Feast of Shadows
by Ashley Kim
Ashley Kim is a champion for women, blending years of digital marketing experience with her passion for helping female business owners embrace their online presence and thrive. She’s also a fiction writer, crafting stories that celebrate resilience, humor, magic, and the emotional experiences that make up life. When she’s not working or writing, Ashley enjoys time with her family, her fluffy Doxiepoo, and cozy backyard fires, no matter the weather.
It’s rude to bring a friend to dinner without telling the host. It’s even worse if they smell like a musty cellar and have maggots dropping out of their sleeves.
I glance around the candle-lit table at my other dinner guests, taking a moment to freak out internally. What the hell went wrong with my Samhain “Silent Dinner” ritual?
My eyes land on my mother. When living, her face held a perpetual scowl, but in death, her brow is smooth and her mouth is lifted in a gentle smile. She smells like lavender and her eyes are warm with peacefulness.
All the work I put into hosting this dinner is worth seeing her smile, but I can’t help but feel like I did something wrong. Usually, with a Silent Dinner, you light candles and set extra plates of food at your table in honor of loved ones who have passed on. It’s a symbolic ritual that lasts through dinner and then you’re done.
The problem is that mine is less symbolic and more real, as in … they are actually here. In the flesh. Or some version of “flesh.” I gulp and shift my gaze over to my dad. Yikes.
He’s missing an eyeball, leaving me with one cloudy eye to look at and one dark eye socket to avoid looking at. His face is in various stages of decay. I can see through the gaping, rotten holes in his cheeks to his blackened gums with missing teeth. He smells like an earthworm who just crawled out of the wet ground, and I almost shit my pants when he smiles at me.
And this isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is the guest sitting next to him. I reluctantly look over at our dinner guest, while my parents’ proud faces are still turned towards me. His skin is gray, like a mole. He’s tall with lanky arms and legs. His clothes are loose fitting, which is unfortunate, because of the maggot problem.
“So, Mom and Dad,” I shift the conversation to my parents and try not to stare at Dad's empty eye socket. “What’s it been like for you after death? How are you doing?” I really want to ask why they are actually here and why Mom looks like an angel and Dad looks like a horror movie extra. And who the hell is this other guy?
Mom puts her napkin in her lap with an elegance she's never possessed before. “Oh honey, it's been wonderful. Right, Roger?”
Dad freezes, his hand an inch away from his mouth, realizing the attention is now on him.
“Dad! Were you going to eat those?!” The squirming maggots in his hand slide off, their bodies plopping onto the table.
“Darling, things are different now.”
This is too much.
“And who's your guest?” Maggots fall out of the guest's mouth now as he grins wide at me. His steak tartare is covered in white squirming bodies.
“Who, honey? It's just your father and I.” Mom looks like she's about to put her hand over mine, but the Earth rumbles, wobbling our chairs, and she grabs onto the table instead. The candles blow out.
Except one.
The one candle left highlights the gaunt features on the stranger’s face. His eyes are bottomless pits of despair pulling me into a thick sea of freezing cold hopelessness. Pain settles across my shoulders as anguish fills my body.
Using every ounce of strength I possess, I pull my gaze from him to glance at my parents.
They’re gone.
What the hell?
“Who are you?” My voice shakes and my hands tremble. Maggots and worms now cover the entire dining room table, some dropping to the floor. Each breath I suck in tastes like I’m being buried alive.
My heart drops to my feet and my throat swells shut as he leans forward, his unruly midnight hair catching fire from the candle flame. I can’t breathe. I keep my eyes locked on his. His hair glows from the orange flame creeping across his scalp.
“My name is Trials and Tribulations.” His voice sounds like gravel under tires. “But to answer your question, I am you.”
Panic squeezes my lungs.
“You came to Earth wanting to overcome trials, learn how to be strong in the face of tribulations, and face your fears. I’m the obstacles, the tribulations, and the fears.” His hand snakes out to grip my wrist. “You want to be strong and survive anything. Well, I’m anything.”
His long fingernails are covered in dirt, and I can now see the maggots aren’t just falling out of his clothes, they are climbing out of lesions on his skin. “If you’re going to be strong enough to survive hell, then you need a hell, and that’s me. The more you seek light, the more darkness you create. I’m the darkness in your story. You created me and I am the you that you’ve hidden deep inside yourself.”
Ripping my hand back, I finally suck in air. “No.”
“Yessss.” He stares down my hand in awe, the one he just held, and I look down, too. My hand is now a gray color, with deep gouges in my skin filled with maggots bubbling up from within. I feel their wriggling on my skin and their soft bodies sliding off my hand as they crawl out. “I've been wanting to meet my creator.” He gently strokes my hand like a lover. “Thank you for inviting me tonight.”
Transfixed by horror—horror I created?—I continue staring at my hand until he speaks again. “Tell me, what dark things have you spoken into existence lately?” he asks with the reverence of someone who’s just met his god.
I have so many of my own questions, I ignore his. “This ritual was for my parents. How did you show up? Where did they go? Why are you here?”
He smiles like I’m a middle school student in a doctorate course. “Were they ever here? What were you thinking when you started the ritual? Are you sure you didn’t ask for me?”
Did I ask for him? Did I ask for darkness? No. I asked for more light. Our eyes connect and I can tell he knows I just put it all together.
“Yes, my love. You asked for your parents, seeking the light you used to feel around them. But don’t forget that with light comes darkness. And it’s my turn.”
His turn?
Suddenly, I know what I must do. Slowly, I stand and take a step toward this stranger. I pull back his chair so I can face him, looking over his hair which still smolders from the candle flame. I take in the awfulness of his gaze and the maggots falling off his skin. I straddle the chair and lower myself until I’m in his lap. I slowly wrap my arms around his neck and pull my body close to his. He lets out a soft sigh, like he’s home. I sit there, listening to him breath against my neck, holding my darkness to me. I watch my skin turn gray. I hold on tighter until maggots cover my skin, too. I can feel them sliding down my back under my shirt. I continue to hold him like two lovers who have just made up after a fight. I hold him until the world turns black and the sound shuts off. Until my body is no longer and my mind is put to rest. And still, I continue to hold on.
***
I wake on the floor of my dining room, the morning sunlight shining through the widows. I stare at my ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles like my life didn’t just change. My skin is back to its normal state—full of freckles and sun spots. My dining room shows no signs of my guests from the night before. I lay on the floor feeling … nothing. Numb.
Am I disgusted with myself? Am I proud of myself? Does it matter? I have no judgments. There’s no need to judge when you’ve embraced everything that makes you want to close your eyes and hide. I’ve accepted the fate that comes with this new knowledge. I’ve embraced my darkness, knowing it’ll be a constant companion because I will keep pursuing the light.
