My first encounter with the one they called the Shadow of Death, happened just before the destruction of my nest, during one of my illicit knowledge gathering adventures. It was argued by many, including by the demons that haunt my very own mind, that perhaps my foolhardy quest for knowledge was what led the Shadow to my nest and its eventual destruction in the first place. After all, I was more foolish then, unable to understand the importance of wisdom over mere knowledge. Unable to understand, until it was too late, that some answers demanded too high a price.
But now, at what I know to be the end of my life, I understand the cost of curiosity. At least it was not all for naught, for though I have lost everything I held dear to me at the hands of that which they call the Shadow, I have in turn gained the knowledge to avenge my loss. The price I have paid in blood and sorrow has led me to learn the secret to defeating the Shadow once and for all. And while I no longer have the strength to defeat the Shadow by myself, I can still pass on the accumulated sum of my knowledge to posterity so that they may use it to finally end the black-hearted monster. But I am getting ahead of myself. I may not be long for this cruel and inhospitable world, but I know I have enough time to start from the beginning.
*
It began with doubt and skepticism. I was born a weak pup, the weakest of my litter by far. I was born, unusually for our nest, at the tail end of a particularly brutal winter. Death was expected of me from the moment of my birth but miraculously, me and all of my litter-mates made it through the winter and into maturity. A fact most from my nest would later come to regret. In the nest, everyone had to pitch in to scavenge enough food to survive and to keep it safe from destruction. But because I was weak, not much was expected of me and I was given less work than the rest of my peers. This was a badge of shame in the nest, since the contribution of each individual determined their standing in it. But unlike the other runts, I liked my weakness and the associated lack of busy-work because it gave me time to think.
At my post as a lookout, while the rest of my peers worked hard to collect the food that we required for survival, I kept one eye on the horizon scanning for threats, and one eye beyond it. Trying to imagine what the world was like outside the limited scope of my nest. Dreaming of all the adventures that could be possible outside the safety of the nest. From time to time, when I was not needed in the nest, I would take short, sneaky trips outside its perimeter, slowly daring to venture further and further away each time. These were mostly uneventful, except for that fateful day when I first came into contact with the Shadow.
*
The first time I saw the Shadow on one of these trips, I found it fast asleep. If it had been awake, it would have spotted me and killed me and that would have been the end of it. But unfortunately, it was not and this gave me the courage to go near it. The courage to study it without any consideration of the risk I was putting myself or the rest of my nest in. A risk that would end up destroying my nest and sending me on this lifelong and all-consuming quest to learn the secrets of my enemy, to learn how to outsmart it, to learn how to kill it.
The creature’s chest moved gently and harmoniously in rhythm with its breathing. It lay in the open on some hard ground between our nest and the large structure that the strange apes used as their nest. Despite the creature lying in the middle of a large stretch of flat ground where one could always track its position with ease, one could not help but feel dangerously exposed. As if the roles were somehow reversed and it was the beast that stalked the shadows while you stood exposed in the middle. I know now that it was not an idle worry either. During my study of the creature, I have witnessed first-hand, the speed and ferocity that it was capable of at any given moment, no matter how docile it looked. Of course, I did not know all this back then, but I still could not shake the feeling of utter helplessness when facing my sleeping opponent. As if generations of oppression of my kind at the claws of these creatures had imprinted a fear of them into my very blood. And yet, I was somehow foolish enough to disregard all that and inch my way closer to the beast.
The creature was a few times larger in size than me and my kind. It had soft black fur and a thin tail that was long enough to encircle the creature on one side as it lay sleeping. It had sharp pointy ears, the depressions of which faced forwards, and thin long whiskers shooting out sideways from its nose. It lay on its belly with both paws, with their murderous claws retracted, pointed forwards and tucked one under the other. Its head lay over its paws but turned to the right. Because of the position of the head, I could make out a strip of foreign material wrapped comfortably around its neck, with a shiny circular piece of something hard hanging from the front of this strip. On the shiny something were strange markings that I could not decipher, but which I nevertheless note down here in case someone manages to decode them in the future.
TIDDLES
What this meant, I do not know for sure. But my best guess now, with the benefit of hindsight, is that it was the creature’s name, written in the dialect of its kind. But on that day, deciphering this code was not my highest priority. I do not know where I had found the courage to get close to the creature in the first place, but I lost it just as quickly as I had found it. More crucially, I lost it when I was just a few paces away from the monster. The monster continued to sleep undisturbed. Or so I thought at the time. For I remember searching my memories after the incident and realizing that its whiskers had twitched towards me when I got close. But I was far too paralyzed with fear on the day to pay attention to anything except the creature’s eyes, which were thankfully still closed. Eventually, I found the courage to slowly back away from it and once I was sure I was out of earshot, I scrambled for dear life back to my nest, failing in my terror to notice the stench of fear I was leaving in my wake. I am almost certain, that it was this stench that led the creature to my nest.
*
The next sunset, I left the nest with my group for our nightly scavenge. Still a little scared from my encounter the previous day, but mostly calmed by time and a good day’s sleep. The forage passed without incident and we finished gathering our supplies before the soft white circle in the sky was even at its zenith. But that was the last moment of peace I would ever experience in this life. Lulled into a false sense of security by the agreeable nature of the night, I did not notice anything wrong as our group returned to the nest. It was the squeals of our lead scouts that alerted us and made us bolt towards the nest. Only to find the aftermath of a brutal slaughter awaiting us. Torn guts and shorn limbs greeted us along with the sickly smell of blood as we entered. The silence of death was only shattered by the intermittent wailing and shrieking of those who had survived unscathed due to absence. These lucky few had had the fortune, or misfortune depending on how one looked at it, of being away from the nest when the creature had attacked. I was one such lucky individual. The most undeserving one.
Maybe I should have stayed silent. Maybe I should have kept quiet. But the overwhelming burden of my conscience forced me to confess. That the rest let me live after learning that I had been the cause of their destruction was a miracle in itself. Sometimes, I wish they had killed me upon learning of my betrayal. But then again, if they had, I would not have learned the secrets of the beast. I would not have uncovered the means to defeat it. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Upon my banishment from the tribe, I roamed through the recently familiar but now empty environs of my nest alone and distraught. The survivors of the nest had left the area, afraid that the monster would come back to finish the job. But I stayed, waiting for it to come back and slaughter me like I deserved. But it did not come.
After a few days of waiting, I decided to take the initiative. I went back to where I had found it the first time. Near those large artificial burrows that the tall apes used for shelter. But this too was in vain. For though I searched till the bright light in the sky was swallowed by the ground, I could not find the monster. It was not in the clearing I had first found it in. And after circling the entire artificial structure, I failed to find any track of recent activity from the beast. But I had in the past observed, from a very safe distance, the tall apes entering and exiting these burrows. Since I had exhausted all other options, I decided to see if the creature was within this structure.
In all of my excursions, I had never ventured closer than a few hundred paces from the tall apes’ lairs. They were simply too unnatural for one to feel safe around. But I was no longer looking for safety. So, with a surprisingly complete lack of concern, I strode forth and entered the burrow. A rectangular piece of wood blocked the entrance that I had seen the tall apes use most often to enter this burrow. But there was just enough space to squeeze through because of a break near one of the edges of the wooden barrier. The first thing that struck me were the bright lights. It seemed brighter inside during the night than it did outside during the day. In a panic, I scrambled around for cover, eventually finding some shade from the unnatural demonic lights under another rectangular piece of wood that hovered over the ground using four tall, thin wooden columns. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately considering my objective, I was undetected. Neither the tall apes nor the beast had been around to welcome me. These creatures no doubt slept through the night. Not knowing how the burrow was structured and hesitant to go looking for its occupants under the glare of the false lights, I decided to seek shelter and wait for the daylight which I knew from observation made the tall apes and the monster more active. Fortunately, I did not have to go far as there was snug crack in one of the walls of the burrow with was just large enough to fit me and hide me from the uncomfortable lights. I snuck in there and despite my best efforts, fell into a deep and somehow peaceful sleep.
A sharp clang awoke me, causing me to jump back further into my hole with such intensity that the wind was knocked out of my body on impact with the back wall. Once I gathered myself, I remembered my purpose and steeled myself to face my grisly end. But upon gaining the threshold of the burrow, a startling sight stopped me, fully dumbfounded, in my tracks. I watched in horror as the shadow attacked one of the tall apes, a creature more than a dozen times larger than itself, and won!
It started by climbing the tall ape’s legs. Digging its retracting claws slowly and with deliberate malice into the thin columns that kept these apes upright. The ape let out a shrill shriek which it repeated every time the Shadow ripped out and dug its claws into the loose multicolored fur that the apes were covered in. Over some unknown terror of the Shadow, the tall ape did not try to resist, but rather meekly but loudly accepted its fate. When the Shadow was halfway up the ape, the ape crumbled and fell backwards onto a raised soft surface made from dead skin which protruded from one of the walls. The Shadow almost fell off at the sudden impact but to my astonishment, was saved from its fate by the very tall ape that it was attacking. The Shadow walked over the now horizontal ape while cruelly and deliberately kneading the loose fur, or was it skin, of the ape with its razor-sharp claws. The ape howled a hyena-like howl but to my continued astonishment, still seemed unable to resist. To add insult to incredulous injury, once it had thoroughly bested the tall ape, the Shadow simply laid down on top of the creature and went to sleep, in a display of contemptuous superiority. The tall ape, despite being fully awake, seemed unable to do anything except gently rub the sleeping monster in abject submission. My blood curdled and my heart froze.
I do not know how long I stared at this grizzly tableau, but eventually my courage gave out and I retreated back to my hole. Despite my intentions in coming here, I was now scared of death. The unnatural sight of the Shadow besting the ape had filled me with a supernatural dread. I could not shake the fear that killing me was the least cruel thing the Shadow was capable of doing. I could not help but feel that somehow, my very soul was at stake.
*
The next few days were spent in terrified hiding, with the exception of a few nocturnal excursions to secure food. Outside of the threat posed by capture, securing food in these artificial burrows was actually very easy. These apes seemed to have some inexplicable fascination with throwing away perfectly good food. Every day, they would throw away enough food to feed my entire erstwhile nest for an entire week. Of course, my nest would never consider venturing close enough to the burrow to take advantage of this fact. The artificial burrows were too unfamiliar and they were simply too scared to explore, for good reasons as I now realize.
But it was not just my fear that drove me to survive. After the initial shock of seeing the Shadow mutilate one of these apes had worn out, my curiosity began to return. Learning nothing from the last disaster caused by me sticking my snout where it did not belong, I began to ask questions once again. Questions like, what were the creature’s weaknesses? And how could I use them to destroy the monster once and for all? Ironically, it was the Shadow’s complete dominance over a creature many times bigger than it that inspired me to search for a way to kill it. After all, if it could subjugate something much bigger than itself, then so could I. Above all, I realized that although I could never reverse the mistakes of my past or bring the lost souls of my nest back, I could still avenge them. I could find a weakness in the Shadow’s being and use it to pay back in blood and suffering, all of the sorrow it had caused me and my kin. I had no guarantee of success nor any hope of absolution, but I had nothing left to lose and everything left to gain.
I spent my days furtively observing the inhabitants of the burrow from the shelter of my hole. My kind roamed in the darkness and rested in the light. But both the apes and the monster were most active in the light. So, I had to adapt to their way of life to better observe them. And what I observed under the glare of the bright disc in the sky drove me to the edge of despair.
The Shadow seemed to be in complete control of the burrow. Despite being many times larger than it, the apes seemed to be slaves to the monster’s needs and desires. The apes went to bed after feeding the creature, and awoke at its beckoning call. I never saw the creature hunt, for it wanted for nothing. The apes would sacrifice their own food for it whenever it demanded. The apes had even built a separate nest for the creature which it completely ignored, instead displacing the apes and using whatever part of the nest they usually occupied for its own relaxation. Most shockingly of all, the creature even forced the apes to clean its waste. It would expel its waste, not outside the nest like all decent creatures had the courtesy to do, but inside the burrow in a corner on a bed of sand. The tall apes would then pick up the waste and move it outside the burrow. Not even our kind, who lived within the damp earth, had the indecency to pollute our own nests with waste.
And despite all that, so great was the fear that the apes had for the shadow that they did not seem to have the spirit to revolt or rise up against it. I knew that the creature and its kind were vicious and relentless killers, but I had underestimated the true scope of their lethal prowess. No wonder just one of these creatures had destroyed my entire nest.
What I saw in that burrow, actually made me feel sympathetic towards the apes. Subservience was no way to live and I would not wish it on anyone. I had had very little power in my nest in the past, but at least me and the rest of my nestmates were free to leave at any time. We chose to stay, chose to lend our efforts to benefit the common good, because of the safety and surety that the nest provided. But these poor apes seemed to have no choice but to obey and serve the monster. I needed no further motivation at this point, but the suffering of the apes still added one more reason to destroy the Shadow once and for all.
*
Many moons passed by with nothing out of the ordinary happening. Of course, the Shadow continued to harass the apes and inspire a feeling of mortal dread in me, but that was ordinary by now. The apes suffered their injustices loudly and I suffered them silently. Until one unremarkable day, when my luck changed.
As usual, I was observing the creature from the new, better hidden nest I had found for myself. This new vantage point was within one of the walls of the house which for some reason was very thin and hollow and had the consistency of soft wood. There were some long strings of tasteless material clumped together throughout the wall serving some unknown purpose, but the hollow was otherwise empty and a perfect hiding space. The opening to this nest was also higher than the ground and afforded me a longer range of vision into the artificial burrow, letting me better observe its inhabitants. It was from this vantage point that I first discovered the weapon and the effect it had on the Shadow.
The apes had just returned to the burrow after some unknown journey, and they had not returned empty handed. They came back carrying large quantities of raw food in multiple, large, transparent and artificial-smelling pouches. Once they had unloaded the contents of the pouches, they threw these pouches onto the floor where they lay silently, only moving slowly and gently when they were affected by the breeze flowing through the openings of the burrow. With nothing else to do, I lazily monitored the motion of the pouch as it drifted aimlessly, lost in my own thoughts and barely paying attention. In this state of absent-mindedness, I failed to notice the Shadow enter the burrow and move towards the room where the apes usually stored their food. I only noticed it as it neared the pouch that was under my observation and almost jumped back into my nest in surprise. But thankfully, I stayed put and was rewarded for my resolve with a glorious sight. As soon as the monster stepped on the pouch, at which point the pouch emitted an unnatural sound somewhere between a shimmer and a rustle, it jumped up in shock and ran as fast as it could in the opposite direction.
For a few moments, I sat paralyzed with disbelief at what had occurred. The creature had never expressed fear, even when facing enemies many times larger than itself. And yet, this unassuming, flimsy, transparent object had shocked the spirit out of it. I felt the unstoppable poison of hope creeping into my soul, but I pushed back as hard as I could. Hope had never bought me anything except loss and I would not fall for it again. I resolved to stay at my post, awake for as long as needed, to catch a repeat of the spectacle before I got my hopes up.
Extraordinarily, I did not have to wait long for the repeat. A short while later, the Shadow once again tried to enter the same room and, as if learning nothing from the previous experience, once again strayed into the path of the floating pouch. Once again, it stepped on it, and to my elation, once again it jumped back in shock and horror and ran back to wherever it had come from. This was all the proof I needed. I scrambled out of my nest to get the pouch but had to retreat when one of the apes came into the very same room and to my horror, started picking up the pouches and throwing them into the container where all of their waste went before being thrown out of the burrow at the end of the day. There was not much time to spare, but I knew I could not rush my mission. I might only get one chance and I did not want to waste it while I was so close to victory.
So, I waited for some time, till the bright disk that bought light to the world had passed its highest point in the sky. I knew that both the apes and the monster were less active during this time. I also knew that I would find no better time to pull off my mission before the sky darkened and the pouches were thrown out. I tried to sneak slowly out of my nest, but proximity to the fulfillment of my all-consuming passion drove me involuntarily faster towards the waste container. My claws scraped hurriedly across the hard, polished floor and in my enthusiasm, I failed to see the monster lurking near the container until it was too late. The creature seemed to have been sleeping in a corner behind the container and had been woken up by the sound of my feet. For a moment, both of us were still, me having skidded to a halt when I caught sight of the creature. Then, we acted. Gathering all of my resolve and baring my teeth at certain death, I ran towards the container as fast as my feet could carry me. And the cat, no doubt recognizing my purpose, let out a shriek and jumped straight up into the air in terror. When I was within range, I leapt up towards the container and caught the edge of one of the transparent pouches and let the weight of my body pull it to the ground. The container came crashing down and spilled all of its contents, including the many pouches, onto the floor in the direction of the Shadow. The cowardly creature in its turn, shrieked again before turning away from me and scrambling towards safety before any of the pouches could even touch it, so great apparently was its fear of that unconventional weapon.
The pounding of my heart began to hurt my chest as I stood there feeling elated after witnessing abject terror on the face of my torturer. But the victorious silence was broken by an abrupt shriek, this time coming from one of the apes who had just come out of the opening that the Shadow had run into. Overjoyed at our shared salvation, I looked into its eyes expecting joy and salvation, but was greeted only with fear and anger. To my utter surprise, instead of joining me in taking down our mutual oppressor once and for all, the ape picked up a thin wooden stick and ran towards me with murderous intent. Caught completely by surprise, I grasped the nearest pouch I could find with my teeth and ran towards my nest. The pouch was very light but it kept catching the air and slowing me down. Nevertheless, I summoned all the strength my spirit could provide and ran as fast as I could. I could not let the sacrifice of my nest be in vain. I had to protect the weapon.
Behind me, I heard the crashing of objects and the raising of inexplicably angry voices. But I ignored them and the projectiles that were thrown in my direction by the mad apes and finally made it to the entrance of the nest. With one final burst of energy, I jumped up and almost made it inside safely. But alas, mere whiskers away from the entrance, I felt something cold and heavy hit me from behind. The impact knocked my forward and pushed me into the nest and slammed me against the opposite wall of the nest. After a few moments laying there collecting my breath while the ape rampaged outside, its voice joined by the now pitiful meows of the Shadow, I considered moving. But even before I attempted it, I knew it was impossible. The ape had hit me in the middle of my back and had clearly broken it, for I felt nothing below the point of impact. In a panic, I looked around for the pouch fearing its loss but thankfully, it had made it into the nest with me. I should have felt pain and sorrow. But in truth, I was content. Watching a look of abject terror appear on the Shadow’s cruel mask of a face had been well worth the sacrifice of my legs and very soon, my life. Even better, the weapon had survived and with it, the hope for the final and complete destruction of the Shadow.
I felt no anger towards the ape, for its punishment at the claws of the Shadow had been cruel enough. The Shadow had taken away its spirit and had made a slave of its very soul. It had turned the ape into something so subservient, that it could no longer recognize freedom when presented with it. To you who stumbles upon this nest in your search for safety and shelter from the cruelty of the Shadow, I hope that you treat these apes with compassion, for they are as much victims of the tyranny of the Shadow as anyone else. And I hope, that you who read these final words of mine will use my knowledge and the weapon that I have sacrificed so much to obtain, to finally end the tyrant Shadow, that which is named TIDDLES.
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