Ralph froze as the shadow moved again, its silhouette sharper than the lamplight should allow. It had been weeks of this; shapes shifting at the edges of his vision, a voice he could not place murmuring in his dreams. He was used to dismissing it, chalking it up to his overactive imagination or the loneliness that came with being sixteen in a small, quiet town.
But tonight, the shadow spoke.
“Who are you?”, Ralph whispered, his voice shaky but curious.
The air thickened as if the room had been submerged underwater. The shadow didn’t respond at first. Instead, it stretched along the peeling wallpaper, spreading like ink spilled across the paper.
“I am you,” it finally said, the voice a rougher, older echo of his own.
Ralph stumbled backward, his chest tightening. “That’s not funny,” he said. “Stop messing with me!”
The shadow laughed, a sound that carried more weariness than malice. “If you think this is funny, you haven’t lived enough yet. But you will.”
The words wrapped around Ralph are like cold chains, heavy with implications. His instincts told him to run, to break for the door, and never look back, but his legs wouldn’t move. “What do you want?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“It’s not what I want,” the shadow said. “It’s what you need to hear.”
Suddenly, Ralph’s surroundings dissolved. The familiar confines of his bedroom vanished, replaced by a cacophony of images flashing like lightning. His mother crying at the kitchen table, a car skidding on a rain-slick road, a hospital monitor flat-lining, a courtroom with faces he didn’t recognise. Each vision came with a jolt, like a live wire pressed against his skin.
“Stop!” Ralph shouted, clutching his head.
The shadow stood beside him now, no longer tethered to the wall. It was a man, older, weathered, with lines etched deep into his face and eyes that carried storms.
“You can’t stop what’s coming,” the shadow said. “But you can prepare. Listen to me, Ralph. You’ll lose more than you think you can bear. But you’ll survive. And when the time comes, you’ll know how to make it right.”
“I don’t understand!” Ralph yelled, his voice cracking under the weight of his frustration.
“You will,” the shadow said softly. “When you’re me, you will understand.”
The ground beneath them shifted again, and Ralph found himself back in his room, trembling. The shadow was gone, but its presence lingered, like smoke after a fire.
For weeks, Ralph tried to forget. He ignored the warnings in his dreams, chalking them up to teenage angst or some deeply buried anxiety. But the shadow’s predictions came true, one by one. His mother’s silent sobs became a nightly ritual. The car crash on a rain-slick road happened just as he had seen it, tearing someone he loved from his life. The hospital, the courtroom, they all came to pass, each event carving a deeper wound into Ralph’s soul.
Yet, through it all, the shadow’s words remained. You’ll survive. And when the time comes, you’ll know how to make it right.
Years passed. Ralph grew older, his face hardening into the shadow’s visage. The pain did not vanish, but it dulled, replaced by a quiet determination. One night, as he sat alone in his dimly lit apartment, a strange sensation prickled at the edges of his mind.
He looked up. The lamplight flickered, and a shadow danced along the wall. It was slight at first, but it grew darker, sharper, until it took the shape of a young boy, trembling with fear.
The boy’s voice was faint, but Ralph recognised it immediately. “Who are you?”
Ralph’s chest tightened. His throat burned with the weight of everything he wanted to say, everything he wished someone had told him when he was that boy.
“I am you,” he said, his voice steady, carrying storms of its own.
The boy flinched, just as he had so many years ago. “That’s not funny.”
Ralph smiled sadly. “It’s not meant to be.”
The boy stared at him, wide-eyed and frightened. “What do you want?”
Ralph leaned forward, the shadows curling around him like smoke. “It’s not what I want. It’s what you need to hear.”
DoubleSpeak 