He’d seen them first, on Surrender Bridge: fragments of a vision swimming in hazy fringes of peripheral sight. He thought they were people, and maybe they were, but they seemed to unhinged from reality as he knew it. They were tall. They were sleek. Something in their poise made him think of predators. Something in the way they spoke, reminded him of dumb parrots demanding crackers. And then, they were gone. When he thinks of them now, he can only recall blackness. He has seen them since that pivotal day on a bridge named for something the city has forgotten. He recognizes them as they swim through the peripheral fringes of his sight. They are human. They are something else: a function, perhaps, of the city. When he thinks of them, his mind clouds with thick billows of oily darkness. Tonight, he stalks along the banks of the river. He can hear the soft crunch of his footsteps. He walks west, facing the memory of sunset. The sky is clogged and clotted with clouds like torn dreams…evaporating. Advertisements flash and sputter on the sides of busses or on the tops of taxis. Tourists gawk at the steel-and-glass towers surrounding them. Hilarity flutters in their throats, spewed into the light-splashed night as laughter. Hyena noise. It traces a chill down his spine. They are unaware of the other things, the shadow things that live only in the peripheries of forward sight. They do not sense the things clumped in triads and quartets around them, bending forward as if to touch, to listen—or maybe, just maybe to smell or to taste. He spots one. Singular. Alone. As black as the memory of smoke at midnight. He freezes in his steps, crunching city-grit gone suddenly silent underfoot. The thing vanishes. It takes a sideways step, he thinks, losing itself in the reflection of a trend-scent ad embedded in the illuminated frame of a bus stop shelter. He tries to find it, but his eyes settle on little more than reflections and shadows, the glimmer of glass, and the sparkled movement of headlights and tail lights crossing a distant bridge. He knows that he will remember this night, and his sight of the thing watching him. Perhaps later, they will meet. But for now, he is alone, and the night is heavy around him. * * * I took this picture during a period of fading warmth. Corey and I found ourselves in Chicago’s downtown core, listening to the sounds of a city at rest. We were in the mood to capture sodium vapor light and reflections of the face of the river. It was late. We were restless. Shortly after I’d taken this picture, I tucked it away and forgot about it. As I rifled through files, it jumped out at me, along with a gaggle of mysterious, sentient shadows, somewhere within (or at least around) this image. I don’t know what the shadows are, but I figure with so much darkness in this shot, there has to be something lurking within it. I don’t know anything about the character who sees these shadow things. I’m curious about this character, and I wonder if he wears Channel for Men. Probably, and then again, probably not. Things are slowly beginning to settle down…sort of, but it might be a while before I can get back to commenting on things I’ve seen here. Rest assured that I visit the galleries quite a lot and will catch up as time permits. Until then, thank you (as always) for viewing, reading, and commenting.