WITH HIS SHADOW HIDING IN THE CORNERS OF HIS MOUTH

After three days of being bereft of his shadow, Stan Kurdlow started to give up hope of ever finding it. He had looked through all the cluttered drawers of his writing desk, beneath his mattress - where he found a fifty dollar bill which had brought him a minute's worth of happiness - , deep into the drains of the sink and tub and even within the pages of computer magazines that he'd recently purchased, but all this effort was to no avail. The yellowed kitchen neon lights or the sun shining in through the living room reminded him of how ineffectual his search had been. How useless he was.

On the sixth day of his confinement, there was a knock at the door.

"Yeah... yes ? " he asked, scaring himself with this weakened version of an already quiet voice.

"Hey Stan, it's Jake. You alive in there ?" boomed the outside voice.

"Yeah, okay." He unlocked the two locks of the door.

"Jesus Christ on a coffee enema, does it ever reek to high heaven in here !!" Jake continued to boom, making his way to the fridge.

"Yeah I haven't been... I've been having problems with... um with my -"

"And there's nothing in this God forsaken fridge of yours !!" Jake's voice boomed out from deep within the back of the fridge.

"Yeah well I umm -"

"Yeah, you've been having problems obviously. So tell me all about it but make it snappy cause I'm just on my way to the movies. I've got a hot date."

"Well you see..." Stan stood paralyzed in thought and came to with the notion to raise his arm to the the kitchen light.

"Yeah, there's no sweat under your arm-pit. Jesus Murphy Christos what's wrong with you Stan ? You fall on your head or something ?" Jake's voice continued to boom.

"My arm doesn't cast any shadow," he said, trying to make sense of what these words meant as they came out of his mouth.

"Yeah... so ?"

"Well isn't that kind of weird ?" He looked to his friend for confirmation of the rules of reality.

"Okay I guess so but it's not like you've lost an arm or anything. Who the fuck needs a shadow anyway ?" His laughter rumbled out of his rather large mouth at twice the volume of his speaking voice. "Hey but seriously, I need to borrow some money for tonight. Could you spot me some dough?"

After several seconds of silence, Stan pulled the recently discovered fifty dollar bill from his back pocket.

"Thanks a million buddy !!" Jake's voice boomed as he stepped out of the door.

Familiar pangs of anger and shame shot through his body; once again he had been walked over. The world was walking over him.

How would he ever find his shadow ?

Donna Balma