A Box of Shadow

by Sapfarah the Magnificent

This isn't fanfiction on any videogame character. It is fanfiction on me, Sapfarah. I had a dream.

*****

    What time was it? Very late. Too late. Past midnight, past 1AM. 1:33, I say a number out of my head and yet we were all awake. All three of us. Who were we? They were two middleaged women and I. Who were they? What were they to me?

    I remember the artificial electric light, so contrasting to the serene darkness of the night, only into our apartment. Outside, where we couldn't see, the night was dark and dark to stay.

    I was waiting for my sister. She hadn't returned and I was worried. Did I wait for anyone else to come with her? But she hadn't come back. I think the women were playing cards over the dining table. We hadn't dined. We waited for her. She hadn't come back.

    I took the bag of trash to take it down. It was too late for that but I had to take down the trash. The bag was big and I had to hold it with both my hands. I had to go down some floors. Maybe I was hoping I would meet my sister on the way down. I don't know if I had
that hope. But I went for the trash and left the open door behind me and the electric light poured in a neat asymmetric quadrilateral from it. One could see the corner of the dining table and one woman with her cards at hand. But I know I didn't look back.

    I don't know what happened to the trash. But I was on the ground floor, in the entrance area.

    It was dark and all I could distinguish under the light of the night and the aid of the street lamps, was the small area with the grey walls and the rectangular entrance, with no door. Nothing too fancy. I think there was an elevator door on my right.

    A little girl came into the strange room, stranger than anything I have ever seen. She wasn't more than four, her height and her skinny legs could tell that. She was wearing white stockings and a bright fuchsia skirt. I don't remember her white blouse too well but I
remember her flaxen, shoulder length hair in tiny twisted spirals and the smile on her face. So innocent... so trusting... so sweet...

    I smiled back at her because I knew that had I done otherwise, I would have scared her. She walked uneasily. She was so young...

    So young...

    "Can I stay with you for a while?" she sweetly asked. She had the little tiny voice of a girl of four, insecure, chiming.

    "You shouldn't be out so late," that's what I think I had told her. Or something different. I was worried. What was a little girl doing out so late at night?

    The sweetly face melted into unspeakable sadness and her legs faltered. She was really ready to cry...

    "Then I guess I'd better go and find my mother..." she really said but it sounded like she accused me of sending her to the worst feasible horror. It made me fell so bad...

    "That's okay, you can stay with me for a while," I smiled at her and went on my knees, so she could be on level with me.

    The little girl came to me and buried into my embrace. I never liked kids and yet I held one. Something surged within my heart that made me strong to defeat her from anything.

    "I'm scared..." she chirped, before I could ask where her mother is. I wanted to take her back to her mother, but so I was afraid of the woman I would see in her.

    "What are you so afraid of?" I told her. Even my voice sounded different. Sweeter. More deep and concerned.

    "Of my cousin, Diana," she said.

    "Why?"

    "Because she's there, there in that rectangle of shadow," she said and from my embrace, her little finger pointed towards the shadow.

    There was a small alcove with a couple of steps, leading to a small storage room. The shadow box she had pointed was caused by the way the light came into that room. Naturally there was no Diana standing in the shadow.

    I smiled at her thoughts. The dark must be horrifying her. I thought that if I took her with me and walk together into that shadow to show her that there wasn't anyone there, not only would she be afraid but worse, she would run away and... leave me...

    So I kept her in my arms.

    "Don't worry... Diana does not want to scare you..." I said and my eyes welled. "She just wants to say hi and she loves you very much. I think she smiles at you..."

    The fearful face smiled at me, still scared but happy at my explanation.

    "You shouldn't worry..." I said and pulled her to me. Her little head rested on my shoulder and I looked absently.

    My sister hadn't come back and up there in the apartment the two women would be in the room with the electric light. That little girl had come to the place of my sister. She could use some food and some shelter. I would give her some comfort and call the police to appease her worried mother...

    I closed my eyes, this time in pain and sheer fright. My collarbone was aching, stinging and like my blood seeped through the vein, the tears trickled in my eyes. She was draining me. Slowly. Softly. Drip by drip my blood was trickling into her soft little mouth. And that's the certain that I know.

    "And this is how you repay me?" I nearly whined.

    "You'll be with me..." she mournfully said. "I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life..."

    I closed my eyes as I felt my life seeping away. Drip by drip. Trickle by trickle into her soft tender mouth. This wasn't joy and it wasn't terror. But things now were different.

    The same room was now colder and so much more grey. There was an alcove in the rear wall, one where with a few steps down you reached to the door of a store and there, in the corner, leaning against the wall, in a box made of shadow, was cousin Diana. Pale like death with dried up eyes, smiling as she leaned against the wall, with her small little
hands behind her back, as if to say everything would be all right. She didn't want us to be afraid. In her misery, Diana was truly happy.

    I stood up and looked at the little girl with different eyes. Taller, wider, more ashen. Caring and sorrowful in the misery we shared together. In a cold nod I stretched my hand at her and in a childishly happy smile she took it.

    We walked together out in the dark, leaving the electrically lit apartment back and the women playing cards on a table dressed in a royal velvet cloth.

    My sister never came back.

- the end -