Nika's Shadow

Every winter, there’s this thing that comes out of the lake and stalks my property. This is the thirteenth year this has happened. Every time it happens, I am forced to stay indoors because I can’t bear to hear its voice or to see its face. A face that it stole, a face that doesn’t belong to it. This parody of a woman as it wanders around my property clad in swamp growth, screeching and moaning as it does. Somehow, it stole her face. Somehow, it stole Nika’s face.

Nika and I met when we were kids. She was an orphan and my father had just passed away. We were both broken from a very young age. Looking back, I feel like she’s the only person I ever loved besides my parents. We became fast friends and by the time she was supposed to start her life as an adult, my mother had passed away too. I was alone in this world and so was Nika. Being familiar with the bottle already back then, I remember one night I offered her to come to stay with me. I explained I had nobody besides her, and she laughed before her expression turned solemn again, noting that she didn’t have anyone besides me, either.

We moved in together, but not for long. Nika, who never knew a home or a family, couldn’t stay too long in one place. She was a nomad, a flame without source or restrained. For all of her confidence and strength that she projected onto the world, she was lonely and hurt. I knew this much because what we had was special. I could see it in her eyes. That’s why I always let her go because I knew she’d always come back and she did. She’d disappear for a while, then come back. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a man or a woman, she claimed to have feelings for. We both knew those were lies. She loved no one truly. She loved me, but it wasn’t romantic. That was different. I’ve seen her break so many hearts, but she always professed to be concerned with only breaking mine.

I kept telling her she could never do that, but that was a lie, too. She broke mine. Nika broke my heart the last time she came back. When she came back, she was different. Her skin was pale, her stature meek and gaunt. There wasn’t much of her usual fiery self. She was cold, slow, and fading. She never told me what had happened to her, but I knew she would not last for long. I could see it in her eyes.

Nika always liked to drink. Besides me, that was her only other love. The last we lived together, though; she drank like a horse. That was when I realized she wasn’t making it out anymore. The same woman I’ve seen laugh through broken bones and torn organs, through hunger, through immense physical and emotional pain. She could beat all of that. This time, she wasn’t beating the disease that ate at her. She never told me what it was, and I could never find the strength to make her tell me. She kept saying she’d be fine, but I knew she was lying.

One night, when we were about to go to sleep, as we lay in bed, she said she could see this black shadow standing there, looming over her. Growing darker and colder with each passing day. She said she saw it pull out a thread from inside of her. A white little thread came out of her chest and into the shadow’s mouth. I thought she was being metaphorical about whatever she had. She insisted on being literal, and we had a bit of an argument about it. I called her insane, and she laughed at me, calling me a psycho instead.

She and I, we always had those minor arguments and disagreements. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but these arguments ended with banter.

I forgot about Nika’s shadow, but I couldn’t unsee her deterioration. She withered away like a flower in the summer heat, becoming smaller, thinner. Her skin tightened around her body, becoming leathery. Those shining eyes of hers became sunken while her cheekbones became more and more noticeable. Her strength was fading away. She’d spend days doing nothing but lying in bed. Sometimes she’d moan and cry weakly in her sleep. I couldn’t do anything but watch, and it ate at me. It gnawed at me to the point I started drinking way too much. It got to the point I couldn’t tell apart Nika’s corpse-like appearance from my healthy-looking ideal of her. We spent days drinking and talking. I’d lie if I said I can remember what we talked about or how long we’ve spent like this because I remember nothing from that period.

I remember the taste of alcohol and misery in my mouth as I watched the only person I cared about being sucked out of this world by some sort of evil dressed in a man’s shadow. Oh, I’ve seen the abomination. I’ve seen it once, and that was enough to burn it into my memory for all eternity.

I woke up one night and found myself face to face with a pitched black shadow standing over Nika. Its pernicious shape connected to her broken form with a white little thread, a barely visible one. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. My body froze in place. The thing must’ve noticed me as I saw a thick pure white smile form on its dome. When I saw that sickening smile, the room turned frozen, and I felt a knife pierce my chest. It sucked the air out of my lungs as the sound of my heartbeat bombarded my ears. I was choking on the void in my throat as the shadow’s smile grew larger and larger. Panicked, I tried moving, but nothing came. My body wasn’t in my control anymore. My skin turned to marble. A statue stuck in place for as long as the demonic kept its invisible eyes locked on me.

It simply faded, finally allowing me to break out of its spell. Once I pulled myself away, a knot formed in my stomach. I let out a scream and ended up puking all over myself. Thankfully, I didn’t wake Nika up. I remember her face from that night. It seemed so comfortable, so calm.

The morning after, I told her about the shadow, and she looked at me like she’d seen a ghost before bursting out into pained laughter. She admitted that the shadow man was just a joke she pulled on me. Yet I’ve seen it. I was adamant about knowing what I’d seen. She wouldn’t believe me, however. Instead, saying said she must’ve finally driven me mad like everyone else she came into contact with. She said I was losing it.

She wasn’t wrong. I was losing it… I was losing her…

Not long after, I found her body in the bathtub.

Cold and still.

Something inside of me broke, a sharp pain shot through my body as I watched her lifeless body floating in the water. It wasn’t purely emotional; it was quite physical - this pain. I felt like I had lost a part of my body. I couldn’t move my gaze away. Her form transfixed me in place. Feeling the tears streaming down my face, I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing at all. It’s like it threw me into a vacuum of emotions. Nothing came in and nothing went out. Nothing moved, nothing changed, everything stayed motionless.

Colorless.

I remember little from that day or any day after that one, for a long time. I do not know how long. All I know is that there was a lot of booze, a black hole inside, and the corpse of my beloved Nika laying in one room.

My mind snapped. I was so lost and not hurting, just lost and floating in absolute nothingness, and not in a good way. Trapped inside my little bubble of pleasant memories and memetic happiness with a person who was gone forever. The days bled into weeks and those soon became months. It all flashed by me like a little spark. I didn’t care. At that point, I didn’t care about anything at all. I was too busy drowning myself in alcohol, hoping to feel something. No sensations came, however. At one point, even the alcohol started losing its burning edge, slowly turning into a hydrant rather than an intoxicant.

She filled the house with the stench of decay, but I could barely register that. I was too far gone at this point. I didn’t care about it. Nika’s room became a horror show, her body slowly decomposed into a gooey puddle of brown and black material draped over a skeleton. I’ve been to that many times over the months.

What haven’t I done around those remains of hers? I prayed at her remains. I’ve cried on top of them, and I spoke to them. Everything, I did it all. I was a madman who spoke to a decaying pile of bones and kept on crying just how much he loved them. She was gone, but I couldn’t let her body go even though not much had remained of it.

I spent my days drinking and puking on myself or talking to the quickly disintegrating body. I spent my nights dreaming about drowning at the hands of Nika in the lake by the house. Soon enough, I fell in love with the thought of drowning in that fucking lake. Whenever I thought about just throwing myself into the waters with a rock tied around my neck, I’d remember just how peaceful and how beautiful she looked in death. Her form was impeccable to behold as I watched her float in the bathtub. In these moments of grim recollection, I felt myself feel something again. Thinking about my death, I found peace.

Somewhere deep down inside, I was dreaming of reuniting with her on the other side.

Eventually, my intrusive thoughts became even more prevalent, and I opted for that one last step towards immortality. Life has become nothing but a painful, monotonous chore fueled by alcohol and self-destruction. Life was no longer worth it.

Even cutting myself and burning myself with cigarette butts did nothing. I wasn’t living. Instead, I was just an animated sack of shit and chemicals. I needed a way out. I wanted to see her again. She was calling me to join her in my dreams. Begging me to follow her into the realm of endless darkness where she was so lonely and cold. I’ve finally had enough and took that one last step, well tried to anyway.

There was nobody left in this world whom I’d care for, nor there’s anyone to care about me. After all, I had no bridges left, as everyone I ever loved had died. I think it’s funny today, as the awful thing outside calls out my name using Nika’s voice. Demanding I come out, demanding I set it free. I let her go; I did. She forced me to let her go.

Nika terrorized me from beyond the realm of the dead to let her fucking go. She forced me to untangle myself from her filthy remains, and I did. I ended up burning whatever was left of her. It took a while, but I did. Now this thing, Nika’s shadow, Nika’s demon… still pretending like I have a part of her with me. The only thing I have now is memories. As the prospect of my suicidality is funny to me now, so was the prospect of remaining alive was back then.

I was ready to end it all there and then. I sat the whole thing up and was about to throw myself into the lake. A boulder tied with a strap to my neck as I watched the calm waters below. For a moment, I got lost in the serene scenery. Almost able to find a semblance of joy in my own pitiful existence. Before I could notice, however, dark clouds covered the sky, slowly casting a gloomy shade over the beautiful scenery. As I watched the winds rocking the waters in the lake below, forming waves, I could hear her voice. It called me faintly from below. It felt airless and watery. I felt the tears streaming down my eyes as I was about to reunite with my beloved, but then I looked down again.

The sensation of a sharp knife pierced both of my lungs as a scream echoed through the blackened skies. I fell down backward, clenching the boulder and shivering with fear and disgust. Another awful scream pierced my eardrums, louder than the last. The waters in the lake rose as the winds became violent, bashing against my body, making my skin shiver even more. What I had seen down below made little sense. Even thinking about it makes me shudder to this day.

A third scream pierced the air, coinciding with a thunderclap, sending shock waves through my body. It was my name. Something down below screamed my name. Something furious, very irrational. A thing that shouldn’t exist. Something so terrible even I couldn’t handle watching it. A thing from my worst nightmares. I’ve never been so afraid in my entire life, as I was in those moments.

Feelings were back, in the form of sheer terror.

Untying the strap that tied my neck to the boulder, I left it there and ran as fast as I could back home. I locked the door and the windows before running to Nika’s room. This time, the stench of her mostly decayed body was almost unbearable. Even then, I remained right by her, huddled next to the gore and decay stayed bed on which I left her unburied remains.

I spent the next ten hours sitting on the floor, shaking in fear as images of that thing in the lake flashed themselves before my eyes repeatedly. I couldn’t move, I could think straight, I couldn’t do anything as the panic slowly corrupted my mind. Inserting impossible images into my eyes, slowly burning away at what remained of my sanity.

Eventually, my body gave out, and I passed out. When I woke up, the stench of death was far worse than it had been prior to when I fell asleep. It was truly hellish. I ran out of the room, only to slip on a puddle of water.

The whole hallway was wet, there shouldn’t have been any water. My head was spinning, and I was groaning because of the pain pulsating in the back of my head. None of this made sense. I stumbled to the bathroom to wash my face and attempt to come back to my senses. The water in the bathtub was running. Overflowing the tub, dripping onto the floor. I didn’t turn it on… My heartbeat became rapid, my mind was going around itself in circles. Nothing made sense.

I heard a breathy sigh behind me. Chills ran down my spine as I turned around slowly. There she was in the mirror, her face contorted into pure rage and hatred. A parody of a once beautiful woman has become a ghastly monstrosity that threatened to devour me there and there. I fell down and averted my gaze for a second. Mustering up all the courage I still had in me, I looked at the mirror and she was gone.

The thing that was in the lake somehow had followed me how. These were my first encounters with it, but they wouldn’t be the last. Over the next few weeks, this thing had become a fixture of my life. A permanent reminder of my worst wound, the one that could never heal.

The thing would appear behind me and whisper awful things in my ear. It would stand there in the mirror and windows. It would stare and accuse me with its ugly, soulless black eyes. Somehow, it would mess with the water and electricity in the house. It would stand there and stare at my Nika every time I went into her room. It would stand over me at night and hiss.

Every time I saw this thing. I felt myself losing a part of myself. It would just stand there and make me feel like I’m losing a piece of myself. This is what Nika spoke of when she said that there’s a shadow that is sucking her out of existence. Though for me there was no white thread, no void. I had to watch as the darkness of oblivion had twisted my only friend into a sick, decaying, ghoulish parody of herself to torment and mock my loss and me.

I finally lost it with this thing when I went into Nika’s room and it was beyond cold. It was painfully cold inside, dropping to near-freezing temperatures. I left the window open to ventilate out the stench of death. Kneeling down beside her remains, I stayed there for a few moments, in total silence, just remembering the good times with her. Something cracked audibly in the room. I allowed myself to become so lost in thought I didn’t notice the source of the cracking.

I was only pulled out of my memories by the sound of a gasping skeleton as it awkwardly rose from the gore and decay-stained sheets reaching out to me. I fell backward as my heartbeat became erratic. The room had gone suddenly even colder, and my body shook violently with fear as the skeletal remains of my dearly beloved pulled themselves up and crawled out towards me. I screamed and crawled away from the reanimated cadaver, but it followed me relentlessly. Too shocked to do anything, I kept on crawling until it grabbed a hold of my leg.

At that point, I finally snapped. Whatever humanity remained in me died in that instant and I just kicked the unliving hell out of the skeleton. Great happiness and a terrible sadness overcame me at that moment. Somehow, I found the strength and the will to get up and continuously beat on the perverted remains of what used to be Nika.

I kept on beating and kicking those bones until I could no longer do that. Whatever took over the remains wouldn’t get out either. In a moment of desperation, I’ve made the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make.

With tears in my eyes and great pain weighing on my heart, I had to come to terms with my loss. I could no longer keep the one I love by my side. Till death do us part, it’s said, for a good reason it would seem.

Dragging the unliving corpse of my beloved to the hearth, dousing the rotten possessed bones in alcohol, and throwing them into the fire. I couldn’t watch as they burned and I couldn’t stand the sound of the inhuman cries that emanated from within the flames. I drank myself into oblivion that day to forget my misery, but I was never successful in escaping it.

That day, after I had passed out from overconsumption, I had the worst kind of nightmare. I was dragging my beloved Nika to the shower. She was kicking and screaming, weakly. Resisting my grasp, but to no avail, she was too weak to break free. I shoved her face into the sink and turned on the water. Crying, tears burning my face, and muffled gargles cutting my eardrums, I watched as my body was killing the only person I ever loved. When she finally stopped moving, I placed her lifeless body in the tub and filled it with warm water. I watched her reawaken before shoving her head under the hot water once more.

Then, I woke up. It was dark, and I was alone… Nika was gone and with her, the shadow. I had a lot of mourning to do, but time partially heals all wounds. The days have become bearable as they turned into weeks and later into months. I was used to being alone, but the thought of being actually alone in this world always lingered in my mind. It still does. I still miss her every single day. I know I am alone, but that’s the way I like it. Nika drove indeed me mad because I refuse to replace her with anyone else.

That said, there is still something lusting after me out there. Every winter it comes back, wearing her form to torment me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there and as long as I’m inside, it can’t reach me. I’ve learned that the first time I’ve seen it after cremating Nika.

I’ve had that same terrible nightmare nearly a year after I encountered the undead. Waking up from it, drenched in a cold sweat, my heart still beating violently, I headed outside to cool off. I grabbed a smoke and my coat and went out. Finally relaxing, I noticed someone walking around in the woods. I called out to them, remarking that few people visit this place. Once the person turned around to face me, my body tensed up, and the shape filled my head with these ugly memories.

Nika’s twisted and perverted dead face plastered to its head. A toothless grin ever so widening and sickening pure white eyes contorted in pure hatred stared at me, a wet black hair draped over its gaunt form. The thing noticed me and bolted right toward me. I saw it speeding in my direction, covering a great distance with each leap. Seeing its progression, I ran back inside, locking the door and the windows. I stood behind the door, waiting for it to make its move, but nothing came. It was dead silent, no banging or trying to break it. It was gone, seemingly.

Nearly gave me a heart attack while I passed by a window. It just stood there, staring at me. Its ugly, ghoulish face trying to say something. I do not know what it wants, nor do I care to know. I guess this thing that killed Nika is real. It is after me, while it is here every time I go out it tries to reach me but I always go back inside as it's seemingly unable to enter the house. I stay indoors for the week or two it shows up for. After that, it disappears again until the next year. This is the thirteenth year Nika’s shadow has been stalking me.

A grim reminder of the things I’ve done, and the things I might've done but have purposefully erased from memory with copious amounts of alcohol.