The Shadow Back

This piece was published in the September 2011 issue of Eclectic Flash.

The Shadow Back

The editor lifted her hand to rub her eyes.  It was late, the stack of submissions before her was as tall as ever.  The light from her desk lamp threw her shadow into sharp relief.  When she said that she wanted her notions of what writing can do exploded, she didn’t mean she wanted high-powered grit and hip imagery redounding on the glitz of life, lust and love, dragging it into the exaggerated grime of romanticism posing as pessimistic realism.  The black letters were failing to stand out against the page, diffusing in washes of white.  She hated Arial.  If these pieces did not improve she would be without something to publish, every editor and every writer’s nightmare; all the good ideas have run out.

What was she looking for?  She could not remember.  The long night had worn down her once defined impression of her goal.  She would know, she kept telling herself.  It is always obvious when something is good.  There is a certain quality that we can identify when it’s before us, but cannot describe otherwise.  We can only expound by example, proving something by its shadow.  She had not even encountered the tip of the shadow, yet.  It projected behind her.

She wearily pulled the next submission into the light.  Her eyes fell on the page, lazily at first, but the story drew her in.  She furrowed her brow at one point, at another she pursed her lips, her eyes would widen periodically, and she released a soft, questioning noise at one point.  The story she was reading broke through her, redoubling the relief at her back.  The hair rose at the nape of her neck.  She was not where she saw what she saw; while pouring over the page she came to be otherwise staring at her own back as if from behind her shadow.  She tried to turn but found that too many twists and turns had taken place.  She could not move her gaze away from the sight before her.

As she stared at her back in the dim light, she began to see things.  She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the more she saw the more she understood the truth.  All the cracks and flaws twined their way along like insects and reptiles.  Every defilement she hid became apparent.  She had been looking for something that showed her herself.  But this seemed a bit presumptuous.  The author was under her skin, where she wanted no one.  Her nature thrust against her very being, tugging her from her intricate about-face.  She thrust the page aside, and shrank from her shadow.