October 8, 2025 • 19 mins
A near-death crash leaves Paul seeing strange, sheet-like entities that drift between life and death—and follow him home.
L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, ‘The Feather and the Lamp,’ sits alongside works in anthologies such as ‘The Monsters Next Door’ and ‘Best of British Science Fiction 2022’ as well as Short Édition’s ‘Short Circuit’ and the ‘Horrifying Tales of Wonder’ podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE ‘Transactions on Neural Networks,’ which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
You can read "Shadows" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.
Website: kaidankaistories.com
Please feel free to contact me through the website contact form.
Follow us on:
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Bluesky
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L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, ‘The Feather and the Lamp,’ sits alongside works in anthologies such as ‘The Monsters Next Door’ and ‘Best of British Science Fiction 2022’ as well as Short Édition’s ‘Short Circuit’ and the ‘Horrifying Tales of Wonder’ podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE ‘Transactions on Neural Networks,’ which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
You can read "Shadows" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.
Website: kaidankaistories.com
Please feel free to contact me through the website contact form.
Follow us on:
Bluesky
Substack
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the kaidn Kai, where every story takes you
one step deeper into the world of the strange, the
eerie and the unknown. I'm your host Linda Gould, and
tonight's story is Shadows by l N. Hunter. A man
survives a terrible accident, only to discover that he has
(00:30):
a new skill, the ability to see things no one
else can. Are these strange things harbingers of death, scavengers
of souls, or hallucinations born of the trauma that he experienced.
Shadows brings us to a space between life and death
and whatever weighs beyond. Ll En Hunter's comic fantasy novel
(00:54):
The Feather and the Lamp sits alongside works in anthology
such as The Monster's next Door and Best of British
Science Fiction twenty twenty two, as well as short editions,
Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There
have also been papers in the IEEE transactions on neural networks,
(01:15):
which Llen says are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely
less fun. When not writing. Lln unwindes in a disorganized
home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and
a soulmate and now dimmer lights, Settle in and prepare
yourself for shadows by L. N. Hunter and Joy. There
(01:42):
was no pain, just anomnus that covered the entire left
side of Paul's body. He lay at the side of
the road, gaze oriented across the tarmac. He was unable
to move his head. Later, he couldn't recall if he'd
(02:07):
even been able to blink, but he remembered what he saw,
the blur of the road surface too close to focus on.
Farther away, the yellow Honda accord on its roof was
the horn blaring. There's always a horn blaring in circumstances
(02:27):
like these, But Paul could never work out if he
was recollecting the detail from his accident, or just some
fragments of TV programs he'd seen, or maybe it was
just a ringing in his ears. The yellow Honda accord
a woman was wedged in the windshield, half in half
(02:47):
out of the car. He had no memory of the crash,
though he had a sense of seeing her shocked expression,
wide eyes behind thick rimmed glasses and an O shaped mouth.
Somehow he ended up lying on the ground while she
(03:08):
was in the upturned car. He couldn't tell if she
was alive or dead, but there was something moving around her.
At first, he thought there were plastic bags or sheets,
translucent gray shapes two to three feet across with no
discernible thickness, fluttering in the breeze, except there was no
(03:32):
breeze that day. He was certain of that. The first
sheet had wafted across from the other side of the road,
creeping up on the upside down car as if stalking it.
The thing looked as if it was investigating the vehicle,
probing around it for something worthy of its attention. It
stopped at the woman as Paul stared. Another shape slithered
(03:56):
into his line of sight from somewhere along the street.
It exhibited the same sort of drifting stalking motion towards
the front of the car. Three more turned up as
he watched, making their way to the shattered windshield, where
they huddled. They looked like they were sniffing, investigating the
woman's body. The creatures started to wrap themselves around her.
(04:20):
Were they eating her? He saw the ambulance arrive. The
sheets jerked back, as if startled by the arrival, but
they quickly returned to the woman. The ambulance brought another
two of the things, which emerged from the back door
when the paramedics opened it. The paramedics split up, one
hastening to the car and one coming towards Paul, each
(04:42):
with a sheet fluttering behind. As the thing got closer,
he could see a pulsing within it, a darkening and lightning,
and a tracing of black veins trailing out to the edges.
The corners flexed and stretched, extending into probing hedrils, putting
him in mind of those sting ray eggs he recalls
(05:03):
seeing on the beach mermaids purses. He thought they were called.
The paramedic leaned close and must have said something. Paul
saw her lips move, though he heard nothing, nothing but
the ringing in his ears or was that the car horn?
The giant mermaid's purse following her took up a position
(05:25):
in front of his head. It didn't totally obscure his
vision of the paramedic, but blurred and distorted her face,
as if he was looking through frosted glass. It floated closer,
and he felt a clammy pressure on his face, the
first physical sensation since the car had hit him. He
(05:46):
heard a murmur but couldn't make out any words, and
then he couldn't remember any more. Paul awoke in a
hospital ward. He was told how lucky he was, suffering
no more than a broken left tibia, concussion, and some bruising.
The doctor said he'd have to stay for a couple
of days observation, and then he could go home with
(06:07):
a light weight cast. The driver of the car that
had hit him was dead. A vision of the woman's
startled expression flashed before Paul, then the shattered windshield with
those things wrapping themselves around her. He wanted to ask
how she'd died. Was it the accident or had she
been suffocated. Pain tore at him that first night in
(06:32):
the hospital, despite the drugs. As he drifted in and
out of tortured sleep, he kept catching glimpses of the
strange sheets. They glided along the corridors, following staff and
other patients. Sometimes they clustered around other beds in his ward,
but they left him alone. He thought they looked like
a school of jellyfish canopies. He told the doctor who
(06:57):
came in the morning that he might be seeing things.
She studied him with a mixture of sympathy and skepticism
on her face. She shone a light in his eyes
and got him to follow her finger as she moved
it in front of his face. Everything seemed normal, she said,
but she would arrange for a scan in the afternoon.
As he was wheeled along endless corridors to the m
(07:19):
RI room, Paul saw more of the sheets, though they
seemed to be waiting in corners or at doors, rather
than following any particular person. His brain was pronounced healthy
and uninjured at an initial glance, but the neurological specialist
would study the scans in detail later that week. He
(07:39):
slept a dreamless sleep the following night, and after that
he was sent home. Although climbing the stairs to his
second floor flat was slow and agonizing, it was pleasant
to escape from the hospital and those things, those creatures.
Paul switched on the kettle and popped a couple of
pain killers. As he stood by the sink sipping his tea,
(08:02):
he let his eyes room over the street outside his window.
He sighed a couple of months of hobbling around in
a plaster cast were ahead of him, then another few
months of painful physiotherapy. It could have been a lot worse,
that poor driver. He couldn't remember the accident. How had
(08:26):
the car hid him? His memory started when he was
lying there, glued to the pavement. He shuddered as he
remembered the sheets. Was she dead already or had they
killed her? Did they eat her soul? He opened the
window for some fresh air, letting in the sounds from
(08:46):
outside as well. A cluster of school kids were piling
into the shop across the road, laughing and shouting at
each other. They seemed to be at the age where
all conversation had to be carried out at maximum volume.
A woman pushed a buggy containing a crying child while
she had her phone clasped to the side of her head.
A group of men were striding towards the bedding shop,
(09:09):
one of them coughing and blowing his nose. An old
man slowly hobbled along the other side of the road,
just a normal street scene. As he watched the unsteady
elderly pedestrian, Paul half smiled to himself and thought that
was how he would be walking for the foreseeable future.
(09:29):
But then Paul went pale and froze. A sheet creature
had peeled itself from the ground behind the old man
to flap and writhe around his head. Another joined it,
and the two took turns and fluttering at each other.
It seemed as if they were communicating. He rubbed his
(09:51):
eyes and looked again. There were lots of the sheets
out there, almost perfectly camouflaged on walls and pavement. The
only clew to their existence was the pulsing of their veins,
visible only if he focused closely enough. Individuals occasionally emerged
from their resting places to follow one person or another.
(10:15):
Paul saw one sheet, a small one sniffing at the
corpse of a road killed pigeon. Half a dozen of
the apparitions followed the bedding shop customers, but were concentrated
around the coughing man. Within the group, it was clear
that the things seemed to favor death or illness. Were
they ambulance chasers out to get what they could from
(10:36):
misery or did they cause the suffering themselves. The old
man was about to pass close to some scaffolding on
a building having its upper windows replaced when the sheets
started to flap more quickly. They darted in front of him,
and three more, no four, then five raced to join them.
(10:57):
The man gave no sign of seeing them, but he
seemed to react to the creature's presence, nonetheless hesitating in half,
stumbling before he took his next step. Just then, a
pane of glass fell from the scaffolding and shattered at
the pensioner's feet, daggered like shards, missing him by mere inches.
(11:18):
One of the workmen called down, Jesus man, are you
all right? The old man looked up and mumbled something
before continuing on his slow journey, as if the near
miss was of no importance, while the sheets all faded
into the background. Had they been jocking for position to
(11:39):
be the first of the old man? Had the glass
hit him? Or might they have been trying to save him?
Another thought wormed its way into Paul's mind. Had they
caused the pain to drop? He'd been so focused on
the old man that he'd not noticed whether there were
any of the creatures higher up or the glass had fallen.
(12:00):
From that evening, Paul drank several shots of cheap vodka
along with his painkillers. He knew he shouldn't mix alcohol
and medication, but he was sure he'd be awake otherwise.
Worrying into the small hours of the night, and he
damn well wanted to sleep with no dreams. Paul felt
(12:22):
surprisingly clear headed the following morning. He'd convinced himself that
the creatures were phantoms, conjured by his over active imagination.
Since the crash, the sheets didn't exist. He peered out
his window, squinting as he concentrated on every shadow. To
his relief, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Even so.
(12:45):
Half an hour later, he held himself at the front door,
heart thudding for several minutes before he built up the
courage to twist the handle and take a step outside.
He was almost at the drug store when he noticed
the first sheet, lazily drifting in the wake of a
hunched woman who looked like she was in pain. He
(13:05):
twisted around, almost tripping over his crutches, to see if
any of the creatures were following him. There were none,
or perhaps they had scurried away before he could see them.
He knew he wasn't mad, He couldn't be. They did exist,
but only he could see them. His phone rang, startling
(13:28):
him so much that he almost fell over. He fumbled
the phone out of his pocket, dropping one of his crutches.
It was his doctor, asking him to come in as
soon as he could. They'd found something in his scan.
In the examination room, the doctor pointed to what Paul
assumed must be a picture of the inside of his head.
(13:50):
We didn't notice this before because we were looking only
for signs of injury relating to the accident. However, a
review yesterday showed this. The doctor tapped a finger on
a dark patch on the screen. We performed confirmatory tests
on your blood and I'm sorry, mister Jones, but it's
(14:10):
a malignant tumor. Given its position, we can't operate, but
we should start chemotherapy as soon as possible. I must
warn you, however, the prognosis is not good. A dozen
or more sheets followed him back from the hospital. Paul
(14:30):
wanted to wave his arms or his crutches to disperse them,
but then decided that the creatures didn't exist. They couldn't
be real. They were figments of his unwelcome friend, the tumor.
They didn't follow people or cause misery. His damaged brain
had fashioned them out of nothing. At night, he could
(14:54):
send them hovering over his body, smothering him, even though
there was no physical sensation. He deliberately kept his eyes
clamped shut he didn't want to see them. Paul had
peeked once and found the sight of them clustered above
him so terrifying that he'd wet the bed. He'd been paralyzed,
(15:14):
unable to move, unable to get out of the bed
or wave them away. Each night, he sends there were
more than the night before. He didn't know how they
crammed themselves into his bedroom, but he wasn't going to
open his eyes to look. One touched him and he shrieked,
still refusing to open his eyes, and then others touched him.
(15:38):
He could feel gentle strokes and caresses, and he could
hear indistinct whispering. Paul relaxed and drifted into sleep. He
awoke late the next morning, still covered by hundreds of
the sheet things. The whispering became louder and more distinct,
(16:03):
and he thought he recognized some of the voices within
the murmuring. His parents were there, though they'd died many
years before, other long dead relatives and school friends. The
voices were soothing and welcomed him. They said not to
(16:23):
be frightened, and Paul would be with them soon. The
nurse tapped the medical notes as he pulled the bed curtains, clothes,
and the porter prepared the trolley. Oh, this one's a
sad case. Do you remember the accident? Like three weeks ago?
(16:43):
It was in the news. This guy Jones almost made it.
He seemed to be conscious when Marie and Colin picked
him up, but then lapsed into a coma after they'd
managed to patch up his injuries. Ah, he was a mess.
Shattered rib cake, broken collar, boon. His arms and legs
were like jigsaw puzzles, I tell you, punctured long as well,
(17:07):
burst spleen. They did what they could, but he'd certainly
never walk again. I'd say the state his body was
in Haugh, he was probably better off unconscious. Poor guy.
He hasn't moved since he got here. The only sign
of life was the pulse of the heart monitor last night.
His body just gave up. No idea what happened. He
(17:31):
seemed to be stable, but then his heart just stopped. Blind.
You see the smile on his face, first expression I've
seen since we got him here. What do you think
he looks content? Wouldn't you say? I reckon? He must
be happier wherever he's gone to. Now, say, is there
(17:51):
a window open here, I feel a draft just now.
And what I loved about this story is how it
points out the power of the brain. Everything in the
story after the ambulance attendance arrived was something that his
(18:12):
brain concocted. Science has discovered so much about the power
of the brain. I mean, we know that it feels
limbs that have been removed, but it also can create
memories of things that never happened. The placebo effect can
actually change physiology, and our thalamis is an actual gatekeeper
(18:36):
that in part determines what we perceive as real scientists
are learning about these things and how robustly our brain
can create worlds that feel real situations that feel real.
So Shadows is a reminder that the brain is still
(18:57):
active even when in a coma or when dying, but
just not in a way that we might recognize. This
story reminds us that the line between life and death
is not always clean, and our perceptions are not always
as factual as they appear. Thank you, LN. The Kaiiton
(19:24):
Kai feature stories of every genre, so don't miss any
I post weekly, so please subscribe to the podcast and
follow me on social media the Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky,
and substac information is in the episode description. Thank you,
thank you so much for listening today, and I'll see
you next week.
Welcome to the kaidn Kai, where every story takes you
one step deeper into the world of the strange, the
eerie and the unknown. I'm your host Linda Gould, and
tonight's story is Shadows by l N. Hunter. A man
survives a terrible accident, only to discover that he has
(00:30):
a new skill, the ability to see things no one
else can. Are these strange things harbingers of death, scavengers
of souls, or hallucinations born of the trauma that he experienced.
Shadows brings us to a space between life and death
and whatever weighs beyond. Ll En Hunter's comic fantasy novel
(00:54):
The Feather and the Lamp sits alongside works in anthology
such as The Monster's next Door and Best of British
Science Fiction twenty twenty two, as well as short editions,
Short Circuit and the Horrifying Tales of Wonder podcast. There
have also been papers in the IEEE transactions on neural networks,
(01:15):
which Llen says are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely
less fun. When not writing. Lln unwindes in a disorganized
home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and
a soulmate and now dimmer lights, Settle in and prepare
yourself for shadows by L. N. Hunter and Joy. There
(01:42):
was no pain, just anomnus that covered the entire left
side of Paul's body. He lay at the side of
the road, gaze oriented across the tarmac. He was unable
to move his head. Later, he couldn't recall if he'd
(02:07):
even been able to blink, but he remembered what he saw,
the blur of the road surface too close to focus on.
Farther away, the yellow Honda accord on its roof was
the horn blaring. There's always a horn blaring in circumstances
(02:27):
like these, But Paul could never work out if he
was recollecting the detail from his accident, or just some
fragments of TV programs he'd seen, or maybe it was
just a ringing in his ears. The yellow Honda accord
a woman was wedged in the windshield, half in half
(02:47):
out of the car. He had no memory of the crash,
though he had a sense of seeing her shocked expression,
wide eyes behind thick rimmed glasses and an O shaped mouth.
Somehow he ended up lying on the ground while she
(03:08):
was in the upturned car. He couldn't tell if she
was alive or dead, but there was something moving around her.
At first, he thought there were plastic bags or sheets,
translucent gray shapes two to three feet across with no
discernible thickness, fluttering in the breeze, except there was no
(03:32):
breeze that day. He was certain of that. The first
sheet had wafted across from the other side of the road,
creeping up on the upside down car as if stalking it.
The thing looked as if it was investigating the vehicle,
probing around it for something worthy of its attention. It
stopped at the woman as Paul stared. Another shape slithered
(03:56):
into his line of sight from somewhere along the street.
It exhibited the same sort of drifting stalking motion towards
the front of the car. Three more turned up as
he watched, making their way to the shattered windshield, where
they huddled. They looked like they were sniffing, investigating the
woman's body. The creatures started to wrap themselves around her.
(04:20):
Were they eating her? He saw the ambulance arrive. The
sheets jerked back, as if startled by the arrival, but
they quickly returned to the woman. The ambulance brought another
two of the things, which emerged from the back door
when the paramedics opened it. The paramedics split up, one
hastening to the car and one coming towards Paul, each
(04:42):
with a sheet fluttering behind. As the thing got closer,
he could see a pulsing within it, a darkening and lightning,
and a tracing of black veins trailing out to the edges.
The corners flexed and stretched, extending into probing hedrils, putting
him in mind of those sting ray eggs he recalls
(05:03):
seeing on the beach mermaids purses. He thought they were called.
The paramedic leaned close and must have said something. Paul
saw her lips move, though he heard nothing, nothing but
the ringing in his ears or was that the car horn?
The giant mermaid's purse following her took up a position
(05:25):
in front of his head. It didn't totally obscure his
vision of the paramedic, but blurred and distorted her face,
as if he was looking through frosted glass. It floated closer,
and he felt a clammy pressure on his face, the
first physical sensation since the car had hit him. He
(05:46):
heard a murmur but couldn't make out any words, and
then he couldn't remember any more. Paul awoke in a
hospital ward. He was told how lucky he was, suffering
no more than a broken left tibia, concussion, and some bruising.
The doctor said he'd have to stay for a couple
of days observation, and then he could go home with
(06:07):
a light weight cast. The driver of the car that
had hit him was dead. A vision of the woman's
startled expression flashed before Paul, then the shattered windshield with
those things wrapping themselves around her. He wanted to ask
how she'd died. Was it the accident or had she
been suffocated. Pain tore at him that first night in
(06:32):
the hospital, despite the drugs. As he drifted in and
out of tortured sleep, he kept catching glimpses of the
strange sheets. They glided along the corridors, following staff and
other patients. Sometimes they clustered around other beds in his ward,
but they left him alone. He thought they looked like
a school of jellyfish canopies. He told the doctor who
(06:57):
came in the morning that he might be seeing things.
She studied him with a mixture of sympathy and skepticism
on her face. She shone a light in his eyes
and got him to follow her finger as she moved
it in front of his face. Everything seemed normal, she said,
but she would arrange for a scan in the afternoon.
As he was wheeled along endless corridors to the m
(07:19):
RI room, Paul saw more of the sheets, though they
seemed to be waiting in corners or at doors, rather
than following any particular person. His brain was pronounced healthy
and uninjured at an initial glance, but the neurological specialist
would study the scans in detail later that week. He
(07:39):
slept a dreamless sleep the following night, and after that
he was sent home. Although climbing the stairs to his
second floor flat was slow and agonizing, it was pleasant
to escape from the hospital and those things, those creatures.
Paul switched on the kettle and popped a couple of
pain killers. As he stood by the sink sipping his tea,
(08:02):
he let his eyes room over the street outside his window.
He sighed a couple of months of hobbling around in
a plaster cast were ahead of him, then another few
months of painful physiotherapy. It could have been a lot worse,
that poor driver. He couldn't remember the accident. How had
(08:26):
the car hid him? His memory started when he was
lying there, glued to the pavement. He shuddered as he
remembered the sheets. Was she dead already or had they
killed her? Did they eat her soul? He opened the
window for some fresh air, letting in the sounds from
(08:46):
outside as well. A cluster of school kids were piling
into the shop across the road, laughing and shouting at
each other. They seemed to be at the age where
all conversation had to be carried out at maximum volume.
A woman pushed a buggy containing a crying child while
she had her phone clasped to the side of her head.
A group of men were striding towards the bedding shop,
(09:09):
one of them coughing and blowing his nose. An old
man slowly hobbled along the other side of the road,
just a normal street scene. As he watched the unsteady
elderly pedestrian, Paul half smiled to himself and thought that
was how he would be walking for the foreseeable future.
(09:29):
But then Paul went pale and froze. A sheet creature
had peeled itself from the ground behind the old man
to flap and writhe around his head. Another joined it,
and the two took turns and fluttering at each other.
It seemed as if they were communicating. He rubbed his
(09:51):
eyes and looked again. There were lots of the sheets
out there, almost perfectly camouflaged on walls and pavement. The
only clew to their existence was the pulsing of their veins,
visible only if he focused closely enough. Individuals occasionally emerged
from their resting places to follow one person or another.
(10:15):
Paul saw one sheet, a small one sniffing at the
corpse of a road killed pigeon. Half a dozen of
the apparitions followed the bedding shop customers, but were concentrated
around the coughing man. Within the group, it was clear
that the things seemed to favor death or illness. Were
they ambulance chasers out to get what they could from
(10:36):
misery or did they cause the suffering themselves. The old
man was about to pass close to some scaffolding on
a building having its upper windows replaced when the sheets
started to flap more quickly. They darted in front of him,
and three more, no four, then five raced to join them.
(10:57):
The man gave no sign of seeing them, but he
seemed to react to the creature's presence, nonetheless hesitating in half,
stumbling before he took his next step. Just then, a
pane of glass fell from the scaffolding and shattered at
the pensioner's feet, daggered like shards, missing him by mere inches.
(11:18):
One of the workmen called down, Jesus man, are you
all right? The old man looked up and mumbled something
before continuing on his slow journey, as if the near
miss was of no importance, while the sheets all faded
into the background. Had they been jocking for position to
(11:39):
be the first of the old man? Had the glass
hit him? Or might they have been trying to save him?
Another thought wormed its way into Paul's mind. Had they
caused the pain to drop? He'd been so focused on
the old man that he'd not noticed whether there were
any of the creatures higher up or the glass had fallen.
(12:00):
From that evening, Paul drank several shots of cheap vodka
along with his painkillers. He knew he shouldn't mix alcohol
and medication, but he was sure he'd be awake otherwise.
Worrying into the small hours of the night, and he
damn well wanted to sleep with no dreams. Paul felt
(12:22):
surprisingly clear headed the following morning. He'd convinced himself that
the creatures were phantoms, conjured by his over active imagination.
Since the crash, the sheets didn't exist. He peered out
his window, squinting as he concentrated on every shadow. To
his relief, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Even so.
(12:45):
Half an hour later, he held himself at the front door,
heart thudding for several minutes before he built up the
courage to twist the handle and take a step outside.
He was almost at the drug store when he noticed
the first sheet, lazily drifting in the wake of a
hunched woman who looked like she was in pain. He
(13:05):
twisted around, almost tripping over his crutches, to see if
any of the creatures were following him. There were none,
or perhaps they had scurried away before he could see them.
He knew he wasn't mad, He couldn't be. They did exist,
but only he could see them. His phone rang, startling
(13:28):
him so much that he almost fell over. He fumbled
the phone out of his pocket, dropping one of his crutches.
It was his doctor, asking him to come in as
soon as he could. They'd found something in his scan.
In the examination room, the doctor pointed to what Paul
assumed must be a picture of the inside of his head.
(13:50):
We didn't notice this before because we were looking only
for signs of injury relating to the accident. However, a
review yesterday showed this. The doctor tapped a finger on
a dark patch on the screen. We performed confirmatory tests
on your blood and I'm sorry, mister Jones, but it's
(14:10):
a malignant tumor. Given its position, we can't operate, but
we should start chemotherapy as soon as possible. I must
warn you, however, the prognosis is not good. A dozen
or more sheets followed him back from the hospital. Paul
(14:30):
wanted to wave his arms or his crutches to disperse them,
but then decided that the creatures didn't exist. They couldn't
be real. They were figments of his unwelcome friend, the tumor.
They didn't follow people or cause misery. His damaged brain
had fashioned them out of nothing. At night, he could
(14:54):
send them hovering over his body, smothering him, even though
there was no physical sensation. He deliberately kept his eyes
clamped shut he didn't want to see them. Paul had
peeked once and found the sight of them clustered above
him so terrifying that he'd wet the bed. He'd been paralyzed,
(15:14):
unable to move, unable to get out of the bed
or wave them away. Each night, he sends there were
more than the night before. He didn't know how they
crammed themselves into his bedroom, but he wasn't going to
open his eyes to look. One touched him and he shrieked,
still refusing to open his eyes, and then others touched him.
(15:38):
He could feel gentle strokes and caresses, and he could
hear indistinct whispering. Paul relaxed and drifted into sleep. He
awoke late the next morning, still covered by hundreds of
the sheet things. The whispering became louder and more distinct,
(16:03):
and he thought he recognized some of the voices within
the murmuring. His parents were there, though they'd died many
years before, other long dead relatives and school friends. The
voices were soothing and welcomed him. They said not to
(16:23):
be frightened, and Paul would be with them soon. The
nurse tapped the medical notes as he pulled the bed curtains, clothes,
and the porter prepared the trolley. Oh, this one's a
sad case. Do you remember the accident? Like three weeks ago?
(16:43):
It was in the news. This guy Jones almost made it.
He seemed to be conscious when Marie and Colin picked
him up, but then lapsed into a coma after they'd
managed to patch up his injuries. Ah, he was a mess.
Shattered rib cake, broken collar, boon. His arms and legs
were like jigsaw puzzles, I tell you, punctured long as well,
(17:07):
burst spleen. They did what they could, but he'd certainly
never walk again. I'd say the state his body was
in Haugh, he was probably better off unconscious. Poor guy.
He hasn't moved since he got here. The only sign
of life was the pulse of the heart monitor last night.
His body just gave up. No idea what happened. He
(17:31):
seemed to be stable, but then his heart just stopped. Blind.
You see the smile on his face, first expression I've
seen since we got him here. What do you think
he looks content? Wouldn't you say? I reckon? He must
be happier wherever he's gone to. Now, say, is there
(17:51):
a window open here, I feel a draft just now.
And what I loved about this story is how it
points out the power of the brain. Everything in the
story after the ambulance attendance arrived was something that his
(18:12):
brain concocted. Science has discovered so much about the power
of the brain. I mean, we know that it feels
limbs that have been removed, but it also can create
memories of things that never happened. The placebo effect can
actually change physiology, and our thalamis is an actual gatekeeper
(18:36):
that in part determines what we perceive as real scientists
are learning about these things and how robustly our brain
can create worlds that feel real situations that feel real.
So Shadows is a reminder that the brain is still
(18:57):
active even when in a coma or when dying, but
just not in a way that we might recognize. This
story reminds us that the line between life and death
is not always clean, and our perceptions are not always
as factual as they appear. Thank you, LN. The Kaiiton
(19:24):
Kai feature stories of every genre, so don't miss any
I post weekly, so please subscribe to the podcast and
follow me on social media the Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky,
and substac information is in the episode description. Thank you,
thank you so much for listening today, and I'll see
you next week.
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