Chased

I was night jogging when it happened.  I was wearing my bright yellow nylon sweater so cars could notice me and I wouldn’t be run over and end up a pizza. Sometimes I wished my parents wouldn’t be so strict on me. I had to sneak out to go jogging; otherwise they never let me out of the house. They were overprotective of me and it became tedious not being able to do anything on my own. It’s like they were trying to keep my worlds boundaries strictly to home. I was already being home schooled. What more could they do to me. The little things I had left were  my night jogging to keep in shape. And even that they could take away.

   “Psss” a voice whispered calling my attention from an alley way, I kept on walking acting as if I hadn’t heard anything. Another alleyway passed and the voice said “I’m trying to help you!” in a harsh whisper. My Jog turned into a sprint. A slim alleyway passed not possibly wide enough for a person to fit in. “Listen!” The voice whispered in a harsh tone that almost made me stop.

  Almost.

  There were no more alleyways from here on down. After these buildings there’s just houses and sidewalk. I stopped for a few seconds.

  Suddenly one by one the flickering lights of the street lamps bulbs broke all the way down the street. I stood rigid in the darkness not moving a muscle as a cloud of wispy black fog approached me, enveloping everything in its path so it wasn’t visible and swallowed whole by the darkness. Every muscle in my body twitched with one word:

  RUN.

  The darkness was crawling ever closer, no matter how fast I ran it wasn’t working. It was like running on a treadmill running as fast as you can and ending up nowhere.

  My breath caught unevenly in shallow gasps and my feet were killing me. I had never run this fast in  my life. Was it a coincidence that no cars were driving by this street?  No people walking down the street to help? If there were, they had been consumed by the darkness.

  I scampered away from the shadows at such a slow speed compared to the darkness. I knew I was losing. I might not live through this. These tears that roll down my cheeks have been wasted. They have not helped in the least. So have all these years I’ve lived been a waste? In the end I never did anything with it. I’ve always asked myself that if I died today would I be proud of what I had done with my life. The answer had always been a confirming yes.

  Now I’m not so sure.

   The darkness was inches away from me and they’re long finger like tendrils were clasping my ankles.

   It caught me and swum over me like a great wave then stopped just above me as I fell to the ground, skinning my palms on the cement. The shadows were consuming me and seemed to be seeping into my veins as they felt cold as ice. It was like a cold fire blazing inside of me. It was the kind of feeling when you run too fast and for too long in the cold and your lungs feel an icy pain, intensified by ten. My tears stopped because I was so shocked. It hurt so much, I had never felt such an unbearable pain; but most of all it felt evil.

   “Now will you listen to us?” The shadows whispered in my ear in the voices of a dozen people speaking in unison.  

   I managed to choke out “Yes just stop!”

   They receded from my body and loomed over me as I sat up gasping for air. They were in the shapes of many men and they surrounded me blocking my escape.

  “We are the council of the shadow people” they said in unison. They always spoke in unison.

  “Ok” I said terrified.

  “Do not be afraid, we come in peace” they said.

  “Oh yeah, is that why you almost killed me?” I asked.

   “That was simply a greeting” They said.

   “Yeah, right” I said with sarcasm in my tone.

   “We come with a message from the shadow king” They said skipping right to the point.

  “Who’s the shadow king?” I asked.

  “He’s our leader and the king of our realm” They said.

  “You’re from another dimension?” I asked. “How did you get to ours?”

  “Yes, were from another realm, and we seeped through the holes in the fabric of space” They said.

   “So what’s the message” I asked contemplating what it could be.

   Strangely this didn’t sound odd to me at all, about different dimensions and shadow kings, mostly because I was talking to shadows. How much crazier can you get anyways?

“the shadow king. He wants you to come to his kingdom if you don’t come, there will be consequences”  they said.

  “Remember we’ll be watching” they said and vanished into the air.

   They’ll be watching…