All Shades of Human (Yousef Ayman)

All Shades of Human

Darkness had bathed this corridor for a very long time. Hints of light penetrating cracks through the wall were the only thing allowing a faint view; oddly enough he never knew where the light really came from. He stood there, rethinking whether he should go through this. He had made a promise not to come here gain; time truly does change. Nothing has changed about this place. The corridor seemed unvisited as expected; the coldness caused a stinging chill throughout his body. The deafening silence was timely broken by the random water droplets falling on the cold floor, its sound came from where he was heading; third door to the left. Robert stood there with an uneasy posture, paralyzed by the dreadful surge of memories he has of this place. The memories of something he laid hidden in that room over there. He never planned to once more be a guest to what laid in that chamber, a guest to what he locked up here years ago. "It" was surely still there, he would have known if ithad broken out. He was always reluctant to call him by his real name, or even refer to him as an actual person."No, something has changed about this place" He thought while inhaling the repugnant stench coming from the room. He coughed heavily as he regretted inhaling so acceptingly, the stench seemed so unfamiliar. He never smelled it here before, yet it has been years since he visited the hollow corridor. Now, it was time for him to take the first step towards the room. Each step was an echo through the deaf corridors, accumulating regret along the way.

Meanwhile, a few steps and door away, a silhouette laid centered in the room. "It" was there. Its feet were strapped to the front legs of the wooden chair, and his arms to the armrests. His face was looking down, yet his gaze seemed oblivious of his surrondings. Opposite to what Robert called him, he appeared to be human. The man's cloth hinted on the longevity of his stay in this captivity.A long enough time for him to be the source of the stench Robert smelled earlier.  His clothes were ragged, accompanied by dreadful stains of filth. The sleeves were torn.  The man wore no shoes; the skin of his unwashed feet caressed the floor's cold stones. Something was; nevertheless, peculiar about the man, for regardless of the uncanny state he was in, and the time through which he suffered in it, his face had shown no remorse nor appall. Nothing has shown but a bloodless stare. A stare that is knowing of what's to come, or who is to come.

The man heard several steps followed by their hallowing echoes and began humming a desolate tune, nodding his head from hum to hum "Drop..Drop…Drop.. Step.Step..Drop. What a melody" He said while finally breaking the silence. For a long time he had waited for a change of tune. The water drops sipping through the roof and into the floor cracks have become painfully repetitive. "Step..Step..ahh, Beautiful" He lavished on the extravagant orchestra around him. He didn't just enjoy the eerie melody, but he knew what it signaled; "He is coming" he thought.

Robert's eyes lay fixed upon the corridor as his feet trembled with pauses between each footstep. The ceramic floors stretched away from him with every step he took. His nerves pulsated with an escalating beat, forming yet another instrument to the tied entity in the room. The smell, it's getting stronger. He raised his right hand to block out the stench. His mind shuffled, attempting to pin down the smell. The smell reminded him of that of a carcass he found in a forest during a school road trip. He was filled with a chilling anticipation to what could have arisen the smell of rotten flesh; it is coming from the same direction he is going. His hand did a fair job in blocking the smell, yet the carrying air was soaked with the dreadful stench. Robert stopped a few steps from the first chamber. "What am I doing?" he thought. He rest his left hand on his knee, as he looked down from tedium; the stress of meeting the grinning man was wearying him down. And there it was, like a hammer blow to his head, he remembered his face, that grin that embodies all the terror he holds deep in this chamber.  "that damned face.. I can't do this" He thought as he planned to turn and head back to where he came from.

"As always Robert, no fun at all" That voice, soaked with the utmost resilience of calmness, a symptom of a sick mind.The sound's apparent sympathy was opposite to its intention. Robert's eyelids were stretched wide open, he stayed in the half-bent posture; he couldn't get himself to stand. Drops of sweat slid across his forehead, and unto the floor.

"Here is something that would keep you going. Look to your right" The convincing voice rang in his ears. What appeared to be mere seconds, was an eternity filled with internal panicking and unanswered calls from the man in the third chamber. "Look to your right Robert". Robert struggled not to look, yet the curious temptation was too great to ignore. He stood upright, looking reluctantly to his right. "That wasn't there." He thought. A white light slid from under the wooden door. He could have sworn that this door wasn't there. He could have ignored it and continued to the grinning man, or he could have easily came back from where come from. He would go back to his normal life, and attempt to forget whatever he saw and felt today. The more he stayed, the harder it would be to relinquish those morbid thoughts.

The grinning man started repeating his words; his sinister voice was an omen of what's behind the door. The last whisper was the definite answer for Robert to decide. "I have to do it" He realized. He is not going to stop until I do. He started walking to the room. Images of shadows danced feverishly on the lighted reflection coming from beneath the door. He pushed the door, it seemed very fragile and the push was stronger than needed. The room was empty, and no source of light seemed to come from anywhere. How can the room be dark, he thought. Robert couldn't get to see anything. Several squints could only show him a figure standing beneath the chamber's opposite wall.

"Who is there?" He heard a desperate voice. The voice was of a young boy. He couldn't really see him, nor could the boy see Robert. "Please.." The voice said, the trembling tone echoed through the room. "Help me.." his weak voice barely vibrated to mumble the words. The manner was of utter helplessness. a young creature with only his barely audiblevoice as a weapon of survival. Robert's eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he could glimpse a faint image of the room. The ragged cloth of the child looked tortured by the whims of time. His body was pressed to the wall, his hands frightfully clutching through cracks in the stone. Robert squinted his tired eyes, further noticing a broken window. He tried to see what's out there from where he is standing, but there was nothing. Not nothing as a landscape omitted by darkness, but absolutely nothing existed outside the damp walls and broken glassy pattern on the window. Robert tried approaching the boy, vigilant to whatever might occur. Out here anything can happen. This could be a mere bluff fabricated by the grinning man.

"Hey kid, what are you doing here?" Robert said

"I have always been here" The child said, taking breath after a hefty cough that drenched the opposite wall in blood. "You just never noticed me. I begged, shouted, and pleaded for help. I err to remember the span of time through which my body broke under his wretched self. Unlike you, I couldn't wallow in the commodities of life, for he kept me here, the grinning man."

"Who are you" Robert said.

The child looked back, weakening his clutch on the wall. His tedious eyes shot a direct stare at Robert's face. Robert couldn't see his face, only those pair of eyes. Those bloody hazel eyes islanded by whiteness he never witnessed before. The child was paralyzed for a few seconds before he broke into a horrendous scream. The scream was an enthralling climax to the grinning man's eerie symphony, echoing deep through the corridors. It halted, the scream was the last weapon the boy had; the last cry of a wounded animal expecting his death. The boy's body was hurled on the cold floor. The fall was followed by another cough that bathed the floor with blood.

"It's you, the grinning man.." The boy said with the same bloodcurdling look he had before. Robert stood paralyzed, the boy's words, and that scream. The kind of mind that would agonize a child was beyond Robert's comprehension. What monstrous figure would do such a thing?  He felt the stupidity of the question as soon as he answered it. It is the grinning man. The thought of the grotesqueness of his mind froze Robert's blood in its narrow streams. Robert tried approaching the boy. Midway through his walk, he saw the child's hands reach for a shard of glass. Robert couldn't see his face still, but his eyes glared like a lantern amidst the tyrannical darkness. The same glare protruded from the veil of the dark room; an oblique blood drained look of shock and animalistic fear.

"The boy is learning" Robert heard the same fiendish voice come from the third chamber.

"Survive, boy. Kill the grinning man" The voice said again.

Robert tried to approach him again, for he realized he is the only one who can save that boy now. For some reason, he couldn't get himself to utter some friendly words to assure the injured child. His body's manner was the only method of communicating his intention; he approached as cautiously as possible. Step by step he tried approaching the boy, negating all hellish ideas of what is happening today. Again his nose caught the smell of the decaying meat he smelt earlier; he had almost forgotten about it. The dark shroud started to fade gradually as his eyes adapted even more, he could spot something bracing the boys hand that was holding the glass shard. The watch glittered in the night. It had brought back a memory that didn't belong in this nightmare of a place. It looked like a watch his father gave him twenty one years earlier; a Casio digital watch. He had promised to get him one on his thirteenth birthday, a fine trophy to his watch collection. He had always loved watches; the idea of a simple mechanism that instructs us on the passage of our lives was an idea of pure ingenuity to him. Robert even wanted to manufacture a line of watches for his own.

"It's strange" He thought though. "The watch did look identical to his own" He blocked those thoughts out of his mind. "This is no place for this".

The whiteness surrounding his pupils had given away to the watery flow of fear. Tears started dripping from the glaring lanterns. The boy favored death over falling again into the hands of the grinning man. "Please..no" He said one last time, before his hands bolted to his fragile skin around his chest. Robert ran to the boy with a violent scream, alas his silence was broken, yet too late indeed. He reached for the kid's hands as he took the shard out of his chest, sprouting blood all over Robert's face and torso.

Robert's gaze slowly met the boy's face. His eyes met something that forced his body to jolt backwards in terror. His hands covered his mouth as he was on the verge of breaking in tears. And so he did, as tears dropped along his cheeks, sliding on his hands that blocked his expected screams. He had wished earlier that once he left this place, he'd forget everything about italong all its memories. Now though, nothing, not even the passing of the clock would make him forget what he just saw. There he was leaning back to the corner of the room. His vision was blurred by his pain-soaked tears; he could see the boy's face now, his own face from when he was thirteen. That was him...His young body was gushing blood all over his ragged cloth. The narrow gaps between the ceramic tiles were filled with what once thrived through the young body. An urging feeling boiled through Robert's mind as the last breath came out of the tired body laid down on the floor. The beating furnace warmed his once shivering body. Dismay turned to aim, fear to rage. For the first time since he arrived at this place, he had a clear view; he knew what he has to do now.

Robert stood up; he looked at the child for one last time as he exited the chamber's door. The beat of the footsteps went faster, and faster. The grinning man could hear the rhythm, an ecstasy to his devilish perception. Robert ran faster, with anger as his burning fuel. He came here to seek help, help from a necessary evil. An evil that he knew was better at handling what is out there, what is outside the walls of those corridors. Now though, it all changed. How could he seek the help of a whimsical mind of a smiling psychopath? That smile, that grin.. The grinning man he calls himself, that grin that stands for everything inhumane about that human parasite; the self-proclaimed survivor who fests on children. A cannibal of a different measure he was, a cannibal that devours sanity, be that of his own or others. Robert realized that this was his fault; keeping that mind alive in the place he admires most, captivity. Robert's gallop met its end along the tightly sealed door of chamber three. His once accelerating will fell weary after his hand began heading for the knob. The door's knob seemed rusted as his skin laid hands on it. Robert opened the door slowly as a shouting creak arouse from the scratching wood. Here he was, tied up on the decaying wood chair in the center of the room.

Time seemed to stop as Robert gazed upon him. The stench was strongest at where Robert was standing; it was coming from the center of the room. The man sitting centered in the room raised his arm, waving to his guest that just arrived. The vulgar sight of the arm made Robert instantly uneasy; the man had bitten off his own hand to free himself from the bonding. Robert couldn't see his face still, secretly wishing that he wouldn't. The grinning man's face looked downward, and all Robert could see was his hair-covered scalp. The arm kept waving slowly, splattering blood around.

"I think I cut myself" He said, while slowly raising his gaze.

Robert realized that this is the moment he would see it; the grin that marked a dreary period in his life. His eyes were very large. The left eye was bloody with a scratched cornea, protruding out with a wide-open gaze. Smudges of blood coated his mouth, the blood of nothing but his own hand that he chewed off.The room was utterly dark, yet his blood glowed fiery red. It was happening, all the jaw muscles that his resilient eroded body hadmoved accordingly to the impulses of his capricious mind; The finale of the damned concerto of his ends with the last crescendo; the abdominal visage that is the grin.

"Hello Robert" He said gazing through his eyes, unwavering into the bottom of his soul. Robert stared back at the image of no one but himself, he was the grinning man, or to put it correctly, the grinning man was him. Summoning up the remaining vitality he had left, Robert fixed his posture as if to intimidate his tied up image; the mask he created a long time ago. The mask was a tool for him to survive. He saw it all around him, there was no place for the weak, there was no place for the sane. This mask was the only thing that kept him alive out there,out in the real world. It was of no conscious choice for him to create that mask; the most hideous of his creations, yet the craftsmanship of the years have caused him to unwillingly perfect this abomination. Surprisingly, he fitted perfectly in the real world. Devoid of emotions, getting the job done, mischievously gaining admirers; that was ultimately what the mask was made for, survive. Everything; however, comes with consequences. Robert had kept on the mask for some time, attempting to ignore the symptoms of keeping it on for such long time, his close relationships started to fade away, money and power becoming his only concern, and the unregretful attitude he kept all the time. Robert handled the symptoms, thinking they were suitable sacrifice for his new life. He thought so until one day coming back late from work, a man tried to rob him, a poor old sob with an untrimmed beard and ragged clothes holding nothing but a blunt rusty knife. He didn't seem much of a threat, Robert could have easily ran off, or even gave the guy a couple of dollar, but "He" had something else in mind. A few punches knocked out the old fool, until he tediously stood up running for it. The old man dropped his knife on the way. Robert followed him relentlessly, grabbing the knife. The old man's fragile and time-worn body stood no chance at outrunning Robert's athletic stamina. Robert tried to stop the awful run, attempting to take control over his body, yet it was too late. The mask had taken over completely. What Robert could do was nothing but stop and stare at what his own hands were doing. The old man pegged for his life under the terrible thrashing caused by Robert's unwilling hands, the blunt knife sank deep repeatedly into the old body, each followed by a dreadful scream. Robert felt the bloodless resolve of the mask. Each stab was a rush of ecstasy that cooled off his burning vanity. The old man's last breath was extracted much earlier than the crazed man's rage had ameliorated. The knife didn't halt to the sight of the dead body, yet kept going further and further. Here he was kneeling down on the dead corpse, inhaling tiredly. Robert's fixed eyes looked at the horrid sight; the deformed body was no more to be recognized. The horror he had seen in this incident was too much for him to handle, he kept thinking if next time it was his wife, maybe child, a friend, or even another stranger. He wasn't able to control him at the time, and he is not going to be able to any other time. Robert knew what he had to do. He sought to lock up his most horrific creation in those corridors. The corridors were placed deep inside his mind. He had visited him a few times, even thought about freeing him back. Though each time he had visited him, the man only spoke a few words. The words seemed meaningless, yet there was something peculiar about him, the man always hosted Robert with a wide open grin. From then on, the name stood imprinted in Robert's mind, the grinning man.

Standing here again in that cold cell, he regretted locking him instead of ending his dreadful existence. He had come here seeking his help, yet this trip of seeking aim is now a crusade against the demon that lurks through his mind. "You always sickened me with that grin of yours. To think that I needed you, to think that I even thought about freeing you" Robert uttered those words with rage filling up through his mind, the grinning man looked at him with his crimson eyes, admiring the change he had created. Before today, Robert would have never had the guts to speak such words, nor plan someone's demise. His eyes too, the sudden attentiveness of eyes filled with rage with an intention to kill was all too flattering for the grinning man. "Grin? I am just glad you are here Robert, is that your way of repaying my kindness?"

"Shut up, enough of your games, it is time for you to go" Robert's hand availed from behind his back showing a shard of glass. "What did you to that child?" The words came out boiled with rage. A sarcastic laugh burst out from the grinning man "You silly sod, how can I do anything to that boy, while I am tied here by none other but yourself. And I thought you were smart Robert" The grinning man's words were followed by a heavy fist that crackled his jaw bones. Robert hailed on him with a series of relentless beating with every punch. Robert punched and punched, exclaiming "Why?" with every landing of his fist. The grinning man started giggling, unable to talk because of his jaw's disposition. Robert laid his final punch as he stood there with bloody knuckles. The beaten up man sat there with a face gushing blood, no longer grinning. "That last one really did fix my jaw Robert" The man had found tremendous trouble talking, pausing midway through each word. "Now, to answer your question. You should know better than me…. it was you who created me after all. You know what I never liked about you Robert, you always blamed me, yet come to think of it, I wouldn't have done what I have done, if you hadn't made me. Relentless, mischievous, bloodless. That is what your life truly desired, what your mind truly wished. Well…. Here I am"

Robert fell to his knees in front of the blood dripping wooden chair, horrified at what he just heard. The tied up man was right. It was him who created this. It was him who killed the man at the alley, it was him who killed the young boy, indirectly it might seem, but it was all an all him. He looked up to see him again, looking at him while enjoying the suffering he seemed to be going through. His jaw was broken, along with several teeth. Smudges of blood covered the floor from where he spat. The grinning man noticed the dismay Robert was going through. He despised this nature of Robert. The glaring eyes filled with purpose and intent to do it were gone. "No Robert" The grinning man screamed as he hauled his bitten freed hand with all the might he had towards Robert's face, knocking him down.

Robert woke up; his screams filled the room as he looked down to see himself tied up to the same wooden chair, "What did you do to…" He stopped midway through the sentence as he looked to the floor to where the grinning man was laying; he couldn't stand as one of his feet was chopped off. "You see I could only slide one out, yet I had to cut off the other" The grinning man said. He had lost a lot of blood, and Robert's punches had gotten the last bit of power in him.  "You see Robert, that is the difference between me and you. I did what I could do to survive. That is what people do out there don't they? survive" The grinning man said as he laid his face to the blood smudged floor of the chamber; his eyes fixated on Robert as the life faded away from his blood smeared body.

He couldn't remember how much time did the lifeless face of the grinning man stood there staring at him, before finally summoning up the courage to do it. It probably took months, yet they felt like eternity. He finally walked out of there, leaving behind all the trouble, and the hell that he went through. His left hand was bitten off, leaving a trail of blood through the corridor. He looked back to glance it for one last time, the multitude of doors that possessed all of his creations; he won't be needing them anymore. The place didn't seem to him as eerie nor mischievous as it did before, yet really did feel like home. He had to get back to his life though. He had a lot to do. He has changed a lot since he had gotten here. He has become stronger, more resilient, capable of survival, yet one thing that really seemed different is that horrid grin he had on.