Story #101 - Shadowing Shelly

Shadowing Shelly

“You don’t want to do that, Bill,” the voice said, scratchy and low, “you really don’t want to do that.”

Bill Horne ignored the thing speaking to him; it had become progressively more difficult over the years, but he refused to let the other make his decisions for him, refused to listen to what it had to say.

Years ago, when it had first arrived, he had been to naïve to understand. It had suggested, he had acted, and for a while, things had gone his way. Soon enough, however, it became apparent that his new companion did not have his best interests in mind, and he started an aggressive campaign to ignore it.

This did not sit well with the apparition, and ever since, it had been doing its best to make Bill’s life miserable.

So few men and women knew themselves, let alone paid attention to what was around them. Bill had a companion, though he wished he’d never bothered to look down and notice that something was odd in the thing that always followed him.

Bill had a shadow, and he knew its name.

The thing has been clear on that point; that it had a name, and was not just a spectral force sent to torment him. It did torment him, of course, because that was what it was good at, but it wasn’t just some faceless thing from the nether. Its name was Llib.

Bill refused to call it that, however, especially after it started leading him astray. For twenty years, he’d called it Shelly, in an effort to make it as uncomfortable as possible, to show that he minimized the effect the thing had on him. It was clearly unhappy with him, something he took a grim pride in.

It wasn’t that the thing was evil, so much as that it didn’t understand how the world worked, and why should it? It was a shadow, a remnant, and when anyone else was around that was exactly how it acted. Friends and family often wondered why he spent so much time looking over his shoulder, but their cast forms didn’t cause them problems when other living beings were absent.

At first, he’d tried to stay around others as much as possible, going so far as to marry a woman he didn’t really love so that he would rarely be alone. Rena was a good woman, but she hadn’t deserved a husband that was using her to get away from an unknown spectral force, so he’d broken it off after three years.

Now, he was alone.

Mostly.

“I think I’ll be fine, Shelly. I doubt the toaster is going to kill me.” He almost managed a smile; the shadow was getting more predictable by the day, and he found that with the right attitude, he could endure the thing’s constant wrangling.

“That’s good, Bill, that’s good. Do that. Do that,” Shelly said as he reached for the toaster cord. Odd. The thing was typically not full of praise for anything he did, and never with such passion.

“Interesting tactic, Shelly, but -“ he cut off as the toaster plug went into the wall and a jolt went up his arm and partway across his chest. Next to him, Shelly made a low keening sound.

What the hell?

“What the hell, Shelly? Are you trying to kill me?” Stupid question – the shade was probably tired of being marginalized and wanted to end him once and for all. Bastard.

Shaking himself, he moved across the kitchen to make sure everything still worked. A headache was crawling up the back of his neck and into his head, and he reached into the nearest drawer for the stash of aspirin he kept there.

“No, Bill, no. No.” He shook off Shelly’s words and dropped the pill into his mouth, and the thing whuffed softly at him. Anything he did to make himself better, help himself, seemed to aggravate the spirit.

He sighed; the day still hadn’t truly started, and already he’d almost managed to electrocute himself. Reaching for the fridge, he could hear Shelly egging him on, encouraging him, and he felt another jolt as his fist closed around the aging metal handle.

With a yelp, he jerked the door open and looked inside, a dangling light and a dark fridge told the tale; something else in this apartment was broken, another thing was falling apart.

And Shelly had warned him about it.

Turning, he ran his eyes over the shadow, which hovered just to his left. Shelly couldn’t touch him, but could come up off of the floor when Bill was alone, and seemed to enjoy floating along beside him to torment him.

“Shelly,” he said, “thank you.” There was a wail from the spirit, and if he didn’t know the thing, he’d think that it was injured. To Bill, it sounded like it was laughing.

“You can’t say much, can you, Shelly?” The spirit stayed silent. “And really, that makes sense,” Bill went on. “You’re an opposite, a shadow of me, and so you’re naturally going to act in a way that opposes what I do.”

Bill could feel his excitement rising. He’d finally figured it out, divined the purpose of the thing that haunted him; Shelly wasn’t evil, just opposed, and that meant everything the spirit said could be turned on its head and used. Now, the shadow could have some value.

The doorbell rang and Bill moved toward it, but stopped to wait to see what Shelly had to say. “Don’t, Bill. Please. Don’t.”

He smiled; that could only mean that something to his benefit was at the door, perhaps a package or good news about a wealthy relative dying and leaving a windfall.

Bill didn’t recognize the man standing outside his door, but he was familiar enough with firearms to identify the Colt in the man’s hand. A shot sounded and he fell, slumping to the floor in pain. The man rifled through his pockets and then stepped over him, pulling him back into the apartment and shutting the door.

The life quickly draining from him, Bill could see Shelly start to swell, start to gain depth in addition to height, and by the time his murderer returned from the bedroom, a replica of Bill stood in the doorway, hale and hearty and with a smile on its face.

Stepping forward, his shadow copy grabbed the startled killer and twisted his neck hard, and the man fell in a broken heap.

Looking down at him, Shelly smiled. “Your turn now, Bill. Enjoy being on the other side.”

Bill felt a pull, a tugging at his thinning soul that had him sliding across the floor to merge with the bottom of his new form’s owner.

Shelly had a shadow, one he knew all too well.

- D