Shadow Walkers

8/5/07

The night’s air is so much cooler then the days. I feel the breeze stroke me as I drive down this two-way lane. But the streets are just as bright as in the daytime. Lamps gleam into the night blending into the glare from the open shop windows. Moths gather around bumping into them. Thud against the glass, again and again never quite figuring out how to get close to the light and not get hurt.

Cars blur by flashing their headlights. The kick-off begins as petals are pushed in a race, a game, as they try to outrun every traffic light ignoring red and thinking green. The polished stripes outline the track and glare in the light telling drivers to stay on their side of the track. It’s a dazzling array of constant motion flashing through the night air. Dancing beams highlight every detail and draw my attention from on thing to the next. My eyes grow weak as I begin to squint to keep my focus.

The noises flow in through my open window. I hear music, chatter, cars flying by, every bump I can’t seem to miss, even my own radio. Combining with the light the sounds keep me wide-awake even after a hard day. There is never a moment for silence or a second for rest. The city comes alive at night. Everything turns into a game as all seriousness and reality appears to fade from minds and people loose track of time, distracted by such a display of night-lights, motion and sound.

A truck with a heavy load turns off onto a dirt road in front of me. Instead of slowing down I ease around him keeping my speed. The thud of his load startles me for an instance. Dust swarms through my cab window blurring my vision even more. I continue to the darker side of town where few lights are to be fount. Some walk beside the road. There are men on bikes, and women whom do not look heaven sent. All stop and gaze at me as I slowly pass by. None recognize me but still they stare eyes soaking me in without a blink. Eyes that dare me to question them dare me to stop. The night has made these shadow walkers forget all fear in their absence of light.

Hard dark pavement under their feet gives them no comforting touch. But still they walk over it night after night, just waiting for day. All the listless lonely after hours they trudge back and forth trying to get somewhere but never quite being able to walk that far as the dark road pulls them back. They are hardened souls with very few goals. The fumes and exhaust smother the air. Fragrance I’ve grown accustomed to on my nightly drives, an aroma that helps me feel alive.

I pull up to an Exxon Station to pump some gas. Out of the corner of my eye a young woman stands holding a pay phone in her hand to her ear as if she was talking to God. Fumbling in her pockets she portrays someone out of coins. Her head turns desperately as if God is barely on the line and she is desperate for help. She spots me all alone under the one lamp in the whole place. As she approaches her eyes flash like a cat’s that have been reflected in the dark by an alien light. Green, vivacious eyes, with some intellect still left in them as if the shadowed walks have yet to completely burn them out.

A gleam of yellow teeth, and a twist of messy hair craftily asked me for a dime. I handed her a dollar and she returned to call her invisible ride. The game had started again, as she began to shrewdly play with me using her subtle ways and charm to wet my appetite for a meal. She stole glances at me like a nervous schoolgirl, even though I know what she wanted. She wasn’t’ the best of figures at all but she was pretty in her own way if your not that picky. It was those eyes that made a man really loose their focus as they told you what you wanted to hear. Distracting like the lights they held my focus.

Starved steps came back over to where I gazed never leaving me sight. No words were exchanged between us, a snake charmer’s talented way of getting a dangerous snake to behave, as she sat in my tomb beside me. We drove a little ways down the track to a motel. Again no words were seen quite fit to describe our lustful mines so we remained silent as I got us a room. We talked little but moved a lot.

We danced all night in different positions. Me on top, then her, then from behind, anything that I wanted she had to do. Not because she wanted to but because it was what she was paid to do, to please me. I made her get on her knees to further please. She did her job okay, I can’t complain. But those eyes never changed for me they gleamed and glistened like the streetlamps and I was the bug. Her body was covered in scars, cellulite and tattoos, not a pretty sight, but they eyes held my focus giving me light. But when morning came and the night lights went away we went our separate ways as the game ended.

But when the air grows cool, and the lights being to dance again, I’ll begin my shadowed walk searching for that one light in the mist of so many, one that will ease my darkened soul. I’m a shadow walker no difference from anyone I pass by on my ride. Only difference is, the pavement isn’t what my feet hit and when the reality of daylight comes shining through dimming out the nightlights my game ends but theirs doesn’t. It never ends for them because it’s not a game that they choose to play. They walked with shadows and flash their eyes as cars go cruising by hoping that one will stop. Every night they are trapped in the shadows of the worldly world. Walking back and forth for that one chance, for one night of peace, with some stranger, with only one thought in their head, “Is it over yet? Should I still be afraid? Have the shadows all gone away?” But the real shadows that follow them aren’t the ones that sketch their feet. They are the deeds and memories and loss of desire that cloud their souls casting shadows across all the land making no place for them to stand out of the shade.

We all seek and desire the dancing lights, some for selfish lustful desires, and others so they can try to forget that shadows cloud their soul. Forced to walk in the shadows without it. Everyone walks in the shadows its something we can’t escape. The only reality is when day comes back again, “Do you light up? Or does your heart stay in the dark??”