crazy.
She had reached for her phone in those last few moments, an attempt to flick through a list of contacts she had yet to meet, people that might hold an answer to her question. However each time she settled on a name she found herself doubting her decision, not entirely confident that they would even be willing to help. After all, how many people would help a stranger who randomly contacted them?
She might, but she wasn't everyone.
After several moments of mental goading on her own part she was about to press the call button when the shadow reappeared again. It flashed into life in front of her and it was with a shriek that she dropped her phone to the ground, hearing only the faintest of clatters as she stared at what had been plaguing her for the better part of the day.
So this was fear.
Except it wasn't?
When she'd finally gotten the courage to open her eyes she was greeted with the shattered vision of someone she should have known. At the very core of her being this man was someone she was supposed to know, someone she was supposed to have met. There was a familiarity there and yet she couldn't place him, not perfectly. Instead, all she could do was watch in a mesmerised manner as he stared into an emptiness beyond her. His lips were moving, his expression one of concern and yet she couldn't hear him.
This continued for a few moments more and then she did manage to make out one word. In the depths of the incoherent movements of lips and concerned features, she heard the voice echo out.
"Run."
What?
She glanced quickly behind her to check but by the time she had turned back to look at whoever had been in front of her, he'd gone.
Nothing had been behind her and the words made little sense, in fact the familiarity had been so extraordinary given she'd never seen his face before. Nevertheless, from that point on the shadow was gone. No sign of it lurked in the corner of her eye, but this didn't mean that she didn't check over her shoulder with regular frequency. Whatever that might have been, hallucination or otherwise, the shadow might have disappeared but the impact it had left seemed to be lasting.
It was something to dwell on later when she was in a much safer environment. Rather than stare into an abyss of thoughts in the open street it was better for her to simply go home and figure it out there. In the quiet of her own room she was likely to think about things more clearly without the possibly of any unexpected interruptions...
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