Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Alex and The Gruff walked back down the stairs and stopped outside of The Man’s room. He was breathing heavy and probably asleep. Alex was tired. He yawned out loud and The Gruff took him by the hand and pulled him along the corridor away from The Man’s door, back into his own room.

  Alex went to his corner and he lay down on the ground. It wasn’t comfortable, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He used his arm for a pillow and he tucked his legs up into his body and he closed his eyes. He was asleep before the cold could abrade him.

  The Gruff sat by Alex as he drifted into slumber. He was proud of him. He had found his strength quickly. He had seen an opportunity and he had taken it, without loitering in the thought of repercussion.

  He was finding his voice.

  The Gruff ran his small hands through Alex’s hair. He hadn’t had a shower in days so it was all knotted and clumpy, but The Gruff just ran the palm of his hand over the crown of his head. He had never had a friend like Alex before.

  He hoped he’d never leave.

  After some time, when Alex was lost in his dreams, The Gruff got up and cleaned the room. He packed away the games that were sitting in the middle of the room into the far corner. Then he took the newspaper that was on the floor. He held the picture up in front of his face and he stared at it. He looked at the picture and then he looked back at Alex. And he did that for maybe half an hour.

  He smiled.

  Alex was just like in the picture.

  He was real.

  He was a boy.

  The Gruff placed the newspaper down on the ground near the stack of toys. He was careful not to scrunch or to fold the pages. They wouldn’t be able to get another one, not with the same picture. All the other papers now would be showing pictures of his mother and father and there’d be less about Alex and more about the people he left behind. The Gruff couldn’t sympathize with that kind of grief.

  He took one more look at Alex sleeping on his side and he smiled to himself. He looked like a proud father lost in peaceful gaze at his son at the end of an arduous day. And the day had been just that. But not just the day. There were many of them. Many long days that lead to this peaceful gaze. And that’s what made it so special.

  The Gruff turned off the light and he slowly walked down the corridor. He ran his hands along the walls as his tiny feet slid along the slippery floor. He stopped at every door and at one, in particular, room four, he bowed his head and he rested upon it, the palms of his hands and upon them, his tired and weary head. And The Gruff closed his eyes and he took a breath. He took a long deep breath. A breath that was like an icy shower on his arid thoughts. There were so many things that he missed, so many people that he would never see again.

  “Why does everything have to grow up?” he said to himself.

  A tear ran down his cheek and pooled by his tiny feet. It splashed when it hit the ground. It sounded like a disciplining hand being slapped across an apologetic cheek. The Gruff wiped his eyes and he bit his lip. He hated crying. And he hated how warm it made him feel.

  He peeled his frowning face away from the door and he lifted his spirits with his feet and he turned the handle on the last door on the left. The lights were off, but The Gruff could still see. His eyes could always see what others could not.

  The Man was asleep on the bed. He was snoring loud and he was curled up foetal, just like Alex. He had his legs tucked tight against his fat belly, his head was leaning in towards his heavy chest and he was sucking on his thumb.

  Beside him, on his nightstand was a comic book and beside it was some kind of denture. It was what he used to make his teeth look normal and to hide the ones that were missing from where he sucked relentlessly on his calloused thumb.

  The Gruff climbed up onto the bed and he crawled under the blankets beside The Man. The Gruff loved climbing into a warm bed. The Man preferred the opposite. His favorite thing in the world was to take off all his clothes and put on a fan and then dive under the blankets. He loved to feel the shiver of cold and knowing he was about to get warm any second. It gave him the other kind of shivers, the ones of excitement.

  The Gruff though would always wait until the bed was warm enough for him to calmly enter and cuddle up. With Alex, he liked to sleep at his chest. He liked to feel Alex’s chest rising and falling and to hear the sound of his heart beating or his chest wheezing, especially because Alex’s room was so cold and he had no blankets. Alex probably didn’t know at the time, but last night he snuggled his arms around The Gruff and wrapped his chin over The Gruff’s head. It kept them both really warm. And it felt good, to have something to hold - to have something to care for, to have something that mattered.

  “Did you like the picture?” asked The Gruff.

  The Man was awake. He hated the picture. He hated Alex. He didn’t want to talk about him. He didn’t want to think about him. He just wished Alex was gone, that he was never born in the first place. He wanted someone to hurt Alex, to make him go away. And so, he pretended to be asleep.

  “Do you think they look the same? I do. I think they look the identical. I mean, he was a bit younger then and his hair his different. I know, know. It looks a bit silly. I thought so too, but I wasn’t gonna tell him that. You didn’t tell him that did you? You better not. I don’t want him thinking his picture is stupid. But maybe we should cut his hair, so it’s more like the picture. What do you think?”

  The Gruff was stroking the back of The Man’s neck. He was twisting and twining the fine hairs of his neck between his tiny little fingers. The Man continued breathing heavy. He kept on pretending he was asleep.

  “Do you remember when I met you?” The Gruff asked.

  The Man, he remembered. He didn’t say so, but he remembered. He couldn’t remember anything before that day, but he remembered that day like it had just passed like it was yesterday and not thirty odd years ago. But more than that day, he remembered the day he found his voice; the day The Gruff helped him to find it. He remembered how bloodied his hands were. He remembered how bloodied it left his soul. He remembered how after that day, he didn’t laugh as much as he used to.

  “You don’t look like your picture anymore,” said The Gruff. “But I still love you.”

  He hugged The Man.

  He wrapped his tiny arms around him.

  He kissed him on the nape of his neck.

  “I’ve always loved you,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  The man shivered.

  It wasn’t from excitement.

  And he stopped pretending that he was asleep.

  “You missed some hair,” The Gruff said in a disgusted tone.

  The Man shut his eyes tight. The Gruff ran his hand down his arm and The Man tensed. The Gruff’s little compassionate hand felt like a wasp creeping along sunburnt skin. He tried not to move a muscle in case it should sting.

  “My arm is better,” said The Gruff.

  “Why did you do that?” asked The Man. “I don’t want you to have to hurt yourself anymore. You’re the only friend I have.”

  The Gruff kissed the nape of his neck again.

  Again, The Man shivered.

  “It’s ok. Alex made me better.”

  “I could have.”

  “But Alex did.”

  “Does he have to stay here?”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “It’s not that. It’s just…”

  The Man wanted to say what he wanted to say. He just didn’t know how to say it. He wanted to say that he didn’t like Alex, that The Gruff didn’t need Alex, that he was enough of a friend for them to be friends forever. He wanted to say that Alex was stupid and that his picture was stupid and that he would grow old too and that just because he looked like his picture, it didn’t at all make him special. It wasn’t his fault that he grew. It wasn’t his fault that he got all that hair. He tried to get rid of it. He really tried. But it always came back.

  It wasn’t his fault that he got old.
It wasn’t his fault that The Gruff never did. None of it was his fault. But he was still special. He was still the same boy he always was. He was still the best friend The Gruff had ever had. And if The Gruff didn’t think so, then he was stupid too.

  He wanted to say all that. But it was so hard when there was so much to say and then all he could really do was to cry and to moan. And that’s just what he did.

  “You know what you have to do,” said The Gruff

  The Man said nothing.

  He knew just what he meant.