Ksb1981 (480p — UHD)

I drove to the Salt Flats.

Below that, a single Polaroid had been stapled. A boy, about ten years old, stood in the center of a bleached-white desert. He wasn’t looking at the camera. He was looking at his own shadow, which was not his own. The shadow was taller, leaner, and wore a fedora. ksb1981

And for the first time since that forgotten June, I did. I drove to the Salt Flats

“You’re not real,” I whispered.

A sound emerged from the ground: a low, harmonic whistle, the same three-note tune I’d whistled into a well on my tenth birthday. My shadow shuddered, then began to grow. It tipped an invisible hat. He wasn’t looking at the camera

I looked down at my hands. They were translucent. The boy in the Polaroid had grown up, but only as a ghost. The shadow in the fedora was the one who’d lived my life.