I thought my shadow was ordinary until the afternoon it stopped copying me and began to act on its own.
I was sitting in my room when the sunlight from the window stretched my shadow long across the wall. It looked exactly like every other shadow I'd ever had: flat, dark, and perfectly behaved.
Then it moved.
Not when I moved. Not when the curtain fluttered. It shifted by itself, a little at first, as if it had suddenly remembered something important. I lifted my hand. My shadow did not lift its hand. It stayed still for one strange, breathless second, as though it were waiting for me to catch up.
My stomach tightened. I sat very still and watched.
The shadow took one step away from my feet. Then another. It slid across the wall like a person sneaking out of a room, and before I could make sense of what I was seeing, it turned its head and looked straight at me.
I jumped up. The light from the window flickered behind the curtain, and my shadow vanished from the wall.
But I knew, with a cold little shiver, that it hadn't really gone anywhere.