“I am the world’s greatest magician bank robber. Watch as I fly through these bars on my magic smoke cape. Mumbo Jumbo!” Owen muttered to himself as he hung upside down on the monkey bars in the school’s playground before homeroom. It was a cold November morning, and every word Owen said transformed itself into a tiny cotton candy cloud.
The frosty steel bars bit the back of Owen’s knees through his jeans and his toes had already gone numb, but it was worth it. No first grader had ever gotten the monkey bars before school. On the bus, his best friend Leon told him it could never happen. Then Leon triple-dog-dared him to try, which felt significant. Owen couldn’t resist a triple. He nudged his way to the front of the school bus and as soon as the doors opened, he imagined he was being chased by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Owen ran so fast that he almost peed his pants.
For a few precious moments alone on the monkey bars, while Owen continued the ongoing adventures of The Amazing Dr. Snafu, he believed that anything was possible.
A happy story would end here.
Owen watched his elongated shadow intently as he swung back and forth on the bars, escaping his nebulous two-dimensional jail over and over again.
“After robbing the First and the Second National Bank you set a trap for me at the Third. You thought you had me all figured out. What you didn’t know is that I let you catch me. I wanted to show you that no cage could hold me and my laser gun!” Owen said in a whispered shout. He folded his hands into a shadow puppet gun and shot the hundreds of invisible policemen surrounding him with laser beams. Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Owen shot blindly in every direction he could pretzel himself into while hanging upside down until one carefree Pew! hit Marshmallow’s shadow.
Marshmallow’s real name—the name he raised his hand to when the teacher asked, Present?—was Marshall, but all the kids called him Marshmallow behind his back, and no one said anything to his face. Marshmallow was the biggest kid at school, a rough, doughy third grader with a perpetual expression of gastrointestinal distress. According to playground legend, Marshmallow was a cannibal who ate first graders for lunch. Kids in his class swore that the teachers never made him do homework because they were afraid of him. Other kids said that Marshmallow gave the teachers homework, and if they didn’t do it, he killed their children. Then there were the accusations of Marshmallow being the boogieman, Abracadaver, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Kraken, the Michelin Man. All this seemed unlikely to Owen, but not impossible. What was certainly true is that Marshmallow scared the pants off of Owen, and he had just pretended to shoot him.
Owen tried to be optimistic. Maybe Marshmallow didn’t notice? After all, Marshmallow was a few feet away looking towards the sandbox and only his shadow reached the monkey bars.
Owen quickly jumped down, landing on all fours, the way a dog would if it was pretending to be a cat. He grabbed his backpack by the base of the ladder where Leon was waiting for him with a look of absolute horror on his face.
“You shot Marshmallow!” Leon said in a hysterical whisper.
“No, I didn’t! Hiccup!” Owen said, dragging Leon to the playhouse at the far end of the playground.
Owen was confused. Why was he getting hiccups now? He only got them when he lied. Like last Halloween when Owen ate all the gummy bears out of Leon’s bucket and then told him that he didn’t get any either, Owen hiccupped for two days straight. He hiccupped in his sleep for that one.
“I can’t shoot anyone! Hiccup! I don’t have a gun!”
“You had a shadow gun. That’s super deadly to other shadows. Everyone knows that.”
Owen looked down in amazement at his hands, seeing them for the first time as dangerous weapons. He stuffed them deep into his pockets.
“This hiccup is stupid. Shadows aren’t alive.”
“Shadows are baby ghosts. When you die, then they grow up and turn white so they can haunt people and do ghost stuff.”
“Who told you that?”
“My brother told me. He knows, he’s ten.”
Double digits. This was very convincing to Owen. Ten-year-olds were practically adults without a driver’s license or facial hair. They knew things.
“Did I kill it?” Owen asked nervously.
Leon shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.
Leon and Owen gingerly peeked around the playhouse together, their heads totem poling, until they could see Marshmallow. Marshmallow had not seemed to register Owen’s attack on his life. And his shadow was still there. Which was a good sign. Or maybe not. Owen was not sure. His shadow looked distorted but the other kid’s shadows were similarly stringy.
“Hiccup. It’s not dead. I told you so!” Owen said smugly.
Marshmallow’s shadow didn’t look hurt to Owen, but he also didn’t know what he was looking for. He had seen people get shot in movies and video games. Cowboys limped, bank robbers fell flat on their backs and stuck their tongues out, monsters exploded or dissolved. But Owen didn’t know how to tell a dead shadow from a live one and that made him feel very stupid.
“It must be super angry at you for shooting at it,” Leon said anxiously.
Owen sat down on the rubberized mulch. He had never gotten in real trouble before. He was always in taking-candy-from-the-pantry-without-asking kind of trouble, not attempted murder trouble. What was going to happen now? Did the others know? Did Marshmallow know? Would he be thrown in jail or tortured or killed or worse?
Today, anything is possible.
The school bell rang, and it startled Owen so much that his hiccups suddenly stopped. He was relieved. He looked up to tell Leon, but Leon was already running towards the door with the other kids.
Owen dusted the mulch off his pants and watched as Marshmallow’s shadow oozed towards the door until it disappeared.
Owen waited until most of the kids and their shadows had gone inside before entering the building. He walked in a clunky, uneasy way, like his legs were freshly out of a cast. Owen was not normally careful about avoiding stepping on cracks, but he decided he should not take additional risks under the circumstances and avoided every one he could find.
Thankfully, the school was outfitted with bright lights and colorful walls. The shadows all stuck close to their owners. Owen didn’t see a single stray shadow wandering around the hallways. He became more confident with his steps.
Leon just wanted to scare me. What a jerk! I am definitely not inviting him to my birthday party now.
When Owen got to home room, he didn’t see his teacher, Mrs. Williams, behind her desk. He took his seat, and a few minutes later a substitute teacher arrived with an old TV set on a creaky metal cart. Mrs. Williams was sick, so they could watch a movie. The substitute was talking, but Owen didn’t hear her. As soon as she said there would be a movie, her voice became white noise. He had never watched a movie in the morning before.
Today, anything is possible.
Owen liked watching TV, even commercials. They were always singing or yelling, and there were usually flashing lights. He liked all of that.
The substitute closed the window blinds and turned off the lights. Now it was very dark. She pressed play on the TV and told everyone that they were going to watch The Sound of Music.
Then the substitute turned on a small lamp on her desk and started writing in a notebook. The lamp cast shadows on the wall. Owen could watch the shadow of the substitute’s pencil move across the whiteboard. He tried to concentrate on the movie: there was singing and pretty mountains, but the bouncing stick shadow kept catching his eye.
It’s just a pencil. Don’t panic.
He looked from the pencil to the wall to confirm that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the bouncing stick shadow.
Owen went back to watching the movie until suddenly in the middle of “Do-Re-Mi,” a huge shadow entered the lamp light.
Marshmallow!
Owen fell out of his chair and sprawled on the floor. The classroom burst into laughter.
“What’s going on?” The substitute teacher stood up and turned the lights on.
Owen looked up and saw then that the teacher had just opened the window to get some fresh air in. The shadow was just the window frame. He felt so small.
“Sorry I… I… I need to go to the bathroom,” Owen said, embarrassed. It was the only excuse he could think of for suddenly making a racket.
“Next time raise your hand please.” The substitute pointed to the door. Someone giggled then stopped.
Owen quickly got up and went to the bathroom across the hall. He locked the metal door to the stall. He needed to stop thinking about the shadow. It was only a window. He knew that now. He closed his eyes and imagined he was a spy on a top-secret mission to reveal the secret of the shadow, but when he opened his eyes, everything was black. The shadow was everywhere. Owen screamed. He wanted to unlock the stall door, but he couldn’t find the lock in the dark. He was trapped and started the cry.
The substitute teacher opened the bathroom door and suddenly the lights came on. Owen quickly found the latch and threw the stall door open.
“What’s going on in here?” The substitute teacher demanded.
“I got… I got… I got,” Owen stammered. The words he wanted to say were too afraid to come out.
“Sick? You got sick?” The substitute teacher said, softening a little.
“Yes. Hiccup.”
“It’s ok, it happens. Let’s just get you to the nurse.”
The substitute brought Owen to the school nurse’s office. She had him lie down while she called his mother. The nurse gave him a packet of salty crackers and a box of apple juice with a straw, which was Owen’s favorite way to consume juice. The office was so brightly lit that even when he closed his eyes, the back of his eyelids were red, not black. He bathed in the warm blanket of light. He laid there peacefully somewhere between consciousness and sleep for at least an hour.
“Honey, are you ok? I came as fast as I could,” Owen’s mother said. She came over to him and gave him a hug. She put her hand to his head to feel for a temperature and then pulled him back into a hug. She looked at the nurse. “He seemed fine in the morning when I brought him to the bus.”
Owen was not sure which type of sick he was pretending to be, so he tried to look sleepy.
“His temperature is fine. His teacher told me he threw up in the bathroom. It could be a stomach bug. Lots of kids are getting that now. I would just keep an eye on him at home, and if it gets worse, take him to your pediatrician.”
Owen imagined beetles crawling around in kids’ stomachs. How did they even get there? Was it the kids that ate them? He knew kids that did that. He did it sometimes, too, when he was bored. Was it becoming more popular? And how did the adults know they ate them?
“Thank you, I’ll keep a close eye on him.”
Owen’s mother put her arm around his shoulder and helped him to the floor. She gently guided his back with her hand like a pillow as they walked out of the building. The sun was now high in the sky, and shadows were short and unmenacing.
“I was so worried when the school called, I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“I can’t believe they don’t even have a real doctor or nurse on staff for emergencies. She is probably just another teacher that took a first aid course once and knows where the band-aids and the popsicles are. Sorry, I’m just rambling.”
Owen was confused. Adults knew so much that he didn’t know. Were there also fake doctors and fake astronauts? How could you tell who was the real one? Maybe you could smell the real ones? Owen’s mom always smelled like apples. Did all moms smell like apples? He tried to but couldn’t remember if the fake nurse smelled like his teacher.
Owen’s mother helped him into the car and buckled his seat.
“I’m sorry, honey, but I’ve got to dial into a meeting for work. If you need anything at all, just tell me. They know I’m multi-tasking.”
He could hear people talking on his mom’s phone as they drove, but their voices were muffled, and he couldn’t understand them. Their voices all blended, and they reminded him of what ants would sound like if they could talk.
“They sound like ants.”
“If the investors want the slides purple what’s the problem? Yes. Yes. I agree, but that’s not the point. No. Yes. I think. Look, can we put this into perspective for a moment? Fifteen million and we’re sitting here discussing color preferences.”
“Ants!”
“What? Listen, the design is beautiful, but change it. Let’s make this happen. We’ve got debt, and if we don’t start responding to these wishes, even if they are stupid, we are going to be laying people off next week.”
Owen’s mom stopped at a red light and pressed a button on her phone. “Are you itchy?”
“Yes. Hiccup!”
“You poor dear. We’ll be home soon,” Owen’s mom rubbed his knee and then turned back to the road and her phone.
Owen looked out the window for signs of shadows. He looked at the lamps, benches, and people as they whizzed by. No shadows out of place. Owen felt like he understood the world again.
“Thanks, everyone. Bye.” Owen’s mom pressed a button on her phone. “Sorry about that, but I needed to take that call. Now, for more important matters: how about some fresh chicken soup? It’s practically medicine. Are you okay to stop by the grocery store?”
Owen nodded. He liked going to the grocery store. It was loud and colorful, and sometimes people in the store would give him blocks of cheese or a roll of baloney. He hoped she went to the big grocery store with the blue sign. They had an entire aisle of chips.
Owen’s mom drove past the blue store into town to a smaller grocery store that had all their fruits and vegetables in wooden barrels.
“This place has really good meat.”
Owen was disappointed but he tried not to show it. He got out of the car and grabbed the shopping cart with his mom.
“Can I push the cart?”
Owen liked pushing the cart. He liked big important things. Grocery shopping always felt so important.
“If you feel up for it, honey, but you don’t need to. We’re just grabbing a few things for the soup.”
Owen walked slowly behind his mother with the shopping cart. He imagined that the barrels were all stored in the belly of a pirate ship.
Arr! Arr! These be our apples! These be our watermelons that we stole from Funny Tree Island. Arr! Arr!
Owen remembered that pirates have peg legs, so he leaned heavy on the shopping cart and started to limp with his left foot.
Then a beam of light came through the store window by the pineapples, casting a dangerously spiked shadow on the ground. Owen saw it and screamed.
Marshmallow!
“Owen! Oh my God!” Owen’s mother turned to see him screaming and limping towards her. He was so scared of Marshmallow that he forgot he was still a pirate.
Owen’s mother grabbed him and pulled him towards her. “Did you hurt your foot?” She seemed simultaneously angry and worried, and Owen was not sure which emotion was winning. Owen needed to say something, his mother was waiting for him, but he was too afraid. At this very moment Marshmallow’s shadow was waiting for him by the artistically stacked pineapples for a clear shot. He started to cry.
He thought about telling his mother the truth but there were too many unknowns. What if she didn’t believe him? How would he prove it? Or even worse, what if she did? He knew she would be angry, angrier than she had ever been with him. And what would that mean? Could she be so angry that she would stop being his mother? People in the store were staring.
The monster is coming!
“It hurts! My foot hurts!” Owen said, swallowing his hiccups. He found that pretending to be injured was much easier than pretending to be tired all the time.
“That idiot excuse for a nurse! You can’t even walk! You poor thing. Mommy is going to take care of you.” Owen’s mother scooped him up and put him in the shopping cart. He loved that, but he knew it was not the time to smile so he looked down at his chest. He picked up the packet of frozen chicken and held it against his cheek.
His mother zoomed through the store away from the pineapples, through the checkout and back to the car where his mom carefully scooped him out and placed him in the backseat.
“I’m so sorry, honey. If you told me that you were hurt, I never would have taken you to the store. You’ve got to tell me these things. I thought you were sick! Which foot hurts? This one? Or this one? Did you fall? Does anything else hurt?
Owen nodded his head yes to everything as his mom poked and pressed on his limbs and bent his joints. She had the same face Leon did when he told Owen that the shadow must be very angry at him. It was worry, but a special kind of worry associated with a fear of imminent death.
“Where did you fall?”
“The monkey bars.”
“Oh my God. Does this hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
Owen looked out at the shadows being cast by the other cars. They were wide and blocky, but they were moving so fast he couldn’t see if Marshmallow’s shadow was there or not. He looked, disoriented and anxious.
Owen’s mother closed the car door and called someone on the phone.
“Yes, is it possible to still get an appointment today? No? It’s important. Look, I don’t know, but my son said he fell from the monkey bars and felt sick, and now he’s having trouble walking. The hospital? Is there really? Okay, thank you.” Owen’s mother hung up the phone. “The world is full of idiots! Not you. I’m sorry.”
“I’m thirsty.”
Owen’s mom handed him a water bottle from the front seat.
“At least you’re staying hydrated. Look, honey, I called your doctor, but they think you should get checked out at the hospital just to be on the safe side. You could have a concussion.”
Owen didn’t know what a concussion was. He just wanted to go home, to his room, where he could turn on all the light switches. The hospital? What would he tell the doctors? Were they real doctors or fake doctors? Would they know he wasn’t a real patient?
Owen looked out the car window as they drove. The sun was already lower in the sky, and the shadows on the roads were getting, longer, more fantastical. Owen knew Marshmallow’s shadow was following him. First, he was a large decorative potted plant, then a streetlamp, then a mailbox, then a pizza box, then a fountain. He was always there, one step behind Owen.
They parked in the hospital’s parking lot.
“I want to go home.”
“I told you the doctors need to check if you have a concussion. Let me carry you.”
Owen’s mother carried him into the large bright building that smelled like his grandmother’s house. The light comforted him, and he buried his face into his mother’s jacket.
Owen’s mother took him to the pediatric part of the hospital and placed him down on one of the thinly upholstered blue chairs. The room was small with only a few other kids and their parents. It was much smaller than the crowded room they walked by when they arrived that seemed to have people stacked on other people. This one had a play corner with some broken crayons, half colored animals and a stack of board books that were disintegrating at the seams.
“I’m hungry.”
Owen’s mom looked in her purse and found some coins.
“Just wait one second.”
She walked over to the vending machine and came back with a packet of peanut butter crackers.
“It’s all they had.”
Owen ate one but he didn’t like the peanut butter. He liked peanut butter at home but not the kind of peanut butter that was between these crackers. It tasted like cheese.
Owen laid his head into his mother’s lap and closed his eyes, soaking in the bright light through his eyelids.
Now Owen was back on the monkey bars on a beautiful sunny day. He swung effortlessly from bar to bar, an orangutan in his prime, his long shadow trailing behind him. The bars seemed to go on forever. It was fun, for a while. Eventually Owen got bored, and he was ready to jump off. But when he looked down the rubberized wood chips were gone, and the ground beneath him was replaced by endless sky. He pulled himself up and wrapped his limbs around the bars to keep himself from falling. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on when a wave of darkness came over him, shaking him off the bars to the empty sky. As he fell, he saw Marshmallow’s shadow, monstrously tall, raining bullets down on him from its fingertips.
“Owen, I’m here. I’m here! Everything is okay. It’s all okay!” Owen’s mom was hugging him. “I think you were just having a nightmare.”
Owen blinked and was hit with the bright fuzziness of his surroundings. He was in a hospital. Was he sick? Was he injured? He couldn’t remember. He ran his fingers along the length of his body. No holes.
Marshmallow.
“The doctor just called your name. Are you ok to walk?” Owen’s mother spoke softly as if she was afraid to startle him.
Owen didn’t answer so his mom carried him into the examination room and put him down on a padded table covered in wax paper.
The room was all white except for one large poster on the wall showing close ups of strangely shaped moles.
Owen looked around the room to make sure there were not any stray shadows hiding in the corners.
The doctor walked in a moment later wearing all white. His entire body was camouflaged to the wall, except for his bright red face that stuck out like a floating stop sign.
Owen looked at his mother for signs that this was a real doctor, but he couldn’t tell. Her face was fixed in a worried stare.
“What seems to be the trouble today, little man?”
Owen’s mother explained that he suddenly started vomiting at school and now can’t walk after falling off the monkey bars.
The doctor walked over to Owen. He smelled like vinegar and soap.
“Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“I don’t know.”
The doctor told Owen that he was going to examine him. He placed his hands carefully on Owen’s arms, then his legs, then on his head. Did it hurt? Owen said no, it didn’t. Then the doctor took out a flashlight from his pocket and shined it in Owen’s eyes, and he asked Owen to watch the doctor’s finger move left and right. Owen was skeptical that the doctor knew what he was doing.
Don’t real doctors know you’re not supposed to put bright lights in your eyes?
The doctor then asked Owen to get up and try to walk a straight line to the other side of the room. Then he asked him to touch his nose and jump as high as he could. Owen did it all.
This man is not a doctor. Owen again looked towards his mother for clues, but she just stared.
“How are you feeling?” The doctor asked gently.
“Hungry.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” the doctor said chuckling. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. Thanks for bringing him in, better to be safe than sorry.”
“But he threw up at school?” Owen’s mother said quickly.
“I wouldn’t worry, these things happen. Some kids vomit when they are nervous. Were you nervous about anything?”
Getting shot by a shadow monster with a vendetta.
“No. Hiccup!” Owen said meekly.
“But what about his feet? He couldn’t walk a few hours ago. I know my son; something is seriously wrong.” Owen’s mother looked anxious.
The doctor asked Owen to take off his shoes and socks and then looked at his feet.
“He has some calluses on his feet but nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Calluses?” Owen’s mother said, repeating the word indignantly.
“Yes, I suggest letting him soak his feet in oil once a day for about a week. Olive oil followed by a gentle scrub with a pumice stone works great. Store brand oil is fine.”
Owen’s mother opened her mouth as if to say something and then closed it again. She did it several times, like a fish tasting the air.
“Don’t we need an X-ray? Blood tests? A urine sample?” Owen’s mother pleaded.
The doctor said nothing, just smiled, shook Owen’s hand and his mother’s hand, and walked out of the room.
“Thank you, doctor,” Owen’s mother said, defeated.
Owen’s mother starred at the door with her mouth in a little o shape, as if she was drinking from an invisible straw. Owen’s mother helped him back into his shoes and socks. She looked like she was about to cry.
“I’m so glad that it’s nothing. I’m just confused, I guess. I thought there was something wrong. I’m just tired. I’m so tired.”
“I want to go home.”
“Me, too.”
Owen tried to keep up with his mother who was now walking very quickly to the car.
When they stepped outside, it was already dark. Owen stopped at the door. He didn’t want to leave the bright lights, but his mother kept walking. When Owen tried to protest, his mother picked him up and carried him to the car without saying a word.
Owen buried his head in his mother’s shoulder and closed his eyes tightly, till his eyelids looked like little raisins.
Owen’s mother didn’t say anything on the car ride home. She just kept flipping through the radio stations with an invisible button as if she was looking for a song that she couldn’t find.
Owen kept his eyes shut, afraid to see a stray shadow dancing in the glow of a streetlamp. He didn’t want to see it. He knew it was there. He could feel Marshmallow’s shadow tailing him. It would find him. The only question was when.
When they arrived home, Owen’s mom helped him out of his shoes and socks and then told him to sit on the couch. It was late. He knew because his mom kept repeating how late it was out loud to no one in particular.
The lighting was comfortable, familiar. There were shadows that he trusted from lamp shades, bookcases, ottomans that hadn’t moved his whole life.
“Where’s dad?”
“Sleeping. It’s late, Owen.”
She asked Owen to sit on the couch and put his feet in a plastic salad bowl and then poured olive oil on top. He liked the feeling of wiggling his toes in the oil and his mom told him to be careful not to splash.
Owen’s mother told him he could watch TV while she made some cheese sandwiches and alphabet soup for dinner.
She tossed him the remote and he turned on his favorite cartoons. He never got to watch TV before bed.
Today, anything is possible.
Owen turned on Paw Patrol. He practically had the episodes memorized. But that made him like it even more. He loved knowing before the show even started that nothing could go wrong. He could always predict the ending. It made him feel in control.
Owen was exhausted. He was completely focused on the cartoon dogs saving mermaid dogs from a sunken shipwreck that was simultaneously teetering on an underwater cliff that he didn’t notice the shadow as it moved from the lamp towards his chair until a flash of black broke the spell. He saw the long crooked, witches’ fingers shadow reaching towards him.
Marshmallow!
Owen screamed. He kicked over the salad bowl and ran to his mother, throwing his arms around her thighs and melting to the floor leaving a trail of oily footprints from the living room to the kitchen.
“What has gotten into you today, Owen?”
Owen couldn’t speak and pointed to the shadow fingers that suddenly appeared much smaller than before.
“The spider? Jesus, Owen, I’ll get it okay? Just sit down.”
Owen’s mother grabbed the hardcover cooking book she used exclusively to kill spiders and smacked it against the ceiling lamp where the spider was hiding. She wiped the spider off the cover with a paper towel and tossed it in the trash.
“Owen are you all right?”
Owen nodded yes. His head sunk to the ground. He was crying softly.
“You’re a thousand times bigger than this spider. It can’t hurt you.” Owen’s mother took a deep breath, softening. “Let’s eat something. It’s been a long day.”
Owen ate his soup while his mother ate a cheese sandwich in one hand, sprayed floor cleaner with the other, and dried it up with a kitchen towel she dragged around with her feet.
After dinner, Owen’s mother helped him to get ready for bed and curled up with him to read Jack and the Beanstalk. When it was over, she kissed him on his forehead and turned to leave the room.
“Good night, Owen.”
“Don’t go!” There was an urgency in Owen’s voice and a sadness that caused his mother to pause.
“What on earth is going on, Owen?”
“I’m afraid of the shadows.”
“Shadows? Honey. Shadows can’t hurt you. Look, let me show you something.” She got back into bed, turned on the flashlight on her cell phone, and projected it up towards the ceiling. “Put your hand on front of the light and you can make any shape you want. Look, this is a duck. Quack quack.” Owen and his mother made butterflies, rocket ships, spiders, wolves, rabbits, and tailless cats. “See? There is nothing to be afraid of. You can make the shadows disappear. Think we can try bedtime again?”
Owen felt better. Adults just knew so much that he didn’t know. He had been worrying all this time about nothing.
Owen’s mother left his nightlight on, and his door opened a crack. Owen said goodnight and heard his mother walking down the hall to her room and gently closing her door.
As soon as his mother went to bed, Owen could feel the heavy numinous presence of the shadow creeping into his room. Owen knew Marshmallow’s shadow would come. In fact, he was waiting for him. As the monster opened his mouth to bare its otherworldly teeth, Owen threw a shadow hand grenade straight into its mouth, and watched it explode into endless particles of black sand.
Lanay Griessner is an American short story writer with a PhD in biology that she doesn’t know what to do with yet. Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Lanay moved to Austria in 2008 for graduate school and couldn’t figure out how to leave because the signs were all in German. She now lives in Neunkirchen, Austria with her husband and two children. You can read more of Lanay’s work at www.lanaygriessner.com.