The Shadow Friend

by Alex North

The place had a gravity that held whatever was dropped where it fell. That included the people.

It wasn’t just the sight of this place, but the feel of it. Memories kept threatening to surface – ripples of history beginning to blur the surface of the present – and it was all I could do to push them down.

A small light in the shadows. It was like a candle flame that I wanted to cup with my hands, blow on gently, and bring to brighter life. But, of course, there was always a danger when you did that. Always a risk you would make it go out instead.

Jenny had been my first love, and when you’re young you cling to that long past the point when you know it should be over. You know you need to let each other go, but it’s so sad and difficult, and so you don’t until you have to. Until the hurt of keeping someone outweighs the hurt of losing them.

And how strange that a generation I remembered as being strong and sturdy and reliable was now vanishing away into old age.

Graveyards might have housed the dead below the ground, but what lay above was always for the living; they were the places where people came to deal with the break between what their lives had once been and what they now were.