Inside the Shadow

Chapter ten: Intertwined Within My Mind-POV: Mairi

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      "Why won't you just leave me alone?" I shouted at the shadow mass with red eyes that seemed to have followed me home somehow as if it were attached to me. "You know why, Mairi Ida Noble, we can get our desired outcome the easy way where you cooperate or we can do it our way, but either option brings us what we want." I did know what they meant; at the bare minimum, they wanted me. Still staring into the figure's fiery red pits for eyes my anger began to form from having been forced to end my call with Erin so abruptly. Preparing myself to tell this form to back off, as if I could have possibly controlled such a creature, I took a breath and closed my eyes, readying a scream. As I opened my eyes again, I let out a shriek as the way the mass had so easily vanished startled me. It was as if a genie was being sent back into its bottle but in this case, there was no bottle, and that was most definitely not a genie.

      The whole experience I encountered felt so unreal to me and not just because I wanted it to be fake or for it to really all be in my own mind, but I knew that it was very evidently for real. Instead of trying to remake contact with Erin, I decided to get my mom to come help me down the hall so I could use the restroom. She came in quickly after hearing me calling for her, and she supported me as we got my body lifted into my wheelchair. I then rolled myself down the hall to the first door, it already opened, and entered relieved that our doorways were all so wide. In an awkward silence, my mom helped me get onto the toilet and prepared to leave so I could do my business more privately. After I had finished, I called her back in and she continued to fix me up and help transfer me back into my chair.

     "Thanks Mom. You know, I'm grateful for you and Dad." I uttered as I began to roll over to the sink to wash my hands. "Min, you're the reason we are even able to be called parents, you should know that we want you to be able to do anything you set your mind to. This is but merely a setback and even if you do end up in this state permanently, I know you will do great things." What she had responded with surprised me as well as filled me with courage, injured or not I was still strong and eager to live my life. "You're the best, mom. I love you." I stated. "I love you too dear." She replied as she stood in front of me and bent down for a hug right as we were entering the hall. We both made our way back to the Livingroom and she decided to turn on the T.V. and sat down on the couch to watch something. I chose to take this moment to attempt to bring up the darkness, the living shadows that I've had to endure ever since I awoke in that alarming hospital.

      "Hey, mom?" I muttered, grabbing her attention. "Yea Min?" She responded still extremely tuned into her show. "Have you been noticing anything strange lately? Like since before we even left the hospital?" I questioned her as the shadow creatures still seemed to be with me, as if they had, in a way, become intertwined within my mind. "Like what dear? Are you feeling alright?" She spoke, turning towards me now giving me her utmost attention, now completely ignoring the show on the screen 'Jane the Virgin'. "Well to be blunt, I felt like there was something here that followed me from the hospital." I stammered now, being face-to-face with my mom as I examined her expression and her reaction to what I had just mentioned. Her eyebrows were now furrowed in an almost judgmental or quizzical way.

      "Something followed you? I don't think I understand what you mean. What followed you? I haven't seen anything." My mom voiced, her now appearing anxious, her reaction probably came from fear we felt as she had heard some of what Erin and I had discussed earlier. About how he had been targeted as well as successfully kidnapped probably made her wonder if what I had just mentioned was me seeing a man following us, however, what I had encountered was from a whole other realm entirely. "Well..." I paused as I tried to choose a statement that would be most blunt, "It is almost like I am being constantly surrounded by several dark presences here, and I am afraid that they mean to control me." As those words rolled off my tongue and into my mom's ears, I realized how truly crazy what I had just claimed sounded aloud.