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re16: Embrace the Shadow
A short story from the Charlie Holiday vault.
“Gotta do the deed, dude.”
Charlie looked up from his phone but didn’t yet look over to the guy who said it.
He thought about asking what he said and the whole who-are-you-and-why-are-you-talking-to-me but it had become so common that so-called strangers just struck up conversations with him that he wasn’t going to bother.
He thought to himself, Going to skip all of those pleasantries and get into it.
“And what deed might that be,” he said in his best sophisticated accent, especially good, he thought, in response to the scratchy ruffian voice that asked the question.
Charlie still didn’t look at the man, choosing instead to look straight ahead and leave something with his imagination.
“Embrace the shadow.”
Charlie nodded as he took it in. He understood the words but was pretty certain there was some ridiculously important meaning behind them. He also calculated, with lightning-speed efficiency, the man was going to explain further if Charlie didn’t quite catch on immediately.
Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Charlie was waiting for the man to make an explanation, but none was coming.
In a staring contest without looking, Charlie was about to lose. He was indeed curious and couldn’t deny he wanted to know what the man meant. He had absolutely more important things to do the same afternoon, he was sure he did.
He looked at his watch in a blatant and old-school sign that he did have better things to do, but they both knew nothing was better than the topic at hand.
Charlie turned his head.
The whole dude reference had implanted a vision of a younger man, but not to the extent he saw now next to him.
The guy, no, the dude, couldn’t have been past his mid-twenties. If wrinkles around the eyes and a bit of stubble in a beard were signs of intelligence, experience, and all-around worldly importance, this kid had none of that.
He was fresh off the boat of innocence. What could this kid possibly know about Charlie, about some shadow of, what was it? Embracing? Charlie thought to himself as he looked into the eyes of the young man next to him.
But his eyes were unwavering. If his blemish-free skin and clean-cut hair were signs of youth, his eyes held a deeper soul that had no trouble holding ground with the powerful gaze of Charlie Holiday.
It was clear the boy wasn’t going to give in and speak again. Charlie had things to do, he was sure of it, he needed to move on to other matters of the day. Still, he had to know.
“OK, I give in,” he started. “What does it mean to embrace the shadow?”
“What do you think it means?” the boy responded immediately as if he had been waiting for the question.
Charlie hadn’t been waiting for the question to his question and before he could reply with some delaying tactic like that, he stopped to actually think about it.
Embrace the shadow.
He let it roll around in his brain a few times. The idea bounced around like a Bingo number in one of those air poppers—lots of air and one ball made of plastic.
With witty commentary on the tip of his tongue, something about Bingo balls and empty space, a pang hit him in his gut as if the man punched him. Of course, the man was sitting still, very still in fact, and hadn’t moved a muscle. At least not a physical muscle.
It was as if the young dude had hit Charlie in the stomach with a thought.
The thought of embracing the shadow.
It sank in quickly, like a strong punch, and the ache spread further throughout his stomach to his back and up to his heart. In another instant he knew what the pain was: he knew what embrace the shadow meant.
The problem was that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to talk about this. He wanted to get back to whatever it was he was doing, which was guaranteed to be more fun than this.
Published on 7 years, 4 months ago