Foe

a short story

by Astor W. Heinemann

Staring at the wall from about two feet away, the old tiled wall, grout not scrubbed in a long while. Small one and a half inch square tiles, thousands of them, mostly white but sprinkled with many black and navy blue ones. I always stare blankly at them, my vision blurred, and let the patterns make up familiar outlines, my imagination running amuck with wild memories from a past I had not yet lived. 

Urinating was always a waste of time, I felt. A necessary deed cast upon us by our maker with no room for rebuttal. Not the same with cutting our hair and fingernails, which have been engraved into our beings by hundreds of years of social evolution, but  general human biological maintenance, inner grooming, or as I like to call them all, time killers. I was not yet half way done when I felt this painful taser shock on the left side of my head. I turned to see and he was there, staring at me, stupid grin on his face, empty eyes like someone who has just woken up, is high or not one hundred percent at wit. It scared the living shit out of me. I tried to cut off the piss, somehow walk away from there, but as every man knows, once you start you can’t stop. It seemed like hours before I was done, still those disgusting eyes fixed on me. My face felt warm, hotter by the second, burning as if a million BTUs of the sun’s heat were getting closer and closer. I dared not look again for fear of having that hideous expression carved into my memory forever, haunting me for the rest of my existence or even beyond.

When I was done I quickly went to the sink to wash my hands and again he approached me, crowding the sink beside me. I didn’t even want to look up at the mirror, at my own reflection, lest I would suddenly see him, his face, behind me. Scrubbing my hands quick, nervously, I shook off the excess water, got a paper towel and before I could toss it in the trash can, he spoke. A slightly idiotic, mentally challenged way to speak, he had. Deep, too, same as the look on his face, as echoes from endless catacombs. He said something about needing some help. Later, I said, In the afternoon. I’m too busy now and need to keep focused. He said 0k moving his face around in circles like he was saying yes and no at the same time. I got the hell out of there as fast as I could, still nervous. Thinking he could sniff my scent in the empty space I had moved about while escaping, like a demonic hound tracking its prey, I feared to look behind me and just kept going, and going fast.

The mural was not half way done yet. Restoring these old things is a delicate, time consuming job, you have to be meticulous and keep the original work as intact as possible. This is why they hired me, I’m the best at what I do, a perfectionist. I keep my staff on their toes and they do their best possible work, just for fear of my reaction if they don’t. This was a big job, it was going to help solve a lot of financial problems and the only reason why I caved in to the property owners’ request to allow their one and only son, Bubba Kirkland, to chime in and help in whatever way he could. I had never met the fellow, but said yes because of the money. The old eighteenth century mansion had a mural about ten feet by twenty feet in one of the main halls, this was our work area. I made my office one of the nearby smaller rooms where I was able to quietly analyze the high resolution digital pictures of the mural to assess our progress. I kept some scotch and a small mattress there, although I had grown accustomed to seldom sleeping.

I did my best to keep Bubba as far away from our work as possible, but in one of their visits, the old folks told me he complained he wasn’t being allowed to work and that I should give him something to do. He’s not bad at all, once he gets the hang of it. You may find him a useful hand. Of course, I should have cancelled the contract right there. This went against all my work ethics and was sure to turn out a smudge in my otherwise flawless career. If word got out, I would have been thought of as soft, maybe as loosing my edge. But the financial difficulties kept me from making good judgements and I said sure, I’ll find something for him. It was then that I noticed he was standing by the door, just barely peeking in, listening, again with that face, that expression. It drove me mad, it gave me the creeps, nightmares, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, sent chills down my spine. He just stood there, not moving a single muscle, not even blinking, holding on to the left side of the door frame, I could see his dirty hands, dry blackened mud under his fingernails. What was going through his mind? This is why I could never be at ease in his presence. I am, in general, a very good judge of character, like a sixth sense to read people, their intentions, their morals, the greatest poker player that ever lived. But with this person, if it could be called a person, I couldn’t see a thing. It was like staring at a blank piece of paper, absolutely nothing there.

After the old folks were finally gone I just wanted to get working and get any distractions out of the way as quick as possible. So I took the young fellow aside and asked Ezra to come along as well. Ezra, you’re working on the oak tree and the children playing around it, right? He nodded inquiring why I asked. Why don’t you take Bubba here and have him help you. Show him the basics and make sure he stays away from anything that can be easily damaged. He looked at the young man, with suspicion, scanned him from head to toe and gestured with his head for him to come along. I was already regretting the decision, but if anything even remotely apart from catastrophic could be pulled out of this situation, Ezra was the best man to do it, he had been with me for fifteen years and the only person in my team I fully trusted. As always, I went to breathe down the necks of the rest of my staff, pointing out mistakes and generally making them feel worthless.

After a few hours of my own hands on work on the murals I retired to my office to try and relax my nerves with a drink and some music. I thought about the mural. A gigantic english oak tree on one end, several children dressed in colonial era clothing played cheerfully under it’s shade on the left side The center was mostly grass and a beautifully landscaped garden, sun setting away on the horizon, far away a horse carriage came or went through a winding road that led to the main house on the right side of the mural. A servant of some sort bringing refreshments for the children, obviously included to hint summertime bliss, while the adults had their tea on a smaller but more pompous garden directly in front and to the left of the house, which made them closer to the observer in the painting’s perspective. It was obvious that the colors were vivid when it was young, like most of us are vivid and full of life in our youth, and I always thought of my murals as living beings, just deteriorated, abraded, worn down with time, that old enemy of everything, but which most of us covet so fiercely. A cosmic joke of us wanting, needing, begging for more of it even though we know as much as we get of it is as much as we’ll be closer to deterioration, old age and certainly death. It made me feel very empowered indeed, god-like almost, to be able to bring new life to these beings. Bring their birth about once more, giving them more time. I was a fountain of youth to my murals.

I was very fond of this particular one. I had lived in Paris after college, studying the arts in several galleries, working as curators’ helper. I learned from some of the best there were. This particular mural was painted by an artist who had also painted one of the first restorations I was allowed to do on my own. I felt the nostalgia and saw all the beauty in it that I had seen before, when I first fell in love with this line of work. Then, suddenly, as my glass slowly became empty I began to realize what a big mistake it was to allow Bubba to work on this job. I began to panic. What could he have already done to it? Even my trust in Ezra was being questioned. Was Bubba conning him into giving him more access than he should have?

My head was spinning, I grabbed my hair with both my hands and rested my elbows on my knees. I tried to calm myself down, but I could not allow this to go any further. I sprang off my chair, knocking down some things off my desk and ran out to the main hall where the staff was working, all focused on their particular little three feet by two areas of the mural at a time. I moved my head about, whipping, panning, eyes moving around nervously, my hair flowing all over as I did so, getting on my face, making it more difficult to find what I was looking for. Ezra was nowhere to be seen! And Bubba? Where was he? I could only see the backs of the workers and had a terrible time picking out Bubba from everybody else. Running amuck like mad, scared, frustrated, turning around every male working there, but none was him. I finally called out his name, yelled it. There he was, at the other end of the mural. Looking at me with that retarded face of his. His slight mustache, his big ears, it all made him seem mad, evil, insane! Gigantic eyeballs covered half way by his eyelids, big crater-pored nose, smiling with all his teeth out, but with his jaw hanging open, a little bit of spit on one end of his mouth, it all made me feel like I was looking at some kind of devil dog, sent here hell spawn by Beelzebub himself to make my life miserable until it was my time to spiral down into the fiery infernos of the underworld! 

I walked slowly towards him, the way one does when approaching a rabid beast and you don’t want to make any sudden movements for fear it might jump on you and chew away a piece of your neck. What are you doing? I asked, with a calm, condescending voice. He stared at me for what appeared like hours before he started babbling some seemingly random sentences that were somehow supposed to be related to my question, but it was all senseless. Listen, put the brushes down, let Ezra take care of this, let’s go into my office and talk for a while. He just made that head wobbling gesture again. I didn’t want him walking behind me, so I put my hand forward, palm up, in the direction of the room I had taken up as office, and got out of the way so he would go in front of me. Anticipating any possible aggression, I was tense as I walked behind him, fearing a back blow thrown at me at any moment. The walk, which was only a couple of dozen feet, seemed like miles through a sizzling desert road in the middle of the day, a firewalker, him walking like an obscene primate. 

Leaving the door open I walked past him and asked him to sit down in the only chair I had in he room. I remained standing, pacing calmly trying not to look directly into his eyes, while plotting how to get rid of him once and for all, my mind spinning clockwork with no possible way out. He followed my every move with the precision of a modern military device tracking a target. My usual bluntness was deterred by fear, my passive aggressor was weighing on me, psychologically, and this was certainly not 0k. He dared me to do anything with his look and general demeanor. An attitude of and there’s nothing you can do about it filled the room. 

0k, this is how it’s going to be: you are not to touch the mural under any circumstance, you are not allowed to touch any of the tools or materials we brought in, you will not interact with the staff while they’re at work and you will certainly stay out of our way and let us do our job, is that understood? It was as if time had stopped, his face remained frigid as if nothing had been said, no reaction of any kind and I just remained there, frozen, with my left hand on my waist and my right hand index finger pointing up after I had used it like a baton conducting my great speech. After what felt like an eternity he gyrated his head and walked out slowly, pulling away from me and towards the door backwards, no change on his expression not even a hint of discontent or anger at what he had just been told. I didn’t know how to react, but it certainly didn’t make my unease go away, if anything all I could think after he was gone was what have I done?

A few days went by mostly without incident, Bubba was nowhere to be seen, I didn’t bother to ask anyone if they had seen him, and I let my guard down and became reassured that this could possibly be finished up without any major glitches. I was in a much better mood for days! I had done it, I had gotten rid of the hideous face and did not need to worry about it any longer.

Maybe a week later the job was done, we were all very happy and especially I for not having major problems. The staff celebrated and we took pictures but before long I felt I had enough social interaction for the occasion and retired to my room while they all celebrated. I finally felt at peace, had a couple more drinks and laid on my mattress to think. Think of the job, the money and inevitably about Bubba, where was he? Why did he just disappear in such a docile way? Maybe I had misread the poor folk and he was really just a nice guy, perhaps a devilish face cursed him, but he was not the Devil incarnate as I had thought him to be. I think I felt a little bad for him, but I was just mostly glad he was out of our way to finish this mural. I gave the old folks a call to tell them the good news and they were very glad, they said they couldn’t wait to see the result and would be over the next day after noon with my payment. I hung up the phone and felt a sense of closure, I couldn’t wait to go back home and rest for a while.

The next day the old folks arrived, we heard the front door and I went over to give them a warm welcome. We were still asleep when they arrived, there had been much celebration until late hours of the night and I had re-joined the party after my talk with them. Most of the team was still drunk and the ones who were up were hungover. I gestured them to come in and excused myself to go and wash up.

I hear a scream, a wail of anger and discontent, a male scream. I didn’t even bother to dry my face up, couldn’t reach for the towel, panic wouldn’t let me, all kinds of things went through my head as I raced down the stairs, almost gliding through the steps, my feet barely touching every other one. At the bottom of the stair case I make a swift left using the end of the handrail, decorated with some wooden hand carved figure, as a pivoting anchor. My shoes are slipping and sliding on the floor as I strain for traction in order to make it there as fast as humanly possible. There, where the scream is coming from. As I get closer it turns into cursing, flaming, I can almost see and feel the fire this angry dragon is breathing out, burning me, consuming my very soul as I shake in my bones fearing the worst possible scene is to be found.

And it was the worst possible scene I found. There was no scene, no mural. The whole wall was covered by several blood red coats of enamel paint. Thick and dry, the smell of the solvent still filling the room, which at the time I woke up I had faintly noticed but convinced myself it was the smell of alcohol from the night before. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, even look at the old man, the other site was too horrendous to be true, all I could do was stare in disbelief, convince myself I would wake up from this nightmare any second now. The possibility and implications of this being true were too great. Months of work, my reputation, the money, I would loose everything, I would never work again. A sticky paint roller on the floor a few feet away from the mural, some mostly empty cans of paint, hardware store paint, they were not in the house before, we keep these things away from our work area just for fear of a freak accident. But it was obvious this was no accident, this was a premeditated attack on me, personally.

I couldn’t even face the old man, I just stared at the mural, what used to be the mural, now just a gory wall that looked like an elephant had exploded on it, then turned back and walked away while the old man yelled and screamed something about me not working ever again and making sure I was doomed into cleaning urinals for the rest of my life. As I went into my room to pick up my things, the staff stood in a military line up way as much in disbelief as I was. I told them to pack up the tools and leave. I sat alone in my room, door closed, wanting to drink, but not being able to, all the booze was used in celebration last night. Celebration, I felt like I was celebrating my own demise. I was frustrated, defeated. Dead.

I had nothing left but to leave this place. The frightening idea of what I would become weighed heavily on my soul. I walked to the garage with my head down. A big garage, it had been a stable in the old days but the owners had converted it into a gigantic home for their unique classic car collection, none of which were here yet, it was just my little roadster at the other end of the structure. As I approached my car something called my attention and I looked up. I should have kept looking down. It was it, The Devil, Bubba Kirkland. His eyes fixed on my, his stomps firm and slow echoing through the empty building. The hell hounds had been sent to give me my final blow so my blood would drain down into hell. I kept walking, slowly, hoping he would pass by me, but it was useless, I knew he was there for me, I was the only one left in the building. I was dead.

As I get closer he reaches into his pocket. I am scared out of my mind, I have to protect myself from this demon! I quickly look down into my pack and pull out my .45, my hand much faster than my eyes, the gun is up, safety is off, a shot is fired, even before my eyes look up. All I see is a spark, so bright it lights up the whole place, so loud my hearing goes out for a second, then a deep loud ringing takes over my ears. I manage to focus, he lies on the ground. I come closer, slowly, blood streaming like a red creek from under him. He quivers, shakes, barely breathing, more like gushing, gargling. His hand manages to go reach mine as I kneel to inspect him. He hands me something, a piece of paper, all wrinkled and crumpled. I use my hands to flatten it, it’s a check made out to me for the full amount of the work. The gargling sounds something like I’m sorry before it fades away. The trembling stops, the noises stop. It’s all gone now.

Ende.