Living Shadows
The flames burned high, lending a
tremulous luminescence to the paper screen. On our side all was darkness. My baby sister’s hand was hot in mine; she drew comfort from
my soon-to-be-married status, which banished monsters as surely as daylight. Her head moved next to my shoulder as
she crunched through the bag of banana chips I had given her.
Drums rumbled. A silhouette goat was lifted, legs
kicking, and my sister gasped as its throat was slit with a long motion. The Village Elder puppet-shape raised
his leather arms as the drums thundered and the goat was dropped, head askew,
black blood running. Cymbals
crashed and were silent.
The outlined villagers drew back and we
held our breath. My sister’s hand
grew clammy with horrified expectation.
The rebab strings whined in sympathy
with the audience’s tension, warning us of an approach. My sister cuddled close and buried her
face in my sleeve.
The Jenglot-shadow entered, inching its
mummified body across the screen towards the crowd of villagers. Its delicate, skeletal head moved this
way and that, sniffing, searching.
The villagers huddled behind the goat, praying its blood would satisfy
the creature. The Jenglot loomed
huge on the screen as it hovered over the broken animal.
Then it turned.
The Jenglot’s thin shadow-flicker
played across the audience, its long hair seeming to brush each of us in
turn. The drums rumbled with
hunger. The shadow grew, engorged,
then shrank and faded, and the screen villagers bowed in relief as the creature
slid away, satiated with blood.
My sister’s cold fingers lay still in
mine and terrified dark tears slid down my glassy face still staring at the
screen, too afraid to look at her.
* Jennifer Stakes is orginally British but now lives in Washington DC where she writes flash fiction, poetry, short stories and culture articles. She is currently working on a dystopian novel and blogs about her writing adventures at http://writerinthewilderness.blogspot.com/