Isaac

Short story of my favorite creation.

    He hummed a song to himself while walking through dimly lit streets and dark alleyways. The world was wet with fresh rain and smelled lightly of decaying leaves, and the smell of the moldering bones of the graveyard a few blocks away was earthy and fresh to scent, if distant. The moon shone silver and bright against his dark hair and black garb, making the paleness of his skin ever the lighter, but the night itself was sticky and sweltering, a typical summer night for any town in Mississippi. A scurrying to his left momentarily caught his attention, but the meager curiosity faded after just a second. The road was devoid of life except for Isaac, and the fat black rats that infested the garbage cans next to the dirty brick buildings.
    Malevolence followed Isaac like an aura, and for a flickering moment, the miasma of darkness that hung around him in a perverted halo was made visible by the bright sodium yellow streetlamps that dotted the corners.
    He turned left and passed out of the desolate street soundlessly, making his way towards the bright world of Rue Lumíère, a street full of depravity and pleasure, and sweet, succulent life. Sexuality and exotic scents lured him from each beautiful, decadent doorstep. Every building here was old, built in the 18th century in European style, with the curling, decorative ironwork that was so popular throughout the South, and the lamps that lit the streets here were old gas lamps that lent the light a mysterious golden quality. Little strings of colorful paper lamps were draped along the iron lacework along the second story of the buildings, and small lanterns hung from the Romeo spikes. The street was crowded tonight; most of the bars and strip clubs he passed were crowded with people, drunk on liquor and the smell of sex.
    Near the middle of the Rue Lumíère, he paused in front of a thin building of red brickwork, squeezed between two gaudily lit strip clubs. A swinging, paint-faded sign above the entrance proclaimed it as ‘L’Entrailles de L’Enfer’. The Bowels of Hell. He allowed a bemused smile slip over his features, transforming them momentarily to something sweet and almost boyish. How fitting, he thought. A glance in through the window told him exactly what he expected: the bar was nearly empty, aside from one or two new people and a small group of regulars who never really spoke to each other anyways. If you were coming to the Bowels, you weren’t coming to be social. He swung the heavy wooden door open and let himself into the darkly lit bar.
 
The world doesn’t change in a day…
    The calendar said a week had passed. He hadn’t known. He could smell something starting to rot a little, out in his living room or kitchen somewhere Jeremy looked at a stain on the tattered blanket that wound around his skinny legs. It was a deep brown-red, the color of dried blood. He felt oddly detached as he examined it, as if he’d been caught up in some eerie dream. He stared at the calendar again, and wondered where three days had gone. Wondered at the slight smell of decay permeating his shabby apartment. Wondered what had happened when he’d come home from work at the coffee shop. The last thing he remembered was getting in the shower, then a shock of pain had ripped through his skull. He must have taken some vicodin or something, and gone to bed. This had to be a dream. Jeremy stretched his arms over his head, then bent forwards. A dried-up layer of something cracked over his skin, and he looked down in surprise. It was on his chest and arms as well. More blood; perhaps he was in shock, but everything still seemed displaced to him.
    He shrugged away the feeling, and got out of bed. A hot shower would do him good, he figured, and would get all the sweat of sleep off of him at the least. That was, if he wasn’t still asleep. Jeremy pulled a dark red towel down from the corner of his bedroom door as he made his way across the hall to the bathroom.
    Everything’s fine, he told himself, though somewhere in the back of his mind, he had most despairing feeling that it wasn’t.

Hot water steamed up around him, streaming down his body and washing away all the filth of that lost week. Jeremy tried to ignore the red pain flaring in the back of his head, the pain that sent small tendrils of misery to the forefront of his conscious mind. He’d always had these horrible migraines, ever since he was a child. Sometimes he’d even black out for a while because of them, because of the pain, but he refused to submit to them just yet. There was something strange happening, and panic were began to scurry out and gnaw into his thoughts ever so slightly at the edges, but it was enough.
    He’d blacked out before. He’d woken up with phantom bruises and blood before this, as well. And it had happened more than once, though up until now, it had never been for more than a day or so.
    Jeremy found himself choking on the steam, and his hot water world was suddenly suffocating, the walls pressed in on him. He yanked the knobs around to turn off the water and stumbled out of the shower, grabbing his towel up off the toilet seat in the process. He took a deep, trembling breath and sat with his head in his hands, unwilling to look further than the worn terrycloth he was drying himself with. The panic began to recede, though his head still felt like someone had driven a spike through it. He stood up and began drying himself off, and turned slowly to inspect himself in the mirror.
    As the warm mist of steam swirled away from the glass, he could see something, letters that danced and solidified in the heavy air, a finger-traced word staring back from his reflection:

ISAAC

    It hit him like a sledgehammer. His body froze, but his mind was working almost faster than he could handle. Images and memories flashed through his mind, painting a picture of himself that he had never known. Showing himself as Isaac. The pain in his head reached forward and snapped him back to reality, and a wave of nausea hit him, dropping him to the floor. He pulled himself over the lip of the bathtub and vomited into the porcelain basin, then simply laid there for awhile, skin clammy, head reeling, his body too weak to move.
    The putrid smell began to creep back into his sinus, bringing him back to his feet. Jeremy threw his clothes on and scampered to the entrance of the living room. The stink of rot was strongest here, and it made his stomach turn again. He turned away, tears forming in his eyes, and took a deep breath, held his shirt over his nose and mouth, trying his best not to breathe in the odor.
    He peered around the bookshelf to the couch. His mouth worked silently, but no utterance came beyond a small, rasping noise of dismay. He slumped down onto the floor, shock wracked his body and his mind, and he vomited again onto the carpet.
    A boy was sitting upright on the couch, the long slit in his throat stitched closed. His eyes were fogged and glassy with death, and his skin was gray, splotched with yellows and greens, waxen and putrefying.
    A knock on the door made Jeremy snap to attention, all the intensity of his terror and panic caught up and focused in his brain.
    “Sir,” a voice said from the other side. “This is the police. We’d like you to open up the door.”
    He clutched at his head as a ripple of intense pain seared through him; the knocking grew more persistent, heavier.
    “Sir,” the voice said, loud and insistent. “Sir, open the door!”
    And then the world went black for Jeremy.

The two beat cops were greeted by a tall, lean man dressed in all black. Though they didn‘t understand why, the first thing they felt was a low buzz of terror rising from deep within. The one on the left shifted uncomfortably, and gave the man a slight smile.
    “Hello, officers,” the young man greeted them. His voice and manner were steady, cold. “Can I help you?”
    “Uh, yes. Your neighbors called with complaints of a, uh… a bad odor. Can you, er, tell us anything about this?” The officer who spoke looked pale and nervous. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his brow and bile rising a little in the pit of his stomach. He licked his lips, but his mouth was too dry to wet their cracked surface.
    “Ah, yes, that… Come in, please,” said the man in black. He was cool and composed, his eyes danced with something that burned deep within. He stepped back to open the door wider, hiding the long, sharp butcher’s knife behind it as he allowed the cops to step inside.
    Beat cops, he thought, biting back a sneer.
    “Could you tell me your name, sir?” one of the policemen asked, his voice shaking a little. Suddenly, he could smell exactly what the neighbors were complaining about. He took a few steps into the front hall, his partner following, and turned to face the man again.
    “Sir?” he asked. “Your name?”
    The lean man smiled, and somehow the look seemed cunning, feline. He shut the door and locked it, allowing the two officers a good view of the wicked looking knife.
    “Why yes,” he said, still grinning. “My name is Isaac.”

*    *    *

    Outside, two shots echoed in the hall, and then silence. The neighbors listened as the front door opened and shut, and someone flicked a lighter. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke filtered into their apartments through the cracks in the doorway, and they heard solitary footsteps walking down the hall, and into silence.

Reviews

[Jūdan FyreHeart]

The difference between the jekyll / hyde sides of the personality were well done and clear cut. It was atmospheric with enough detail to paint a good image. Some of the sentences seemed to run on a little though.