keyword "shadow" title "the unbearable being of lightness" in misc. flash fiction

Nearly everyone remembers the scene in “Peter Pan” when his shadow tries to escape from its attachment then Wendy captures and manages to sew it back on, yes? Have you ever wondered why his shade was trying so desperately to abscond? No, you probably haven’t. To you, it was just another darling little detail to charm you for a moment and then move on to the heart of the story. If you’d ever wondered why, well, I can tell you. I can tell you for certain as I happen to be Peter’s shadow. I keep trying to escape from this purgatory because, in all honesty, being young forever gets old after a while. I am bloody sick of it.

I’m not sick of living forever, certainly. Immortality appeals to me as much as any other thinking thing, I don’t know anymore what happens to a shadow when we fade than you humans do when you expire. I’d certainly rather live forever than find that out via death, that’s not my problem. But forty years of being the shadow of a child, living in a fairyland of lonely low-consequence fantasy, I am just exhausted. I don’t know how the little moron does it, this ability to not go mad being juvenile forever. As far as I’m concerned, it’s hell.

This sexless floating life in trees, playing pirate cops and robbers, it was great for the first decade but now the whole thing is just grating. Running around with feral little boys, at best palling off with stereotypes and pixies, good Lord, I just want it to end. I want to go and eat the shadow of a good steak for once. I want to dance with a real woman’s shade, from time to time, that would be lovely. Doing the shadow of a job isn’t pleasant and paying off the mortgage on the shadow of a home, that sounds tedious, but it would be a change of pace and I know the sacrifices would be worth having the stability and stimulation. I would certainly take all the trade-offs if I could just be allowed to just grow up.

So of course, I took my chance to run away that night in London, when Pete was distracted by his little jail-bait Gwendolyn, and damn her for catching me. Damn her for restraining me and double-damn it all that the Neverneverlogic of sewing me back to his booties still worked out there in the really-real. It shouldn’t. I’m the absence of light, for God’s sake, a thread should go straight through me but, ah, magic. Childish magic overcomes my attempts to change and grow.

I think that I would even take a real death someday if it meant that he’d grow up, that I would grow up with him but hell, even that, the little bug-girl would just get the audience to applaud and I would be back here, trapped again, as the shadow of a kid. In the shadow of a childhood.