Highway Shadows
(a satisfied mind)


The man liked to watch the shadows, as they flew by. He liked the highway shadows. He sat in the dark, under the no-light of the broken lamppost, and gazed onto the highway. He observed the highway shadows at play, dancing from on car to another. An intricate dance only a madman could understand; which was why the man liked them so much. He had done this before, of course. Many times, and they still hadn’t caught him yet. But the man remembered none of it. The man only knew to wait. To wait and watch the highway shadows.

The night passed on, the flow of cars trickled down, almost at once. The shadows were rare now, but because of that they told the man so much more. The man looked down at his watch; it was 6:17, as always. The man’s watch was broken, only he understood it. He moved now, for the first time in hours. He moved down, away from the highway shadows, to the creek that was slowly running past. It was dirty; the man wouldn’t have touched it if the shadows hadn’t told him to. So he did. The man bent down and began to scrub his hands in the filthy waters, the blood slowly oozed off of them. With the blood, went his mind. As always, the ritual act of rinsing brought the man into the place where the shadows were.

It was dark, as it always was in here. He wasn’t scared, as this was a place of kindness. He laid down on the vast blackness, not knowing what was supporting him. The man waited. As he waited, he thought. The man thought thoughts of home, and thoughts of pain. He thought in colors and he thought in feelings. The man thought in a way that no one else could think. He knew this was special, and he cherished his secret, when the men he told as a kid made him take medicine, he knew to lie. As if thinking of the social security agents had summoned them, there they were, in the darkness with the man. Something was different though, the man realized calmly, they have black eyes now. The highway shadows always came in different forms in his special place. As he watched them, they began to speak. They were telling him stories. There was nothing the man loved more than hearing a story from the highway shadows. He sat up attentively, and listened. And so it was that the man’s madness took him again.

This story was new, like all the others, and this story was about a little girl. “This little girl was sad,” said the shadows, “and she needed to be happy.” They told the story of how the man made the little girl happy. The man was happy because he was in this story too. The things the shadows told him were good, they made him fell important. The man knew that if he was in a story then people would like him. The story went on for a long time, and when it was over, the man came out of his special place. He was surprised to find the body of a 7 year old girl lying at his bare feet, but he let it pass. The man knew what he had to do now. The man had to go back to his spot, on his highway.

When the man got back to his highway, the sun was coming up. He was sweating really hard, and the story had made him very tired. He sat down in the no-light of the broken lamp post, and turned his thoughts back to the highway shadows. He watched them with a satisfied mind.