“The Fractured Mind”

(Tehreem Akram| FA Humanities| Part 1)

A huge coffee stain grazed the mahogany top of his desk. There were pages scattered all over the
surface. He sat glaring at the golden awards he’d won in various competitions. They stared back
at him in mockery. His hand clutched a wrinkled paper. A letter, from his publisher, asking for
the story he owed him. In a swift moment he crumpled the paper and threw it away.

He brought his hands to his hair, digging deep through them, piercing his skin. He rocked back
and forth in his chair which creaked under his weight. A cold breeze passed through the open
window which blew the only lit candle away, giving into darkness. He shivered in the cold of the
night.

He retrieved his hands back in front of him, the tip of his fingers covered in blood. His blood. Or
perhaps it was paint? He couldn’t tell. Suddenly, a loud noise startled him, seemingly coming
from the grandfather clock he kept in his hallway. He flinched in his seat as his arm accidentally
knocked over a pot of black ink on a piece of paper he was previously scribbling upon. He stared
at the black liquid slowly consuming the whiteness of the paper. The black, it reminded him of
the night sky, without its stars. What is night without its stars? That is what he always imagined
death would be like. Black and fading. A color, which held nothing but the end as it consumed
the paper. The color, somehow, comforted him. It felt to him like peace, like resting. Like taking
a warm bath while it rained outside. It reminded him of all the times he ever felt peaceful in his
life. His eyes stayed on the black, but his heart, his heart was beating. Hard and fast. He could
even hear it if he concentrated enough. He closed his eyes and let out a breath.

Thump,
Thump,
Thump,

He opened his eyes again- expecting to see the same black stain. But it was gone. Along with the
coffee stain and the messy desk, replaced by a cleaner, new version of the same desk.

He was clothed in a neat and expensive suit. A sweet melody ran through the hall, the voice
seemingly coming from the radio. The air smelled of sweet pie and pot roast. His wife must be
cooking dinner. Oh, how he loved days like these when the air seemed alive and happy.

He looked down at his hands, clutching an expensive metal pen as it scribbled on paper. His
hand moved swiftly. Writing, writing and writing.
His hand wrote a story of a boy who was happy and surrounded by love. He grew up in a country
house, bigger and wider than the whole world, at least to his eyes. He had a loving mother who
smelled of roses and a father, who smelled of burnt leaves and cigars. He smelled of corpses and
rotten flesh. He was disease, a plague which was consuming him. The house the boy lived in,
which to him seemed white and lively was dead and black. Not peaceful any longer.

“No. No. All wrong.” The man mutters, but his hand doesn’t stop writing.

The boy is dragged by his feet through the hallway, through the house. The dragger is a monster
with a wolf’s head and an owl’s eyes and the voice of a hawk along with the wit of a fox. His
hands- no, not hands, talons grip his legs and rips through his flesh as it drags him along, towards
the door. It opens the door and the boy sees nothing but an abyss. It lifts him up and tosses him
over.

The boy falls in the black abyss. The same peace which the man felt when he stared at the black
stain washes over him. It is only when he looks back at the monster, he sees his grip on his
mother’s beautiful neck, lifting her limp body towards the ground. The monster looks at the boy
and his hideous lips turn into a wide grin, showing his bloody teeth. He isn’t scared of that, no.
He is scared of the fact that the monster is not a monster. He is his father. The boy screams and
falls.

The Man screams and falls down from his chair. Footsteps echo towards him. His wife rushes
towards him. A pair of hands grasps his shoulder. But he wasn’t married. He’d never marry.
Black long fingers with talons rip his skin as they lift him up. He looks up and sees the monster,
staring at him. He lets out something between a cry and a scream.

The man somehow escapes from the monster’s grip and runs. He runs until that is all he knows.
He runs until he hears the gods above him laugh. He runs until his knees bleed and his shoes are
filled with blood. When he stops he falls down on his knees. He cries in happiness, cries that he
is safe. Cries that the monster will not hurt him. He looks up at the stars, but there are no stars.
He tilts his head. He’d never seen the sky without stars before. Something grabs at his neck. No,
no. This wasn’t the sky he was staring at. This was the monster he was running from.

“Please. Please.” The man whispers. Tears ran down his face. He sobs, caving in on himself.
“Please. Please. Mercy.” He begs. The monster tilts its head. One hand lifts from his neck to his
cheek, the knuckle of his huge finger brushed past his cheek. The man closes his eyes and sighs.
He lets out a breath and laughs. “Thank you. Thank you.” He mutters but the words die down on
his tongue as the monster lifts him up by his neck and throws him over the edge.

His limbs freeze as they make contact with water. His body struggled to not drown. He opened
his eyes and saw the sky, the moon shining bright. His gaze lowered and he saw the monster
standing on top of the railing of the bridge. Its feet buckled and straightened as it jumped in the
water. The man closed his eyes and screamed, water filled his lungs as he sank to the bottom of
the river, only to be forgotten.