My Shadow Doesn’t Follow Me Anymore — Part 2

I didn’t run.

I should have. But something kept me frozen as I watched my shadow on the floor. That smile was wider now, stretched too far, too sharp.

And it moved.

Not like a normal shadow that copies your every move. It slid forward. Quiet. Smooth. Independent.

I tried to step back, but my feet felt rooted to the ground.

The shadow reached up — a hand that wasn’t mine — and touched my ankle.

I yanked my foot away and stumbled backward.

The sun was setting now. Long shadows crawled over the street, but mine still wasn’t there.

Only that thing.

Over the next days, the shadow grew bolder.

It didn’t just mimic me anymore.

It started doing things I wasn’t.

It showed up places I never went.

People whispered when I passed, but not to me—about me.

“You don’t look right.”

“Are you sick?”

“Something’s off with your eyes.”

I caught glimpses of my reflection in windows. Sometimes, there were two of me.

One moving normally, the other lagging a beat behind, grinning like it had a secret.

Then the nightmares started.

Not the usual bad dreams.

No, these were memories — but not mine.

I saw faces I’d never met, heard voices I didn’t recognize, and lived moments I never lived.

In one, I was standing at a crossroads, the sky bleeding red.

A figure emerged, a shadow too—but it was me, and yet not me.

It whispered in a voice like cracked glass:

“I’m not here to replace you.

I’m here to set us free.”

The next morning, I woke up on the floor of my apartment.

My phone was missing.

I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious.

When I finally found the device buried under the couch, I opened it to a new message:

“Look outside.”

I walked to the window. The street was empty — eerily silent.

No people. No cars.

Only shadows.

Thousands of them.

Crawling over walls, creeping under doors, pooling in corners.

And they all looked like me.

I didn’t want to believe it.

But it wasn’t just my shadow.

It was the start of something bigger.

Something ancient.

The shadow was spreading.

I grabbed my coat and fled the apartment.

As I ran through the streets, the shadows followed.

They didn’t stick to the ground anymore. They stretched upward, twisting into twisted shapes, giant and terrible.

I ducked into a church.

The heavy wooden doors shut behind me.

Silence.

But it wasn’t peace.

The air grew cold, thick.

I saw the shadow in the stained glass — grinning, twisting in the fractured light.

Then a voice.

“You belong to us now.”

I screamed.

The next moments are blurry.

I remember running through a forest, branches clawing at my face.

Falling.

The cold grip of hands—not human hands—pulling me under.

When I woke, I was somewhere else.

A place without sun.

Walls covered in twisting shadows.

A mirror hung on the wall.

I looked in.

No reflection.

Only darkness.

Then it whispered:

“You feared losing your shadow.

But losing it means becoming us.

Free. Eternal. Infinite.”

I understood.

The shadow was not my enemy.

It was my destiny.

It was the truth hidden in the darkness of light.

And now, I had to choose.

To fight the darkness and fade into nothing…

Or embrace it — and become something more.

I don’t know what I chose.

But now, as I write this, my hands aren’t mine.

The words blur, twisting on the page.

The shadows outside are growing.

And somewhere, behind every corner, a familiar smile waits.

If you see your shadow smiling back at you — don’t run.

Because it might already be too late.

THE END — for now.