Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Man left the room first. He stepped into the corridor and held his back against the wall. He was looking for The Gruff, but he couldn’t see him. The corridor was dark; the lights had all been unscrewed. All except for one, the dim flicker coming from room four.

  The Man had his picture folded in the palm of his hand. He’d had this picture all of his life. He’d stared at it every day and he’d memorized it every night. He always imagined no matter how tall he got or how tight his clothes got around his belly, that he was still that little boy, that nothing had changed. But enough was enough. He couldn’t live in this mask anymore. He couldn’t stretch inside this skin.

  He held the picture up to the dim light. It was hard to make out the boy’s face into the dark, but his could follow the line of his face from his jaw up to his neatly parted hair. He smiled as he scrunched the paper into a ball and let it slip from his opening hands. It made little noise as it shuffled along the floor.

  The Man took a breath. It was a long breath, but it couldn’t clear his thoughts. Nothing ever would. He thought of escape, of ending this all. He touched his waist for where his belt would have been. He wondered if it would hurt if he were to hang himself. He closed his eyes and he wished they would never open again.

  “So it’s done?” said The Gruff. “You were right again.”

  The Man felt sick. He had tired of this game. He walked into room four, into the dim light. He looked around, but he couldn’t see The Gruff anywhere.

  “I told you. This is cruel. You’re not saving them. You’re not saving anyone. Don’t you see? Look at me. I became the very hand that rested upon me. You made me this way. I’m not saved, none of us are.”

  The Gruff was seated somewhere in the dark.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s gone, like the others.”

  “God damnit” screamed The Gruff.

  “I’m not gonna do this anymore. I’m leaving” said The Man.

  “You can’t leave. You need me. What are you gonna do out there? They’ll catch you for what you did you know. Your mother, that whore. You can’t leave. Your home is here, with me.”

  “You don’t mean that. I stopped being special for you the moment I killed that man, the moment you so called saved me. I shouldn’t have been brought here. I shouldn’t have had all of those things done to me. And I shouldn’t have had to have become this” he shouted.

  “You were perfect,” said the Gruff glowingly.

  “Then what am I now” screamed The Man.

  “You grew up” shouted The Gruff.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “I never touched him,” said The Man.

  The Gruff grumbled. He stepped out of the darkness wobbling from side to side. He was carrying something behind him that ground along the floor.

  “I never touched any of them,” said The Man.

  “Never? Ha! Your hands marked the neck of each and every one of them.”

  “I set them free, but I didn’t hurt a single one. What you would have had done, no child could be saved from such horror. No child whose mind can still feel the salivation spilling onto the back of their neck, who can steal hear the heavy breath that stinks and warms the cusp of their ear, who can still taste their own dried blood like ground aluminum in the back of their throat and who can still see his face after all these years, every time that they close their eyes. No child who has to live forever with their torment itching under their skin is free or thankful or alive. All I ever wanted was for one of these children to kill me, to make this hurt stop. It’s all I ever wanted. But I couldn’t do what you wanted. I couldn’t touch them. I couldn’t look at them. I couldn’t hurt them. And in the end, they could do no harm. And why should they? They’re god damn children.”

  “They’re victims, the poor little things. They weren’t born this way. They were nurtured into being victims, nurtured by the people who claimed to love them. A human is as a human does and a human being is in every way a human having been done. These children learn from the people they look to most for protection that their mother and father will not attend to their cries and will, in fact, put them to the whimsy of the predator. The child learns that they cannot cry out so they learn through politeness to be quiet and to submit. Politeness is the discipline of molestation. Politeness in its most detail is keeping one's mouth shut when one most needs to have it open. It is domestication, like the dog, being fearful to bite back and then accepting every angered boot in the bum and slap across the face as hopefully being the last in adoration and desperate need for a tickle behind the ear. They were made this way. They watched their mothers ignore their cries enough times so they learned to ignore their own. They were primed to be taken.”

  “And we fucking took them” shouted The Man.

  “For their own good. If we didn’t take them, someone else would. And they wouldn’t have our considerate trial. They wouldn’t learn to find their voice.”

  “None of them have” shouted The Man.

  “You did,” said The Gruff.

  The Man wiped away tears from his eyes. They were the downfall of his frustration. They did not rain from his sadness. He had left that, scrunched in a ball outside of the room.

  “This world can be unkind. Some bad people do some very bad things but most of the time, they’re taken themselves; by a bad thought or a bad urge. The animal stretches inside of their skin. It’s fucked up, but what we do is worse. We hurt them not to gratify ourselves, not for some sick animal instinct. We hurt them to make them better. We hurt them so that we can save them. We’re so much worse. You’ve made me so much worse.”

  “Listen to you,” said The Gruff. “Listen to your humanity. You think you’re worse? You killed how many children? Fifty? Sixty? Even in the midst of depravity, you found compassion. You were never worse. I made you better. You saved all of these children. Just think, their lives would have never taken hold if they hadn’t have come to us. They would have been victims in so many parlors of abuse, long before disease or old age had made their beds. Sexual abuse, intellectual abuse, domestic abuse, financial abuse and emotional abuse. They would have found lovers who stepped on their spirits. They would have subscribed to remorse and regret. They would never say what the felt because the truth was not polite; it was not what anyone wanted to hear. And they’d get sick; sick in the body and sick in the mind and they’d turn to anything that would just shut up that insolent voice screaming inside of them, that voice unto which they gave no tongue. They would have spent a lifetime living on the contrary. Why is it so easy to take children? It shouldn’t be so. It shouldn’t be.”

  “Then stop.”

  The Gruff grumbled.

  “Just stop. It’s not your place to sharpen their claws. If politeness is to have them pinioned, then let them have a world where birds cannot fly. It is only strange then to be that one bird, flapping it wings and blocking out the sun. Just stop. No more.”

  “Was it different?” asked The Gruff, “killing that man?”

  “To what?”

  “All of those children. You didn’t just kill them, did you? And your mother and your father? Was that any different?’

  “Shut up,” screamed The Man.

  “You could have just let them go, all of them, even Alex. You could have just let them go. But you didn’t, why?”

  “I was scared! Scared to go home. I was scared to leave. No-one would know who I was. They’d find out what I did. They’d call the police. They’d come and they’d take you away from me. I didn’t want to be alone. Not after all this. Not after everything we’ve done. I hate you, I do. But only cause I can never be away from you. You promised we’d always be together. I wanted to free you from the nightmare you endured. I wanted to save you.”

  “Is that what you tell all those children before you save them before you cut their throats?”

  “Don’t try to turn this on me. You made all
of us. You turned us into murderers. And you watched us as we grew, you pretended to care. You pretended to be our friends, but you were just waiting, waiting until you could do it all over again. I spent every day waiting for my turn to come. You stopped playing. You stopped joking.”

  “You stopped laughing” shouted The Gruff.

  “You stopped giving me a reason to. You made me old. You made me older than I was. You didn’t save me. You made me the predator so you could save some other child. I’m not the animal here.”

  “Not the animal? Isn’t that your mother, in pieces on the floor? And the last boy, what was his name?”

  The Man squirmed. Sweat was stinging his eyes.

  “Graham,” said The Gruff. “That was it, Graham. He looked a lot like Alex. What did you do to him?”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. I never wanted any of this. ”

  “And yet, you were so good, except this one-time,” said The Gruff.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well Alex isn’t dead,” said The Gruff.

  “Yes, he is. He’s dead. He’s free. Like all the others.”

  “How did you do it then? How did you kill him? Was it like the last? Did you shave him too? Did you have your way when you were done?”

  “Shut up” screamed The Man.

  He turned to run out of the room but in the doorway, under the flickering light, he saw a specter, a face that only came when his eyes were closed or when the night whispered the truth of his past.

  The Man stopped. Adrenaline flowed through every crevice in his body. He sank inside his own skin. He sank inside his own mind.

  “You’re not real” he shouted. “You’re dead.”

  The Gruff laughed.

  “Tell him you’re sorry” laughed The Gruff. “Tell him you didn’t mean any of the things that you did.”

  The Man turned back to the doorway. He looked at Alex who standing under a flickering light with a long serrated knife in his hands and a leathered mask, made of a dead man’s skin, dressing his own face.

  Alex licked his tongue through the dead man’s lips. His eyes looked so far back behind the dead man’s skin and they were so white, even in the dim play of light.

  “Alex please.”

  The Man was pleading, but he was looking to the floor. He couldn’t bear the sight of that face, alive once more and chewing at his resolve.

  “Please, Alex. Don’t listen to The Gruff. He only wants to live out his hell for an eternity. Don’t do this, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I took you. I’m sorry I took all those children. I was only following orders. I didn’t want to do any of it. Trust me. I wanted The Gruff all to myself. I didn’t want to bring other children here. I didn’t want to have to hurt them like he ordered me to. I didn’t want to have to be that man that did all of those things to me. I just wanted to keep my friend. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to keep my friend.”

  “He’s not your friend,” said Alex. “He’s mine.”

  Alex stepped out of the flickering light and into the darkness. The light flickered once and twice and then everything went black. Blindness arrested their sight. The Man moved backwards, panic gripping his nerves. He swung his arms left and right and he threw himself from one side to the other, but there was nothing but black space between his hands, under his nose and beneath his feet.

  Silence was impossible, what with his heavy breath exclaiming his fear. It was so loud that he couldn’t hear the cutting of air as behind him, from below his buttocks, a large serrated knife moved swiftly through the darkness. To hear it, one’s breath must slither through a whisper and not bid as one’s voice.

  Alex closed his eyes. He travelled through his galaxy feeling his sun behind him though its radiance had been darkened by the entity that stood grieving before him. It was a monstrous entity. It had outgrown the galaxy and it would swallow them whole should he fall under its invisible dance and be drawn towards its center. Alex knew, the only way to return the sun was to divide zero and cut through the heart of darkness.

  The Man thought of the picture of the boy that was scrunched up and rolled about on the floor in the corridor. He tried to remember the boy’s face, but he couldn’t. In his mind, the child had turned away. He saw only the corner of his smile as the boy turned to then be with his friends. His own reflection had left him alone.

  Alex swung the knife. It carried low and travelled swift and quiet through the air. And he almost cut himself as it tore through The Man’s right heel, hardly slowing or losing force as it severed through the tendon.

  The Man stumbled backwards and he tripped over Alex’s body.

  “No” he shouted.

  Alex walked around his shaking body. He slipped once or twice but he curved his toes and the round of his feet and he found his grip again. The floor was covered in so much blood. It splished and it splashed when he wiggled his toes.

  “Please!” said The Man.

  That word, when it shouted, was not as polite as Alex had imagined.

  Alex unwound the belt that was wrapped around his hand. It sounded like a gust of wind passing through a tight bend and then, in the end, there was the rattle of metal on metal and then the scraping of metal on the cold bloodied floor. Alex walked in slow dragging circles. The air scratched at The Man’s ears. Horror and fright were clawing and burrowing its way inside his skin.

  “You’re only human” whispered Alex.

  His arm ran a perfect circle. The buckle whistled as it cut through the air, carrying past Alex’s legs, up over his head and soaring down from such a great height and cracking like thunder on the bridge of The Man’s nose.

  The Man screamed. He pulled his hands over his face, covering the gush of blood from his broken nose. Alex swung the belt once more and then once more again and then once and then twice and then thrice and tenfold and twentyfold and with each swing, the air whipped as the belt ran high above his head and then like the hands of time, it fell upon the inevitable.

  And crack and then whip and then crack went the whipping belt on his skin.

  Up it went, so smooth and rounded and then down it came, smashing against the rough edges of a broken and bleeding skull. And it lashed against The Man’s curved and shaking body and it tore away his shirt and his skin like the wrapping on a present and it hacked off clumps and then chunks of tendons and nerves and muscle. And it grooved and it cut deep, deep into his bones.

  Alex whipped him until the buckle broke and slid across the floor. And then he whipped him some more. The Man’s back looked like a tethered sheet.

  Alex rolled him onto his back and climbed onto his chest. He held the knife firm in his hands. It felt as natural neath his fingers as his tongue between his teeth. It would speak for him how his mouth had been trained to not.

  He pushed the tip of the knife forwards. It knocked off a piece of bone on The Man’s chest and traveled up into his throat. It cut through so easy. Alex barely had to struggle. As he pushed the knife upwards, he fell over onto The Man’s chest.

  The Man was trembling under his body. It was amazing that someone so big and someone so strong, couldn’t shake off such a small skinny boy like Alex.

  But he didn’t see Alex. He saw the mask that he wore. He saw the man who had tormented him all those years ago. He saw the dead face that spoke to him every night and laughed in his ears as he fought to deafen the screams of scores of frightened children from his insomnolence. He saw the man who beat him, who mocked him, who tied him up and who tortured and molested him. He saw in that man’s dead face before he became the very monster that he had fought. And he felt as weak and as servile.

  Alex had never felt this kind of calm before. His breath was hot under the dead man’s skin so he took the mask off. It made a spluttering sound as it clumped in a pool of blood on the floor. He rested for a moment and caught the fresh breeze running across his face. He thought about his brother, passing him on the motorcycle and his brother smiling. He was still clinging t
o his father’s jacket, but he had turned to Alex and he smiled.

  The Man gurgled. He was trying to speak, but the knife had dug from his throat, up through the bottom of the jaw and sliced his tongue in half. As he trembled and shook and moved about, his jaw slid further down the blade and the tip edged closer to his pallet.

  Alex tore the knife back out. It made a mess coming out, shredding his windpipe. It must have been the serrated edges. They went in so easily. Who would have thought? He’d have to remember that when preparing lunch.

  Alex dug his heels into the side of The Man’s legs. It gave him some leverage and that gave him the strength to push the knife deep into The Man’s stomach. Alex’s face splashed cool and red. The Man thrashed about, flinging Alex to the floor.

  It was still dark.

  Alex landed somewhere at the back of the room. He couldn’t see a thing and he could feel now, electricity coursing through his veins. He closed his eyes again and he listened to the sound of The Man gasping and the scratching of the handle against the tiles as The Man dragged himself on his belly to what he though was out of the room.

  Alex stepped onto The Man’s back. The knife dug deep into his chest and he stopped moving almost instantly. His breathing was fast and shallow and it emptied itself of life with every squeak and squeal from his broken throat.

  Alex rolled The Man onto his back. He sat upon him once more and pulled the knife from his chest. This time, it was harder. It was caught on muscle and bone, but he pulled hard and the knife tore out and almost flung out of his hands.

  The Man was still alive, but barely.

  Alex ran his fingers along the ridge of The Man’s face. He ran from the tip of his forehead, down along past his ear and to the point of his chin. He had strong features.

  Alex pressed the knife into his skin. He tried to be gentle. He didn’t want to accidentally cut into the face. He had seen what some of the other masks looked like. Some children should not play with scissors. Even in school, his art was so different to all the other kids. The other children, they painted what they saw or what their teacher wanted them to see. They painted the flowers. Alex painted the space between the flowers.

  He ran the knife along the side of The Man’s face. There was no struggle in his body anymore. He wasn’t dead, but there was no struggle. This was wonderful. Alex ran his left finger along The Man’s jawline and he followed with his right. He could feel the tip of the blade cutting through nerves and the face snapping away from the skin that pulled tight over his neck.

  When it was done, there was not a single mark upon The Man’s face. The light in the doorway flickered once more and then light flooded in from the corridor. The Gruff stood with his tiny hand on a switch and he was smiling.

  He was proud.

  Alex fought to catch his breath. He had The Man’s face in his hands. It was wet and slippery. His fingers slipped on its surface and he had to hook his index and middle finger inside of the mouth grooves so that it wouldn’t slip ion to the floor.

  Now that his blood was without electricity, no that it was without gasoline, now that the fire within his eye had been extinguished, he felt different.

  “You did it,” he said. “You’re no longer a victim,” said The Gruff.

  “Then what am I?” asked Alex.

  The Gruff smiled. He turned and walked back up the corridor.

  Alex followed.

  In the corridor, he found the small piece of paper scrunched up on the floor. He unfolded it in his hands. The picture wasn’t torn, but the face wad been wrinkled and some of the ink had smudged. He took the picture back into room four and he walked along the walls, lightly passing his index finger over every child’s polite smile.

  He closed his eyes and he thought of his sun that was now burning brightly over his head. He didn’t feel lost anymore. He didn’t feel like his universe was skipping under his feet. He had found himself in the light of his own trial.

  Alex smiled and he pressed his hand firmly against the wall. He took the paper and evened it out, brushing his hand over and over until the wrinkles all turned into flat edges once more. It didn’t look pretty, but it was where it belonged.

  Alex looked at the wall.

  So many children had been saved.

  So many.

  He went back into room seven where there was a mess of blood and human remains all over the floor. In the corner, he found the newspaper with his picture on its front. There was a pair of scissors sitting by the old radio. Alex took the scissors and carefully cut around the large picture. He cut close to the edges, keeping the line straight and being careful not to cut into the picture itself.

  When it was done, he held it in his hands and he admired the boy sitting with a polite smile and neatly parted hair. He hardly knew that child. He had never been him, not once in his life but now, he would become all he ever knew.

  Alex took the picture and skin of The Man and he slowly walked down the corridor. It was funny how everything could change so quickly, how things one day could seem so big and impossible and then the next day, they are so finite and fragile.

  Alex opened his door. He walked into the room and squished the carpet between his toes. He loved the feeling of being tickled. He tried to fight the feeling, to pretend that it wasn’t there. He closed his eyes and he smiled because he knew that the more he ignored it, the louder its shout would become and the more it would itch. And he tried to hold on for as long as possible before he yelped and gave in and dived for the bottom of his foot with his scratching nail.

  Alex walked into the room of faces. He turned on the light and he was enshrouded in death. On every wall they lingered and they leered. They hanged like plaid expressions, trophies of transition, hanging one by one from the ceiling to the floor. And there were two spaces; one for the trophy he had claimed and another for when he grew and his would be taken from him.

  Alex hanged the skin mask onto the wall. It looked beautiful, but it was starting to sink and curl inwards. He looked at the sides of the mask and then at every other mask. “There was space,” he thought. “To nail small hooks so the faces could be pulled and stretched and so they didn’t curl inwards.”

  It was interesting, staring at a dead face. Even though he knew The Man was not living, he stared at the empty pockets for eyes and the cavern for a mouth and he stared and he stared and part of him still expected a twitch of an eye or a nudging of a grin; even though he knew that The Man was dead.

  Alex took his picture next. He sat on the edge of the bed and he sprang up and down. He wanted so much to just jump up and down on the bed; to jump up and down and sing some rock n roll. To jump up and down and sing rock n roll and to wave his arms around and kick his feet when he was high in the air and then flop down on his belly when he got tired and had had enough.

  He found the perfect spot to hang his picture. It was on the ceiling, hanging over the bed so that every night when he went to sleep, he could see his reflection watching over him and every night, the boy that he was would fly down from the heavens and he would sleep in his soul and it would keep him young and it would keep him a child, forever.

  “Do you want to play a game?” asked The Gruff.

  He was standing by the doorframe with a deck of cards in his hands.

  “What do you want to play?” asked Alex.

  “We can play snap if you like?”

  “I don’t like snap,” said Alex. “That’s a silly kid’s game.”

  “Well what do you want to play?” asked The Gruff.

  “Teach me poker,” said Alex.

  The Gruff smiled.

  “Promise you’ll never change,” said The Gruff.

  “If you promise you’ll never leave,” said Alex.

  “I promise,” said The Gruff.

  “Best friends?” shouted Alex extending his hand.

  “Best friends,” said The Gruff, ignoring his hand and running to him, wrapping his small arms around Alex’s body.

 
Alex smiled. He had never been this happy before, but it would only get worse from now. The Gruff held him tight. Alex felt like a young boy in his hands, but he felt like a young boy who was quickly becoming a man.

  The Gruff was so proud of Alex, but he knew that one day he would change, regardless of his promise. And The Gruff would hate him for that. He’d hate him for growing up, for breaking his promise.

  And one day, he would have no choice but to send Alex out to take another child and it would put a bandage on the cancer that ate away at his reason and at the joy in his heart but it would be no permanent cure.

  For now, he didn’t have to close his eyes. He could watch Alex while he played, charging himself on every look that he gave as he fought in his mind over which card to put down next. And he could watch him while he slept, as his eyes trembled and tremored as he ran through the trinkets of his imagination. And maybe, just maybe, if he watched him enough, time would have no courage to steal him away, for if he blinked, Alex, his dear friend, would age another day.

  And every day, the currents of time would drift him further from the moorings of his promise. He would no longer sway in pleasant tide but instead swarm to a tempestuous sea of rage and then all of his joy and good tidings; they would be crushed under the heavy spill of his broken crest, only to emerge placated in a tepid swill of still boredom.

  And the second he stopped looking like a boy, The Gruff would have no choice but to close his eyes and it is then that he would be given to the madness in his mind, the hell from which he could not abscond. And no amount of feigned elation or joyous regard would silence the sound of the young boy weeping inside of his mind.

  And his curse would continue.

  For even in the lightest part of the day, he would be reminded, in the shadow that it drew, of the darkness that was forever preparing its stage. And he would somehow find, even in the polite address of a thousand dead children, no rest from his blessed woe.

  When would The Gruff ever find peace?

  husband, father, son, brother, philosopher, storyteller, recluse

  Also by C.SeanMcGee

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  Heaven is Full of Arseholes

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  Rock Book Volume I: The Boy from the County Hell

  Rock Book Volume II: Dark Side of the Moon

  The Terror{blist}

  The Anarchist

  Happy People Live Here

  The Time Traveler’s Wife

  Ineffable

  STALKER WINDOWS:

  BedroomWindow

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  THE FREE ART COLLECTION©2016