1
I slammed on the wall, if it wasn’t for the wall I would have hit the floor. Learned against it as my legs racked for strength. As a victim of dismay, my scream was as weak as a moan. Surrendering, I raised my hands over my shoulders, heart thumping in my chest.
Pointed accurately with a pistol I assumed I wasn’t in my apartment. I took a quick scan of the faint lit living room area: a red carpet covered by a clutter of laundry and loose notes and couches covered occupied by a bunch of sufficient films and porn magazines to survive a man’s regular day; a dozen of empty cans and a phonebook on the narrow table. Then I made a conjecture that the faint aroma I sniffed came from his cologne. All this lead me to conclude that I have got an intruder.
The lurking intruder paced into the light where I could see him. He was tall and broad, in a black suit and matching sunglasses. I expected a sudden assault when her lowered his arm and advanced to me with a flaring nose.
“You’re Calvin ,right?” He grunted.
My voice trembled, “I…I…yes, I am”
He thrust his free hand into his pocket, nodded and started pacing around my living room. I listened to the muttering noises down the block and then a crescendo of a passing aeroplane roar swallowed everything my ear hovered above. That’s when I started to suspect that something might have dragged me into this situation. Something I have done. Something very impious.
As an agnostic young man who lives according to the tune of his own opinions, two years ago I drew a dating schedule with a goal to date a hundred of women and over (sex them hard). The idea had beckoned me and I just sailed the ship without any further thought. My targets we unexplored petite girls, freaky girls lusting from gusto parties and desperate women who were choked by marriages. It was a fully loaded game that enabled me to date a bundle of women in a period of months.
The hefty intruder walked up to me again. His eyes darted to something beside me on the wall. He studied it. “So, these are the women you play?” He demurely asked.
“Sir, is your wife on that list?” I asked.
“If it was her I would’ve crowned you a halo, already.”
“Your daughter?”
“If it was her I would have tortured you from the moment you walked in.”
“Sir, then—“
He interrupted with a vehement explosion, “Shut up!” He poked me with the gun. “I’m the host her. I’ll kill ya!”
2
In my time the crime rate was high, the city escalated with theft and violence. As a result we were introduced to a new innovative form of homicide. I first read about it on a newspaper article, then heard about it on the radio, later it was on television news. It was called the Kitchen Torture. The most brutal and spiteful murderers who exert their creativity to produce horrible homicides used a kitchen as a torture chamber. A regular kitchen possesses all the tools crucial for the racking procedures. To illustrate, torturers would strip the body, beat, stab, crumble the bones, butcher, peel the skin with boiled water, blind with forks, thrust heated knives into the victim and more gruesome acts.
I remembered everything like the papers intact with scribbles of ink, every thought, story, comments and reports .The memories bombarded me when he commanded me to follow him to the kitchen – the death factory.
Looking pale, I dawdled through the arch separating the living room from the kitchen.
“My tea was getting cold,” he said as he saw me walk in. “Well, that’s not important. What’s really important is why I am here.” He grinned settling in one of the chairs. I quickly scanned the room for anything alluding to a torture.
“Sit down, Flicklin,” he gestured to the chair across the table. He extracted a stained knife from his pocket and stirred the tea with it. “We need to discuss a matter.”
He recognized I was trembling when I grabbed the chair.
I studied the blade, rust with red stains on it. “I know,” I said.
He took a sip. “Here, he tossed the gun to my hands.
I found it absurd and pointless, or else the gun wasn’t loaded at all. Bewildered I merely scrutinized the silver gun.
“You dreamt about a hole last night,” he told me. “Do you know where I might find it?”
Overcome by disbelief, I wondered how he knew. Sharing nightmares wasn’t a habit of mine but I tried to at least think of someone I might have told who might have shared it with someone else. My mind was blank.
“Are you the voice I have been hearing inside of my head?” I whispered. After waking up last night voices pestered me with the same questions.
He placed the knife on the table.
“I’ve been there for you since you kicked in your mother’s womb.” He sniggered. “Isn’t this time for you to do something for me?”
I visualized the dark bottomless hole. Cold currents of air blew from its depths. It droned. Then it sucked the whole heart of the city into its infinite belly like a vacuum cleaner. When I fell in it closed in a blink of an eye and I woke up panting.
“The face of the world has changed,” he wept, “and I’ve realized…I don’t belong here.”
I stared as removed his sunglasses exposing his dull eyes. He had no eye brows or eyelashes, then I began thinking he was an alien.
He wiped the tears that ran down his cheeks. “Where might I find it, Calv?” he demanded.
Suck things, I thought, have remote chances of existence.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know where you might find it”
As if I had uttered a spell he completely vanished into the air.
3
Daylight snapped me out of that dream the moment it struck my face. Astonished, I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. I scanned the room suspiciously replaying the dream in my mind. Then I knelt on the floor for a cleansing prayer.
Fatigued, I shuffled to the kitchen with my pyjamas drooping grimly beneath my butt. When I saw the exact silver gun lying on the kitchen table where I had left it in the dream I froze. Then I heard the door knob rattle as if an intruder was breaking in. Wary, I leaped forward and grabbed the gun for defence.
THE END
Author’s Note
Thanks to a nightmare from a friend I got inspired to write about Calvin a character that his story made me grow as a writer. The story got dark and mysterious on me. After five years of writing it, the city from which it is set haunted me ceaselessly until I went back and visited it. Scarlet City I named it, and after some personal experiences its stories were brought to live and I could not escape them any longer.