One Step Closer

One Step Back, Two Shadows Forward

by Theodore Homuth

I should say upfront that I’ve never been one to put stock in signs or omens or any of that ethereal nonsense. People who swear by them—they’re the type who scan the world like it’s a cryptic crossword puzzle, connecting dots that were never meant to be linked. A license plate number that matches your birthday. A single white feather drifting down onto a cracked sidewalk in the dead of winter. Dreams that linger like half-remembered conversations, whispering promises of destiny when they’re really just your brain recycling yesterday’s stress. I’ve always been wired differently, grounded in the tangible, the stuff that leaves marks you can’t ignore. Rent receipts crumpled in my pocket, stained with coffee rings from too many late nights. Calluses etched into my palms from gripping a mop handle too tightly. The dull, insistent ache in my lower back after pulling a double shift at some dead-end gig, the kind that makes you wonder if your spine is plotting a quiet rebellion.

So when I sit here and try to tell you that something—call it fate, or a ghost, or just plain bad luck dressed up as guidance—was steering me through the muck of my life, feel free to roll your eyes. Hell, I’d do the same if I were in your shoes. Doubt it all you want. I certainly do, even now, as I type this out on a keyboard that’s seen better days. But here’s the rub: it keeps happening. Not in thunderclaps or burning bushes, but in these quiet, persistent nudges that build up like static electricity. Every single time I muster the nerve to take a step forward—toward stability, toward something resembling a plan—something invisible reaches out and taps me lightly on the shoulder. Not a shove, not some cruel boot to the ribs, just a gentle reminder that I’m not done tumbling yet. That the ground I thought was solid is still prone to shifting underfoot.

Let me give you a concrete example, because abstractions never convinced anyone. Take that job I landed at the warehouse on the edge of town, the one with the flickering fluorescent lights and the faint smell of diesel that clung to your clothes like a bad habit. It was the kind of place that promised normalcy: steady hours from seven to three, with a fifteen-minute smoke break that felt like a luxury. Benefits, too—health insurance that actually covered more than a Band-Aid and a prayer, dental that wouldn’t bankrupt you for a cavity filling. For the first time in years, I could picture a future that didn’t feel like a house of cards waiting for a stiff breeze. I could lean against it, let it hold some weight. I threw myself into it—stacking crates of canned goods until my arms burned, logging inventory with a precision that bordered on obsessive. I lasted exactly three months. Then, at two in the morning on a shift that should’ve been routine, the fire alarm shrieked to life, piercing the silence like a accusation. Flames erupted in the west wing, devouring pallets of cardboard and forgotten paperwork with a ferocity that suggested they’d been starving for weeks, months maybe. The official report pinned it on faulty wiring, some overlooked fray in the system that no one caught during inspections. Me? I call bullshit on the coincidence. It was timing—impeccable, almost poetic timing. The kind that makes you wonder if the universe has a wry sense of humor, one that punches you right in the gut when you least expect it.

Or consider the apartment I found a few months later, the one that seemed like a small victory in a string of defeats. It was on the third floor of a brick walk-up, with a big bay window that caught the morning sun and turned the scarred hardwood floors into something almost golden. The rent was reasonable, the super was gruff but reliable, and the neighbor across the hall—an elderly woman named Mrs. Delgado—offered to water my half-dead ficus when I pulled those inevitable late shifts. I signed the lease with a flourish, unpacked my mismatched boxes of books and thrift-store dishes, even taped a fresh label with my name on the mailbox, the ink still smudged from my sweaty thumb. It felt like progress, like I was finally staking a claim. Two weeks. That’s all I got before the ceiling in the living room gave way with a groan that sounded like the building itself was sighing in defeat. Water poured down in a filthy cascade, courtesy of a pipe in the unit above that the landlord swore had been “fine for years”—his go-to phrase, apparently, for anything that broke on his watch. Plaster dust coated everything, turning my dreams of domesticity into a soggy, moldering mess. The super shrugged, handed me a check for the deposit, and muttered something about insurance claims that never materialize. I packed up again, the taste of chalk in my mouth, wondering if stability was just a word for fools.

That’s what they always say, isn’t it? “Fine for years,” until it isn’t. Like clockwork, every fresh start unravels at the seams, leaving you to pick through the threads. I don’t talk about the dreams to anyone anymore—not friends, not the bartender at the dive down the block, not even the therapist I saw for three sessions before I ran out of copays. People’s eyes change when you confess that sort of thing; they glaze over with pity or pull away like you’ve just admitted to hearing voices in the walls. But the truth is, they wake me up reliably, night after night, always at 3:17 a.m., that witching hour when the world feels thinnest. I bolt upright in whatever bed I’m crashing in, heart hammering, with the unshakable certainty that someone—or something—has just slipped out of the room, leaving the air cooler in their wake. The dreams themselves are deceptively simple: endless stairs, spiraling up into fog-shrouded heights that stretch forever. Wooden ones with creaking treads that echo like accusations, metal ones slick with rain that clang underfoot, stone ones worn smooth by centuries of invisible feet. I’m always climbing, one laborious step at a time, my breath ragged, sweat stinging my eyes. And behind me, at a respectful distance, there’s this presence—never overt, never lunging, just trailing me with the patience of a shadow. It doesn’t rush to catch up; it doesn’t fade into the distance. It matches my pace, polite as a dinner guest who knows when to linger.

For the longest time, I chalked it up to my own demons doing laps. Failure, that old familiar hound, sniffing at my heels with its hot breath and yellowed teeth. Or punishment, maybe, for all the choices I’d made in the haze of youth—dropping out, drifting from city to city, burning bridges with a casualness that now embarrasses me. Perhaps it was just the echo of my worst decisions, looping back around for an encore, demanding I relive the plot twists I’d tried so hard to forget. I’d wake up cursing myself, vowing to outrun it all, only to stumble into the next setback by breakfast.

But here’s where the narrative starts to fray at the edges, where the reliable skeptic in me begins to waver like a bad signal. Because woven into these knock-backs, these relentless detours, I’ve started noticing something else—something that inches forward when I’m flat on my back, staring at the ceiling (or what’s left of it). It’s not redemption, not some Hallmark glow-up. It’s subtler, like finding a loose thread in a sweater and realizing it’s the start of a pattern you didn’t design but can’t unsee.

Take what happened after the warehouse went up in smoke. The acrid smell of charred pallets followed me for days, seeping into my jacket, my hair, my skin. I was adrift again, pacing my temporary crash pad—a friend’s couch that sagged in the middle like it mirrored my posture. Out of sheer restlessness, and maybe the allure of bottomless coffee that didn’t taste like regret, I started volunteering at the soup kitchen a few blocks over. It wasn’t altruism at its finest; I wasn’t there to save souls or pat myself on the back for good deeds. It was boredom gnawing at me, the kind that makes you itch for purpose even if it’s just stirring a vat of vegetable stew. That’s where I met Eli, this wiry guy with laugh lines etched deep around his eyes and a habit of talking a blue streak about everything from quantum physics to the best way to caramelize onions. But what hooked me wasn’t his chatter—it was how he listened, really listened, leaning in like your words were the only currency that mattered. He’d laugh like he’d already absolved the world of its sins, a big, rolling guffaw that filled the cramped kitchen and made the steam from the pots rise a little higher. Eli showed me the ropes: how to feed fifty hungry faces with a single industrial pot and a prayer that the rice wouldn’t clump; how to portion out seconds without judgment; how to stand still and bear witness when someone unloaded their worst day like it was a sacrament, tears mixing with the broth on their spoon. Before long, I was showing up not just for the coffee, but for the quiet alchemy of turning strangers’ stories into something shared. It didn’t erase the fire’s sting, but it banked the embers into something warm.

Then there was the fallout from the apartment collapse. With my worldly goods reduced to a duffel bag of damp clothes and a rescued ficus that looked as defeated as I felt, I swallowed my pride and crashed with my sister in her cramped two-bedroom across town. She welcomed me with eye-rolls and open arms, the kind of sibling love that’s equal parts exasperation and anchor. It was during those weeks of folding myself into her guest room—really just a converted closet with a futon—that I got to know my nephew, little Theo, all of five years old with a mop of curls and eyes that seemed to hold questions too big for his frame. Turns out, he wasn’t scared of the dark because of monsters under the bed or shadows in the closet—no, it was simpler and sadder. He feared the silence, the vast emptiness that swallowed his whispers and gave nothing back. “What if no one hears me?” he’d ask, voice small as he clutched his stuffed whale at bedtime. One night, after his whimpers pierced the thin walls for the third time, I dragged my blanket into the hallway and parked myself on the floor outside his door. I hummed then—badly, off-key renditions of old folk tunes my mom used to croon, the notes wobbling like a drunk tightrope walker. It wasn’t pretty, but it was steady. A signal in the void, letting him know that someone, somewhere, was still tuned in. Theo started sleeping through by the end of the week, his breaths evening out into the soft rhythm of trust. I stayed in that hallway longer than I needed to, long after his snores filled the air, because for once, my presence felt like enough.

I’m not claiming these silver linings were a fair trade for the wreckage. A soup kitchen shift doesn’t rebuild a warehouse, and a hummed lullaby doesn’t patch a ceiling. The losses still ache, sharp as fresh cuts. I’m just pointing out that they were there, tucked into the corners like forgotten change in a coat pocket—glinting when the light hit just right.

The dreams shifted after that, subtle as a tide turning. The stairs didn’t vanish, but they shortened, each flight ending in landings that felt achievable rather than infinite. And the presence behind me—if it was ever more than my frayed nerves—started to hum along, low and companionable, picking up the same melody I’d mangled for Theo. It was the first time I noticed it, that faint echo weaving through the dream-stairs like a counterpoint. I brushed it off at first, of course. Too busy steeling myself against the idea that any of this added up to more than random noise. After all, what’s the trouble with folks like me, the ones who narrate their own lives with a skeptic’s pen? We’re unreliable precisely because we lie most convincingly when we’re dead certain we’re telling the unvarnished truth. We build walls out of logic, mortar them with “coincidences,” and call it a fortress, even as the cracks spiderweb through.

The night it all crested—or cracked open, depending on your lens for these things—was unremarkable in its misery. Rain hammered the pavement like it had a personal grudge, turning the streets into shallow rivers that tugged at my boots. I’d just sloshed out of another interview, the kind where they smile through their teeth and murmur “overqualified” like it’s a compliment instead of code for “too broken to slot into our machine.” It’s the polite dismissal, the one that leaves you questioning if your resume is a confession or a curse. I was blocks from shelter, head down against the downpour, when the streetlight ahead flickered—a stutter of orange that made the shadows dance like uneasy guests. I stopped dead, not from fear exactly, but from that gut-deep pull, the kind that says pay attention without spelling it out. The rain drummed on, indifferent, soaking through my jacket until I felt like a drowned outline of myself.

That’s when I heard it: my own voice, casual as if we were chatting over coffee, drifting from a few steps behind. “You can turn around now,” it said, clear as the downpour wasn’t there to drown it out.

I didn’t. Of course I froze, rooted like a fool in a ghost story. If I’d spun on my heel right then, this whole tale would shrink to a footnote—neat, dismissible, the sort of anecdote you trot out at parties to polite chuckles. Instead, I stood there, water streaming down my face, and muttered to the storm, to the empty sidewalk, to whatever cosmic interior decorator had been shoving my life around like mismatched end tables. “I’m tired,” I said, the words half-lost in the roar. “Bone-tired of the reroutes, the dead ends. Just let me catch my breath.”

The voice laughed then—not the sharp bark of mockery, but a warm, resonant chuckle, like it had been perched on a nearby stoop, waiting for me to finally voice the obvious. “I know,” it replied, patient as ever. “I’ve been walking with you. I get it.”

I wish I could paint you a picture of what I saw when I finally mustered the will to turn—something cinematic, etched in lightning flashes. An angel, perhaps, all luminous wings and knowing eyes, straight out of a Renaissance canvas. Or a shadow version of myself, doppelganger-sharp, wearing my doubts like a second skin. Or, simplest of all, nothing but the rain-slicked street and a flickering bulb, which would’ve been the version I could tuck away without a second thought, the one that let me sleep without questions.

What I can tell you, with the clarity of hindsight, is the sensation that washed over me in that moment: a profound lightness, as if an invisible rucksack—stuffed with ledgers of regrets, IOUs from old failures—had been lifted from my shoulders and snapped shut for good. The weight I’d carried for years, the one that bowed my back and slowed my steps, evaporated into the mist.

“You weren’t being punished,” the voice continued, gentle but firm, like a hand on a fevered brow. “Not even close. You were being redirected—nudged toward the paths that fit, the ones you’d miss if you bulldozed straight ahead.”

It sounds trite, I know—like the kind of homily you’d find embroidered on a throw pillow in a beachside gift shop, flanked by seashell soaps and scented candles promising serenity. I’d have snorted in disbelief too, back when my edges were sharper. But there, drenched to the marrow, jobless and adrift yet inexplicably at peace, it landed with the weight of revelation. Not fireworks, but a quiet click, like a lock finally yielding to the right key. Redirected. Not cursed, not chased, but guided—however clumsily—toward something truer.

The reversals didn’t screech to a halt overnight. Life’s not scripted like that; it’s more jazz than symphony, full of improvisations and off-beats. But they softened around the edges, lost their venom. The ground beneath me, once a minefield of sinkholes, started to feel more like firm earth—yielding here and there, sure, but not prone to swallowing me whole. I landed work eventually, nothing flashy or etched in gold: bartending at a neighborhood joint with sticky floors and loyal regulars, the kind of place where stories flow as freely as the taps. It paid the bills, left room for breath, and felt honest in its grit—no illusions, just the rhythm of pouring and listening. I stuck with the soup kitchen, too, carving out shifts that wove into my week like threads in a tapestry I was only starting to see. Theo, bless him, now crashes through the night without a murmur, his whale tucked under one arm, dreams untroubled by voids. And the stairs? They’ve receded into memory, replaced by a quieter cadence—restful spells that stretch into actual sleep, unbroken and deep, the kind that leaves you recharged instead of ragged.

These days, I still sense that presence now and then—not lurking at my heels like a pursuer, not scouting ahead like a scout, but parallel, a companionable stride matching mine. Just there, in the periphery, as real as the scuff of my shoes on concrete. And when the inevitable hitches crop up—because they do, in every life, like potholes on a well-worn road—I don’t default to paranoia anymore. I don’t spin tales of cosmic malice or personal vendettas. Instead, I pause, breathe, and glance sideways. What’s the detour revealing? What thread is pulling loose to show me the weave?

Believe this yarn or bin it as fanciful drivel—I wouldn’t hold it against you. Skepticism’s a sturdy shield, and I’ve wielded it plenty. If I were the rock-solid narrator you deserve, I’d probably double down right now: chalk it all up to psychology, to the brain’s knack for pattern-making in chaos, to sheer dumb luck finally tilting my way. No supernatural strings attached, just neurons firing and opportunities knocking at last.

And yet—

I wake up these mornings with a lightness I can’t fake, a quiet joy that hums under my skin like that old lullaby.

And nothing—not a whisper, not a tap—has knocked me back in a very long time.