Mark M Bulmer

They've always been with us. We've seen them so many times they're normal. More than normal, really. They're expected.

They're in front of us, behind us, to the side, to all sides. They are everywhere.

We've known of them since the first eyes witnessed dawn. We've revered them, envied them, worshiped them. We turned them into playthings; toys to entertain.

We didn't know of their hunger.

Millions vanished the first day. One second there, the next not. Just gone. Planes dropped from the sky, cars careened madly, the infirm received no care, babies starved.

We still don't know where the vanished went or if they still live. Nothing remains.

Except the shadows.

Shadows dot sidewalks and hallways. They spread across buildings and bridges. Tall, short, fat, skeletal, stretched for yards with reaching fingers.

Don't touch the shadows. If you touch a shadow, you vanish. People disappear every day.

We who remain have crept about, each foot carefully placed, for a year. We tried light and dark, paint, electricity, heat, cold, water, lasers, grenades, guided missiles, drones, more. Everything.

The shadows remain.

Until today. Today, we grimp.

I was a grimper in the attack. Two led the way with what looked like lightning-spears held high. Me and five more followed with weed-whacker kind of things.

The first spearman's toe touched just before the point struck the ground. He, and the spear, disappeared as if I'd blinked and everything reset.

The second spear found its mark in the shadow's chest. A whorling, spiraling, climbing howl erupted from the point of impact. It grew louder. Loud to the point of pain. Sharp fingernails scritching the blackboard of my soul.

I hit first. Square on the hip, just as I'd been told to do, with the head of the grimpitizer then squeezed the handle.

They'd described shadow grimping as the trimmings of grass being blown by the wind. It's why they made the grimpitizer look like a weed-whacker.

The blood of a shadow is not flecks of green. It doesn't drift on the breeze.

The blood of a shadow is white. A sharp, eye-stinging white spewed from the grimping site. It shot in all directions, a thick oil which clung to everything. It covered me, it covered all the grimpers, but we did not stop. We grimped.

The howl cut off suddenly. The only sound was the rasping breath of we destined to become known as the first Shadow Killers.

I removed my faceguard, tearing it from my head to behold the corpse of a shadow.

There was a shape on the sidewalk. It might have appeared human once but was now a distorted blob surrounded by white shadow blood in all directions.

The spearman heaved the weapon from the sidewalk and the blob drifted away as if dust blown from a book's cover.

We learned something new this day. Shadows, it seems, can move.

They're coming for us.