The Maggot in the Apple — Part IV

Chapter 7: Blood

Scratch… scratch… The sound of my body being dragged across the floor fills the whole corridor. It attracts the attention of the nearby cell dwellers. I look to either side. I could see their eyes follow my figure as I crossed by, their faces squeezed through the bars of the cell doors. I had given up resisting some time ago, and am now limp. The pain it caused in my ankle was too much to bear. The man dragging me has a monster grip on my hair. As he drags me along, the skin on my temple stretches, reopening my half-healed scar. Fresh blood spews out and covers the right half of my face. My hair… So long it was, so perfect it was. But after coming here, it only brought me suffering. I was pulled hair-first into every place I went. It was just a bonus toy to play with in their eyes. I had to cut it off, so I spent a whole night by the cell doors, rubbing my hair against the rusted steel bars. But it didn’t matter. If anything, they seemed to want to make me bald. Just before I feel like my hair is going to be ripped off my scalp, his hand lets go of my hair. The back of my head rams the floor, blinding me with pain. After it subsides, I look straight up at the person standing over me. As I felt the blood from my wound dry up and stick to my face and hair, I notice a confused expression on his face. He’s feeling all his pockets and looking all around him frantically. He then bends down and begins to frisk my whole body. It looks like he’s missed something. Frustrated from not being able to find it, he kicks me hard on the side, and I groan loudly. An involuntary tear drips over my cheek, wetting the blood on my face. I lay curled on the floor as he grabs hold of an overhanging lamp and shines the light around as if he were playing with a cat. When he doesn’t seem to find what he’s looking for, he lets go of the lamp, and then grabs my hand a second later. He turns to the direction opposite of which we were headed, and starts dragging me along.

Before I know it, we’re back outside the door to my cell. He had retraced his path, combing every section of the corridor we had traversed. Being back where we started, I figure that he still hasn’t found what he had lost. He unlocks and opens the cell door with a loud clang. The shadows of the bars on the floor got swept away, revealing my cell mate, who is seated by the wall exactly opposite to us. His hair covers his face as he stares at the floor. But my attention is suddenly diverted from him to what he is holding in his hand, and I understand immediately what the man was looking for. It’s a knife. But I know I wasn’t the only one who was surprised by this. After the man chucks me to one corner of the cell, I look up at his face and shiver. The expression he has is worse than that of a starving lion. His jaw is clenched so tight I’m scared that he’d break his teeth. His nostrils are flared wide and his eyes are lit on fire. The anger he is emanating stops my heart for a second. But the boy on the floor gives no reaction what so ever. The man slowly walks towards the boy. The noise of his every footstep seems to get louder and louder along with his escalating anger. Finally he stands stooping over the boy, but there is not a single movement from the boy’s body. After a whole tense minute, the man snarls and raises his hand up into the air.

Then it all happens in a flash. It’s like a movie that has a couple of frames censored. Suddenly the boy is on his feet, leaning on the man. The man’s face is ashen with astonishment. Then I hear something dripping from under them. I shift my gaze slightly downward. Something periodically drops to the floor in the form of huge droplets. Then I gag when I realise what it is. Blood. I look up at the source. A knife is embedded into the guts of the man. And the one holding the knife is… I couldn’t control myself. I scream at the top of my lungs as the man collapses to the floor, a dark puddle oozing from him. When I run out of breath, I look at the murderer.

I remember exactly how he looked on that day by the lake like a photograph. In the picture, he is in his school uniform, blue pants and a white collared shirt. He has a bag around his shoulders, and is holding the ID card I had just given him. It reads Tony Andrew, Dandelion High. His face has a look of cute embarrassment on it. The features of his face, brown eyes, perfect nose and smiling lips are in vivid resolution. But suddenly the photograph starts morphing. The bright background of the gul mohar dissolves into a mossy concrete wall. His uniform and bag change into red-stained tattered clothes. The ID card he’s holding elongates into a knife that’s dripping blood. And his smiling, clear face turns blood covered and stone cold, with a snapped, crooked nose. The expression he has in his face now is a grotesque calm, as if the whole incident didn’t faze him at all. He didn’t even flinch. I lay on the floor, staring at my cell mate and former friend unbelieving. Tony, I wonder in astonishment. What have you become?

Chapter 8: Monster

I am suspended in darkness. There is no floor to stand on, no walls, no ceiling. Just pure black fills the expanse I am in. As I float aimlessly, something makes me look a little off to my left. A light from a non-existent source cuts through the darkness onto the body of a child. Her half-open eyes are lifeless, her limbs are covered in streaks of red and her neck is bent awkwardly. I remember her. I saw her through the bars of my cell door, being dragged by a man across the corridor. She had the same expression as she does right now. As I saw her body flitting across the bars, I realised that she had met her end. Something appears to the right of me. Another phantom light illuminates a boy in the vast void, with a huge gash on his skull. I remember him too. His head was crushed on the edge of a table. His life was sucked out of him instantaneously by the grubby paw that had held his head. I shudder after recollecting those thoughts. The trauma I had experienced witnessing those events is something I never want to go through again. But just as I think of this, the darkness suddenly disappears. Bright white light fills the space and replaces the black, searing my eyes. I involuntarily close my eyes shut, unable to cope with the sudden change. But as I get used to it, I open my eyes, and gasp in horror.

DEATH. Bodies of children lay mutilated and broken all around me, every face having half open eyes, all staring towards me. I feel my heart about to burst and my lungs contracting under pressure. The same trauma I had experienced before slowly possesses my brain. Finally I crumble. I let out a huge roar. The space around me develops cracks like a broken mirror. Along with the bodies, the shards of white fall and vanish through the abyss below revealing the previous darkness. All except for one piece. This shard stands as a rectangle in front of me, it’s white brilliance in contrast to the surrounding black, pulling me towards it like a butterfly to nectar. But as I get closer, the gleam from it dims. I’m standing right in front of it now. It’s a mirror. And in it, I can see my reflection. It’s glowing with a bright light, all except for a small spot on the center of my chest, which is pitch black. The luminous order I possessed was concealing the lightless chaos in a small portion of my chest. But then the white shell cracks, and the little darkness oozes through the vents in my body, causing more cracks. The chaos dissolves all of the order, and the little bit of the light that survived is now trapped within my chest by the darkness, exactly in the same place the darkness was concealed in before. The body of my reflection is now covered in black chaos, and merges with the black expanse behind me. The only thing that’s barely visible is the little light of order in my chest. I can’t bear with the pain anymore. I can’t witness death anymore. I can’t stay in this prison anymore. I’m getting out, and I will do whatever it takes. I’m willing to let go of any little sanity that’s left within me solely in exchange for the strength I need to escape. If it meant that I would be consumed by chaos, and that my personality would be broken forever, so be it. Whatever it takes… With that thought, the little dim light in the mirror vanishes.
I come to my senses on the floor of my cell. Something about me feels different. I am no longer scared. My mind is clear. So is my goal, my goal to escape once and for all. I look at the knife I have clutched in my hand. Whatever it takes… My cell door opens, and a set of boots appear in my sight on the floor two inches in front of me. Whatever it takes… What I have to do now is clear in my head. I spring up on my feet and drive the knife through the man’s guts. He’s on his feet for a second before he falls dead to the floor, a dark puddle oozing from him. I’ve killed someone… I’ve killed someone, but I seem to be extremely calm about it. I don’t even flinch. Then I realise that the dark chaos that had possessed me is absorbing my panic, making it all seem natural. I, Tony Andrew, have changed. Even though I am worried about it, I make no effort to revert the change. To escape, I need that strength. Whatever it takes… As I look at the blood dripping off the knife in my hand, a nagging question keeps popping into my head, What have I become?

This article was written for Festember: The Renaissance by Tejas Harirajan Radhakrishnan