The Mad Man
A Short Story
Another oldie that I pulled out of my files. Written back in 2010, it’s one of the few stories that had other eyes on it. It even received some feedback that I argued against in my adolescent contrarian manner. It was my attempt at getting into horror fiction, which I had an admiration for until I branched out into my love of the more vague and enduring expression of the human condition. I will admit I was inspired by a two part cartoon made by David Firth (the maker of Salad Fingers) called A Black and White Cartoon about Berries & A Black and White Cartoon about Roof Tiles. Something about the style, tone, and subject matter of those cartoons took hold of me and gave me the inspiration for this short tale of falling into madness. It’s grime and graphic because when you are an angry teen, shock value makes up for the dread of insecurities when facing the individual responsibilities against an indifferent world at large. Enjoy!
The door bell buzzed and the back of his head swelled with a disapproving whine. Dennis opened the door and came to the downward sight of a small girl in a green and brown uniform with buttons patched on it. Dennis itched at the scar on the back of his head and blinked to check if she was still there.
“Hello sir.” The little redhead said in a nervous tone, “would you like to buy some cookies for my troop?” Dennis didn’t answer; he brushed his hand against his breast pocket where his cigarettes rested and his mouth yearned for the taste of tobacco and cloves.
“Please sir. My troop needs more money for our trip to the city, so would you please buy some? Please, please, please.” Her tear-jerking plead was wasted on Dennis but he smacked his lips at the thought of chocolate.
“Uh, well, okay. I’ll buy one of ‘em.” She smiled and handed the broad man a box that she was sure he’d love. After he signed the quota form he handed her ten dollars and her small freckled hand nudged against his. A flash of black and white abstract pattern shot through Dennis’s head and blinked before his eyes and then he saw the girl’s face looking thin to the bone and her skin pale as chalk as she chirped in a screeching voice.
“Scary man! Scary man! You’re a big Scary man!” The back of Dennis’s head cried in disgust and he cradled it with both hands as he screamed deeply through clenched teeth,
“Get off my fucking property!” He opened his eyes. The girl was normal and tears flowed down her ginger face and she ran off leaving her rolling case of cookies. Dennis slammed his door shut and locked it. He tore open the box to consume the peanut butter filled chocolate discs. He tossed the box onto his sofa and went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. The water and cookies went down into his stomach but he still felt sick. He sat on his couch and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. With the long stick of tobacco clenched in his mouth, he lit it.
The back of his head wouldn’t stop itching and aching as his mouth became dry. He finished his cigarette then slumped back on his couch, staring at the blank television screen. He hoped that Mable wouldn’t come home and would instead stay with her cousin for a few days. He was sick of her asking if he was alright and if he would like something new to eat. Dennis didn’t spend thirty years doing carpentry to be treated like a small child by his aging wife.
The thought of Mable and her passive nagging made Dennis kick the coasters off of the coffee table. He fidgeted in his seat until the throbbing in his head stopped him. He went to the bathroom and dry-swallowed three aspirin. He looked at the balding man in the mirror giving a sigh of revulsion, he hated getting old almost as much as he hated his wife henpecking at his brain and almost as much as cats, especially the one that bit him a week ago. He suddenly felt sick and fell to his knees then moved over the toilet and vomited which made his head ache twice as hard.
Dennis got to his feet after his stomach emptied and tried drinking some water yet he couldn’t swallow, it drooled from his wide lips. He wiped his face with a towel, flushed away the sickness and went back to the sitting room. He turned on the television, but it was so bright that his eyes burned at the flashing lights and the volume was far too loud and Dennis’ whole head felt like it was being pried open with a crowbar. He grabbed the ashtray and threw it at the screen and yelled as the glass shattered causing sparks to fly from the black set.
Dennis collapsed onto the couch and pulled out another cigarette and lit it; his mouth was as dry as a desert. He calmed down but his head still throbbed and he could faintly hear music playing in the distance of his mind. It was a string quartet playing in a bright tone that began to annoy Dennis.
“Is there some music playing?” He asked the empty apartment, “Where’s it coming from?” The music continued to play louder and louder,
“Stop it. Stop it, dammit!” Dennis screamed to no one as his head throbbed. He snuffed out his cigarette into his open palm which made him bellow and then he passed out.
His unconscious mind saw cracked walls throb along with the pulse in his brain, children were humming with a taunting merriment as cats and dogs wailed from outside into the darkened room that he stood in. The window had a pupil in it like a cat’s eye that stared at him and Dennis stood there humbled. He then witnessed Mable’s body rising up from the torn carpet and splintered floorboards. Her corpse-like figure crawled on the ground before him and croaked out, “I’ve got the cancer because of your blasted cigarettes, Dennis, you bastard. I hope you die cold and alone; I hope the rats gnaw at your bloated gut and your intestines drop from your ass and the stomach acids rot you from the inside out. I’ll watch it, too, Dennis. I’ll watch you rot, just like an apple.” Dennis felt the blurring pattern overwhelm the room as his head screamed like an out-of-tune violin and then he stomped on Mable’s head, relentlessly.
Dennis awoke to the sound of his front door opening. “They’re coming to get me”, he thought, as he pulled his face out from the foam that he had drooled out, “the doves are coming to peck out my eyes with their squawking and screeching”. Dennis stumbled to the door and grabbed the picture of him and Mable standing at the beach with their daughter Betty. The door opened and Dennis gazed upon a scarecrow with too bags of groceries followed by a witch wearing the same glasses that Betty wore.
“Dennis, what are you doing?” Mable asked as she dropped the groceries. Betty looked over her shoulder to see her father leaning over himself with a picture frame clenched in one hand and his face covered in ashes, vomit and white foam; his plaid dress shirt was stained. He kept babbling, violently but his speech was too incoherent for either of them to understand anything except for “cancer” and “doves”.
“What’s the matter dear? Your Gulliver still aching? Have you been drinking?” Her voice sounded like silverware being scraped against a fine china plate. He screamed and smashed his head into the wall and when the scarecrow stepped forward with an arm raised, Dennis charged. He smashed the corner of the picture frame into the scarecrow’s head; enough times that a black oily water started to burst out and the witch backed up, but Dennis grabbed her by the throat and began to punch in her teeth.
After he realized that his intruders were good and dead he walked back to his couch and lit up another black cigarette. He tried to eat some cookies, but to no avail. He smelled something that smelled like copper. He went back to the bodies and dipped his fingers in the black liquid. He licked fingers and the taste was delightful to him, he began to gather up handfuls of the thick substance to gulp down and then his head started to ache a little less.