Edgar A. Tieman

THE SHADOW

I see it, I feel it, and I hear it. They become alive in my mind. They are me and I am they for I am, “THE SPIRIT WEAVER!

I felt their life drain from them as I held them; their last breaths gone forever, never to be shared with another. Their heads bow in silent prayer that only I can hear. I watch as words of their loved ones and friends fall silent as tears dry… for I am, “THE SPIRIT WEAVER!”

The last thoughts of love, home, and life before The Shadow descend. Bodies maimed and mangled, most beyond recognition. Their blood drying, turning dark starts cracking into shapes of small delicate drying leaves. Others, their silence falls, blood slowly flows from them forming distorted red pools about them.

Their clothes saturated, The Shadow, unable to recognize them. All is quiet… their faces covered, with three others waiting;

One, with a letter in his hand, it looked as if he was trying to hand it to someone to mail. It was addressed, “To my sweetheart”…

Another – clutching a picture of his beautiful wife with their new born child to his chest.

The last one, arm reaching, his blood stained fingers straining as if he is going to pick a very tiny white delicate flower.

The Shadow stops, “looks”, then delicately picks the flower and places it tenderly in his hand, then gently closes his fingers around it as the sunsets.

In the far off distance, the soft sound of waiting taps flows through the valley. Then – the quiet sound of the marching cadence of those returning to assist The Shadow in the final covering of their last three fallen comrades, ends in the sound of silence.