Teen Ink

Chapter 2

The world around me is dark.

I was created when light and darkness collided. I say created, not born, although I suppose it means the same thing. I shouldn't be here; my creation was a mistake.

Have you ever wondered why there are shadows? Well, the reason is because it is the unfilled area of blankness where light touches darkness. Everything has a shadow, even me. I found this odd, seeings that I shared absolutely nothing with anything else except my human appearance.

Yes, I appear human. I look as if I am about sixteen years old, but it is not really possible to pin-point my age. In actual fact, I am thousands of years old. Even I do not know how old I specifically am.

But really, I am young. I have existed since the dawn of humans themselves, alive in only their fantasies and nightmares.

It was only recently that I myself evolved into a solid figure, and that was because I made a mistake. My birth was a mistake, but my solid creation was an even bigger mistake.

For you see, I was created by one girl's imagination.

Alice Redwood was a smart girl who lived in Quebec, Canada. It was through her that I was created. On a night where shadows were invisible, lost in the space of the dark night itself.

Alice has a dream. I was in that dream. But it wasn't a normal dream, per say. It was a dream that was unusual even to me. I, who have invaded the minds of millions in my existence, had never experienced a dream such as this.

The dream was so vivid. I knew that Alice could sense everything in the dream to an amazing level. And I could too.

I could sense everything, including the girl. I believe that is what triggered the Split, as I call it.

Something happened in the dream. Alice seemed aware of my presence, and was speaking to me. She spoke French, a common language that the Canadians speak. I couldn't understand her at the time; my mind was immature, even though I must have been a couple of thousand years old.

Alice touched me, and I felt it. I felt the warmth of her hand against my shadowy figure, for back then I was not physical, but a mere Shadow. Well, that was I called myself anyway.

But when Alice touched me, something happened to her, and she couldn't let go of me. In her own dream, I watched the light of life drain from her pale eyes, felt her hand grow cold against me, and I was the one to catch her as she fell.

She was dead when I caught her in my arms. She had died in her own dream, because she had touched me. She touched something that could not exist, and so her life left her.

But what happened next was even stranger.

Her life drained into me.

With her touch, I felt the light fade, the warmth leave, and the aura of life diminish. I was now Alice Redwood.

However, I did not wish this upon myself. It was not in my power to take the life from a human, and become that human myself. It was not something I could control, and guilt consumed me. I tried to push the life back into Alice's now crumpled body.

At first, I though it was working. Her skin was faintly warm for a moment, but then the icy-cold returned. Her face, her skin, her body, turned blue with cold. She died. For real.

So I left her there. I had no feeling even as I was propelled out of her mind and into the physical world around me.

Sweet Alice Redwood was dead, but through her death, she had borne me. I left her in her own dream, because I felt like it was what she wanted.

In other dreams, I was the figure that controlled the dream of a person, if they allowed it. Some people possess the ability to control their own dreams, and so I am stripped of the control if it does not suit them. Alice had taken control, and actually touched me.

I felt as if she meant to do it, an I suppose I should thank her for giving me the life that she did. She created me. The Shadow became a real person.

Or so I thought.


What I really happened, was that I was still the Shadow, but I was physical. Instead of being only a figure of human imagination, I was real. But I was not Alice like I thought I was. I was my own person, my own soul. I was the Shadow in human form, and I still resembled the darkness in which I was created by.

As a human, I appear dark. My hair, long and silky, reaches almost to my hips, and is as dark as the night on which I was firstly created.

My eyes are also dark, but are not black or a dark shade of blue, but purple. An impossibly dark, exotic shade of indigo.

The only part of me that is light is my skin, which is so pale that it is almost transparent. I believe that this is because I was created through when light and darkness collided, so I am not completely dark. I find this comforting, somehow.

With my human body, I blend in, but with my Shadow, with my impossible mind, I am different. My mind is the only thing that separates me from being a true human. My mind is so intense and powerful, it is impossible for a mere human to possess what I have inside my head.

But with all of this, everything I am and once was, I still do not know what I am.