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The beginning. You're born, you live, you die. That is life. That is the fundamental essence of life. Just like stories: we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's the middle, yes, the middle, that has the most life in it. So many tales from the middle. You only get one tale at the beginning and one tale at the end. Birth and death. That is true. I am sorry if you think otherwise.

The middle. This is what this story is about. These stories, mostly. We will touch base on the beginnings, and dabble in the ends, but the story will mostly consist of the middles. Their middles. Their tales. Their lives.

The end. I do hope that you will cherish the middles to prepare for this. To prepare for the end. The end of them. Never forget the middles. Do not lose them to the ends, or I'll be disappointed. Very disappointed. You won't like me when I'm disappointed.

I hope you will enjoy these stories. The truly mean it. I really hope you will.

The Madman, a title that people will come to call him, the Madman. He was not a stereotypical madman with unpredictable eyes, and to be fastened in straitjackets and chains, and to gabble out nonsense. The Madman was a man with calm and thoughtful eyes, and he was unrestrained from the clutches of chains, and he conversed actual sense, yet on a few occasions he would spew out strange nonsense that only he would understand. Usually once or twice a day. Oh, who is the Madman, you ask? Oh, silly me, I forgot to introduce him. I'm getting ahead of myself here, you see.

The Madman's true identity was Shadow Michael D'Alton, who was a tall man, about six foot and an inch tall; and he had peachy skin. He had a head of shaggy, gingery hair, the same colour as the setting sun. He had a broad face with a shaggy beard. He had a pair of very thoughtful dark blue eyes like mysterious dark pools of sapphires. He was thirty-one years of age, and he was unwedded at the time. He survived in the city of Nona, a city of utter brilliance and vast wealth.

Nona was a city with looming buildings that scraped the grey sheeted skies. The architect of this city was composed of wondrous stonework and enduring steel. It was certainly a city of industry and prosper.

The city would expel great heaps of smoke into the skies that were from the lively factories that produced productivity and most of Nona's wealth. The smoke would shroud the skies in sheets of dull grey, causing the sun to barely peek out of at the city; but the folks didn't care about this. They were busy with their hasty little lives, it was a tragedy. But it was a time of wealth and prosper, and those things do not come to people who aren't busy making prosper and wealth.

Nona was also a city filled with vast cultures and different exotic species and races. Yes, Nona was not just inhabited by humans. Nona, and even the continent of Dwelf, was also inhabited by elves, that were tall and fair, dwarves, whom were stout and hearty, and half folk of cat, lizard, fox and wolf, whom were more akin to their human adversaries then to the half beasts they were. The humans treated these species as secondary citizens, for the humans thought of them not as pure nor as majestic as them. Most of the elves in the land of Dwelf roamed in the dark forests in the north in solitude from the touch humans; and majority of the Dwarves of the land marched and resided in kingdoms in mountains and deep underground from the eyes of humans. As for the half folk, they lived alongside the humans as best as they could. Some were as equal as humans, but some were lesser to the homo sapiens.

The city was divided into three districts: Bliss - where the supremely rich resided - the Works - where the working class lived - and the Slums - where the dirt poor and degenerates scurried about. Nona was not a perfect city, it was in fact far from it.

Shadow had a steady job as a journeyman electrician, a very well-paying job. Strangely, he lived in an apartment, instead of a solitary house, despite his fortunate income.

He lived at a two story, red-brick apartment building that had a peeling brown door that had a tarnishing 757 stamped to the top of it, four oak windows - the bottom two and the top one on the left were dusty, only the one on the right was clean, which was where Shadow lived. It had an olive green and a brass C bolted onto it - and it was rectangularly shaped. It sat near the corner of the street called Oxford, which was laid in The Works. The apartment was stuffed between a triple decker apartment, which was at the corner, and a miniature shop, that the people of Oxford Street called it Nana's. It sold assorted candies, baked goods, and handknitted apparels such as scarves and sweaters.

A sweet, little old lady ran the miniature shop. She was called Mrs Jahures - her first name was all but known to Shadow and the other neighbours of Oxford Street. Whenever he asked her she would just smile and tell him to call her "Mrs Jahures". She immigrated from a distant land many years ago when she was only young woman and she lived off her ability to bake and knit ever since. The people of Oxford street called her Nana, because she was very grandmotherly to whomever entered her shop: kind hearted and rather sweet. She loved Shadow like he was her kin. She would always give him a free brown paper bag of goodies, crammed with peanut butter shortbread cookies and chocolate butter tarts. Shadow would always insist that she was too kind and that she didn't have to go to such a trouble to make these for him, and she would respond with "Oh, no, no, no, dear. It's fine, dear, it's fine!" and then she would give a sweet, little laugh and a sweet, old smile.

Once, about four years ago, she knitted him a scarf, a beautiful wool scarf. The scarf was a midnight black and it had silver aces woven at each of the ends of the scarf, two at each end. Shadow would always wear that scarf, except on those hot sticky days of the summer. He was very thankful that she made him such an exquisite scarf.

Shadow would come every rainy day to have a cup of tea with her and share a laugh or two, and whenever she needed something to be hammered up on the wall or screwed into place, or just something that needed to be fixed, he would venture over and mend the problem for her, and he asked for no charge except for her grandmotherly smile.

Oxford Street was a quiet street, especially by midday, where most of the people would go to their jobs and their work. Oxford Street consisted of mostly apartment buildings where folk like Shadow would survive. Perpendicular to Oxford was Williams Street, a very busy and lively street littered with houses, apartments, a gargantuan food store, and a rowdy bar named McMillan's Pub where a handful of Oxford Street would frequent. Shadow was apart of that handful. He would venture over to McMillian's every Friday night of each week where he would meet up with his closest friend, Marcus Holmes, for a pint or two of beer, an exchange of the week's stories, and a roar of laughter and merriment. They had been the best of friends for nearly a decade.

Marcus Holmes was, of course, the younger brother, at the age of thirty, of the widely famous and humongously wealthy Hunter Holmes, who was forty-two years of age, and who resided in Bliss. Hunter Holmes was famous for his bossmenship in the workforce. He controlled majority of the tradespeople in the Works, including his younger brother and the Madman, he was the boss of bosses. He definitely played a major role in the development and function of Nona. His younger brother was offered a position by him that paid handsomely, a much larger quantity and few injuries than his current job, but Marcus declined his elder brother's offer.

Marcus loved his work as a welder. He loved working with his hands rather than his mouth, unlike Hunter. Marcus was more of a follower than a leader and he did not care for riches, he just wanted enough money to pay for his needs for survival and some leisure benefits. He prefered cheap beer over expensive wines, a raggedy jacket instead of a cleanly-pressed suit, a loud, dirty, body-packed party chock-full of sexual ecstasy and illegal mind-altering substances than a clean, chatter-filled, silverware waltzes, ones that his brother mostly hosted on special occasions. Marcus Holmes was a man who loved danger and excitement.

When Shadow was not spending his weekly meetup with his best friend or working enthusiastically at his job or aiding the elderly Mrs Jahures or having to shop he resided in the rooms of his apartment.

Let me give you a tour of seven-hundred and fifty-seven C Oxford Street. I am personally sorry if this is overextended, now please read on.

When you enter through the olive green door you are immediately greeted to the living room. The living room was a large, square-shaped room with mahogany red walls and a pinewood floor. In the living room we have two leather armchairs facing each other, yet adjacent to the noir mantelpiece where a roaring fire was lit underneath on those late, sleepless nights or those frosted cold days. Between the two chairs we have the scratched-up walnut coffee table where Shadow leaves his books, keys, and other objects on it, more so to the left side of the table - which was where he sat, and occasionally rested, most of the time; the other chair was for guests such as Marcus and Mrs Jahures. Behind the Guest Chair was the neat window that gazed out at the streets of Oxford.

To the left of the living room we have the dining-kitchen area and to the right we have Shadow's bedroom and the bathroom. We'll start with the dining-kitchen area. A room with hazel walls and a blank ceiling (with a faded orange stain smeared on it, an interesting tale for another day). It is a box-shaped and it is medium-sized, not quite as big as the living room. The metallic sink is on the left hand side of the room and the hand-me-down fridge on the right of the sink. In the middle there's the tall walnut table and four chairs rest beside it. Seven mugs in a circle and seven plates stacked together are resting casually on the oak counter beside the sink.

We stride over to the bathroom, which is the only room on the left down the short, mahogany red hallway from the living room. The bathroom is by far the smallest room of seven-hundred and fifty-seven C Oxford street, with the capability to only hold three people at once without it being cramped and crowded, unless somebody steps into the bathtub. The floor and the walls are composed of white wood, the floor is tiled and the walls are paneled. The room is rectangularly-shaped. The room is furnished with a porcelain sink, with a borderless mirror overhead, a porcelain toilet to the right of that sink and the bathtub, and the showerhead overneath, to the left.

At the end of the hallway we have Shadow's room. This majestic square-shaped room (in comparison to the other rooms of his apartment) had auburn walls with birch borders. A hand-me-down queen bed with mahogany sheets slept at the furthest side of the room, facing the entrance of the room. An oak bedside table sat at the right side of the bed holding a jade green lamp and a black, leather-covered book embroidered with a silver moth on top of a silver moon and silver words - The Butterfly's Eclipse - underneath them. Shadow though it was a beautiful book, one of the best. It was actually the first book he bought when he moved into his apartment. At the wall to the left of the bed we have an oak bookcase chock-full of wonderful and colourful books that Shadow had either kept, collected, or bought over the years, two of the books were even from his childhood: The Swallow - a lovely children's book with lots of colourful and fun pictures - and Sanguinis Vulpe - a more grownup fantasy story with brilliant words and vivid imagery within them. Shadow enjoyed reading them from time to time. In front of the bookshelf there was a cherry wood desk lodged up against the corner and an oaken stool in front of the desk. A thick, brown leather-covered journal laid peacefully on the desk, in wait of Shadow's pencil to scribble down in it, either continuing his memoirs of a particular event, bizarre yet wondrous ideas or just absolute scribbling nonsense.

Shadow's apartment was not fit for a king nonetheless, but it was definitely fit for him, since he had lived there for six-and-a-half years with little complaint and, more or less, in contentment.

There you have it, the Madman, Shadow. There you have his fundamental basics to begin to see and understand (I am so sorry, personally, to have taken up so much of your time with this nonsense, you'll thank me later.) Now, we delve into his stories. Welcome to The Journey of the Shadow.