A Form and a Shadow

Viruswitch's Story
Trinity had been dreaming of that bright green light every day for the past month. It started as a weak green point of light and expanded into a great green liquid curtain. In the dream she held her hand out, touched it and it endevoured it into the green dimension. It was a beautiful sight. Green and blue shadows glew all over, with hues of purple that met with a sight-penetrating white, stubborn enough never to abandon a world poor of color. There was a green fountain that threw out drops of a crystal-like shiny water. The sound of the flowing water was very quiet but as her gaze was fixed on the fountain, she started to perceive it incredibly loudly. Unable to resist she aproached the water, closed her eyes and felt, how it felt. Trinity was now a glowing green mass of refreshing liquid, her body had vanished and only the outline of her form reminded of a past human existence. As if a green current of electricity hit her, she reached the peak of this peculiar green nirvana. Thats when she always woke up.


Mushroom's Story
It was old science, or pseudoscience, but it's the one that her grandfather swore by: he had this "ozone machine" that looked like a shoeshine box with eight neon-like tubes on top that would glow blue-white with electric plasma. He claimed that the static discharge it produced improved the circulation in his feet, and he'd sit in the La-Z-Boy with his feet gently placed upon the tubes. She had the ways and the means to replicate her grandfather's wonder-machine, but it wasn't her feet that she was having trouble with. She wanted to improve the circulation of her entire body and built an entire wall of tubing that she could stand near, or go about her work next to. It looked really great, like something you'd see at a home improvement show, and people commented they'd love to have a shower stall or external entryway to their homes that looked like this. But after a week or two, she concluded that the science had failed her. Partially this was because she didn't feel a change because she used argon (ergo the green color) rather than oxygen in her tubing, but mostly the problem was that the tubing and the power step-up used to make it glow were causing trouble on the laptop computer she would sit in front of with the tubing wall behind her and it was interfering with her ability to blog about how great this health improvement system was.

[This is partially autobiographical; my grandfather did swear by his ozone-tube footbox.]


Jamie Dawn's Story
She was dead; she knew that much, but where was she? Karen was never one to believe in an afterlife. She felt weightless. She wondered what was behind that weird, green, glowing wall. When she peeked behind it, she saw God, and all the mysteries of the universe were answered just by one look in God's eyes.
You may be wondering what God looks like. Karen knows.


Full of Love's Story
She is trying to find ‘herself’ in her shadow. Her shadow on the green light is the only absolute truth that appears relative in the physical world. She is trying to seize a truth, which cannot be captured in the frames of physical reality. It is something that needs to be flowing like current.


Will Brady's Story
     Gwen had come up the stairs to find the sea chamber blocked off with a curtain. She was concenred about the folds of the curtain [if it confused the fish] and wondered if the fish behind the curtain would be harmed by residues emanating from the synthetic material from which the curtain was composed. She also wondered how the fish would be fed, and even if the fish had been killed off, the curtain being placed in the tank to keep the viewers from seeing their stiff, lifeless bodies floating near the top of the tank.
     This whole affair troubled her greatly, and it was causing her to reconsider whether or not she should pledge her annual support to the Center the next time a fund-raising drive was announced. After all, it was cotsing her well over $100 a year to support the place, and this is not what she was expecting when she came to visit.
     She would rather have seen a new collection on sea anemones in the tank, as had been suggested during the last fund drive. All in all, it saddened her to see the curtain across the tank.


My Story
Matthew entered the shadow studio, as it was called. He stood in the silent chamber, taking in the apparatus and the convex projection screen. The lights dimmed and he counted the seconds of silence while the hum of transistors and electrified circuits cut in as a steady, subliminal vibration. All the preparations had paid off. Soon he would be able to carry out his plan. His mind drifted through bits and pieces of the interview with the psychologist who'd certified his suitability for the procedure. Not everyone was allowed into the room...

"Tell me again about these voices you've been hearing," the psychologist’s voice stated unemotionally, eyes staring through the wire-rimmed glasses at Matthew.

"---It's when no one else is around. They call to me --- beaconing me --- as if they were around the corner, or in the next room. But when I go in, they've moved on --- and when I hear them again their condescension only builds." Matthew spoke like a man hounded, and the sensors on his fingers and pasted to his head confirmed the emotion.

"And these voices, do they ever tell you to do anything?"

"Yes. Yes, at night. It begins as insinuations, 'That girl next door would like someone to...' Then the demands become more direct, first as questions, 'Why don't you visit her and---' Then commands, 'Go to her now and---' And loud, very loud, sexual things, you understand --- I press my hands to my ears and fall to the floor, but they scream at me, many voices at once, an entire crowd, and won't let up." At this point he buried his face in his hands and began to cry, his frame shaking with emotion. It was a passionate performance and sustained throughout a film may even have sufficed for an Oscar nomination. The psychologist, though no connoisseur of acting, liked what he saw.

"I think I can certify your insanity," he told Matthew. "We shall begin the procedure in half an hour."

Matthew smiled inwardly. Those weeks of intense meditation and practice with his homemade lie-detector had put him in a position to claim anything he wanted, and have it officially approved as truth. Suddenly, light appeared behind the now rippling membrane. It was a weak, colorless glow at first, strengthening finally into a thick hue of green like one might expect in the illuminated brine of a fathomless ocean. It was his soul, his soul that formed out of the green ether as a dense, dark shadow. He reached out to it, to touch it, to embrace it, the ultimate embrace of oneself, which had been his intention all along. Had he been insane, the procedure would have extracted the pathological segments of his being and left them to dissolve into dust, to be vacuumed away and sealed in a specimen tube for scientific reference. But now the complete soul presented itself intact, stood before him in his reach. His hand felt drawn towards the real reflection but as his fingertips grasped, the soul turned away. His soul, too, had had intentions. It wanted out, out of dull, normal Matthew. A moment later it vanished entirely, and Matthew stood alone, a mere shell of his former self.