57
Perfect Little
by Sage Schneider
The barista was perfect. The man with no shadow had been to eight coffee shops this week hunting perfection, but now, walking into this cozy cafe, hipster enough to be chic but not pretentious, scattered with plush chairs, glowing laptop screens and discarded straw wrappers, he’d found her. Her crooked smile, her proudly haphazard bun, her eyes dancing between blue and green– she was perfection. He sat there for hours, nibbling pastries, sipping coffee and then tea and then water, until her shift ended and he followed her out the door.
Her shadow dragged behind her in the afternoon sun. His did nothing because it did not exist. He followed her to a perfectly ordinary yellow bug, sarcastic bumper stickers proclaiming her college-feminist vibes while desperately signaling that she was fun at parties. When the time came, her last moments were a sad plagiarism of a cheesy horror.
She fumbled in her purse, digging for keys that must’ve fallen into an alternate dimension because they certainly weren’t in this reality anymore. Slow, silent steps brought him to her, and when she turned to identify the looming figure, he reached out and grasped her arm. Sadly, she never managed a B-movie scream, because she wasn’t there anymore. The man with no shadow placed something in his pocket and walked away, leaving nothing but a tiny leather purse spilled on the ground, keys shining on the asphalt.
His next stop was a towering office building, windows like gleaming mirrors, employees watching the world unseen. Through many months and countless falsified documents, he’d secured an appointment with