The Crooked Man

In practice with routine, I lay still for some time in bed staring at the grey ceiling resting above me. Consistent as the demands of my hunger and thirst, my ceiling never changed. I often felt like I would never escape it, like I would look up each morning and my ceiling would be there, staring back at me. As it went these days, each time my eyes slipped open, I was greeted by the same cold light landing harshly in that ever-constant space above my head. In every sense, I felt like the ceiling trapped me, held me hostage in an uncomfortable box. I was caged somewhere I did not want to be. It was such an ugly ceiling too. My room was ugly. The faded mattress canvased much of the floor and in what little space remained sat a small black plastic chair and matching desk that jutted sharply into my empty closet. Apart from one small window, the cracking walls were bare. No photos or posters or letters decorated the space. Dark and lonely, my cage shaped the start to each of my days. Following standard procedure, I do my best to ignore my crude surroundings and the dull, constant ache that bother me each day, and manage to slip out of bed, allowing myself to quietly ebb back into the real world. The real world that somehow, I exist in. The real world that held the real people I brushed shoulders with each day. The real world that carried on each day, just like I carried on each day, a piece of the real world. Today was Tuesday, which meant very little to me beyond yesterday was Monday and tomorrow was Wednesday. Still, I made myself a cup of coffee and stomached a piece of toast and left my small apartment buried deep in the mess of the gothic downtown I had moved to so many years ago. Work would not need me for another hour so I began to walk. The city I lived in was large. The buildings populated by the masses of faceless men and women sat in a dark shadow, encased in industry. The edges of town held factories and smokestacks that towered over the lives of all of us. Rarely was one afforded a glimpse of something natural in this place and what little beauty did exist was often only found somewhere in the ugly. Perhaps I would find some today, a patch of flowers growing through the cracks of an abandoned shops broken floorboards, or maybe a child would smile at me despite being sat on the street next to her family, begging for food. Humanity and its rotten core had long ago shifted this space into something soulless, a past vision of the future. Presented as a utopia, our city had lasted all of the revolution, now finding itself full of all walks of life. A home for the wealthy and the poor, the healthy and the sick, the moral and the immoral, though I often felt like I only came to know the latter of each category. As I walked in form with the traffic of the others around me I thought of how I had always hated the morning, the constant of it, the things I could not change. The monotony granting others some sense of peace seemed to suffocate me and yet there was not a thing for me to do to escape it. The fear of losing touch with reality in the eye of the public kept me in check, from stepping out of line, from making any real change. And so, I continued on in the hours filled with light like everyone else, moving with them, breathing their air and tasting their food, all while feeling further from them and more disconnected than they could imagine.

“Dr. Sidle!” A voice from the crowd shouted. Startled, I turned my head and scanned the crowd, searching for the source of my calling. The morning rush of our busy city had fallen under the shroud of gloomy spring weather over the past week and to my dismay had not let up yet. Resuming my search, I examined all the faces passing me by, searching for the eyes that would match my own. I scanned each blank, despondent canvas staring ahead until finally, my gaze met his. Walking towards me with a familiar hitch in his step, Tielo Teufel, a past patient of mine offered me a smile.

“Tielo!”

“How are you doctor?” With a grimace, I responded.

“I am well Tielo”, and subsequently under my breath muttered, “I am breathing, still Breathing.” Tielo had suffered an accident the year prior in which he had been crossing a busy street late at night when a driver, heavily intoxicated, had sped through a stale red light and hit the right side of his frame, shattering his hip and leaving his leg in ruins from the femur down. The injury brought Tielo into my emergency room that night, however it was something entirely different that proved the source of our ongoing relationship. As our time together progressed, I learned of his stash of razorblades and how he used them, delicately, to cut himself each night before he went to sleep, often over the same damaged spots, weakening the fat and muscle of his lean build.

“You look well my friend”, Tielo extended his hand and I met it, shaking it with the familiarity of a bond one forms with the unwanted stich in his side. “Has the news reached you this morning?”

“No,” I responded.

“More people were found last night.”

“Where?”

“On park benches and in alleyways, wandering about downtown, all glazed over with that same look as the others.”

“Christ,” I managed, thinking of the poor souls who now occupied those bodies but did not really exist, simply rotted away in a corpse that they could not control. The violent attacks that had occurred in various areas throughout the city over the past few weeks had shown one pattern. Each victim was left completely brain dead, through the implementation of some drug that had not yet been released to the public. Authorities suspected that whoever was carrying out these attacks was someone who possessed a high level of expertise in medical or scientific fields, as whoever was committing these acts had the ability to leave their victims awake and at a stable level while also rendering their general motor functions all but obsolete.

“Do they have any idea who they’re looking for?” I asked, frowning. “Any clues?”

“None that have been made public, no. Though I had heard from a friend who works at the Haze that they had served one of the victims shortly before they were found in the alley behind the club. I wonder if—”

Before Tielo could finish his thoughts, my mind wandered off to the club he spoke of as I had spent countless nights in its dark corners, drinking till my hands went numb. Cutting his dialogue short I interjected.

“I really hope they find him. I don’t know how many more of these poor souls I can add to my patient register.” Looking down as I spoke, I realized the time had edged closer to when my shift began. “I have to run Tielo! I will see you soon, find a way to smile today my friend.” Without waiting for a response I turned and rejoined the movement of the crowd. As Tielo had predicted, the day brought many new victims to my office, with loved ones begging for treatment, for help, for some kind of care that would help their son or daughter, brother or sister, their partner, whoever it may be, back into the light of consciousness. Each time I had to offer sympathies with little else to soothe their sorrow. I thought of how I had no way of fixing these zombie-like shells staring through me as I spoke to them across the cold linoleum floor of my office, until finally the door to my office had closed behind my last patient of the day. Breathing slowly, I gathered my belongings and swept my space clean, pondering the reality I found myself living in. As I made my way towards the door, something stopped me at the mirror hanging in the dimly lit hallway. Each of my colleagues had left so I found myself completely alone, staring at myself, suspended between reality and a reflected version of it. In this moment I felt crooked, as if one of my legs had lost it’s will to support me. I thought that maybe I was just tired, fatigued from the long taxing day. However, upon seeing a man standing straight and tall staring back at me, I realized the feeling had nothing to do with my physical state.

“Sanity is a meal you swallow each day. Do not forget this. Do not stray too far from it. Don’t forget to chew.” I commanded aloud. The face in the mirror looked back, motionless, though it had appeared to receive the words and I felt my head clear and my mental state level slightly. Still, something gnawed at the back of my mind. Focusing on the feeling I turned towards the elevator, however I found myself moving into a state of complete darkness. Fear forced the blood to rush to my ears and I called out for help, my hands trembling. My heart dropped suddenly as I heard nothing, not even my own voice. Panicking, I reached to touch my own face only to feel something unnatural and cold running past my fingertips. Unable to find my own mouth, my mind began to reassure itself. I was having an episode of some kind. All I had to do was shut my eyes and I would wake. After a failed attempt to shake myself free, I thought perhaps heading back to my office for a moment would grant some me some agency over my mind once more. However, as I turned my body the opposite direction to seek some kind of answer, I found myself outside of my office, deep in the streets of downtown, the chill of the winter air burning my raw face. Forcing my eyes into focus, I pulled myself into the scene I had somehow become a part of. The dark walls cast shadows from the cold moon above and I realized my feet had led me to the alleys of the Haze. Strangely, I could not remember the walk here or even what in me had brought me to this place. I thought of the man I saw in the mirror, back at my office and faintly remembered a smile on his face.

“On my face.” I corrected myself aloud, shook by the events that had just transpired. I pushed deeper, retrieving the details of the smile, its lips a deep red, slashing across the pale skin around it, its teeth on display in a deliberate manner. The smile was eerie, stretching unnaturally wide, ringing through my fear-stricken mind. Seeking something tangible to grasp onto in the present, I gazed up and stared at the moon. To my horror, it began to fade and I was left with a pair of eyes, lifeless and dark, staring back at me. Sharply, I clamped my own eyes shut in fear, seeking solace from the moment I existed in. In doing so I found my eyes unable to open again. In a state of panic, I tried to urge my body forward however I stayed put, my legs failing me. In doing so I realized the fog I had felt short moments ago, the fog that had brought me here, was returning. As I fell out of cognizance, the screech of a metal doorframe entered my ears. The flick of a lighter and the quiet drag of a drunken cigarette rung in my ears as the blurry image of a shadowy figure moving into my now shared obscure alleyway burned itself into my mind as the last thing I could remember. The next morning, my eyes peeled open with force, only to be met by the same ceiling as the morning before. I shut them tight and worked to fight the fog of the day prior, remembering my efforts, however futile, to help the patients of that psychopath that was still on the loose. Unable to recollect the previous evening I shrugged internally, pointing to fatigue for an explanation, and instead began to think of the day ahead. I planned to see Tielo, and perhaps find time to sit and enjoy my lunch, rather than clock the day full of work. As I pushed the sheets aside with my crooked hands, stained dark red with blood, I got up as I always did, slowly and purposefully, hoping today might be different.