Optimistically Cynical: A Short Story Compilation- 1

SHADOW

I am a shadow, though I have not attained any official title as such. The one case being that the names been taken and the other no ones known me long enough to attach such a name. Therefore, I am called shadow only by myself and never aloud.

My reason for doing so is that I take on many a guise, many a strong, living real person that all would swear up and down existed, then melt away never to be seen again. I know it's a stupid idea giving myself such a name, but it's my hubris that makes me do so.

I'm not a criminal, or spy, or agent, or anything of that nature. The closest occupation to my line of work would be self employed detective. I am never paid for my work by any monetary means but rather, that which could not be accounted for. I refer to food, lodging and favors.

I guess you could associate my fancy with my late father. He was an actor, no real name just a bunch of no where productions, but he was a much better at his craft than anyone ever knew. He never liked the roles he played but he did so anyway. He preferred total freedom in his acting, to start as one person and end as a completely different one altogether.

It was a kind of game that he played over and over again with no one other than myself. I never knew my mother as she died shortly after my birth. I know not from what as my father did not either. He prized himself on lying to everyone and anyone he could, but not to me. He was straight and forward with me ever since I could understand the words he spoke.

He delved in frivolities of all sorts and never once lived his life as the man he really was. That's how he met my mother and many other women just like her, by pretending to be someone else. He admitted to me that the he thought at first to ditch her and the responsibility of my birth, but he didn't. He couldn't explain to me why as he himself did not know and that's why he trusted it.

Up to that moment, his whole life, he had lived through a series of calculated responses but not this one. He didn't shed a tear over my mothers death as I was the sole reason he stuck around. And I don't know myself, how I felt about him, since from the moment I could walk I was taught to feel all kinds of emotions without ever truly feeling them.

He taught me the three things that are necessary for such a lifestyle, a quick hand, an alert eye and a sharp mind. But I've digressed far too much.

Today I am Mortimer Clinsoft a simple meat packer, one of hundreds. Living in a simple apartment on the east side and a runaway from a lawyer hounding him for child support. I usually use a cover with their own cover to start with, it makes others believe they can trust someone who has a dark past.

I've been working this particular persona for a few weeks now. First, because I need a little money to live off of but secondly and most importantly, because there's a small drug ring being run out of it. A simple, operation that's mostly a way point and it runs all the way to the boss.

But drugs are not the reason for my involvement, I'm most concerned with the boy whose life was ended by one of their delivery trucks that was driving way too fast.

I happened to be in the neighborhood just walking around to a small gig I was working, nothing noteworthy. However, his death would have meant nothing more to me had it not been for the sacrifice of his last act.

A little girl, I assume his sister, was crossing the street slowly, when this truck came tearing down the road. He shouted her name, Abigail, as he bolted and pushed her out of the way of the speeding projectile. The truck didn't slow at all and his body flew forward and would have hit him a second time had the angle not been one that threw him to the side of the road.

I saw it all as I came walking from the other direction and couldn't but admire it, at least that's what I believe it to have been. I have used emotions to keep myself safe as the situation demanded, but never have they propelled me into harms way. Still, I digress.