Ever wondered what lurks in the shadows? - I have.
My earliest memories were of shadows—how they lived all around us, lurking there, sometimes threatening. I also never understood why a shadow followed me, and when I looked into the darkened corners, I sensed both trepidation and movement. They haunted me.
I didn’t understand it, and I certainly didn’t like it!
As a little girl, when I asked my daddy to explain, he told me that what sprouted from my feet was nothing more than my silhouette, and it was a shadow that would be with me for the rest of my life. He insisted that I needed to get used to it, as it was going to be my lifelong partner—two words that sent a cold shiver of fear through my core; my body's shadow scared me.
That anxiety stayed with me as I grew up. At night, when I went to sleep, I always had this foreboding that something was watching me from the shadows. I used to ask my dad if monsters were hiding in the cupboards, behind the curtain, or under the bed. He told me with a chuckle that he never found any, but I wasn’t so sure.
I sensed that monsters were there.
He would softly say, “Emma, my princess, there is nothing there but darkness.” He would then ask me if I would like the side light left on.
I always said no while thinking—there are no shadows when it is pitch black.
When I grew up, it was just my dad and me, my mum having passed when I was just a baby. We didn’t know exactly what happened; just one morning, my mother was found on the floor by the side of the bed. I sometimes wondered if the shadows had taken her away, though I never mentioned this to my dad as I didn’t want to sound foolish.
So there we were, Dad and me, with him growing older and me just plain growing up. While I deeply regretted not having a mother, I didn’t miss her. My mum’s passing had happened before I could gather any memories of her.
However, I felt her spirit living inside me, nestled deep within my core, and there was something else—another reminder, a large black-and-white photograph of her hanging above the study fireplace. I only needed to look at it and then into my bedroom mirror to know I looked like her, with my athletic body, brown eyes, and long auburn hair.
As the years ticked by, I looked more like my mother. It was something my father would often comment on. Then, at sixteen, I had gained the ultimate recognition that I was approaching adulthood; my dad fitted a lock on my bedroom door. It gave me complete privacy.
Yet, despite being older and wiser, I was still scared of those shadows. Sometimes I would wake up and scream out in the middle of the night. It was when the moonlight would creep around my blackout curtains and cast a shadow that my overly creative mind thought it was a monster.
Then, a few weeks ago, I turned eighteen and officially became an adult. Yet, I still have those haunting moments when shadows seemed to creep close to me. I felt like I was being watched. That is especially true at night, with the curtains closed and me getting ready for bed, the light briefly on, and my shadow cast against the wall, moving with me. Yet, sometimes its very presence gave me the strange feeling that it had a life all of its own.
Today, I am an adult, in college, and have discovered sex. Well, I discovered that two years ago. I have a steady boyfriend, Jake. However, despite my frequent asking, I am not allowed for him to sleep over. My father told me that my mother wouldn’t have liked it, though, I have never asked why, as it was hard to argue with a memory and a ghost.
So there is my sorry little life rolled up into a nutshell—nothing special, but how was I to know that my whole view of the world was about to change?
*****
“Dad, you are looking smart,” I teased. I knew he was going on a date. It was something he had recently started doing but, so far, had forgotten to tell me.
“Well, yes, quite,” he mumbled, a little anxiously.
I smiled, thinking that when you were in your late forties, it must be hard to get back on the dating scene.
“I won’t wait up for you,” I joked as he went out of the front door, muttering to himself.
Genuinely, I was pleased for him; he needed his own life. I had told him that now that I had turned eighteen, I had no plans to hang around here; my next stop was going to be university and then the real world.
But with the house now quiet and darkness having already fallen outside, I found myself once again left on my own with those shadows. I sat there, watching television, the light of the screen causing the shadows to flicker. It seemed to me they were slowly creeping up on me, and that gave me the scary feeling that they would end up surrounding me.
It didn’t take me long to turn the television off and retire to the relative safety of my bedroom. Once inside, I locked the door and then sought comfort in my mobile phone—with just the light of its screen in the room, there were no shadows.
But I soon got bored after hitting my social media accounts and messaging my friends. The trouble was that I was restless and, above all, horny. I messaged Jake, hoping he could come over, but there was no answer.
However, I had a failsafe backup plan: watch porn and masturbate.
It was not long before my hand was between my legs, just gently probing away. With the house to myself, I wanted to enjoy this and ride a wave of masturbatory pleasure. Turning to LushStories, I looked for my favourite author, Wxt55uk, and started to read his latest erotic story.
As I took in his words, my fingers slipped into my knickers and passed through my curls, my body looking for sexual relief. But before my digits got to work, I realised that I needed to get comfortable by getting naked and using the bathroom. Then I could spend the rest of the night masturbating.
With my ears tracking for any noise, I scanned the darkness. Everything seemed quiet, even peaceful. I was satisfied that I was on my own and that nothing from the night would jump out and eat me.
So, with a deep breath, I turned on my side light, stripped naked, and used my ensuite bathroom. It was only on my return that I noticed something different with my lifelong friend: the shadow on the bedroom wall—it now had yellow eyes!
I tried to scream, but the only air and noise that came out of me was in the shape of a loud and smelly FART—for the first time in my life, not one decibel came out of my mouth.
I retreated, both horrified at my body’s reaction and what was looking at me—the shadow on the wall. My only defence was to jump back into bed and use my duvet as my protective shield.
There, frightened, I peeked over my cover and saw something surreal—a black shadow chuckling and wafting an arm as it tried to dispense the smell I had created.
Suddenly, the image before me didn’t seem so scary at all.
“What’s your name?” I uncertainly asked, thinking this was weird, speaking to a shadow, and expecting it to answer in English.
With a final waft of what now looked like a hand, the shadow rose, and as it did so, it continued to take on a more humanoid form. Its eyes turned grey, black pupils appeared, and a human-like mouth formed as the shadow monster continued to evolve. It was turning into a solid human shape.
Once again, I began to feel afraid, and I pulled the duvet around me; it was my only protection. Sitting there, I didn’t know whether to scream, hide, or turn the light off. In the end, I opted just to stare.
The room was silent, and there was tension in the air. I felt scared, and once again, my bottom wanted to speak. Then the black shadow monster opened its human-looking mouth, and a single word squeaked out of it.
“Bruce.”
Then once again, nothing but silence, the shadow monster having morphed into something that looked like a naked black man, his genitalia hanging down between his legs.
“Bruce,” it said once again in the same, high, squeaky voice that resembled something that might have come out of a mouse.
I couldn’t help it—that voice, the tension they seemed to have dissipated, and I felt an approaching giggle.
“Bruce?” I questioned as my giggle escaped from my mouth. “There are no monsters outside Disney that are called Bruce!”
I continued to watch, my eyes still peeping over my duvet, trying to judge the shadow's reaction. Only his eyes were different, apart from them, he now looked like a naked, fully three-dimensional black man.
“The name I was given is Bruuuuzzeellcleva,” he then squeaked. Then, almost surprisingly, he repeated the unpronounceable name in a much deeper man’s voice: “BRUUUUZZEELLCLEVA.”
The change in voice tone made me realise that he was still adapting to this new body shape and, perhaps strangely, that he wasn’t there to harm me—that this thing was part of me.
“Bruce it is,” I said, as there was no way I wanted to attempt whatever that other name was.
“Why are you here?”
“I am here to protect you; it was your mother’s idea.”
That threw me. So I quickly counted, “My mother’s dead. So, what are you, male or female, or something else?” Part of me was beginning to wonder if I was just imagining this.
Bruce explained that he was technically a shadow monster, though he preferred to be called a shadow creature as he didn’t like scaring people. He explained that when my mother died, she had called out into the shadows and made a request for her daughter to be protected.
Somewhat unusually, her cry was heard and because of your age, our leader showed sympathy. I was delegated to protect you. Though your father doesn’t know, I have been with you since that very day.
