My corrupted veins stretch out under my skin like fronds of some hideous weed, tangled and black against my pale, almost white, skin. Sometimes I sit and stare at them, wondering exactly what will become of me. I fancy that I can see the corruption spreading, achingly slowly, along the spidery lines of subcutaneous vessels. But it’s only when I’m not watching that it really spreads. From the fingertips of my right hand to my throat, a network of intertwining black threads reaches up as though to throttle me, but it’s what I can’t see that frightens me. How much of my back is crisscrossed by these thin black scars? How deep does the darkness run inside me?
I don’t know. It hardly matters. What matters is him.
As I write, he sits staring at me from the corner of the room. Another step or two and he’ll be close enough to sit in the chair by the window. I’ll move it tomorrow, just to spite him. Let him sit on the floor if he must sit anywhere. At least he’s stopped pacing; when he first began to torment me he would pace, wandering up and down. He was far enough away then for me to ignore him, but now he’s so close I can practically see him with my eyes closed.
It hasn’t been lost on me that the corruption spreads the closer he gets. A little more each day. I’d say his smile grows broader each time I catch his eye too, but that would be an overstatement. His grin has been nightmarishly wide since this all began, as though the pure pleasure of my impending fate is a delicious joke to which only he knows the punchline.
I’m under no illusions that my fate will be something in the order of ‘unbearably cruel’ at the point he reaches me, given what happened. Given my callous disregard for others. My high-handed dismissal of the suffering of my fellow man. By the time he is able to lay his hands on me I’m sure I’ll have almost completely succumbed to this foul, otherworldly infection. Enough for him to take possession, anyway. I have no doubt that is the final move of this vile game. And perhaps I even deserve it. I’ll let you judge. What happened was…
I worked in an office full of awful people. The very worst detritus of human cattle. Or so I thought of them. I suspect you would think differently, call me cynical or nihilistic. And perhaps I am. But these colleagues of mine, how I hated them.
Irritating, oh-so-sincere and unbearably saccharine co-workers who I always assumed could never be as pleasant as they made out. Liars and phonies surely, the lot of them. Not one of them worth anything to me or to the world.
Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe I’m just realistic. Doesn’t matter now.
I still suspect one of those over-sensitive morons of being the one behind the fire, mainly because it amuses me to think one of them finally snapped, and it’s easier to accept than to think the whole thing was planned by him to entrap me. I was working away, inputting data just like every other day, when the fire alarm began to blare. Horribly loud, stabbing through my ears like some kind of demented lance made of bells. For a moment it was almost so loud and sudden I could barely think.
All around me my colleagues sat, stunned into bovine silence as the insane alarm shrieked its impotent fury at us. We glanced at one another, and I saw the same question mirrored on a hundred pale, frightened faces: Is this a drill?
It was only when I saw the smoke drifting past the window that we realised that, no, it was not a drill. I stood up from my desk, which was on the fifth floor of the building, and went to look out. Below us, there was nothing but a cloud of acrid black smoke billowing up from a lower floor. I couldn’t tell which one, but the thought began to repeat itself in my mind that wherever it was, it was between me and the ground. And the smoke was rising.
The windows were not the kind that open. Far be it for the incompetent fools in management to give us a chance to escape. They were also reinforced, which I found to my horror as I flung a wheeled office chair as hard as I could at the glass. The chair rebounded harmlessly off the window; against that glass I suspected even a bullet would be about as effective as a wet paper towel.
I gave up and turned from the window, realising that the office had descended into chaos since I’d noticed the smoke. The screaming alarm provided a discordant background for the madness, as the last of my colleagues ran and scrabbled and pushed at one another to get to the stairwell in a tide of drab office-style clothes. Realising that I had no other choice, and noticing the steady waft of smoke through the top of the door to the stairs, I moved to join the rabble, but they’d all gone by the time I reached the door, screaming and shouting over the relentless bell as they ran.
I couldn’t help but sneer at the animalistic terror my supposed peers were displaying. Did they not remember those days of school when teachers would bellow at pupils to ‘run not walk’ during fire drills? Did they honestly think that five people rushing a doorway side by side was more efficient than calmly walking through in single file? The smoke was thick and the air hot, but it wasn’t unbearable. Nothing to lose your mind over. Or your life.
I made my way downstairs but by the time I reached the third-floor things had become much, much worse. I was choking and spluttering with every breath, and could barely see my hands before my face. I was staggering, but could no longer hold the rail because it was scorching to the touch.
Even the air was blisteringly hot, and I realised I could see glimpses of orange light below me. The fire had reached me after all. The entrance to the fire escape was below me, but there seemed no way of making it through that black inferno. I turned around, coughing and wheezing as I held a hand against my face, and was about to make my way back up to the fourth floor when I saw a shape in the burning gloom. She was lying on her side, sprawled on the stairs just below where I stood, hacking and coughing like me but clearly in a much worse state. I sensed more than saw her turn her head towards me as I backed up another step, closing my eyes against the fierce heat and acrid fumes.
I think she must have called out for help, but I could hear nothing over the remorseless wailing of the bell. The movement though was unmistakeable, a weakly raised hand outstretched out to me. I cursed my bad luck that in spite of the boiling black smoke and the terrible heat against my eyes, I had to see her there. Now I had a dilemma.
But not much of one. She was one of those whose very lives meant even less than nothing, to whom nothing meant more than she herself. Whoever she was, I hated her, and found myself somehow relieved that she’d made my decision so easy. Let her have her fate. She deserved it.
With a final glance at her I left her to the flames and headed back up the stairs. Up ahead, over the siren, I heard the smashing of glass. My heart leapt, and I threw myself up the stairs, coughing and choking all the way as a wild hope flared in my chest.
It was then that the stairs collapsed beneath me. And I no longer think that was accidental.
My feet plunged through the gaping hole opening beneath me and I screamed in anger and thwarted hope, my knees scraping horribly against the steps, the filthy air punched from my lungs as the ground rose viciously to meet me. My hands scrabbled madly on the smooth steps, trying to find a purchase. By some miracle, or some darker design, I managed to arrest my descent for a moment, but far too much of me was dangling over the precipice and my muscles burned with effort. I knew I didn’t have the upper body strength to haul myself up; I barely had enough to hold on. I couldn’t seem to stop my legs kicking wildly, though in some dim recess of my mind I knew they were dragging me back with every thrashing movement. The thought that I was going to die, to fall screeching into the burning abyss beneath me to perish in fire and darkness, filled me with rage. To end like that, having achieved nothing, after having spent my life in the company of idiots and self-obsessed fools, was more than I could bear.
Just then a figure appeared in the smoke. A figure I have seen constantly ever since, moving closer and closer with every passing day as the black corruption seeps further into my veins. He held his hand out to me, and told me to take it. But I could not. The moment I let go I knew I would fall, and be consumed in the burning hell below.
He leaned close to me, seemingly unaffected by the smoke and fire, and whispered in my ear. I wasn’t surprised that I could hear him. I knew on sight what he was and the creeping ice settling into my stomach reinforced it.
‘What would you give?’ he asked simply, his eyes red with the reflection of flame from below and within. And I knew what he meant. I stared at him hatefully for a second, knowing that the choice had already been made by my black heart.
‘Anything!’ I screamed bitterly. And he knew what I meant. I had called him with my cruelty and disregard for others, I knew that simply by seeing him; there is only one thing that beings drawn by such evils desire.
And so it was that I survived the fire. He pulled me up, showed me to a fire escape I was sure had not existed before, and took his leave of me.
I saw him then shortly afterwards as I sat in the back of the ambulance covered in a foil blanket. He stood at the edge of my sight, in the distance. Waving at me. It was then I felt the first icy touch on my finger, and noticed the small black swelling that has grown so horrendously since.
Yes, I’m a bad person. I always was. But at least I admitted it. Unlike those others.
Unlike you.
I know what you think. That I deserved my fate. That I got in return what I so richly lavished on others. I know you do. I can feel your high-handed scorn. Your hypocritical, sanctimonious judgment. Your disregard for my suffering. Much like mine for that pathetic choking form on the stairs.
Good. Excellent, in fact. Thank you.
Ah yes. Even as I type the corruption has receded slightly. And if I’m not much mistaken, he’s backed off a little. His smile seems a little less certain than before –
He knows what I’m doing, and he doesn’t care. How interesting. His shark-like mouth is widening in a predatory smile as he nods an acknowledgment to me. He’s scented new meat. Yours. How delicious, when you have not even read this yet. But who can fathom the working of demons?
Perhaps he will even direct you here, to read this.
How delightfully cruel.
Watch for the creeping black veins; I suspect you don’t have long.