the quiet town

Shadows of hunched figures brushstroked the ground around the campfire, but no bodies sat there. Leaves crunched. The shadows stilled. It was hard to tell if they had turned to look because their shadow-heads stretched out into the night and were swallowed by it.

The man wore a bright plaid shirt. The wind ruffled it and his dark thick-clumped hair. His arms swung tense by his sides. He sunk his hands into his pockets to look more relaxed but took them out again shortly. As he passed by no shadow sprung from the place where his shined shoes met the grass, like the firelight had gone right through him.

In the town the streets were full of shapes. They slunk along walls and pooled on footpaths. He stood in the moonlight shadow of an apartment block for minutes just looking at the way it played over the contours of his hand. No darkness gathered in the creases of his palm.

Little shadow-legs danced in and out of a flickering street light. He thought, approaching, that he could feel the air moving with them, but it was his imagination. A cat darted by; just an actual cat.

'I’m looking for my shadow,’ he said, feeling quite foolish. ‘Have you seen it?’ The little shadow-legs darted away from the street light. It took him some time to decide they were not coming back.

When a cloud slipped in front of the moon, he felt eyes rest on the back of his neck. Nothing was behind him so he fumbled in his pocket for a torch and flicked it on. Shadows stretched out in a ring around him. The torchlight flung other dark flat figures across the road and the grass and the decayed graffiti’d walls, and when the light was on them they all stopped moving. Even the cat looked startled. It had the shadow of a dog. Fingers slipping on the switch he put out the torch and hurried on.

He passed under a clothes line that was not there, the shadows of underpants flapping in the night breeze. Dark masses crept along the road and slipped through him. He shivered. With a sigh he bent up under a power line casting the shade of a chestnut tree and watched the empty town bustle in absolute silence.