A Visit From His Shadow

One day, there came a knock on the door.
    This was surprising in itself because no one had come to visit me in upwards of seven years. After overcoming the initial shock, I opened the door to my little flat. The person on the other side was not a person at all, but a shimmering outline of a person, a silhouette unsure of whether to dissolve into the light or stay itself in the shadows.
    The sight left me speechless, but the shadow didn’t need my words to push its way past me and sit on my large easy chair. Without even bothering to close the door, I sat down across from it on the couch. After a minute or two, its shoulders seemed to heave, as if sighing; I could almost feel the change of mood that always accompanies sighs. And then, quite easily and naturally, it spoke in an implacable, impossible voice that sounded like everyone’s and no one’s voice at the same time.
    “Well, this is the beginning,” it said, “the beginning of the end.”
    “W-w-what do you mean?” I stammered helplessly.
    It shook its flat, two-dimensional head and sighed again. Then it shook its head in a different manner, as if chuckling. “Really, can’t it mean only one thing?” it responded.
    The room seemed to stop, as if time decided to stop flowing for a while, on a whim. Good for it, I suppose, that even time itself can rest. I’m almost envious  of it, nowadays; that, and the ability to rest, to just stay in one spot for a moment and let everything sink in and try to make sense of the insanity about you. As the room froze I froze, and, perhaps, I did feel in myself a calmness, a relaxedness that can only be achieved with motionlessness-- and then the reality of the moment hit me once more.
    “What? What does it mean?”
    The shadow was sitting tall, erect, purposeful- almost like a puppet master of reality. Is it too much to say that I could feel a smile coming from its featureless face?
    “Few can differentiate light from darkness. Shadows mean less and less.”
    “What do you mean? I think everyone can tell light from dark.” Did I mean to say light from dark or good from evil…?
    Another chuckle, then the shadow continued, “That’s useless if you’re comparing the two, trying to make them the same thing. Compromise…” the shadow gathered itself up, as if this was its message, “only brings more and more problems.”
    When something happens to you which you have no explanation for, you try to forget about it, or write it off. Then you forget it. But these are the things which we have to remember, the things we have to hold onto for they are often the only things that have meaning, that are real- with all the nonsense that makes up the world today, the truly nonsensical is most likely the only thing that actually makes sense.
    This was how I felt after the shadow delivered its message and left my flat. Why me? I asked myself. What was the purpose of all of this?
    What is the purpose of all the bumps in the night, or the thought, temporarily supported, that there’s a monster in your closet? Who made up the belief in the supernatural- and the fear of it? Whose mysterious footprints are in the snow, and, more scarily, why? What hides in the shadows and disappears when it enters the light?
    I never saw the shadow again until I realized that the shadow was my own, and then I embraced it as a part of me.
    I realized that since we may never be able to answer all of those questions that need not be answered, we definitely should not be afraid of them.