The Generals Letters, by Jacob Malewitz

The General's Letters
Jacob Malewitz
jfmalewitz@yahoo.com
Joshua Bryant, new short story, 10 shirt

It was a girl—I knew that much—but why she was staring at me, and trying to speak, was beyond me.
Her brilliant red hair flowed to her waist; her eyes were the color of the ocean; her face perfect for a portrait.  I wanted to hold her in my arms, but I couldn’t.
She was a dream.
When I woke up at the hospital, she was still on my mind.  I couldn’t escape the image of her.  It was one of those dreams that showed you a better life.  All you could do was go back to sleep and hope for another.
I was on the third floor of the hospital, in the psych ward. For weeks I had been on a drug binge after losing my job, and soon after I had hit bottom.  All the old and familiar demons of failure came back, and the thinking that I should dull the pain I took to drugs.  Cocaine was my drug of choice at that time, but marijuana played a part in my fall as well.  I had been on the streets for weeks when some bums found me in a gutter and decided to help me out.  They called the cops, and within hours of processing I found myself in St. Peters. Why they helped me I cannot understand—maybe they were guardian angels.
Immediately after being admitted I was put on a variety of medications: for depression, for schizophrenia, and for schizoaffective disorder.  And in turn, I was having hallucinations, obsession, bad moods, and trouble focusing.  I told the doctors that there was no way I was going home again, that I had every intention of dying when I had gone on my last drug binge.
But St. Peters soon showed its upside.  After a week of good behavior, I was let out of the suicide ward.  I changed my story and explained how I was going to rebuild my fragmented life.  Gradually the anti-psychotic drugs were taken away.  My hands had stopped shaking and my head was cleared. I felt better than I had felt in years.  
Within a week my dad visited me.  I’m not sure why he did. I hadn’t been on his good side since I dropped out of high school.  Honestly I thought he wasn’t sure what to do with my drug problem and ailments.  
When he arrived, he had a bag of McDonalds in one hand, a stack of comics in the other, and he smelled like he’d been chain smoking cigarettes.  I had to wonder if the cigarettes were partly my fault; he never did take things lightly.  He told me the comics were to help pass the time.
“Which ones did you bring?” I asked him.
“Batman and Iron Man,” he said back to me, half-smiling.  “Your favorites, right?”
“Yeah.  They are.”
I looked him over.  He looked good, like a businessman.  I knew him to be a serious man, and I saw he was looking for hope.
We ended up talking for almost an hour.  He had a lot of things on his mind.  He had just been offered a new job that would put him in a different income bracket, but the hours were almost double.  I knew the job situation was far from his mind though—my problems were his problems—and he had no idea how to approach the situation I put him in.
He looked around the room.  “They ever let you get some fresh air?” he asked.
“Not really,” I replied.  “But that’s okay.  I’ll be out soon, Dad.”
After he left, I devoured the cheeseburger and fries.
For days I stared at the comics.  I wasn’t lying when I had told him they were my favorites: Iron Man and Batman were well written characters.  But for some reason I was scared of them, I had always wanted to write and in my mind—at least at that time—the best way to learn how to write was to read.  But these are just comics, I thought to myself, no pressure if I only read them.
I could remember every Batman and Iron Man story I had ever read.  And as I stared at the comics for those days and nights, every story would appear to me out of the blue, complete with protagonist, plot, and climax.  When I was a kid I would hide under my sheets with a flashlight-- I wouldn’t want to wake my brother—and I would speed through them one by one.
For days I avoided the comics, but finally I decided to read them.  I read the Batman comics first, pacing myself, and then moved on to the Iron Man comics as my reading ability returned to what it once had been.  I always rated Iron Man better than Batman, but for some reason the dark resonance of Batman stuck with me more than Iron Man’s battle with alcohol.  For days, holed up in my room, I was at peace when the night came.
The comics as a whole were better than I expected.  In retrospect, it was similar to waiting all day to eat something, then devouring it. It seemed so good because I had waited so long.
Eventually my desire to write increased.  I started to write short reviews for each comic I had read.  I gave each a grade from 1-10 and then explained why.  And increasingly from this small beginning, I set my sights on even loftier goals.   I wrote letters to everyone I knew.  At first I was asking for notepads from the nurses.  Gradually I ran through their whole stock going from morning until night composing.
When my mother visited I knew I could get more paper.  She asked me how I was holding up.  “I’m good, mom,” I said to her.  “Could be better.”
“What medicine are they giving you?”
“I think one is called Zyprexa, the others I’m not sure.”  I was lying.  I knew she wouldn’t catch it, but I could recite every medication I had ever been on.  I didn’t want her to know how far I had fallen.  She knew medicines, and the ones they had me on were likely to kill brain cells.
“It takes time for the medicines to work,” she said.  “Just be patient.”
I could see in her eyes that she didn’t want to stay in the hospital much longer.  There was a pain there, past the shade of green, and there was no way she felt good about the situation, no matter how much I tried to tell her I was improving.  I couldn’t remember her ever saying that hospitals made her sick, but it seemed to have that effect.  I asked her for some paper and tried to relieve her conscience.  “I’ll be fine, mom,” I said.  “Just takes time.”
She came back in an hour with a stack of paper.  She left as fast as she came, mumbling something about a dinner date.
I began to write more letters.  I had no intention of ever sending them; the secrets in them would turn some heads.  I documented the changes that were happening for me—mainly mental changes, for my decision making process was already changing.  But I was thinking like a man on the run from the law, like time was running out. I was getting better in some ways, and worse in others.  The medicine made my mind able to focus on single thoughts for hours.  The physical aspects of being on several medicines were evident as well.  I had lost the shaking of my hands, and the other nervous habits—biting nails, pacing across rooms—seemed to go away as well.
I hid each letter in my comic books, and handed them off to my dad on his next visit.  There they would be safe; he would never look in the comics.  “I want you to read some literature,” he had said.   “Get your mind on other things.”
He brought a Henry James novel and I declined.  He brought an Edith Wharton book and I declined.  Finally he picked one off the shelf of a Barnes & Noble that he had never heard of.  I accepted.  The only reason I did was I could see he had his hopes up, so I didn’t want to dash them. It was a novel written by a Chinese writer named Wong Cho.  It was called The General’s Letters.  I had never heard of Wong Cho or his book, but I was hooked from the beginning.
It took me a week to finish Cho’s five hundred page book.  Even with some illustrations, the book was a long, arduous read.  In the end I felt it was worth it.  On the last page was a mailing address to an office in New York, called Wong Cho Entertainment.  I quickly went to the small desk in my room and wrote a draft of a letter to Wong Cho.  Then I looked down at the clothes I was in, the color of the floor, and remembered where I was.  I walked into the hallways, then to the entertainment room.  Most of the other patients were watching the NCAA tournament, some were playing cards, and others were just staring at the wall.
I decided I wanted to go home.  I don’t know why this feeling had come over me, but I felt the book had changed my life.  It had brought me back to reality.  Holed up in a hospital, I couldn’t expect life to come to me.    I knew they weren’t planning on keeping me locked up for much longer; if I was going to get out soon I had to say the right things, act the right way.
On my next doctors visit I expressed my desire to leave the hospital.  “I feel cured,” I said.  “I feel like I’ve gotten what I can out of St. Peters, doctor.  The drugs are out of my system and I have no desire to harm myself.”
The doctor agreed.  He told me it would be a week for the process to wrap up.  He would have to confer with my other doctors, but in his mind I was ready to become an acceptable part of society again.
So I waited.  The ward became smaller and smaller with every passing day.  I read The General’s Letter again, this time taking clear notes.  I wrote a review for the book after finishing it the second time.  In the review I tried to distill the essence of the novel; I felt I had failed in that attempt.  I rewrote it, relying on memory to do the job.  This review I felt was superior to the first.  Minutes before I was released I finished a final draft and packed it deep into my bag.    
On the 16th of January I was released at eight in the morning.  My father picked me up.  On the drive home there was an uncomfortable silence.  I don’t think either of us knew what to say.  I felt I had to break the silence.  “I read that Wong Cho book, Dad.”  He looked back to me, then looked back to the road.
“Did you like it?”
“I did,” I said back, “I wrote a review of it, and a letter.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, then spoke.   “I wasn’t sure about that one, but I thought aspects of a different culture, a different way of doing things, might catch your interest.”
“I think it may have changed my life,” I said.  “After I read it I knew I had to leave the hospital.”
When we arrived at the house I went straight to the desk in my room.
I had a lot brewing in my mind:  I wanted to send Wong Cho the letter and see if I could get my review of The General’s Letters published, but that wasn’t my only goal.  I wanted to write and read as much as I could. Maybe I could piece together a life story from all the letters I had written.  Maybe not, but I could try.  I remembered hearing stories of how F. Scott Fitzgerald had crafted some of his best, most humanistic work by reading his wife Zelda’s diaries.  I thought if I could tap into the depression perhaps I could make it my muse.

I tried to focus on three things to rebuild my life: retaking the joy that I had once had, reading, and writing.  I wrote a review for everything I read.   God knows why.  It seemed like I was wasting the book if I didn’t analyze it fully, taking from it what I could.  And if I wrote a review for a book, its story would stay fresh in my mind.
I began to go to meetings for drug addicts, NA meetings.  I was rather shy at first but the people seemed pleasant.  I felt awkward because I was usually the youngest person in the room, but they took to me, and treated me like I was one of them.  Some were college students about my age, while others had the faces as if a life of drugs had taken its toll on their young features.   One man took to me immediately from the second I sat next to him.  He was an old man with a thick beard and pleasant eyes, and he would tell me stories and offer to take me fishing.  From him and the others, I learned how to look at the world more as a work in process rather than a pained existence.
The meetings changed me as much as the writing had.
It wasn’t easy, especially when I lost confidence in myself, which was often.  The drugs could open doors to different worlds, but they could also hurt me.  Without them I lost my confidence, but I still had my mind and I would always have the pen and pad.
Slowly my life pieced itself back together.  I began to dream again, to talk to regular people, and amidst it all my writing continued. I hadn’t looked over all my old drafts hidden in my comic books; a different writer had written them.  My life was in turmoil then, which usually leads to good writing.  Now that things were going good my writing had likely lost its appeal—accept to me.  And then there was reading.  Always the guy who had drugs in the past, I was now the book junkie.
For some reason Wong Cho came back into my mind, as well as the other reviews. Some of the writing had been done in such haste and was so overblown that I thought about tearing them to shreds.  But the further along I went in studying them the more ideas came to me.  Some were rather simple—pieces of my life that I hated to remember- but I knew these would be the memories people would be interested in.  My thoughts finally surfaced, instead of skirting the problems I relented and faced them in my writing.  
After an entire day of searching, I found the letter I had written to Wong Cho.  In it I explained why I thought The General’s Letters was a masterpiece, truly a generation defining novel.  I assumed Wong Cho was part of my generation—I felt he had to be.  He seemed to know every challenge I had taken in my life.  Again I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Wong Cho was like Fitzgerald was in the 1920s, a man bent on writing the perfect novel.
The General’s Letters was the book men dreamed of writing, something that took all the rules and turned them upside down.  Cho had told the story of young Walter Ray and his love affair with war books.  Ray would read book after book no matter what was happening in his life--deaths and loves both seemed trivial in comparison to his readings.  Ray had written a series of letters to an old college friend explaining what he learned.  He read everything on Napoleon and Frederick the Great—his two favorite European generals— yet he would also read on ancient generals like Hannibal and Scipio.  Ray’s friend would try to change the subject and ask Ray what else was going on his life, but it didn’t work.  The letters came pouring in, and notes on marriage and children would compromise only a few sentences.  Ray was a man bent on changing the world.   He was a veritable Patton because of his enthusiastic discussion of warfare.
I wanted to know where Wong Cho got the idea for the book-- what the process of writing was for him, who his influences were.  I already knew the answers to most of the questions.  He would tell me each writer’s habits are different and then he would expound on why his novel came into being through his experiences in life.  At least I thought I knew all the answers.
When I went to sleep that night I had a smile on my face.  All I could think about was his response.  It excited me in many ways.  I was witness to a writer who was trying to break the basic mainstream novel mold and create something new out of the fragments.  I had to trick myself into going to sleep.   I simply made it known that I had a lot on my plate for the next day.  I would have to send the letter, do other chores, but the letter was supreme in my mind.  
I hadn’t dreamt in ages, nevertheless I had a dream to remember.
It was her again, the redheaded beauty with the thin lips, long legs, and ocean eyes.  She had never spoken to me before. She hadn’t even looked at me. She simply stared away from me.   “If I take off my clothes, will you ask Cho the right question?”  I tried to speak but my mouth wouldn’t move.  She slowly pulled her skirt down and then stopped.  “You can nod,” she said.  I did, and she kept sliding the skirt down her legs.  “Now,” she said to me, “here is what I want you to ask that writer.”
My eyes opened.  I awakened, but why?  My dad was standing at the door to my room and had his finger next to the light switch.
“You awake?”  he said.
“Yes.”
“What the hell were you dreaming? I could here you talking from in my room.”
“Just a weird dream, Dad.”
 I laid back down and tried to get to sleep.  What was she going to tell me? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Eventually I fell asleep again, but there wasn’t a dream to go along with it.
I typed up the letter that morning.  Later I would wonder why my confidence stayed with me through the typing of it.  I put the letter into my pocket and walked to the mailbox and sent it off.  I didn’t tell anyone about the letter.  It was a personal issue for me.   This wasn’t new, from the time I was born I was trying to be discreet about my actions, always trying to keep my intentions and goals secrets.
Time passed.  Days turned into weeks, and my doubts grew with every passing moment.  I knew I had to do other things to occupy my mind or I would end up back at the hospital, or end up in that gutter again.  I decided to continue with my reviews of comic books.  I was gathering quite a collection of them and knew this endeavor had led to my reading of Wong Cho’s book.
Before I could make a decision on what book to read next the mail came, and with it a reply from Wong Cho.  My hands began to shake when I grasped the letter.  Running my fingers over the hand-written addresses on the envelope, the thoughts began to race through my head.  He sent a basic reply, I thought to myself, a standard reply sent to all letters.  When I opened the letter I was surprised to find it was hand written—certainly not a standard response—and the ink had dripped onto the sides of the pages.  I quickly read it.

The serenity in your words brought a smile to my face, and joy to my heart.  I have yet to get such a letter on my novel; some like it and some don’t.  Some give reasons why they hated The General’s Letters, some say it had potential, but no one has ever written me saying it changed their life.
I am sorry but life on the farm doesn’t provide me enough time to write you a long letter, yet I will do my best to answer your questions.
I only wrote one book because I only had one in me, and life here in the country, while suited to writing, is just more enjoyable to walk and observe than to corner myself somewhere and slave away on a story.
If you want to be a writer remember that the draftsman’s trade is one full of obstacles, pain, and rejection.  And once you think your past all that, new problems come.
You said you were thinking of writing a memoir. I think your troubles with drugs may sell a few books, but memoirs are overrated junk.  Write a novel.  And if at the end of it you no longer have the will to write then put up the pen and find yourself a day-job.  
But remember: All hope is lost by those who don’t even try.  I bid you a good day, and a happy life.

And that was it.

Now, as I reflect on the letter, it seems trivial.  But it changed my life and put a smile on my face for weeks.  I was upset that Wong Cho had given up on his writing.  I would never stop, even if none of my comic reviews were never published.
I went to bed that night with the redheaded girl and Wong Cho’s letter on my mind.  It was an odd mix, as I had learned to find the girl amusing, no matter how sexy she was, and in turn Wong Cho was deadly serious.
The dreams came and it was the girl again.  She had her skirt down to her legs, and her eyes were staring at something far away.  She was already talking, like I had missed part of my own drown.  “—and that’s why I think Cho was right, write something fun, forget the memoir, and forget the drugs.”
She looked at me with appraising eyes.  
“Now … where were we?”  



 

Gideons Sphere, by Jacob Malewitz

Gideon’ Sphere
By Jacob Malewitz
2nd draft 5/4/07
Joshua Bryant 2,000

“Gideon,” he looked perplexed, “that’s my name.”
“Gideon,” he looked confident, being a shadow this could be called odd,“that’s my name, too.”
“You don’t look like you belong here.”
“I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Are you dead?”
“Time is fleeting.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Yes, it does.”
Gideon was the only person in the room with a shadow, an archaic thing, confusing for those unfamiliar with the process involved in a man’s own shadow speaking. Gideon’s shadow had evolved into something less benign.
The place was full of people, just standing in a circle, there eyes all white, no hints of any other color.  They had a blackness of the soul that would make one sick if they looked close enough
But no shadows beamed to the sides of them, no clues as to whether they had a soul. Is the shadow a gateway into the mind? Or just a web of lies like anything else considered important?
“I feel to good to let some voice push me over the edge.” Gideon did feel good, even with the end in sight. He had led a life of being dead on his feet, and now he really was the last of the living for miles. He preferred chaos to the understanding that most people had about living.
He recalled that he had the damn shadow.  Who heard of shadows addressing someone like they were a real person? He hated talking to himself; yet he did it anyways. Talking to his shadow bordered on lunacy; if he had been in the real world it wouldn’t have been a problem. Did shadows have real minds? Could they be evil? Were girls attracted to them? Were they republicans?
The kiss of the girl on Gideon’s cheek sent a rush through his body, like first understanding a poem that had left one confused for too long.  He saw her eyes. The face was fine, beautiful really, but he understood, at that moment, this wasn’t the same girl he had seen jogging on the streets of the city at night and gotten a hard on over. There was nothing there, the eyes were like looking into a can of white paint: Gideon saw no signs of life.
He felt like throwing up right there. A possessed person had kissed him; this was almost as bad as talking to his shadow, and acting like it was real, and hoping against hope it wouldn’t disappear. The girl was far to pretty to just throw up in front of her, even if her mind was gone, she still had  a body too balanced not to be stared at. He was aroused by the fact she was being controlled, but it sickened him, thinking of this girl as no different from his mother and his sister, and sex was all that he wanted.
And he could almost sense the sphere moving inside of her. It left her body, and it tried to enter his. He got the fist real glimpse of it, like something out of a movie, a small, black sphere object, with a power so strong, that he had to look away.
He heard a scream as the girl fell over – but it wasn’t the girl screaming – and he jumped back knowing he was no hero, he wouldn’t save anyone no matter what went wrong. Why didn’t the sphere take him like it did everything else? The scream had come from his shadow – the being who had the same name – it had forced the sphere back like a lion over its kill. He liked being fought over, but wasn’t sure this was the right moment for ego; he had done nothing but be the subject of possession. Still, he was curious as to why his shadow screamed.
He adjusted looking at the black spheres moving in and out of the people.  No one knew where the Spheres came from, but his shadow had given hints. He thought, again, that he was the only one with a shadow.
“This is weird.”
“Wrong,” Gideon’s shadow replied showing pain,  “it’s a hunt for those with the will to move on. Care If I explain?”
“Yes.”
“The spheres jump in out and out of bodies – you know that – just as easily as I become your shadow. The thing is, the Spheres have always been there. It’s like an extra toe on a cat, or sprinting past someone when you haven’t run in ages. You didn’t know you had it; but you always did.”
“What if its something sexual, an extra—“
“You make fun. I have the power to end you – and you make fun.”
“You’re too serious. I am here to have fun, and I don’t think a shadow is supposed to kill the person it depends on for survival. And why did it enter me if I already had one?”
“You never had one, that’s why you have me.”
Gideon looked back, realized the conversation with his shadow was about as formal as a dog barking at a cat, so he began to walk, the shadow in hot pursuit. He hated that part, was too young to realize he was doomed to have this shadow following him around forever. He understood few situations these days. The best he could do was play along, act like he understood, try not to ask to many questions.
“Why not believe? Why not? You believe in me.”
“It just isn’t some massive conspiracy. My mind, and I know this, isn’t reliable enough. And what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to care.”
There was the road, inconsequential except that, with the Spheres around, Gideon didn’t think he would last long. He had a strategy behind this. He was sweating hard and, as the moisture began to feel annoying, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was on the right road. He wanted to go as far away as possible; he had to escape the boring shadow explaining the mathematics of the Spheres to him.
He hadn’t realized that, behind him, the entire white-eyed group who he had been staring at before, were all following him. If he had looked, he would have seen them marching in unison, the black spheres moving in and out of them, not making any noise, and the beautiful girl leading them.
“Is any of it real? I feel so outside of myself.”
“Do you like mathematics, because we could just go in circles. There are no places anymore, Gideon. Have you ever seen Cube?”
“There are no movies you stupid fucking shadow! Why would I want to watch another stupid movie when everyone is going crazy, the whole town is full of mindless drones, and you bring up a movie.”
“It’s just that –“
Gideon kicked at his shadow, began pounding the ground beneath him, as though he were digging, and the deeper he went into it, the closer the group behind him came. He didn’t really notice that; didn’t really care. He intended to destroy something, so he began throwing dirt, and pounding at the shadow, until his fists were bloodied, his cotton shirt covered in filth.
He noticed. And he liked the fact they were closing on him; and he liked that they were going to take him.
“Ready! Take me to your leader.”
The spheres burst out of their bodies; they all shot towards him.
“You know,” Gideon’s shadow said, “that would have made most other people’s day, but didn’t quite fit with mine.”
“I think a shot is the answer to all my problems.” He was staring at the Black Spheres as they closed in on him, and he thought of his father, and his mother. Where were they in all this? Life just wasn’t what it used to be.
The spheres surrounded him, reflecting what little light the sun was still giving up. “Take me. I don’t really care.” He pulled out a small canteen, took a shot, fumbled in his pockets for cigarettes, and remembered he only smoked fifteen times a day.
“It’s like I told you, they cannot, but it won’t stop them from trying.”
“Well what the fuck is the point then Peter Pan? Where the hell did they come from?”
“Every question you ask is repeated several minutes later.”
“I still think,” Gideon said in the darkest of voices, “that if I end you they will end me.”
“We all have hopes,” the shadow responded.
Gideon shook his head, traveled through hills, small, empty villages. There was no denying his end was in sight; but how? Ever since he’d moved to this small town he had been enveloped by pain, by the technology. His shadow played a small part, seemingly growing stronger as he isolated more. His color drained from him; the shadow grew stronger.
As he walked, he tried to remember the points where he was having fun. Tried to decipher how he had gotten there; tried to repeat the process that had once made him happy. The possessed people continued to stay with him, and he continued to relent the anger on his shadow, and the spheres tried to enter his body, as they were checking to see if he could be possessed.
He acted upon his depression, even going so far as to ask his shadow to tell him about Cube. He had the tears in his eyes by that point, as though he was ten again. He wanted to pull out a glass, put ice cube in it, and down a screwdriver.
We all have dreams of a sort. Gideon dreamt of the end.
“Gideon,” he said out loud, “that’s my name.”
“I always knew your name.”
“Yet you decided to use my name. Why?”
“That’s what shadows do: steal.”
“Tell me a story. Tell me what I can do to end this curse upon the people. Is it aliens? Monsters? Republicans?”
“It comes from happiness, absorbing pain, watching and not living, questioning everything. It comes from our souls. I already explained this to you. Will you ever remember my answers? You will need them.”
“Will I ever understand?”
“Yes.”
#
Gideon once read in a comic book that all life was judged, naked to the world, in front of time. He read the comic ten times and never understood why the author had decided a comic was the place for such a story.
It led to his shadow. Something he didn’t understand. He rarely spoke to Gideon, as though he didn’t need to, as though he were already dead. He came up with his own story, bored, and decided upon giving the shadow his very own name. Once he trusted him, warmed up to Gideon, he could possibly tell him more about what this place was. He remembered no death, and death, he remembered, wasn’t always the end anyways.
He couldn’t pinpoint God in all of it, though something was behind the Spheres. Could it be God?
By the time he reached a church on the road, he saw the sky turning black, and his shadow weakening, in pain to try and stay with him. He shook his head, wishing the process would speed up. The shadow continued to press on, no doubt fulfilling its intentions of breaking him in for upcoming pain.
By night, as he sat on the church stairs (the door was locked) he began to remember many other points upon that, when in danger, he had asked for help. There were plenty of empty cars in the parking lot, even some convertibles, but the doors were all locked. Figuring no one in this town would need a corvette, he smashed a window in, more as an act of anger than desire, and jumped into the car. He remembered he was never good at stealing, even with all the talents of his shadow, and couldn’t quite make out much in the dark. He needed a flashlight to hotwire it and, being lazy, decided to break into the church instead. There would be light there, a chance for his shadow to lecture him on the Spheres again.
It wasn’t until he had lost the shadow, that he realized the shadow was like the girl with the empty eyes who had kissed him on the lips in that he both hated the idea of it, but felt alone without it.
“Needing something?”
Right on queue, the church light had been lit, and his shadow had returned. Where had this light come from? Whose voice was that? Before he could ponder some more, a door opened, and he heard a whisper telling him to hurry. He looked back, saw the damned people, the walking dead, and began to pace himself towards the church. His shadow tailed him the whole way and, if it could smile, that was what it was doing.
“Do you understand yet why they have changed?”
“I understand nothing.”
“Who are you talking to?” The priest whispered. “Are there more of you out there? Damned glasses couldn’t catch a dinosaur in broad daylight.”
“I am sorry, I’ve been cooped up to long, I tend to hold conversations with myself a lot.”
“We all do what we have to. I talk to myself when I’m not talking to God.”
Gideon felt a hand on his shoulder.
He jumped. It was her again. The sphere was outside of her now. Her eyes wide. Mouth pulling in air. She was no longer controlled by the sphere. He noted that her bangs had turned white.  She was shaking.
“What is happening? Why was I following you? I can’t—“ The Sphere entered her body again, and Gideon began to run. He went inside, past the priest, straight to the bathroom to throw up. He heard the door to the church lock, and looked back from the bathroom, through the door, to see the glint of a weapon touching against the white of the priest’s collar.
“I didn’t think priests would have weapons.”
“And I haven’t seen another person who talks to himself in years. Things change.”
“But they’re being controlled. We can’t just kill all of them.”
“You must.” The shadow, shooting past the holy water at the front of the church, had grown strong again in the dim lighting of the church.
“Your shadow. It speaks!”
“It’s been like that since the Spheres have come. I used to talk to it, but it never responded before today.”
Gideon pulled out his canteen, watched the eyes of the priest as he took a gulp, and handed it to him. “My last vice,” the priest said, eyeing the liquor, I gave up cigarettes.”
“I’m down to fifteen-a-day.”

#
“See, what I think is the spheres came from another planet. Like something out of the 50s movies, and, instead of taking us out, it just takes us. I don’t think there is a plan, other than chaos, behind any of it.”
“Yet they control just about everything,” Gideon replied. “Why follow me? Why was I led here? It’s as if they have some plan.” Gideon looked out a crack in the boarded up windows, a feature he liked about the fort/church, and saw her standing, surrounded by men, in the garden out back.
“Have they killed anyone?”
“No.”
Gideon’s shadow returned. “Yes, they have. Animals. Animals are disappearing.”
“I’m not about to listen to a talking shadow.”
If the shadow had eyes, Gideon presumed he would be looking at the priest in a less than pleasant way.
“Are you one of those priests who believe in God?”
“Hmm, seem to have touched a nerve. I don’t talk to mad constructs.”
“I have a plan.”
“Speak.”
“I am listening,” the shadow said, Gideon still unsure if it could read his thoughts.
He told them, the priest shaking his head from the outset, the shadow not saying a single word. “So if we take her out of the equation,” Gideon said towards the end, “and figure out what these things are, we just might be able to slow them.”
Gideon had been right about a few things. The Black Spheres were centralized around the girl who had touched him, as though they had a leader, something that was the eyes and ears, while the others were helpless drones.
As power is at the center of everything, Gideon had thought he could beat the Spheres. Had they spread across the world? Was this is minor occurrence? Gideon wasn’t sure. Really didn’t care either. He sought an escape for one person, and if he found out the shadow was dead, and the priest died after shooting off his gun, then so be it. He had to act cold in life; warmth wasn’t a luxury, life not a quest, it was all reality.
He walked to her. She just stood, the eyes as white as the moon, cutting holes in his chest. He noticed more about her this time: the white hair matched the eyes, the hands were clenched (she was ready to fight) while the others were the drones. Did these things think? Could they decipher what he was about to do?
He closed in. Heard it. Saw it. The movement behind him was what came first, and he wasn’t’ sure how he sensed this, and why his shadow was all of a sudden gone. He turned in time to see the gun flash, to hear the priest yell out, and see a flood of Spheres head towards the man who spoke with God. It would have been a fitting ending for Gideon, for he was never on top of things, had no faith, no reason, really, to move forward in life.
But the flashes of red came next. A new flood came: Red Spheres began storming down from the skies, intercepting the Black Spheres before they reached the armed priest, who was letting off shots and screaming proverbs as they came at him.
“You were going to kill me.”
Gideon  really couldn’t believe his eyes – it was the girl’s shadow. “I can’t control it, but I held it off when I could. And you were going to kill me.”
“How do you know that? Are you sure? I intended to attack the beast within you, but I’m no hero, if it came to your death so be it.”
“Gideon.” The lights had all ceased, and the priest was talking to him, and he wasn’t sure why he was still alive. Part of him worried about his shadow, another about the girl with a gun to his head. “Gideon there all gone!”
He analyzed her shadow, saw a game had been played on him.
“I really wasn’t going to kill you. I give you my word.” The shadow looked at him, he felt the pain in his arm, something fighting to be released inside him.
He felt his shadow return, the smirk on its face, as the sun began to call out again, and he thought that, maybe, he could hear some birds chirping. All good signs.
“I doubt we will ever understand.”
“Your plan was a disaster.”
“It was a sound plan.”
“It would have never worked. Cut off the head and three more …”
He looked up, could have sworn he saw something moving in the clouds. He wasn’t sure what the Spheres all meant, why some had attacked others, like a big mistake had been made. He saw that the others were all passed out.
“I’m done.” One would think Gideon would have had something better to say. “I’m not one to change, never was, really.”
“It was a happy ending, Gideon.” The priest moved towards him. “Son, I think change will come.”
If there was an ending, it could be found in the way he began to march down the road, trying, as always, to outdistance his shadow.