I should have been more disturbed. Terrified, even. But if my captors were expecting that particular emotional response, then they would be disappointed. I just felt… curious, and maybe a little weirded out.

  I mean, there were real life shadows right in front of me.

  It was a curious setup. I was stuck in a cramped room with a quivering mess of a man who had tears and snot running down his face. Nothing but a pane of glass separated us from a much larger room that held a collection of twenty shambling shadows.

  Across the way from us was another cell, with one more on both the left-hand and right-hand walls of the shadows’ room. Like the one I was in, these three other cells contained two people each. So, eight sacrifices in total! The shadows were eating good that day.

  Speaking of the shadows…

  They were shambling messes. Globs of tar kept shedding off their bodies at random spots, like something was pushing the stuff out from inside. Their long legs put them well above my height, but their arms still dragged on the floor slightly. Their stick-figure bodies also looked supremely fragile. The less said about their overly large heads, the better.

  The one thing that struck me as wrong was that these shadows were actually moving a little better than the ones I’d seen in my vision.

  Oh, sure, their motions were still jerky and unnatural. Their heads were doing their own thing as always. I was pretty sure one was eying me up from across the room, and it had turned its head to face its back to do so. But still. The whole scene looked less like marionettes getting jerked all over the place and more like unskilled puppeteers improving at their craft.

  I was so fascinated, I had pressed my face up against the glass. The sobs of my cellmate only picked up when a shadow copied me almost perfectly, eldritch face stuck to the barrier between us and large sticky hand coming to rest against my own. I grinned at it, and I was almost positive its own Cheshire smile got a bit wider.

  New bestie!

  I giggled, and the shadow let out some unholy abomination between a shriek and a laugh. I’m pretty sure my cellmate shit and pissed himself at that point, if the smell was anything to go by. Which, I mean… rude.

  I sent him an unhappy smile and went back to gazing into my bestie’s eyes. They were so pretty. I even thought I was seeing visions of horrible eldritch landscapes in them, which was extra fun.

  Then the stupid doctor had to ruin it all.

  “Test number 358 commencing. Release control group number 1,” his cold voice echoed.

  The cell door on the far side of the room slowly lowered into the floor, eliminating the barrier between the shadows and the humans found therein.

  My bestie immediately abandoned me to shuffle in the direction of rising screams. I sighed as I thumped my head against the glass. I really was all out of luck recently.

  Thankfully, the shadows unhinged their jaws, and my day got a bit more interesting.

  Their voices echoed out in a horrible jumble that nonetheless harmonized somehow, piercing like needles into the ears and minds of anyone close enough to listen. Screams echoed out from all the cells. Even I had to huddle in on myself a little.

  It felt like someone was stabbing words into my brain. Not even words, but the meaning of words. And while I didn’t really mind all that much, I still wasn’t able to figure out what they were saying. I just kept catching brief glimpses of things no human was meant to see and still remain sane.

  Oddly, those glimpses jolted my mind back to a more stable place.

  I blinked. The first curls of dread wisped up in my stomach, but I did my best to ignore them. For the time being, I had to see what would happen to the other prisoners. At least it would inform me of my eventual fate.

  Sadly, the aforementioned fate wasn’t pretty.

  The shadows piled into the open cell, hands grasping. The two humans, a man and a woman, fought like beasts. It didn’t make much of a difference. They were swarmed and held down.

  Then one of the shadows got its hands onto the woman’s face.

  Leaning in close, it began to speak louder. If its words were needles before, they turned into oversized cleavers, dicing and chopping away at the minds of every human close enough to hear.

  I still refused to curl up into a ball and look away. Not even when a second shadow repeated the maneuver on the man.

  The two humans thrashed, their motions changing from a frantic attempt at self-defense to the jerky dance of a body out of control. And I would know. I was intimately familiar with it.

  Then, instead of tears, tar began to weep down the two humans’ faces.

  I watched, half fascinated and half terrified, as the tar grew in volume. The humans’ veins blackened, and their bodies began to twist. It was like their black, goopy tears were actively draining each body of all it contained. In a matter of minutes, the former humans were literal piles of skin and bone lying in a puddle of tar.

  But it wasn’t over yet.

  Their bodies began to blacken and stretch. The goop bubbled and rose to cover what was once the woman’s body. I watched, mesmerized, as the tar flowed over her, slowly forming her into a new shadow.

  The man, though, jerked a few times and fell still.

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  Instantly, the shadows surged forward and tore into his dead body. They ripped away chunks of black, goopy flesh, cracked the bones, and gnawed off the skin, feasting like rabid animals.

  It took about fifteen or twenty minutes. But by the time a new shadow rose from the woman’s place to stumble jerkily back into the main room, moving much less gracefully than its older compatriots, there was nothing left of the other prisoner but a few goopy stains. The shadows had devoured even the man’s tar.

  “Control group 1’s results match previously observed data. Release control group 2,” the doctor’s voice announced, and the cell on the right-hand wall opened.

  What followed wasn’t much different from the first round, expect the two men housed inside the next cell didn’t seem all that keen on just sitting around and looking edible. Good for them!

  They dashed out of the cell as soon as it was open. Doing their best to dodge the shadows, they searched frantically for any hint of an exit.

  I scoffed. Good luck with that. We’d been lowered into our cells through the ceiling. I sincerely doubted they’d suddenly find doors that would conveniently let them into a safe room to wait things out.

  Predictably, their banging on the walls, cries, and begging did nothing at all. The shadows ran them down eventually, and they died like the others.

  Well, I say died. Both prisoners ended up turning into shadows this time. That put the total number of my shadow friends at twenty-three!

  “Control group 2’s results match previously observed data. Release experimental group 1,” the doctor proclaimed.

  I jerked violently away from the glass as it suddenly began to move under my fingers.

  Aha. Guess it’s my turn to go. That makes sense. They’re moving clockwise around the room.

  The observation did little to make me feel better.

  I glanced at my cellmate, taking him in properly for the very first time. We were both wearing very little, like all the other test subjects. Just underwear, really. That made it easy for me to spot the red cybernetics replacing his legs, starting from the hips.

  They were oddly shiny, almost like carapace instead of metal. Not that I was an expert on the subject. The closest I’d ever gotten to an insect were some pictures from biology and history. Still, it was an interesting bit of trivia to take with me into the afterlife.

  Or my new eldritch existence.

  I strolled out of the cell, trying to pinpoint the shadow that had been kind enough to come visit me earlier. I mean, if I was going to die or be converted into one of them, why not have the deed done by someone slightly more familiar, right?

  Sadly for me, I couldn’t really tell them apart. Even the three freshest shadows were only differentiated from the rest by how horrible they were at the whole ‘using their bodies properly’ bit.

  The shadows surged towards me, intent on claiming more victims, and… walked right past me.

  I blinked, tilting my head. Then I turned to look at the press of bodies as they piled onto the red cybernetic guy.

  He was screaming and lashing out with some truly powerful kicks. Each blow produced crackling sounds when it made contact with shadows, pushing them off and bending their bodies in yet more ways they weren’t meant to be bent. Of course, the shadows just pulled themselves off the floor again, looking not much worse for wear. The guy was pinned down relatively fast.

  I felt a finger poke my shoulder. Turning to look, I found a shadow standing a couple centimeters away, staring at me.

  I grinned at it. I wasn’t rude! And hey, it grinned right back. Then it unhinged its jaws and garbled something at me.

  I winced and fought the urge to cover my ears. Really, though, the sound was… inquisitive? Confused? Why was it…?

  The shadow garbled again, pointing at the guy with the red legs.

  Oh! I see!

  “No no, I’m fine without the group hugs. I promise. I’m just going to stand here and watch, thank you. Are you sure you don’t need to do the whole…”

  I motioned towards the guy, who was currently screaming and crying tar as a shadow whispered at him lovingly, hands clamped around his face.

  The shadow next to me actually tilted its head in a nearly perfect copy of my own mannerism, if I were capable of bending my neck at a ninety-degree angle. Something clicked in my brain.

  “Wait! You were the one copying me earlier! Thanks for coming to say hi,” I said with another grin. The shadow’s own smile grew several sizes larger.

  D’awww! He likes me!

  That established, I looked over at the cybernetics guy again. His body was hollowed out and beginning to blacken. But then something went… wrong. Red tendrils of flesh began to rise up his torso from his cybernetics, warring with the black. Wherever the two colors met, his skin started to rot visibly and flake away.

  Finally, there was a crackling sound. His body broke in half somewhere around his chest level, half of it a stark red and the other half a perfect abyssal black.

  Huh. Well, that’s new.

  The shadows moaned, making some new noises for the first time. I could feel their palpable distress and confusion in the sounds digging into my brain. Then one tentatively tore into the half of the body that was their own color, and groaned happily.

  The rest immediately descended onto that half of the corpse with enthusiasm. I did spot one shadow try to munch on the red bits, but it hurriedly spit out the flesh with a distressed screech. None of the others tried to nibble on the red half after that.

  My ol’ buddy ol’ pal groaned and tried to push me forward, which drew the attention of a couple shadows, but I just sent him an apologetic smile and shook my head. I knew it was bad manners to decline food, but I was pretty sure I could be forgiven in this scenario.

  The feeding frenzy stopped soon enough, and then there was silence.

  I looked around, confused. Wasn’t this the part where Amelia’s daddy dearest was supposed to make his judgment?

  “Experimental group 1’s results inconclusive. Release experimental group number 2.”

  The good doctor sounded shaken. Was that a tinge of dread I detected in his voice? I wanted to cackle, but I bit back the impulse as the final cell began to open.

  Turning towards it, I actually found the man and the woman stuck there staring back at me. My brow furrowed at the dread and disgust in their expressions, but they weren’t my problem for long. The shadows surged forth once again, and while I noted the woman had some kind of pale grey cybernetics for arms and the man had puke green legs, that didn’t help them all that much.

  Both were soon on the floor, twitching and screaming and doing the whole song and dance.

  I realized too late that I should have been paying attention to my shadow pal instead of staring at the human pair. His twiggy hand suddenly closed around my arm and started tugging. The unexpected power behind his noodly limbs almost jerked me off my feet. For a second, I thought he was going to start tearing me apart.

  Then I realized he was dragging me over to the rapidly mutating humans.

  “What’s up, buddy? Want me to help hold them down or something?” I joked, but the shadow ignored me.

  Instead, he (well, I’ve been referring to him as a ‘he’, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have genders) began to speak to his friends in that torturous language of theirs. From the stabbing pain of meaning as it violated my mind, I picked up: ‘broken’, ‘lost’, ‘lack’, ‘knowledge’, and several other visions of a similar vibe.

  Hey! I’m getting better at this! I crowed victoriously, in the safe confines of my brain.

  Unfortunately, that celebratory mood faded when I was tugged to the very front of the pile waiting to chow down on the two bodies.

  Both were rapidly going through the same thing as the red cybernetic guy. The only difference was in the green and grey colors of the flesh battling the black.

  Moments later, the two humans expired. The shadows bending over them pulled away, and then I was shoved onto my knees in front of the corpses lying in a pool of tar.

  “Wha?”

  I looked around at the many shadows who held perfectly still, watching me. Waiting. Judging.

  Realization slammed into my gut when my shadow pal gently put his hand on my head, then shoved my face closer to the corpses. Particularly towards the black remains of the would-be shadows.

  Suddenly, I felt decidedly nauseous.