I was twelve when I first saw them.

Shadows moved when I wasn’t looking at them and stood still when I was. I could never get them to line up with a light source; I saw shadows at noon and shadows at midnight. They wouldn’t leave me alone, but they never did anything either.

At first, I tried talking to them. Well, that’s not true; at first, I tried crying at them. It produced no reaction, but neither did the words I tried later on. Eventually, I stopped talking to them; they never answered, and it made everyone else look at me weird. I started to notice I didn’t have any friends, so I got into the habit of saying nothing and staying still in the hopes that someone would play with me.

It didn’t work.

My reputation had already been ruined; I was the weird kid that talked to nothing and hung around in dark rooms, and nobody would play with me at recess. But that was alright, because I had found a way to talk to the shadows and they were much more interesting than any of the kids around. Some of them were mean, or liars, but some of them were nice and told me things, and I quickly figured out how to tell them apart. The nice ones would lead me into empty places and show me stories of the world they knew, which usually was a cold and empty place. But that was fine, because I didn’t get cold easily, and the stories were fascinating.

As I got older, I found it easier and easier to talk to the shadows. Not with words, of course; shadows can’t speak, but in other ways. A movement of the finger or head, a twist of an ankle; it has to be a big movement, or they won’t pick up on it; they’re not used to reading expressions. So, I stopped being the weird kid that talked to nothing and became the weird kid that never spoke or changed expressions; not that I knew it, of course. I stopped paying attention to the other kids years ago.

The shadows knew more, they were more interesting, and they had more to tell than the idle gossiping of high school dramas. Forgotten secrets told in empty theatres long ago; used up tears in a doctor’s old office; the shadows knew things and I wanted to learn.

I wanted to learn a little too much, maybe. I didn’t realize it, but spending so long in the empty places with the shadows makes you feel uncomfortable elsewhere, and growing used to moving only when nothing is looking at you makes you forget you don’t have to; it started to feel unnatural to speak, abnormal to move my face, and unusual to be in other people’s company. I stopped doing those things before I realized I had, and now it’s been years since I’ve spoken to a human. I guess the reason the shadows wanted to show me things is because it’s a little lonely to remember echoes of what you used to be and where you used to live.

I guess I’m a little lonely too.