Postulate and Shadows: Halloween Collaboration - October 26th, 2014 Meet Up

The Quill's Penumbra - @TaylorGGibbs

Another light comes on. Maaja is gone. Her shadow sitting on the couch in a blur like Jing Jing and Kevin in the picture. A raw and red tonal blur under a dark film. Nearly incorporeal. 

All of our phones ping, or ring with each of our individual notification sounds, we all glance down at the illuminated screens brightening the dim room. Jing Jing is no longer a shadow in the picture, and her face was lit was a flare as a few more lights came back on in the building.  “No need to panic,” she says. “I am sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.” 

There is a darkness creeping in, in a shroud of light. A coin that flips through the air glints while its shadowed underneath. There was no luck in the air. The static crackle that eschewed through the building lit fires that stole our warmth. We could see the waves of flame in the singed bricks of the walls. An unquenchable lust to consume. And hadn’t someone told us about a fire earlier in the evening? 

There in a bean bag chair, lay another shadow. We all searched each other trying to figure out who was missing. The smear of a body nondescript like an aerosol varsol on a fresh portrait, running. Then it occurred to us, Vesalisa was gone.

Mathias stood up on one of the puzzle piece cushions and shouted, “guys we need to do something! We need catch our breaths and figure out something to do” - wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve - “Let’s go back to the “Windswept” room where we can close the door and try to figure out what to do. That way we should be able to see what is coming next.” 

“Fuck that! Every person for themselves, I don’t know any of you! I don’t owe you guys anything!” yelled Alex. “I’m getting the fuck out of here!”

A new shadow appeared dark and looming like the dark mass that shattered the glass. It dripped from the ceiling in large gobs down onto Alex’s head covering him entirely. The shadow flickered like a candle as it sputters in wax and then seeped into the cracks between the floor boards; Alex was gone. 

The rest of us ran into the small enclosure of the “Windswept” room and slammed the door.

The lights grew brighter. Kevin’s face had a clear and cool sheen to it, a glow which brightened his visage like we’d never seen. Nick who stood beside him shared his unearthly luminescence. Neither of them said a word. In the opposite corner Jing Jing stood, her lips flexing as if she was speaking though no words were uttered.

Mathias pointed out that aside from Vesalisa, Maaja, and Alex the rest of us: Takatsu, Kaisareur (who had looked better in times passed), Shazza, myself, himself, Wassabi, Joflower, BB,  Kevin, Nick, and Jing Jing were together and for all intents and purposes okay.

“We can escape this, we can beat this, together,” Proposed Takatsu stoically.

Then, obsidian night fell upon the room. The mass had covered the length of the wall of glass, and windows. The lights on the ceiling dripped darkness like blood which pooled and spread along the floor. Jing Jing, Kevin, and Nick smiled, their teeth and their pupil-less white eyes were the only things visible in the room. Scars on each of their hands began to burn, lighting the room a little further contrasting with the pale white of their teeth and eyes; hashtag on the right, an @ sign on the left palm. The three of them held up their hands palm forward towards each of us. The immense pressure of the shadow grew like a headache, an iron clamp squeezing our skulls. One by one we began to cry, the pain grew, branded in the backs of our eyelids we saw the light of the infernal flame, a hashtag and an @ symbol etched into the backs of our eyelids.

The shadow we were all in, it became clear immediately to Takatsu, was ourselves. The Wattpad manifestation of our dreams, and nightmares, our hopes and our fears; our writings coagulated. A net and a web of our extended selves, our virtual selves. The more we exerted the brighter the building got, until one of us tried to break from the group, from the community - poor Alex. 

Another rumbling tremor shook the floor.

“Finally,” said Kevin. “Gavin is back.”  A feverish chill raced down our spine.

The elevator door slid up and the cage rattled and clanged as it opened. A blank, black, emptiness the size of a man whorled across the floor in flurry toward us.

The glass cracked, lines and fissures slid out from the epicentre. Then the wall imploded with a shriek. We all ducked and threw our arms up to protect our burning eyes.

The darkness dissipated into a man, who's features were only slightly shadowed. A rouge blur over a brushstroke. But unmistakably a bald English bloke, with humour in his eyes.

“You know” he said. “Wattpad would be nothing without you. Our faithful, writers, AND readers. We just wouldn’t exist, nay we couldn’t exist without you.”

Each one of us looked at him, and then at each other. I closed my eyes so I could see the signs.  Takatsu and I looked at each other, and then at everyone else, new to each other.

I turned to Gavin, and Nick, Jing Jing, and Kevin one by one, and with a sneer like a knife wound, quietly said; 

“You know, we wouldn’t exist in a way without you too. We need you as well. Probably in some ways more if you think about it. We wouldn’t have our other selves, our virtual selves without a platform to stand on.” The sneer evolved into a shark-toothed grin.  I turned to Takatsu, he and I, eye to eye, “you ready?”

“Yes”

“Everyone?”

A choral “YES” 

The smile spread from my lips to Takatsu, to Mathias, to Joflower, Shazza, Wassabi, BB, and Kaisareur like a traditional oral story being passed from one to another, connected by the same impulse that sends stories, emails, and posts. 

We surrounded the four staffers, and began to devour them, raw, teeth gnashing, and pulling on stringy meat. Slurping the blood off our fingers as their screams died and they turned back into shadows, bloody blurs.

Afterwards we crossed the street, and headed to the pub for a pint, together. I looked back at the Wattpad building. It was gleaming, lit like a supernova.