Shadow Puppets
“I’m hungry,” Adam said. “My tummy is rumbling.” He plopped onto the couch. “I want a burger.”
Caroline shuffled over to Adam and sat next to him. She was famished, too. They'd eaten the last of their food—just some Skittles, the remnants of a peanut butter jar, and a can of Spam—yesterday morning. It was now the evening of the next day. Caroline remembered a nature program about people surviving by eating bugs, but she didn’t think she could do that. She watched a cricket jump across the living room floor. Tomorrow they’d be hungrier. Tomorrow might be different.
She was worried her little brother wouldn’t eat bugs and would starve to death, but six-year-olds can surprise you.
“Let’s play shadow puppets,” Caroline suggested, hoping to distract him from his hunger pains. Once he got started, Adam could play the same game nonstop until he either fell asleep or was told to go to bed. In the before-time, Caroline could often hear endless hours of whirring, whistling, and explosion noises coming from Adam's room as his Lego fighter planes battled Lego alien spacecraft.
“I miss mommy and daddy.”
“I miss them, too.”
“Will they be back?” Adam asked Caroline that question, or a variation of that question, several times a day since the plague had taken their parents months ago.
“No, Adam. They died.”
Adam scrunched his eyes shut to dam his tears. “Are we going to be alone forever?”
Caroline scratched her chin and took in a breath. The living room smelled stale, like a closet that hadn’t been opened in decades. She forced a smile. “Show me the bird,” Caroline said. “I’ll hold the flashlight, and you can make an awesome shadow puppet.”
“I’m bored with the bird.”
“Okay. What would you like to make? It can be anything you want.”
"Anything I want." Adam tapped his leg and hummed a melody Caroline didn't know. "I wish—" Adam’s growling stomach interrupted him. Caroline held her breath, waiting for another plea for food, but instead, Adam let loose a bellowing laugh that infused Caroline with momentary tranquility. She laughed along with him.
They laughed so loudly that dust shook from the ceiling. The moon and starlight streaming in through the window gave the dust the appearance of glitter. When Adam brushed the dust off his head, it fell as gold, red, blue, yellow, green, purple, and silver sparkles.
A wisp of wind found its way into the house and blew Caroline's hair to the side.
“Okay. I know.” Adam stood and twirled around several times, the glitter swirling around him like a vortex. He walked to the wall on the opposite side of their living room. He clapped once and then clasped his hands about six inches from the only part of the wall that wasn’t covered with family photographs. “This will be amazing.” Adam beamed a smile at Caroline, the first she'd seen since the pandemic began. Caroline aimed her flashlight at his hands with the precision of a theater’s spotlight operator.
Adam brought his hands half an inch closer to the wall to sharpen the shadow's edges. He contorted his fingers, bending and twisting them until the image came into view. He wriggled his fingers, giving birth to his shadow creation.
“An airplane, cool!” Caroline said. “That’s your best shadow puppet yet.”
As he stepped on the glitter, it sounded like wind chimes before a storm.
“Watch,” Adam insisted. He shuffled forward and backward, gliding the plane along the wall. But when Adam walked backward, the plane continued its forward progress, getting larger as it slid along the wall. Caroline gasped and lowered the flashlight, but the shadow airplane didn’t disappear. Trailing behind the shadow plane's two engines was the red glow of hot exhaust. The plane shot across the bay window, retaining its crisp edges even as it crossed the expanse of glass. The shadow moved past the wall and around the bend between the living room and front hallway, the jets of red like the morning sun. The shadow plane slipped between the door frame and door into their front yard.
A loud roar like a jet engine vibrated their house.
“Come on!” Adam shouted over the engine’s noise. He took his sister’s hand and tugged her arm until she stood.
“Come where?”
“To the plane. It’s waiting for us.”
A mask of confusion covered her face.
“Now, Sis. The plane’s here to take us to another place, a safe place.”
They hurried outside, Adam a step ahead of Caroline. The puzzled look on Caroline’s face gave way to wide-eyed astonishment as soon as they opened the door. Not just because this was Caroline’s first time outside in nearly six months, but because in the middle of the empty street was an airplane.
The silvery-gray plane was about half the length of the plane Caroline had flown in when they went on a family vacation to Disney World, but resembled no aircraft she had ever seen before. There was an outsized, wooden propeller in front of the cockpit. Connecting the two jet engines to the propeller was a network of copper pipes of varying diameters with valves protruding up at random intervals. Every few seconds, the valves hissed, releasing steam, like tea kettle tops popping up and down. The entire plane’s front was spherical glass, with a prominent bulge on top, which made it look like a beluga whale.
As they approached, a door opened, and a ladder dropped down from the plane’s midsection. A thin man with blue and yellow hair, wearing a cap with an image of the airplane embossed in gold on the front, stuck his head out the door. A bushy mustache covered his lips, and a wide tie with sheep hung below his neck. “Hurry, hurry!” He curled his fingers and beckoned them toward him. “It’s only eleven steps, like Caroline’s age.” He waved faster. “There're burgers and fries on board, so make it snappy if you want to eat while everything’s still warm.”
“Where are we going?” Caroline asked. She also wondered who that man was, how he knew her name and age, and how this plane came to be, but these were questions that could wait for later. There were burgers on board.
If you liked Shadow Puppets, I think you’ll also enjoy my story, Indoor and Outdoor People.