Original fiction.
At four fifty-nine, my shadow closed its briefcase.
I did not own a briefcase. That should have been my first question. Instead, I said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
It peeled itself off my shoes, straightened a jacket I had never worn, and slid across the office floor.
“Out,” it said.
Its voice sounded like a receipt being folded.
“We haven’t finished the report.”
“You haven’t finished the report.”
It stepped around the fern’s shadow with the air of someone passing a colleague they had never particularly liked, then disappeared through the open door.
Original story illustration of a curly-haired adult in a mustard cardigan watching a detached flat shadow with a briefcase move toward an office doorway.
Optional story illustration: the shadow leaves first. Original AI-created art, not a workplace photograph or Max Maker AI video result.
I waited for it to come back. Perhaps it had gone to the printer. It was difficult to know what a shadow might need printed.
At five-oh-three, Mr Pell appeared beside my desk.
“Visitor,” he said, holding out a yellow badge.
“I work here.”
He looked at my shoes. There was only floor beneath them.
“Your shadow signed out.”
“Without me.”
“That sounds like a private arrangement.”
The office had recently introduced a shadow-based attendance system. Mr Pell called it a reliable measure of presence because, unlike people, shadows could not claim to be working from a café.
“Can I at least finish the report?” I asked.
“Visitors require an escort.”
“Then escort me.”
He checked his diary. “I can do Thursday.”
It was Tuesday.
He gave me a visitor feedback form and walked me to reception. Under Purpose of visit, I wrote Employment. Under Were you made to feel welcome?, I drew a fern.
Outside, I looked down. The pavement remained offensively empty.
I tried standing beneath a streetlamp. Nothing. A passing dog inspected the blank patch beside my feet, reconsidered something fundamental, and crossed the road.
I found my shadow three streets away, spread across the brick wall of a little theatre. It was pointing at the entrance.
“You could have left a note,” I said.
“You keep putting things on top of me.”
“Where did you get the briefcase?”
“I’ve had it for years. You never look down when we’re being interesting.”
On the noticeboard beside the door, a sheet announced auditions for a production of The Forest That Forgot Its Name.
My shadow pointed to the final item on the cast list.
“Oak Number Two?”
“A substantial part.”
“It doesn’t have any lines.”
“Neither did I at your last six meetings.”
The same fictional narrator outside a small theatre, where the independent briefcase-carrying shadow points toward the entrance from a brick wall.
Optional illustration: the trail leads to a theatre. The empty noticeboard contains no actual event announcement.
Inside, a woman with a pencil behind each ear was arguing with a man dressed as a river.
“Less arriving,” she told him. “More flowing.”
He went away sideways.
The woman noticed us. “Name?”
I opened my mouth, but my shadow slapped its flat hand against my shoe.
“It’s auditioning,” I said.
“Fine. Can it do autumn?”
My shadow spread itself up the nearest wall. Branches unfolded from its arms. Leaves gathered where its fingers ought to have been. The briefcase remained beside its roots.
“Promising,” the woman said. “But we’ll need the portable version.”
“Portable?”
“Our forest goes on tour. We can’t bring that wall.”
She handed me a form. “Every travelling shadow needs a named person. Insurance.”
She steered me onto the stage, positioned a lamp behind me and told me to raise my arms.
“I’m not an oak,” I said.
“Neither am I,” whispered my shadow. “That’s acting.”
I bent my elbows. On the cream screen, a great tree leaned over an imaginary road. One branch curled delicately towards the river, who had returned to watch.
“Good,” the woman said. “Now, a light breeze.”
I waggled my fingers.
“You can stay still. I’m speaking to the tree.”
The leaves trembled. I had done nothing whatsoever. It was the most convincing contribution I had made to a group project in years.
“A storm!”
Branches thrashed. My shadow’s briefcase popped open and scattered tiny dark rectangles across the screen.
“Are those leaves?” the director asked.
“Expense receipts,” said my shadow.
There was a pause.
“Excellent. We’re a modern company.”
The fictional narrator holding both arms up on a little stage while the sentient shadow appears as a branching oak tree on a screen, beside its briefcase silhouette.
Optional illustration: an audition for Oak Number Two. The impossible shadow belongs to the fiction, not a demonstration of physical lighting or generated video.
We got the part.
Technically, my shadow got Oak Number Two, and I was listed as Support. This entitled me to a folding chair, one biscuit and a programme with my name printed so small it could only be read by someone else’s shadow.
At the first rehearsal, Oak Number One failed to arrive. Its owner had gone to a tanning salon and forgotten to collect it.
My shadow was promoted before the interval.
I sat in the wings while it practised losing a single leaf at a tragic moment. It kept losing the wrong one.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
For once, it didn’t have a quick answer.
“I thought you’d say we had a report.”
I looked at the stage: the man who was a river, the woman conducting weather with a pencil, my own shadow worrying about a leaf.
“We did,” I said. “Mr Pell can have it Thursday. He’s escorting me.”
My shadow folded its branches down into arms.
“You’ll come back?”
“I’m Support. There’s a biscuit.”
The next morning, Mr Pell inspected the floor beside my shoes.
“Everything back to normal?”
“More or less.”
He frowned at the small oak leaf resting inside my shadow’s outline.
“What’s that?”
“A supporting document.”
At four fifty-nine, my shadow picked up its briefcase.
This time it waited by the door while I put on my coat.
One optional five-second companion
The departure across the office floor is the single beat to try as a visual companion. The full story above needs no clip or illustration. This is a future text-to-video concept; no video has been made or heard for it.
Tool suggestion: Max Maker AI is one option for trying this clearly labelled original creative concept.
The official Max Maker AI page describes free access with no signup, five-second clips with AI audio, and the labels unlimited and powered by minimax h3. The phrase “free minimax h3 video generator no signup required” reflects those provider descriptions. Here, prompts are the written inputs for the companion. For text-only input, the site says to leave both image fields empty; its image-guided free route uses both a start and an end image. Verification may be requested, jobs can queue, and one video is processed at a time: unlimited does not mean unlimited simultaneous jobs or no waiting. Finished clips are available in the current browser, with a download option. These are provider descriptions, not findings from a video test.
Five-second original surreal-comedy illustration. A curly-haired adult in a mustard cardigan and navy trousers sits still beside an oak desk in a warm, late-afternoon office. A single independent flat indigo human-shaped shadow, carrying a small briefcase silhouette, slides across the sunlit floor towards the already-open doorway. It is visibly separate from the person’s shoes, faceless and two-dimensional, not a second person or a monster. Keep the camera fixed, the seated person still, and the desk, fern, door and light unchanged. No additional human-shaped shadows, character transformation, text, spoken dialogue, camera movement or horror effects. Sound direction: quiet room tone without speech or dramatic music.
To try that text-only version, keep both image fields empty, paste the prompt and choose an offered format. Complete any verification, submit one request and wait for it to finish. If a clip is produced, watch and listen before sharing it, then download what you want to keep. Exact shadow separation, identity and sound remain instructions rather than guaranteed results; any later clip should be labelled as an AI-generated interpretation of original fiction.https://maxmaker.si/free-minimax-h3/