"Tom"

Published to Reddit January 2021

"Tom", as I had taken to calling him, had been following me my entire life. Always a flash in the corner of my eye, wearing a long black coat with a brimmed hat and concealed face. Silver eyes peering sometimes when I looked and caught the briefest flash of him before he was gone.

They say you can't remember being a baby, or even an early child. But I remember. Pieces and bits. He was smaller then, always about my size. As I grew he seemed to, too. And it was armed with this realization that I stopped screaming and hiding when I caught his flash. I stopped telling people too. It could be mistaken as childhood imagination when I was younger, but I was smart enough by my teens to realize that "Tom" was either a hallucination I wished to never be without or a being that simply couldn't be explained.

I accepted this and allowed "Tom" to watch me as he did. Though strange things occurred in my life with him in it. I'd lose things just to find them laying on my bed or desk as though placed. I'd be cold all night and feel a warmth surround me and though I lived alone, I'd wake with a blanket from the closest on me. I'd be harried and rushing to get to work and suddenly... The traffic would just go away. And I swear in those times, in the corner of my eye when I yelled out triumph and said "Thanks Tom!" that I caught the very hints of a smile... shadowed and hidden but there.

It went like this most of my life, which is why I never wished to disclose him to anyone. I knew the world. People wouldn't understand "Tom" as I did. They'd think he wasn't real and put me in a psyche ward. Or worse, they'd find out just how real he was and do something to him. And as the years dragged into my late 20s, the idea of him being hurt destroyed my heart with just the thought. While I couldn't prove that "Tom" was responsible for all my luck. My gut TOLD me he was. So I clung to him, sometimes playing a game where I switched our roles and he saw me out of the corner of his eye and I daydreamed that whatever dimension or world he was living in, I was also guiding him through it in some way. After all, we'd been together since we were both small. Both fragile in my mind.

But I suppose "Tom" couldn't stay hidden forever. Though I'm proud to say it wasn't entirely my fault.

I had just turned 34 and my new job was looking up. I had been promoted to the top floor of the offices and given a lovely little corner office to work in. It was mundane work for a law firm, but it was my work. And Tom was always there, even in the late hours. Leaning against a wall with his arms crossed. Blurry but there. Perhaps he didn't realize just how much I'd been training my peripherals since discovering him as a young, young child. I'd smile and toss my hair, laughing for no reason and causing his head to cock curiously at me. Cute, even for a shadow.

One evening, and for no discernable reason, a fire broke out on the bottom levels of the office building. It was late and the lower floors made it out just fine. But I had been ever so lucky to be promoted to my fancy top-floor office, which was slowly going to become my firey tomb.

The smoke rose fast and I didn't really know what was happening. The alarms shouted out and an announcement I couldn't hear went over the PA. Smoke was rising up through the elevator doors and filling the office space. I was paralyzed but I felt something pull me. No, not something. I felt "Tom" pulling my wrist and as though led I ran through the flames as they started to engulf the area and made it to the fire exit.

I stared for a long time down the square lattice of stairs that wound down but a push to my back and I was leaping the steps two at a time. Still a tug on my wrist. I felt like I was being flown down the steps and my feet never actually hit the ground until the landing.

That's when I saw clearly from my peripherals, "Tom's" coat slipped under a shiny dress shoe. He tumbled forward like an acrobat, a bad one. And landed sprawled on his back in the alleyway we'd emerged from. I stared down at him, catching my breath from the flight and vaguely wondering why my lungs didn't burn from the smoke that had filled the office before I'd been tugged away. But all that was torn away by the vision of "Tom" before me. Clearly for the first time in 34 years of "knowing" him.

He looked about my age, but his face was boyish with a rouge-like goatee that I had to keep myself from giggling at. His black, wide-brimmed hat had cascaded away from black locks of hair that reached to his ears and flared out in curls. He had skin the color of bright beach sand and I swore it had a faint glow to it. His coat was open to expose a tailored, button-up, black shirt that had been undone to the chest. I did grin at the wisp of chest hair exposed. I stared and he stared back. Panicked amber eyes with a look of misgivings. Catching a breath I didn't know he had to keep as well.

"Well! There's a fire. Get up!" I yelled at him and ran over to grab his wrist. He felt like he weighed nothing as he heaved up with my help. He stared and turned his wrist around to take my hand in his, gripping softly, and giving me the very faintest of smiles. His hand felt like warm coals.

And then we ran.