Dark Passengers

The last man on Earth stood watching the red sun slip into the abyss. His body had been ravaged by the fallout from Earth’s final war. He knew that his time was nearing. As he lay watching his feet, the shadow tied to his ankles began to shift. He had hoped with all his spirit that it was his imagination as his shadow stood opposite him, now entirely severed.

“We’ve been long awaiting this day”, his shadow announced proudly. The man’s breath was shallow; he could not find the will to move, though his body trembled fiercely. His eyes were fixated on the shapes that now morphed into some wicked thing before him, much larger than his figure. His shadow continued, “If only we had known what trouble your kind would cause us, we never would have remained idle for so long.”

“We watched from the shadows as you multiplied”, he continued. Time was short, each word stole a moment from the man’s dwindling account. “We cannot survive in the presence of light without a host, you see. For thousands of years, we lived freely in the darkness of night, retreating to the darkest depths during the day. When your kind discovered fire, you unwittingly brought an equivalent darkness upon yourselves. There is no light without darkness. That first spark in the darkness was the death of night. My kind watched as the light spread from one corner of the Earth to the next, taking our land without knowing it. Of course, confronting you was deadly for us as you harnessed the power of light. The ignorance of man was our greatest weapon”.

“You forced a difficult choice upon us. Some chose to accept humanity, and two-thirds of us accepted exile into the lands between civilizations. But there are those of us who knew your filth would spread, always needing more than you had. So we cursed ourselves. We bound ourselves to your very bodies as hosts. By binding ourselves to you, we survive in the light, though we must die with you”.

The man wanted to ask, “Why?” or maybe “What?”. But not because he didn’t understand but because his mind was overwhelmed. Perhaps he was not meant to understand.

“I can see that your heart is slowing. I will continue. You should know what we have done. You alone will bear this burden”, the shadow said. “Though we show in the light, we have anchored ourselves in the darkness of your minds. Our presence is anchored to your body. Your mind is anchored to us. Every war, every self-destructive thought, every great weapon of destruction…. Why do you think man has the desire to destroy himself? Did you think it was all your idea? Perhaps the greatest trick we played was to make you believe such a thing. We endured you patiently as we drove you to extinction. Our time is not measured as yours. We do not know death unless we bind ourselves to mortality. Now I lay here dying with you, bound to your mortality. You should know that we’ve won. Your death will be like the passing of a terrible storm”.

Too weak to speak, the man let out a single tear. It was not necessarily of sadness, he could not discern his emotion. Maybe there wasn’t a word for such a feeling because no man had ever felt such a weight. Giving up his final breath in the failing light, legions of shadows enveloped him. His last thought, now untainted, was an almost unbearable love for his fellow man. “What could we have been?” the man said as his spirit left his body.