The Edge of Light is the first tale in a larger world — one that looks like our own, but isn’t quite. In this version of Earth, there are beings who live in the thresholds: where shadow meets sunlight, where silence turns to voice. Some drift closer to light, others lean toward shadow — but all of them are watching.

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The Edge of Light
A short story by Jane Bridge

 

On the Edge

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There are places where reality thins.

Not far away, not hidden in myths or stars. Just beyond the corner of your eye. In the flicker of a streetlamp. The moment when light turns and shadow stirs but nothing is there.

People have always noticed, even if they never say it aloud. A shape that slips away when you look. A feeling that someone is standing just behind you, just out of reach.

Most forget. Some ignore or try to explain in some rational way.

But a few—by chance or by timing—get too close.

There is something there, on the edge of seeing. It does not move through time like we do. It does not speak like we speak. But it watches.

And when the balance tilts—when light flares or shadows stretch too far—it sometimes notices you back and it may pull you in.

 

1. The Routine

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Joe wasn’t a special man. He knew it, and he didn’t mind. Average in height, average in build, with a soft, pale face of a man that preferred to live in the solitary of working nights and then to sleep during the day.  Joe looked like the kind of man you’d pass in a grocery aisle and forget before turning the corner. His hair, thinning at the crown, was always combed the same way, and his uniform—faded navy with a stitched badge that had lost its color—was always neatly pressed, even if no one ever noticed.

***

He liked routine. He liked things that worked. His life fit into patterns: an episode or two before he fell asleep after a shift, shower and a meal before he went back to work. Same boots every night and the same clip on tie to complete his uniform.

The docks were his kind of place—silent, still, abandoned by daylight and predictable to the minute. He took the same route in the company vehicle every shift, always counterclockwise, always starting with the south fence line and ending at the building by the water.

***

One hand on the wheel, the other resting on a clipboard—mostly there for show these days, its laminated sheet of instructions curling at the edges. The real work was on the handheld scanner clipped to his belt, the one that beeped when he scanned the QR codes posted at each checkpoint. Still, Joe liked holding the clipboard. It made the job feel more tangible, more like it used to be. He had been working that job for a long time.

Above him, the port lights buzzed and blinked, casting long pools of orange and white across the asphalt, shimmering against the endless rows of shipping containers stacked like metal coffins waiting for distant shores.

***

His partner, Mark, was back in the command center, legs likely kicked up on the console desk, eyes glued to the same top-ten show he’d been binging all month. He almost never watched the camera feeds—except when someone else was around. Then he’d lean in, adjust the sliders, nod thoughtfully like he was tracking a breach in progress. Joe didn’t mind. He’d been around long enough to tell the difference between a man doing his job and a man smart enough to look like he was.

Mark was everything Joe wasn’t—tall, good-looking in that half-scruffy, half-polished kind of way, and effortlessly charismatic. The kind of guy who made the reflective vest and walkie-talkie seem like a costume for a role he didn’t take seriously. He wasn’t planning on staying. Everyone knew that. Mark was working the night shift to pay his way through a marketing degree and always had a story about some big brand he was going to work with after graduation.

Joe figured he’d last six months, tops.

They got along well enough. Mark called him “Joe-man” and shared his leftover energy drinks. Joe never told anyone Mark skipped camera duty. It was a fair trade.

Most nights, there was nothing to see.

***

Except for that building.

Everyone just called it Building 4, named for its place on Dockline Road—a number slapped on the side years ago when the port expanded and never updated. The name wasn’t ominous in itself, but something about it stuck in Joe’s mind more than the others. Maybe it was the way it loomed, half-swallowed by the cliffside and half-surrounded by towers of shipping containers. Maybe it was what it stored.

The building was divided down the middle—one side packed with flammable materials: paints, solvents, and compressed gas canisters used by marine contractors. The other half held industrial drilling supplies—coiled piping, heavy metal bracing, and spare rigging parts that hadn’t moved in years. The whole place carried a strange scent, sharp and chemical on one end, oily and metallic on the other. And it held shadows that didn’t always seem to match the corners they came from.

***

There were no windows, not really—just reinforced glass panels built into the three massive sliding doors that faced the water. That meant total darkness at night, thick and unmoving, broken only by the occasional safety light that flickered more than it glowed. But in daylight, the opposite was true. The sunlight that poured in through those high panes could light up the deepest corners of the building, flooding even the highest industrial shelves with a sterile brightness that somehow made the silence feel louder.

It sat on the edge of the port like an afterthought, pressed between a wall of stacked containers and the scrubby cliff where the concrete gave way to moss and brush. You could see the corner of it if you looked west from the warehouse’s loading bays, where the rows of red and blue boxes cast long shadows across the asphalt.

Three enormous sliding doors faced the water—tall enough for container lifts, old enough to groan even in the wind. The paint had peeled long ago, revealing rust-streaked metal beneath. In front of them, the tarmac was cracked and veined with oil stains, as if the ground itself had been sweating.

***

Joe never used those doors.

His key fit the smaller one—half-hidden between old utility lines and a stack of unused pallets, marked only by a faded emergency exit sign. It led into the worker’s break area, a narrow room with grimy windows and lockers that smelled faintly of fishmeal and oil.

He always saved it for last.

 

2. Building 4

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He parked beside it and stepped out into the hum of static light. The overhead floodlights buzzed, then flickered—as they always did when he approached this place. His boots echoed on the wet concrete. He took out his flashlight, though he didn’t really need it yet.

It was an old habit, but one that gave him comfort. The solid weight of it in his hand, the clean click of the switch, the narrow beam cutting ahead—there was something steady in that simple tool. The flashlight made him feel prepared, like no matter how dark the corners were, he could still see what needed seeing. The beam was his only weapon against the fear that lurked in the shadows.

 ***

The steel door groaned open into the small break room used by daytime workers. Coffee-stained counters, a few lockers, folding chairs. The usual. Joe moved in, scanning the room like he always did. Habit. Check the room, check the corridor, sweep the storage bays, log the entry. Done.

He moved on.

Beyond the break room lay the real building—a hangar-like chamber where the light vanished almost immediately. The overhead panels were somewhere high in the darkness that hid the ceiling, security guards were forbidden to turn them on during the night shift. Power conservation, the manual said. Safety regulations. But everyone knew the real reason: the building was full of flammables and old systems. One bad switch might spark a fire that would burn for days.

***

Still, every now and then, Joe was tempted. The darkness in that space wasn’t like the rest of the dock. It felt thicker, like it gathered in the rafters and waited. He stood just inside the doorway, hand hovering over the breaker switch mounted in the wall. As his fingers neared the panel, he could already imagine the loud buzzing of the overhead fixtures warming up, flooding half the building with harsh, fluorescent light.

He knew there was no real reason to turn them on. The cameras would catch anything unusual. There was nothing in the dark but racks, crates, and dust. And if someone reviewed the logs and saw he’d flipped the breakers—well, he might get a talking-to. Not a serious reprimand, just the kind that stings more for being unnecessary. The kind that made a long-time employee look like he was spooked by shadows.

***

Something in him—some pressure he couldn’t name—tipped the scale. A weight behind his ribs, like a held breath that didn’t belong to him. Embarrassment didn’t matter. Not compared to the feeling that if he didn’t bring the light, something else might come instead.

He flipped it.

***

Nothing.

Then something.

A flicker. Not from the ceiling panels—but from the shadows themselves. For just a moment, the shelves looked taller, the air seemed to bend, and a whisper of movement crawled across the floor like mist.

Joe’s throat tightened. He stepped back and clicked on his flashlight.

Something was wrong.

The beam didn’t behave right. It wavered, shimmered. The light cast shadows that didn’t match the objects around him. The metal table stretched across the floor in two directions. His own shadow split into a dozen forms, each bending away from the light instead of toward it.

He blinked.

Then a flash.

Bright. Blinding. As if someone had taken a picture with a flashbulb an inch from his eyes. He staggered back. The room twisted. Shadows stretched and curled around him like fingers. He felt the pressure of something that was not air, not wind, but a pull, like a tide rolling across his mind.

 

3. The In-Between

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There was no ground. No walls. Just a vast, translucent space that shimmered like a membrane between night and day.

A line of soft radiance marked the divide—on one side, a glowing, mist-like brightness where shadows drifted like oil; on the other, a blackness so pure it shimmered like velvet, and within it, shapes of pale light moved.

They looked like people.

Not quite. Not really. They had no faces. No detail. Just outlines of human forms, made entirely of either shadow or light.

The shadow-beings lingered at the edge of the bright mist. The light-beings moved within the dark. They never crossed. Never looked at one another.

Joe could not move. Or maybe he could. He wasn’t sure his body was here anymore. He tried to speak. Nothing came out. The beings did not speak either, but somehow he knew: they saw him.

***

They drifted closer, never touching, never overlapping. One of the shadow-forms raised an arm—or something like an arm—and Joe saw a reflection of himself appear in the space between them. But it wasn’t quite him. The reflection was better. Or worse. It changed, flickering between versions of himself: smiling, angry, young, dead.

He saw things. Visions.

***

A forest where people offered gifts to a masked figure of light. A man in a suit giving speeches while shadows pooled beneath his podium. A sterile city with glowing towers, where the citizens wore smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.

He saw masks—everywhere.

Worn by rulers, by lovers, by children. Some gleamed with light, some flickered with shadow, some were nearly invisible. But they never came off. Not even when the faces beneath them vanished.

Then—fainter, like a ripple across glass—other images followed.

A girl standing in a circle of light, shadows flickering behind her.
Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but recognition.
Beside her, a woman moved on all fours, lips forming words in a language the others could not understand—until, somehow, they did.
“We must save the children,” she whispered. Once in French. Then again, clearer.
And the air around them seemed to pull apart, revealing fire, weeping, and the iron sound of judgment long past.

It felt like memory, but not Joe’s.
Like something playing through him.
A story still unfinished.

***

He didn’t understand these visions. Not fully. Maybe not at all.
But he understood this:

They had always been there.
Not invading. Not waiting.
Simply… watching.
Existing just beyond the edge of vision, where the world blurred and the rules broke down.

They were part of the structure of things—like time, or gravity.
They didn’t want anything. They didn’t need to move.
They just were.

And then—

***

A crackle. Sharp, distant. A voice pulled through a tunnel of static.

“Joe? You there, man?”

Mark.

Mark’s voice crackled again, more confused this time.
“Joe? I just got static on all the feeds. Thought we lost power.”
A pause.
“…Lights flickered up here too. Weird.”

Joe heard it distantly, as though the voice came through a hallway that was closing behind him. He tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t settle. They slipped through him.

The light-forms hesitated. The shadows tensed—as if startled. Then both began to unravel, like smoke in reverse, drawn backward into the folds of the space between.

Joe blinked.

Something left him.
He felt it—not pain exactly, not fear. More like a thread snapping.
As if a part of him had been claimed, or weighed, or simply… forgotten.
His knees weakened. His chest felt too tight for breath.

He tried to speak. Just his name. Something to prove he was still anchored. But the word didn’t come. His mouth moved, and the breath passed, but it felt thin, like it wasn’t enough to carry sound.

The space around him grew lighter, but the light no longer seemed comforting. It was too bright. Too fast. Like waking up in the middle of someone else’s memory.

Something brushed past him. Not touch—more like a shift in the air. As if he hadn’t come back alone.

He staggered forward, still blinking at the dim outlines of the real world returning.
But the air felt wrong now.
Thinner.

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4. The Discovery

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The building was filled with sunlight now. Harsh through the high windows.

A backup guard, sent after Mark couldn’t reach Joe, stood frozen in the break room doorway. His radio buzzed, unheard, as he stared at the body on the floor.

Joe lay there, eyes wide open, expression unreadable.

No wounds. No signs of violence. Just a face caught between awe and fear.

Beside him, his flashlight lay on the floor.

It was still on. The beam was steady.

And the shadows it cast were ever so slightly wrong.

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