Lost Property Part 3: Eclipsing The Dog

Michelle could have hugged her boss when he told her that their morning meeting had been cancelled, she doubted she could have survived it without seeming completely incompetent. Her gratitude was short lived, as he dumped a pile of competitive data on her to collate and put in to workable spreadsheets. It was one of the necessary joys of being the most junior in the team but sometimes she had the paranoid feeling that management had meetings where they made up mind-numbingly boring requests for her to respond to for their own amusement.

As it was going to take a while for her geriatric computer to stop complaining about being asked to work and actually start, Michelle decided to go and make a strong medicinal cup of tea. Just as the kettle chorus was reaching its climax, Rav their creepy CFO ambled in mug in hand.

Not in the mood for small talk, Michelle busied herself with the art of tea making, using all her concentration on ensuring that the tag on the tea bag didn’t get dragged in to the swirl of poured boiling water. Looking up to reach for the milk she realised that Rav was staring at her. Feeling guilty for hogging the kettle she offered it to him. Taking it absently from her fumbling fingers before she could scald him with splashes of hot water, Rav continued to stare.

Self consciously pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, Michelle put on her brightest smile. “Big night last night, think there are going to be a lot of sore heads today” she chirped attempting to deflect attention from her own sore head. She wasn’t sure what the Finance department attitude was to week-day hangovers. They were always the wildest at the Christmas party, but that was only once a year and it was probably allowed in their contracts.

“Michelle, once you have finished preparing your tea, if you could pop round my office, there’s something I need to discuss with you” Rav answered. Michelle’s heart sank as the lack of inappropriate banter or innuendo surely meant that she was in trouble.

After taking as long as she could to ensure she put exactly the right amount of milk into the mug and viciously squeezed every ounce of tea juice out of the tea bag, Michelle headed to Rav’s office, clasping her mug like a weapon between her fingers. As she walked into the office, Rav was expressionless as he indicated that she should sit down before settling in his seat behind his uncomfortably tidy desk.

“When I was a boy, there was a game we used to play called “Eclipsing the Dog”. My parents played it, my grandparents. It goes back generations.”

Michelle looked up with surprise from her mug, unclear where Rav was going with this, and confused to find him looking at her with patent concern.

“You wouldn’t be able to play it in London, too much artificial lighting reflected off the sky. But where I grew up, there wasn’t this problem. The days were bright and the nights was pitch black except for a ceiling of stars During the day the sun used to make our shadows stretch out beside us and on cloudy days you could watch the shadows of the clouds dust over fields and buildings. It was on those days we would play Eclipsing the Dog, I still remember how we used to giggle and scream” Sighing Rav paused to take a sip of his tea.

“It was a serious business. You could not let the shadow of a cloud cover your shadow. The rules stated that once covered the cloud could steal your shadow leaving you behind to live a half life without it”

Michelle could feel her eyes riveted on Rav, she had never seen him quite so solemn and there was something in the slow way he was unwrapping his story that hypnotised her

“We played this game throughout my childhood and when I was grown I still knew to avoid the passing shadow of clouds in case they should hide something wanting to steal my shadow and leave me incomplete. It is ironic that it is when I moved to study in the city, that I became exposed to the real threat.

In a place where shadows have no room to breathe, where they live on top of each other and are reduced to pale, insipid forms in the glaring lights and teasing half-lights. It’s here that I’ve finally met the shadow-less, seen them move robotically through their daily lives completely unaware of their loss and too numb to understand that something is fundamentally wrong with them.”

Rav stopped for another sip of tea, Michelle still transfixed could feel a growing knot of unease in her guts. She didn’t want to ask but knew she had to “why are you telling me this?”

“Michelle, you are a bright and sensitive young lady, you know that something is wrong and that you are not yourself”

“Well I will admit that I’m a tad hung-over today, last night was a little on the crazy side” she tried to joke, while swallowing down the golf ball sized lump in her throat.

“That is not what I mean, if that were it I would have most of the office in here now, it’s clear you all had a drunken time last night. I’ve had some killer hangovers in my time too, that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. Are you telling me that you haven’t noticed anything strange today?”

“Well maybe” Michelle mumbled quietly back, reluctant to talk about it with Rav and embracing her inner petulant six-year-old.

“There’s no maybe Michelle, you’ve lost your shadow and if you don’t get it back soon, you won’t care enough to!” Rav leant forward over his desk to lend addition emphasis to his words “Do you understand? Too long without it and you’ll lose direction. Yes you’ll still be alive but your spark will be gone! Forever!”

Michelle wished that Rav would stop over-doing it with the exclamation marks. All she wanted to do was sleep, everything beyond that required superhuman strength. Now he wanted her to worry about tracking down lost shadows.

“I’ll admit I’m not feeling very sparky today, but I really have learned my lesson, the tequila shots were a bad idea. I don’t know what else you expect me to do? I just want to get through today and go to sleep, I feel rotten”

“Think beyond the hangover Michelle, this is on top of the hangover”

“Rav, no offence but I really can’t cope with anything on top of the hangover and I really should be getting back to my desk, I have a mountain of competitive data to get through”

“Michelle, please” The earnestness of Rav’s plea stopped her as she moved to get up. She slumped back awkwardly in to the chair and turned to look at him. His brown eyes were darkened with worry. “I have seen what this does. It happened to a friend of mine and I lost him. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. You must find it, believe me, your shadow is gone and you must find it, even in your current state, it can’t wait. I will tell your boss that you were clearly unwell and I sent you home. Go and look please!”

Intimidated by the urgency in his voice, Michelle cracked “but I wouldn’t know where to start” she protested as a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away, sniffing loudly over the injustice of this happening to her.

“Try the lost property office at Waterloo. Not the one on the main train concourse. There is one in the underground. It is in a corner in the corridors near the entrance for the Bank train. It’s easy to miss if you aren’t specifically looking for it. The man who works there may be able to help you, his name is Jenkins”

To be continued