Altered Light

The Oddities Of Oneself

They always said that it was a mystery what it was, those odd occurrences of biology, I thought as I looked at my delicate hands and the glass-like gem cutting through the palms. I had been taught it was simply a defect of the bones, yet the way it caught the light and the ethereality of them always left me wondering otherwise.

I held my hands to the moon, and a faint golden beam echoed through the yellow gem, casting light into my weary eyes. I let my hands drop to my sides and looked through the city, towering city blocks standing confident under a sky full of stars. I aspired to be that stable, that sure, yet nothing ever came of it.

As I breathed in the cool breeze in the summer air I slipped my gloves back on and resigned to sleep, strolling through the glass door and into my room. Sliding the door closed, turning the lock, from outside I heard a crash that seemed to resound through my bones.

Cautiously, I stepped back onto the balcony and peered down the streets and alleys, seeing nothing. Then I saw a street light go out, all light gone as if absorbed into a black hole. Nothing but a wiring error, I decided, until another light blinked out, and I saw a dark shape briefly emerge from the black.

As fast as it had shown, it had hidden.

And then lights shattered.

Faster and faster each time.

Rushing towards where I stood, a creeping dark fog blazing a trail of shadow through the streets.

In a haze of panic, I slammed the glass door and locked it, running to the other side of the room as a wave of darkness smashed into it and every light-bulb exploded, floor showered in shards of glass, though this unbeknownst to me as darkness spread.

Then I blinked and it all seemed to become undone; my room doused in light, the streets outside no longer shrouded in darkness.

That was the first of the nightmares. Though I guess it wasn't the first time I ever saw the figure. I had seen a shadow watching from a distance before many a time, memories hidden deep until I saw it again.

Whether these were real would remain unknown to me for a very long time.

In many nights after that, I had seen the dark figure. Sometimes it was standing on the balcony, entirely still, other times it stood in front of my bed as I froze in sleep paralysis.

I saw it in the corners of my eyes wandering the streets at night, tired from the sleepless nights it caused.
Was it real? I would wonder to myself, a question soon to be answered but never soon enough.

Then change began.

The nightmares stopped. Yet this was somehow more unsettling to me than the nightmares had ever been.

It was as if it was a pause of calm, forewarning a storm.

And indeed it was.