Page 6 of Something Worth Keeping
Julian knew that thought usually elicited a fear response, so he sat for a moment and waited for that feeling to register. It didn’t happen. Instead, Julian realized his heartbeat and breathing were regular, and he felt incredibly calm. It was the same sort of feeling he got when all his books were organized by subject and publication date, or when he’d finished cross-referencing a particularly complex archival index.
“That’s not normal,” he said to the empty apartment. “Although, with no frame of reference to suggest otherwise, it could be.”
The shadows in the corner near his closet seemed darker than they should be, given the morning light filtering through the window. Julian stared at them for a full minute. They reminded him of the being he’d met the night before. He waited, wondering if the shadows in his apartment would move, but no, there was nothing.
“I need coffee,” he muttered, swinging his legs out of bed.
The kitchen was three steps from the bed - Julian appreciated the efficiency offered by a studio apartment. He filled the kettle and set it to boil while measuring grounds into the French press. Seventeen grams, precisely. The ritual of making coffee was assoothing as taking that first sip of the finished brew.
While the water heated, Julian’s mind drifted back to the alley.
In hindsight, he should have been terrified. Any reasonable person would have been screaming in terror and running away. A mass of living shadow consuming a man’s life force wasn’t something that appeared in a normal, well-adjusted reality.
It didn’t appear to bother me.Julian knew that because he’d noted his heart rate had only elevated to approximately one hundred and ten beats per minute. That could be considered high, but it wasn’t at panic levels, and the spike had felt less like fear and more like...excitement.
Julian had to sit with that idea for a moment. He wasn’t the type to get excited. Excitement was an inefficient emotional response that cloudedjudgment and led to poor decision-making.
And yet, he couldn’t deny he’d felt a definite form of exhilaration standing in that alley with that being. The sort of feeling he’d usually get when he discovered a misfiled document that everyone else had missed, or when he solved a complex research query that had stumped his colleagues.
The shadow-being had been a puzzle. Given that Julian had no idea what kind of being it was, he had simply reverted to his usual behavior and offered advice on the disposal of the body. That was his default setting, so there was nothing abnormal about that.
The kettle clicked off, and Julian poured the water over the grounds, watching the bloom as carbon dioxide released from the coffee. It needed to sit for four minutes, so he set his phone timer.
His gaze drifted to the window. The sun had fully risen now, washing the street in pale winter light. There was nothing unusual there either. Just people going about their day as they made their way to work. The only unusual things were that Julian was still home, instead of dashing out the door, and that the persistent feeling of being observed remained.
Julian pressed the plunger on the French press and poured coffee into his mug, the one with “I like big books, and I cannot lie” printed on the side. A gift from his mother that he’d never had the heart to donate.
He carried the mug to his laptop, opened it, and navigated to his personal research folder. The folder was organized into subcategories: Historical Discrepancies, Unsolved Archival Mysteries, Local Architecture Analysis, and - as of 3 a.m. this morning - Shadow Mythology.
Julian had spent two hours compiling sources before exhaustion had forced him to sleep. Now, well on the way to being caffeinated and clear-headed, he reviewed his notes.
Observation Log: Alley Encounter
Entity composition: Shadows, no fixed form, capable of condensing into a humanoid shape
Behavior: Predatory toward criminal element (Vane Syndicate member confirmed by tattoo)
Communication: Verbal, coherent, possibly ancient speech patterns
Response to human presence: Surprise, then curiosity
