PodCastle

* Author : Lora Gray
* Narrator : Summer Fletcher
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Originally published in Shimmer.


Content warnings for self-harm, suicide, and body dysmorphia. 


Rated R. 

Shadow Boy



By Lora
Gray


I am sixteen and sitting on the edge of an empty subway platform when Peter, forever small, reappears. His black eyes are bright, and he smells like licorice and cinnamon. He is wearing purple mittens and a pigeon-feather skirt.
“Who the hell dressed you today?” I ask.
“I did.” Peter tips his head as if considering. “My taste is terrible. Tragic, really, but I didn’t have much choice.”
“Everybody has a choice.”
“Do they, dear Prudence?”
“Don’t call me Prudence.” Tugging my jeans more snugly around my hips, I shift. Chains rattle over the metal platform, and a safety pin fingernails across the yellow line at the edge.
“It’s your name.”
“Nobody calls me that anymore.” I tap a cigarette out of my pocket. It takes me three tries to light up.
“I call you that,” he says.
“You don’t count.” I drag and exhale into Peter’s face.
Peter doesn’t cough. “Feeling sullen?”
“I’m lonely.” I grit my teeth and shrug.
“How can you be lonely?” he asks. “You and me, we have a whole city to play with.” He kicks his legs back and forth, heels denting the platform gleefully. Thump. THUMP. A grin stretches his mouth wide.
My skin prickles and I feel the familiar lurch, reality threatening to wobble around me. “Why are you smiling like that?”
Peter levels his black eyes at me and says, “I found your shadow.”

I am eight years old.
We arrive at midnight, Momma, “Uncle” Leon, my shadow and I, crammed into a Buick the color of old piss. The long stretches of upstate soybean peel away to reveal an army of high-rises marching into the light-polluted never-dark. My shadow surges up from the floor mats when the headlights hit him. He is excited and starry-eyed. He has never been to The City before.
He still believes in adventures.
“It doesn’t work that way,” I whisper. Adventures don’t begin with dodging landlords and eviction notices and shoving unwashed clothes into black trash bags.
“What was that, sugar?” Leon’s voice is Georgia-thick and he is dirty-grinning at me in the rear view mirror. He strokes the back of Momma’s neck, pressing greasy circles into her hairline, and my shadow bristles.
“I’m not sugar.” I tug my sweater over my fingers.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice.” Leon’s fingers dip beneath the collar of Momma’s shirt. “Isn’t that what little girls are-“
“I said this car smells like shit.”
“Prudence!” Momma whips around, but Leon’s hand turns vise-tight, and he glares the rest of the ride into silence.
My shadow seethes and I press my forehead against the rear window glass, neon lights flipping my reflection from infant to ancient. From ugly to divine. From girl to boy. I cling to that last like a secret as my shadow winds himself around me. Sinking into his embrace, I count cars until Brooklyn.By the time we arrive, my shadow is strong. He hefts trash bags easily over his broad shoulders and pounds his new kingdom flat with giant boy feet as we walk to Leon’s apartment. I shuffle, but my shadow struts.