“The destiny of the broken is to fall apart.”
I still hear his voice echo in my head. Not just in my nightmares. All the time. When I cut myself. When I’m bruised or sprained. I don’t know who he is or what or how he came to be or even if he is a he. I call him the Broken Man, because you have to give it a name. How else can you even begin to make sense of it?
When I was a kid, my friend Todd and I stumbled across an old water tower in the woods, and what’s more, a ladder just tall enough for us to reach the bottom rung. Now what kid hasn’t looked up at a water tower and thought, “I want to climb that?”
Todd and I were just such kids.
Up we climbed. Around the catwalk we wandered. It was rusty and dangerous and we were just the sort of young and stupid not to care how much danger we were in, even without the Broken Man. Just being up so high, walking on such rusty metal was a bigger risk than I’d ever take as an adult, especially on a whim. But when you’re young, you think you’re invincible.
When we got to the far side of it, we found the ladder leading up to the top, which naturally we climbed. The hatch leading inside was open and we peered down in. There was still a little water down there. Red from rust and stagnant, but we thought it was cool. We had dreams of making it our secret hideout. But to make it a secret hideout, you need to be able to get in. The idea was that one of us would lower the other in, and when we were done, one of us would boost the other out.
That was the idea.
Todd lowered me in, safe and sound, but when it was his turn to drop in, he came down hard and fractured his leg. I will never forget the cries of pain that echoed through that small metal room.
We panicked. Of course we did. I tried to find a way out. Tried to call for help. No one came. For hours, we called, but we were alone. Too far, too deep into the woods.
And then, as the sky began to turn its first hints of yellow and purple with the setting sun, we heard a thunking as if someone were climbing up. Excitedly, we called for help again. I wish we hadn’t.
A figure appeared, jangly and awkward and moving not quite right. It’s proportions all a little off. He hovered silhouetted above in the early twilight.
“Please,” I called up. “Help us, mister! My friend, he broke his leg!”
“It is the nature of broken things to fall apart,” he replied as he dropped in. Upon hitting the bottom, his limbs popped off like some sort of crash test dummy. We both screamed to see a man fall apart in front of us like that, screamed until our voices turned raw. And in the splash of murky water, the fingers writhed and the legs kicked and the body slowly pulled itself back together with sickening pops and cracks and jerking motions.
I… said some words my mother wouldn’t approve of, but she wouldn’t have approved of any of this.
The Broken Man ambled his way to Todd. I tried to hold him back, though I couldn’t tell you where the bravery came from. I had never shown nearly so much spine in all my life before or since, but he cast me aside like I were nothing. He had no interest in me. I wasn’t hurt. But Todd…
“Broken things, broken things. Such pretty little broken things…” he said in a slow, gleeful raspy whisper. Almost a song.
When he laid his hand upon Todd, I could see the fearful tears in my friend’s eyes. The struggle to be defiant, the paralysis that gripped him. A moment later, he fell apart. Todd’s arms and legs and head simply fell off of him, like a broken action figure.
I vomited.
The Broken Man picked up Todd’s pieces. Examined them. Left behind the broken leg. Placed the good parts in a sack he had slung over his back, except for the left hand. With inhuman, unnatural ease, he popped off Todd’s left hand, removed his own, rotten and disintegrating, and placed my friend’s new, unbroken hand upon his wrist.
Pop. Click. Snap.
Like putting blocks together.
I pressed myself back against the wall, crying. “You’re not a broken thing,” he reassured me. “It is not yet your destiny to fall apart.”
And then he was gone.
I’m not sure if he climbed out or vanished or what. It was all a daze, my mind reeling, struggling to comprehend what I had just seen. I don’t even know if I stayed conscious. I only know I was found some time later, a gibbering mess. Todd, however, they never found anything more than his leg, neatly severed.
These days, I’m afraid of every bump. Every nick. Every scrape. Terrified. How broken is too broken? How broken do I have to be for him to come for me? So I keep my body in pristine shape. But my mind… That’s the break I worry about most of all.