The Shadow of Light

[Mattfl777]

A plain square room.

No light no dark.

Nothing is.

He awakes.



His eyes open to the plain room, lit by an unknown intense light behind him which illuminates all. He turns to observe the light which gave his sight meaning when suddenly a vice grip grabs his forearm, staying his motion. His eyes jerk in front of him, to the source of this power. Standing in front, looking deep into his soul with calming eyes stands darkness, molded to his form, raw power radiates from it and with it a longing unquenchable. The darkness removes the hand and speaks with a slight smirk.



"Hello." His voice flows like thunder under the ocean, drawing him in.



"Hi..." he hesitantly replies.”Who are you?"



The darkness flashes with indignance but quickly masks it behind a lopsided grin.

"Have you not heard of me?" After a slight pause he continues unwavering, his voice a crescendo of sirens. "I am power. Greatness. Immortality. I am he who fulfills your deepest and most cherished desires. I am inside all, be it man woman, weak strong, tall short. I am there. I am always with you. Your shadow." The grin straightens and broadens.



"My shadow...?" He echoes thoughtfully as his glance unknowingly falls slightly. "You sound very wonderful indeed."



The shadow leans forward and raises his chin, locking eyes. "You have no idea." Grinning all the while.



"How can you do all those most excellent things?"



"Well I can't really divulge..."



"Please! Tell me, show me, help me. I must know! Why keep them from me? Do you not take me as being worthy enough? Do I too not deserve power and immortality? Is the pie not mine as well? I too deserve a slice." His eyes flicked back and forth across the shadow's face, seeking solace.



The darkness grew in statue and leaned in close to his ear, "No no my boy... You deserve MORE."



His eyes grew wider as a broad grin was stamped onto his face. "More..."



"Yes, more." The darkness continues. "With me, I can give you all these things, anything and everything. Nothing is beyond my grasp." A black arm lengthens to the side, to the man's eye the black iron fingers wrap into a fist which slowly returns to the shadow's body as he speaks. "With me you cannot lose." He sweeps his arm to the side like a black cape, the abyss of darkness drawing in the young man.



His eyes dilated as he stared in. He began to see things the shadow let him see. He saw a man in rich attire, surrounded by friends all laughing and smiling, and material goods. Paintings from the far reaches of the world. Plush carpets. Lavish sculptures. The vision panned to the side, revealing row after row of shelves filled to the brim with books upon books, knowledge of everything imaginable contained within, at the mere flip of a page he could know. The view altered again, revealing the same man surrounded by gorgeous shapely women, all hanging onto his physique, wishing to touch. His every word oozed with wit and charm, the women swooned. The man wrapped his arm around a woman, firmly goosing her behind as the two of them ducked into the rear of a stretch limousine as the young man spoke as if in a trance. "Who is this man that commands the respect of all whom entreat upon him and enter into his presence...”



The shadow replied ever so smooth, the words oiling from his lips. "That man my boy...is you."



His eyes filled with wonder at this. "ME?! But, but..but how!" His voice was giddy. "Why? How? When?!!"



The shadow continued demurely. "Or rather I should say...can be."



"Can?" A hint of hysteria in his voice. "What do you mean CAN be? What must I do to bring it about? You! Shadow! You said you were power and everything I desired. Well...I desire this! How can I bring it about that it's not what I can be, but what I will be?"



Before the darkness could field a response the light seemed to intensify and warmth flowed through the young man. He saw himself happy, far happier than in the shadow's curtain. With friends around him as he sparred against one during a game of chess. His clothes are humble and drab, a moderate bookcase heaped erratically with worn books leans precariously against the wall. A squeal of pleasure cuts in on the scene as a young girl runs up to the man and tugs on his leg. The man bellows with jovial laughter as he bends over and places the young girl on his knee, as he playfully lets her decide his next chess move. A rather plain looking woman, whose beauty lays masked beneath toil and whom radiates strength and kindness enters from the side and smiles at the scene, as the man's opponent feigns distress at being faced by the child. The girl turns to the woman and says "Mama! Mama! Look me and Daddy are pla.."



Suddenly darkness chokes the room and it fades. The young man looks up at his shadow breathlessly. "What was that?"



His shadow seems a bit agitated as he replies "Nothing, nothing. A mere error."



"Error? Or was that another path I could perchance take?"



"In a way perhaps. But still only an error." The darkness quickly states.



The young man bites his bottom lip anxiously and sits silently in thought a moment. "I liked the second better.."



"WHAT?!" The shadow scoffs and cackles. "Did you see the shambles? The clothes? The wife?" The laughter increases.



"But did you see the happiness? The peace?" The young man retorts.



"You call THAT peace and happiness?!?! Shards of glass from the cup of lesser men is what that is!! I will show you what this peace and happiness brings." His shadow hisses hastily.



A swish of midnight and the vision returns. All are asleep. No noise is heard, no wind blows. Quiet. Slowly footsteps are heard as his gaze scans the room. A disturbance at the door into the house. The handle twists and the rusted latch at the corner pulls from the wall. A masked figure steals into the room. The view twists to behind the intruder, following him. He creeps down a hall and peeks into the room where the man who was earlier playing chess and his wife sleep. From his waist he pulls forth a gun, moonlight from the open door glints off the handle as he raises it. The trigger is squeezed and a bullet rips into the man's skull, splattering blood and brain fragments over the wall. His wife jolts awake and screams. The intruder takes a step forward and whips the gun against her head; she falls dazed against the lifeless body of her husband. The young girl runs crying and screaming into the room and into the back of the gunman. She sniffles and looks up with a wail as a large fist slams down. As the wife shakes her head and calls the child's name as she raises the gunman steps closer to her and pulls off his mask. "Oh Go...” the woman utters before her voice is muffled with duct tape. The man turns to the younger girl and does the same, in the moonlight the young onlooker from afar sees his face, the man that had been playing chess earlier in that very house against the husband who now lay dead. What transpires is horrible and atrocious beyond compare, as the man begins to systematically rape and butcher the mother and daughter with a common kitchen knife.



The young man's eyes turn from the sight but the shadow latches on and twists it back, forcing him to observe. "This is what that brings." The shadow teases into his ear. "This is what lack of power brings.

 

[Mattfl777]

As the man finished his ghastly task he begins searching the room for valuables. As this occurs a white light appears near the three dead bodies. "What!!!" The young man's shadow sharply breathes in. "No..." His gaze now locked on the sight as he locked the boy's before.



A man enters the room, clothed in white. Light follows as if the moon itself answers his need. Never has light seemed more pure or white. The intruder continues pilfering unbeknownst to this man, as if he could not be seen.



Tears streamed down the man in white's face as he solemnly knelt down beside the mutilated body of the child and touched her forehead softly. The white light of her body intensifies and raises itself, manifesting into a child of light above the child of flesh. She smiles and laughs then raises through the ceiling. The man draped in white does the same to the wife then kneels next to the husband. As he extends his hand the young viewer observes a scar along the wrist. The husband rises in light and glances around, as if seeing the world for the first time. Suddenly his wife and daughter appear again from

above. Each taking a hand in theirs, raising him up as they smile. He looks into their faces and smiles as well then all three rise into peace.



The kneeling man in white raises and turns towards the young onlooker, as if this was no mere slight of sight but actuality. His eyes look into the boy, deeper than his shadow had, into what the boy is, and then he too rises silently towards the heavens.



Reality is jerked to the plain room of dark and light as if the very breath was hit from the young man.



His shadow grumbles.



The young man falls to his knees and begins to weep.



"What is this weakness?!" The darkness sneers at the stooping figure. "What you saw was not real. After death the only thing that lives on, the only thing people remember is what you did, who you knew, the power you had. How far your arms reached. This business with light and rising again is absurd. The mind is weak and too readily believes what it desires to be true."



The boy continues to cry on his knees.



"Why do you lower yourself? Stand. You are man. You do not bow or buckle. Stand proud! The earth is your cast, mold it as you see fit. There is no time nor place for cowards and cry babies."



The boy's tear stained face glanced up at the shadow. "Who was that man?"



"I told you!" The darkness persisted. "No one. What you saw was not real! It will never be real."



A voice spoke into the young man's mind. "I am Jesus the Christ. Son of God. I am He."



His shadow's head jerks up. "What?! NO!" His breathing increasing. "Listen boy. Ignore the voice. Listen to me. I am here. I am real. Do you not see me?! Look!"



The boy saw the shadow as he spread his arms to the side and rose higher. The darkness seemed to grow.



"I love you. I am here for you, let me carry your troubles. Your burden is not light but together we shall bear it." The voice continued into his mind.



"What...is this..!?" The young man gasps.



The irate shadow flails his limps. "Trickery! Folly! The light is cunning. Oh yes, cunning indeed. It thinks itself divine, perfect!" The darkness scoffs deep into its throat. "It will confuse and befuddle you. Warp you to become something unnatural. Something it desires you to be in order to control. It desires to steal your individuality as the masked man robbed the family of life." This reference jolts the young man's mind to the death and cruelty he witnessed of the world at the hands of man.



The voice parts the filth like a warm knife through butter. "I am the creator. Only with me will you suffer and feel pain no more. Only with me can you find eternal bliss and live forever in Heaven. Immortal and joyous together."



The vision fades and the boy stands once again.



"Good good" his shadow purrs. "You should stand proud and tall. The ground is meant for dogs."



"No." The young man says. "That is not why I stand."



His shadow begins to interject but is silenced and drowned with the righteous words of this young man.



"Long have I sat alone listening to the words of darkness. Long did it comfort me to know the potential resides within me, waiting to be grasped and harnessed to my bidding. Power." He states with contempt then continues. "But also long have I been blinded by that very darkness. The ails of a grieving world alluding my gaze. The many that were torn down beneath the rise of a man. Me."



He shifts his body to turn when rapidly the darkness manifests itself and lunges forward around his throat. "You cannot turn aside from your path so easily boy. You cannot ignore the plea within yourself, your very nature. You are sin and the need for power. YOU ARE ME!"



His shadow flings itself back against the wall and takes the shape of the young man perfectly. "Do you not see?" The darkness continues. "We are one and the same. Light creates me. What good is light that creates this lust within yourself to begin with? It slaps the very temptation it planted in the face and man is torn in the middle from the strife of nature and morals. Can you see a manifestation of the light like you do me? It is transfixed. Stationary. It moves for nothing. What observes the evils of life and then calls itself good which lets evil occur? Am I not here because of light?"



The young man stood for a moment then spoke. "Light did not create you shadow. You are an ill begotten effect. Light is all around, it is men that creates the shadows. Darkness is a throw back of man, our sinful interior. Yet we must not wallow in it and strengthen the dark."



With that the young man's shadow quailed as light shone through it. The innermost shadows who were once guarded from the light unknowingly by the very sin which created and nourished yet loathed them were now placed before it and withered.

No longer was the light only around the young man, but it shone through him. And through him his shadow was vanquished.



With tears of joy steaming down his face the boy turned into the light.