What Lurks in the Shadows

Chapter 12: Lunatics

Chapter 12

Adrian

The second she left, I felt myself being pulled ― gentler than last time ― back into reality. Guess now I get to see what humanity has become, I thought, now slightly anxious to shadow in this new environment. Time jumping like thatseemed to be the only thing that got me back on me feet again the last time I’d been reassigned. It was practically time travel in my mind, and always made the first shadowing that much more bearable.

I looked around the room my subject had fallen asleep in. From my point of view of the room, I assumed that she had fallen asleep on the floor. And the lack of a bed and the presence of no one else in the room, I had a hard time figuring out how exactly she missed the couch that sat only a few feet away. At one end of the small room was the entry way, which was covered by cloths and beads that shuffled now and then with the shifting of air from the room on the other side of them. The one thing that struck me odd about the room was the voodoo-style charms and trinkets that hung randomly through it. They had a strange, darkly mysterious and sinister air about them that caused the room to feel colder and less inviting that it had seemed at first glance.

My subject’s deep intake of breath startled me out of my observations. I tensed in anticipation as her body shifted above me and she scrambled in a mad rush to her feet.

Confusion filled me as she let out a shrill cry and started jumping around the room, performing a random sequence of actions that could almost be considered dancing. The whole scenario was too odd to imagine: a crazy girl squealing like a pig jumping about and dancing in a gothic room that could be found in that of a horror novel.

Just as abruptly as she started, she stopped twisting and flinging her limbs throughout the air; her eyes grew wide and darted around the room. And all at once she was in motion again, circling the room and then racing through the hanging cloths and beads that made up the doorway.

“Ow!” She cried as she made her way to a more open area filled with even more gothic items. It dawned on me ― it was a shop that sold dark and creepy stuff like the things back in the room. Interesting…

“It burns!” The girl continued to cry, “Oh Lord, I’m blind! I’m blind!”

I would have snorted and rolled my eyes at the sight; you would have thought the girl had spend her entire winter in a cave hibernating like a regular old bear!

Another voice then rang out from within the rows of gothic items, “Whoa, you were only in there for like fifteen minutes, it’s not like there’s that much of a light difference in there and out here.”

The girl stopped recoiling like Dracula himself from the light and made even more annoyingly high pitched squeals, “Kelsey!” She cried out her friend’s name, tripping over herself to embrace her friend. My goodness, is that how people greet each other now? I thought incredulously. The lunatic girl then surprised me even more. She pulled away and assaulted this Kelsey girl just as quickly as she had pounced happily onto her. I was shocked yet surprisingly amused to say the least.

“How did you not hear me screaming, you idiot!” the ― still unnamed ― crazy one yelled.

I “sat back” and watched amusedly at how they bickered back and forth. The stupidity of what humanity had come to thoroughly surprised and disappointed me. I began to wonder how long I had actually been kept out of commission. I glanced around the shop to see if I could catch a glimpse of any dates written anywhere ― on a newspaper or on a calendar of sorts.

The two finally quit their bickering and separated, minding their own while wandering throughout the store. Finally, I thought fleetingly, since I hadn’t been paying attention to them in the first place.