Accidental Thief

Shadow woke in the scratchy sheets of his cot, disoriented and hungry. The light was on and blinding. He lifted an arm to cover his eyes and squint at the open door. A hand beckoned and Shade rose, his gray sweatpants and shirt hanging loosely off his bones. The voices swirled around him, nothing for him, he'd learned to tune it out. He followed obediently the lab coats, keeping his eyes on the floor. The lab coat opened the door and Shadow stepped through without complaint and sat down in The Chair. He braced himself and closed his eyes as he felt the straps tighten around his arms and the sting of a needles in his arms and the stick of sensors on his head. Suddenly the heat was intense. Shadow opened his eyes and all he saw was fire, fire everywhere. Coming toward him. Shadow strained again the bonds and a voice to his left said jovially, "Oops, I'm sorry I can't control my Chemistry." The flames rose higher and higher. Shadows swarmed him and his hand slipped through the bindings and Shade ran for the door. He tried to push through it, fading in and out of the shadow world, but the light on the other side was like a brick wall.

He pounded on the door and suddenly it was a window and he fell back as he stared into the doctor's face. The light from the fire destroyed the shadows one by one. Burning them into oblivion until there was nothing left. Shade screamed and pleaded with the doctor. Out of the doctor's mouth came Daniel's mother's voice. "What a strange boy. He's a freak, should never have saved him." The face warped and he was looking at someone who looked a whole lot like him, a skeleton with bleeding red eyes, his fury was palpable. "You're stealing my life! How could you!?"

Shadow woke with a strangled cry. It was cold! He struggling to get loose of his twisted sheets he rolled from his bed and hit the floor with a painful thump. Shadow struggled to his feet and backed up until his back hit the wall. He stood there for several minutes, his heart pounding in his chest, observing the dark room trying to remember where he was. It was frigid and Shade's teeth clattered against each other, his quick breaths puffing out like smoke, until finally his brain caught up with reality. He was in the darkness. He was here. Not there. He was safe. Shadow emerged into the warmth from the shadow world and his knees gave out on him and he slid down the wall into an exhausted heap. He rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair. It was getting longer now, it was weird. He hated it. Despite the chill his skin was covered in a layer of sweat. He shook his head and forced himself to rise and toss himself into the shower. It wasn't cold like it used to be, here it could be as warm as he wanted and as long. He took care not to look into the mirror.

There was no going back to sleep after a dream like that. Even after a long shower, Shadow felt shaken to his core and his hands shook as he pulled on his black pants and hoodie. He pulled on his shoes and set to venture out. He looked at the box with numbers on it and saw that it started with a '6'. He'd been here long enough to know that if he didn't know what that box was, it counted up from '1' to '12' twice. If it said '6' no one was around, either eating if the sun was out, or sleeping if the moon was out. A quick glance out his window told him it was the latter and so Shadow ventured cautiously out. He moved about the hall like a wraith, moving toward the school where food lived. He had been exploring in the dark of the night but his mental map was limited to a small radius around his room. Mostly along the route from his room to the food. He was headed to a different place, a place he had found that holds small snacks behind a glass wall. It was the delightful orange crunchy triangles he was after, Doritos. He didn't understand all the buttons or the small text that swam by on the screen on the right too fast for him to read it.

A noise down the hall startled him into a shadow, where he waited without breathing for a few moments before deciding the coast was clear and continuing. He found the magic box and without hesitation he gathered the shadows and started harvesting the snacks and stashing them in his pockets for later.

It didn’t make any sense that they would close away the food behind a clear wall, but then again there was a lot about this world that Shadow didn’t understand. His world for so long was four gray walls and the testing rooms. He hadn’t even known the world was so vast when he ran, only that anywhere not there was better than being there. This world was so new and so confusing. He lingered in his room rather than attend the classes they kept sending him notes about or ignored meetings they wanted him to come to. It was all too much. It was part of the reason Shadow enjoyed these early parts of the day, no one was around to bother him. Learning that faeries were real was one thing, but coming face to face with a demon had been near traumatizing. No matter how kind she was. He just couldn’t face this place and all the chances to his worldview.

It was like he was drowning in a river and every time he found a rock stable enough to get a breath, the current swept him away again. The only safe thing was to get out of the water.

Shade was cautious, but when it came to food old habits were hard set. He was single mindedly collecting for his hoard, like a feral dog, focused only on the food in front of him. All he cared about was collecting food for later, to store in his room or on his person in the event that he had to hide for a long time. A part of Shade knew that that was foolish, the other part of Shade remembered what it was like to go to sleep hungry, wake up hungry and feel the sickness that came from too long without food.

So single minded was his task that he didn’t notice that someone was walking toward him. Something caught Shadow’s eye and his head whipped around, his expression briefly one of fear and surprise as he jumped into the shadows adjacent to the magic box, nearly invisible save his eyes catching and reflecting the light. The shadows seemed to deepen as Shadow’s heart beat in his chest, every nerve in his body firing to run. Only one problem. The way to his room, his sanctuary, was past this girl. He watched her carefully, she looked young, younger than him at least. Something about her struck him as familiar. It took him a moment to realize it. She had the look of hunger about her. He knew that all too well. He had the same shadowed eyes and thin skeletal face. Perhaps she’s hungry too, Shadow thought, maybe she just wants to get to the magic box for food. With this conclusion in mind, he slowly separated himself from the shadows and gestured at the magic box, his best way of telling her to go ahead.

Shade lingered in the shadows, her eyes locked on his and his on hers. She looked like a child and Shadow couldn’t stop himself from wondering what she was doing awake. It was early, weren’t most of the other children asleep? He knew why he was awake, but he was suspicious of her. He didn’t know why she was awake, only that she looked dressed for the outdoors. Shadow watched her carefully as she moved. The shadows darkened in the alcove with the magic box as she approached, but Shadow didn’t vanish into them again. He had welcomed her, hadn’t he? She spoke softly and Shade’s guard went up. Not from her tone, but the softness of it. Everyone spoke to him in soft tones, but the soft tones often brought the worst of pain. Automatically, Shadow started to glance around, sure that someone would hear them and come to make his life miserable.

Shadow blinked, the only indication that he was surprised. This place was so strange. What shouldn’t he be doing? Walking around? Being out of his room? They told him he could leave. They had also told him he could go outside, but well… that had ended about as terribly as it could have. Shadow watched her and unconsciously tried to make himself smaller, his shoulders sloped inward and his back arched, protecting his hoard in his arms as he did so. It didn’t matter that she was smaller than he was, Shadow immediately felt a cold finger of terror down his spine. Before he was able to work his jaw into forming words she was speaking again.

Cafeteria. Shadow knew what that word meant and he avoided that place like the sun. Shade shook his head and decided to try to speak again. “I am… запутался…. confused,” Shadow said after a moment of searching for the right English word. Sometimes he felt like he remember so much and it felt like he had been speaking it his whole life, other times he couldn’t remember which language he was supposed to use. He didn’t understand why it mattered if he got food from the magic box (which was closer to his lair) or if he slipped it out of the kitchen. Honestly, this was far easier than trying to avoid all the people on the way to the kitchens.

Shadow jumped when she did, freezing and watching her ready to run but she just seemed to twitch. He was ill equipped to even handle himself much less another person losing it. The last time he’d seen someone cry he’d pushed a tissue in her direction and gotten out of there as fast as he could. Not to mention he had no idea what she was talking about or why she was currently apologizing to him. He blinked, his expression not changing in the slightest as he waited for her to make some sense. Though, he had to remember where he was and that nothing made sense here. Not the people, not the places, and not even the magic food dispensing box.

Looking down at his haul and then back at the magic box, it dawned on Shade what she was trying to say to him. “Oh…” he said softly, his eyes on the food he had piled in his hands. He was supposed to pay the machine for food? He eyed the machine suspiciously. Why would he pay the machine? Was the machine alive? Normally he would have completely knocked the idea aside but after everything he had gone through in his short time in this place, he was in no hurry to discard even the most ridiculous of notions. “I’m sorry,” he said softly and dropped the food, hurriedly emptying his pockets.

He glanced down the hall now, oblivious to her twitching, he was far more worried about getting caught now. It didn’t matter that he didn’t understand, he was guilty. And guilty meant punishment and punishment meant something horrible. Did they have a light room here? Were they going to shove him inside and forget about him. Shadow’s breath quickened and he looked back up at the girl. She was blocking his way. He shivered and looked up at the girl and her twitching. “Please don’t tell anyone…” he said, his expression still one of calm indifference, while internally he was panicking. He didn’t know what to do, he felt trapped and feeling trapped was starting to make him feel frantic.

Watching this girl was like watching an outward reflection of all that he was feeling. It was like the two had been on the same path that diverged, one into hiding expression and one into outward expression. Strange as it seemed, looking at her was like seeing a familiar face. Shadow knew he had never seen her before, but she looked like someone he may have seen from time to time in that place. That thin, hungry, haunted face. Shadow had never interacted with anyone else there, and even now her tears had no effect on him. He knew that it meant she was upset, but Shade still didn’t know what to do when it was right in front of him.

This was made much harder by the fact that he couldn’t understand what was making her so upset. He was in the wrong and he was terrified she would tell someone he was stealing. What would the punishment be? Would they take away his food? Or worse, would they toss him out and leave him where they could find him. Or send him back. Shadow’s mind was digressing into the dark places and swirling out of control without him. He would rather die than go back there. He resolved himself to do just that if it came to that. But… she hadn’t run off to tell anyone. Yet.

The silence that passed between them was awkward, but the awkwardness that came from two people so terrible at social interactions. It was like they came to a crossroads and needed to ask for directions from each other but each was eyeing the other like a strange creature they had never seen before.

Shadow blinked in surprise when she did speak. Amnesia? “Amnesia?” Daniel’s mother’s voice asked. He had heard that word before, the doctors had said it in soft voices when he was living at the hospital. He had heard them talking when they thought he was sleeping. Shadow listened with interest, pretending to be sound asleep. Something he had learned to do very well over the last seven years of his life. “No," the doctor answered, "It’s something different. It’s not unheard of at a young age for memories to be suppressed… or manipulated. Possibly by someone like him.” Daniel's mother spoke again, "So, you're saying someone changed his memories?" "Let's talk more outside," the doctor said softly then.

He shook his head, “No…” he hesitated for a moment before continuing, but something about this girl made him think she might understand. “They said someone did something,” he said and lifted a skeletal finger to tap his temple. He didn’t know how to explain it and what he had overheard didn’t make it any more clear. He didn’t know what they mean by someone like him. He wondered if she would.