Shadow Play
Issue seven: flash fiction by Lawrence Dagstine
Shadows show up in many fairy tales, so it is a great delight to offer this ambiguous piece of science fantasy to the growing canon. In ‘Shadow play,’ Lawrence Dagstine contemplates grief and loss on a cosmic scale.
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I learned to throw my shadow across the cosmos when I was a kid, purely by accident. The first time it happened was when Corey—always my brother Corey—fell through a hole at the planet’s center. I lay flat as paper. Corey leaned over me—gravity wasn’t his friend that day—translating his shadow into sentences, his long hair curling across my chest like fancy script. He passed over me, from my belly to my hips, down my legs and thick thighs, his hair writing out my life story as he heard it, from my lips through Corey’s body. We, as celestial types, had my story inscribed by the sweep of his hair across my endless sheets of skin, which Corey invented. I thought, my God, it’s true, the planet is empty and flat. I couldn’t see my shadow anywhere or past my own horizons. But my shadow quickly wandered off. I said, ‘Hey Corey,’ because the last thing I wanted was to be without him or my shadow.
