Page 57 of Silent Shadows

I think I might need to change the angle.

Three dots appear right away.

Marissa

Good change or panic change?

I glance at the waveform on my screen.

Me

No fucking clue.

I don’t tell her about the sound yet. I don’t know why. Maybe because the second I say it out loud, I have to admit this isn’t just a funny character piece. I’m not just documenting people who believe in something. I'm afraid that the longer I'm with them, the more likely it is I'll end up believing, too.

The rest of the day moves around me like little glimpses through windows.

I stay at the diner because the Wi-Fi is decent, the coffee and Diet Coke are bottomless, and nobody asks why I’ve been deleting and rewriting the same document for the last several hours.

Jax rolls by around noon on a dirt bike, helmet tucked under one arm when he stops outside to talk to a guy in a truck. He’s all restless motion and easy charm, laughing at something before tearing off down the road in a cloud of dust like speed is his love language.

Taylor appears around 2 p.m. wearing cutoffs, boots, and a crop top. She comes in for a milkshake, sits across from me without asking, steals a fry from the plate I don’t remember ordering, and says, “You look, like, freaked out.”

I pause my audio. “I kind of am?”

She grins like this delights her.

“Don’t worry,” she says, stirring her milkshake with a straw. “This work does that to people.”

“Have you always believed that this shit is out there? That there are random… entities?”

“I have.” The answer comes fast. Easy. No embarrassment attached to it whatsoever. Just a sincere smile.

I blink at her over my Diet Coke. “Really.”

Taylor nods, completely serious now. “I mean, look around.” She gestures toward the diner windows, toward the endless desert outside. “You really think humans are the most advanced, most interesting thing in existence? That feels so narcissistic to me.”

I’m not totally bought in. “We're the most advanced species on this planet, though, so it makes sense why people would think that way. This world is all we really know, you know?”

“I know.” She steals another fry. “But people act like believing in Bigfoot or aliens or spirits is somehow crazy, but then they’ll turn around and believe a blue checkmark life coach named Brayden has all the answers because he owns a podcast mic and has a man bun.”

I laugh despite myself.

Taylor leans forward conspiratorially. “Also, scientifically speaking, we understand less than one percent of consciousness. Or the ocean. Or mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?”

“Mushrooms are wild,” she says, without a trace of irony. “Let me know if you ever want my take on them.”

I stare at her. She stares back.

“I cannot tell when you’re joking.”

“That’s because I rarely am.” She shrugs. “But seriously. I think humans have this weird need to feel alone because it makes us feel important. Like we’re the center of the story. The chosen ones.” She shrugs. “Meanwhile, I’d bet the universe is crawling with things we don’t understand.”

“Crawling feels aggressive.”

“You know what I mean.” She points her—well, my—fry at me. “And I don’t even mean just in a physical sense. I think there are energies and frequencies and dimensions we—” she wiggles her fingers in the air— “can’t access normally.”