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“The man looked, I guess, normal at first sight? I’m not quite sure how to describe it really, but there was just a random roundabout way that I felt when I first saw him. Like—like, you know those uh, Lovecraftian stuff? Cthulhu and well, any of those weird monsters that are ‘extraterrestrial’ and yeah?”
“You mean to say that he didn’t feel right, Miss White?”
“That! Yeah! That’s the word! ‘Right’… I suppose that I should describe what exactly it was that made me feel that way now?”
“That would be preferable. And take your time please, there’s no time limit.”
“Truly? I don’t suppose that ancient thing you’re using to record isn’t about to die soon?”
“...I can assure you that it’ll keep on functioning.”
“Hmm, fine. If you say so. (A pause) Well, I was just taking a random stroll one day when the weather was quite fine. The sun was hanging up in the sky, and it wasn’t hot enough to scorch anyone. In fact, it was oddly warm like you’re cuddling under your covers on a winter morning with the radiator turned on. You understand that feeling right? ...It’s almost as warm as this place, and about as creepy as well.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing! Or well, actually, is it odd of me to say that I have this prickly sensation being here? It’s pretty much the same as how I felt back then. It feels like I’m being watched or something, as though a lot of people are scrutinising me, trying to peer into my insides in some fucked up way, trying to understand me. I don’t really know—Oh, are you alright? You look quite pale.”
“I’ll be fine. Do try to remember the task at hand, miss.”
“Right—Of course, I’ll try not to get sidetracked too much. Though really, are you okay?”
“As I’ve previously answered : I’ll be fine.”
“In any case, it was a comforting day when I decided to take a stroll. Along the way, I greeted my neighbour—Paragon was shearing his garden shrubs and other decoratives, I believe I spotted one that looked like a dinosaur. I’d have come closer to it had it not been for the imposing blades that he was holding. It was his pride and joy, something his late wife bought for him on one of their early dates, “to cut distractions away” was carved on the steel. I’m pretty sure that those gardening shears of his had been more than decades old. It still looks brand new, shiny and not a single rust in sight. I’m not even sure if Margaret would’ve been happy seeing him so hung up and so clinging towards gardening each week.
Paragon greeted me back as always, telling me to be careful of being mugged in the park. I told him that there’s nothing to be afraid of while being inside a crowd or any public place, and even if someone decided to rob me, what exactly were they going to steal when I had nothing in my possession at that time being?
He grunted in response, and I left him back to his work, not at all surprised when I heard the sound of something sharp cutting the air. It’s a really distinct sound. So much so that I’m fond of it for some unknown reason.
Now, as I went further and the sound slowly got muffled by the wind, I bumped into someone. He was a young man—looked about early twenties though I may be wrong. He had hollow cheeks where you can see the area where the meat meets his cheekbones and a rather sizable forehead. There was some sort of weird sickly pallor in him. It’s as though the man had never seen the sun before throughout his entire life and never got the vitamins that he looks so haggard, almost like a terminally ill patient, except worse.
His other features—well, I believe that he has heterochromatic eyes, one brown the other greenish blue. Admittedly, his more definitive pupil is eye-catching. It’s not a colour I can clearly describe, a mix of the sea and aquamarine with a taste of the galaxies. That probably doesn’t make much of a sense, but it was the feeling I felt when I saw it. An indescribable beauty, I suppose.
Flaming red hair is sort of the way I’d say his hair would be if he actually washed it. Oh right, I never said it before, but he looked like a hobo. The sort you see if you go downtown. Shabby clothes, dirt smearing their face and gruff facial hair from how long they spend not bathing. Of course, the man wasn’t the exact exemplar of them all, but he was a close call with all the holes in his clothes. It’s too many for it to be accidental and a ‘fashion statement.’
The bump, given by the fact that it left me falling down to the ground while feeling as though I ran into a wall of bricks, made for a memorable scene in my head. I groaned in response as I laid on the pavement, good thing it was a sunny day and there was no… stuff on the ground where I fell or… I’m sure you know what I’m referring to. Anyhow, the man just looked at me in response to me being there. He didn’t look sorry at all. Hell, I think that he wasn’t even aware of what he was seeing in front of him.
If it weren’t for the conversation proximated then I wouldn’t be guilty to think of him as an escapee from the loony bin. He just looks—Um, you look mildly uncomfortable, is it because I said ‘loony bin’?”
“No—no, I’ll reserve my opinions. Just, please continue, Miss White.”
“I feel like you’re trying to get rid of me, but then again, I can’t say I won’t be doing the same if I were in your shoes.”
“That’s not. It’s not. I. (Exhales. Sounds of someone breathing softly) Do continue, Miss White.”
“Right, where was I? Loony bin was it? ‘Kay. To put it bluntly, the man looks far off, as though he was high in his own world, can’t say I’m even remotely curious to know what the hell is in there, just, he had this sort of haunted look on him. Like he’s seen lots of things, I’d say it’s like he’s a veteran of war, but the last time war broke was more than fifty years ago, and not to be offensive towards certain people, but I don’t really think that even with a baby face anyone would look so young nearing the middle of their lifespan.
At that time, (Chuckles) it feels so foolish now that I recall it, I shouted at him. Like a madman—or woman. Told him to be a gentleman and help me up since he was the reason I was laying down there anyway. That, and I sorta feel nauseous back then, almost like I had a mouthful of rotten or expired food from the trash. I’m not even sure how it came to be, I just feel like I got hit by a stench of something bad.
In response to my screaming, he answered with, well, I suppose I know now how it feels to be an utter idiot. But really, it never crossed my mind that he was a foreigner. He just looks like he fitted right in the middle of a crowd, that nobody would ever bat an eye at him except to stare at his rags, or maybe his eye. I’m not sure to be honest. He feels like a ghost, in that, he’s there to fit in space, but as you try to think back on the scene, you can’t really remember much about him. Yeah, I’m even surprised that I managed to recall his eyes and his hair.
The language he used, it sounded like German—all harsh and consonants, though it managed to sound soft in a giddy way. Actually, I’m not even sure if it’s German. I know some basic words, Ich, ja, nein, danke, all those basic words and phrases to get through a single business trip to the country. There was none in all that he mumbled. Now that I think again, it no longer feels like German. I want to say it’s just some made up language that he uses in order to make me feel guilty, but there was no repetition in the syllables he used. And well, as I stared mouth agape, finally he seemed to have caught himself.
He blinked a few times, I could swear that his eyelids were shutting at individual times, one too out of rhyme with the other in just a few milliseconds that it was really jarring, then he said sorry. In English.
I couldn’t hide my perplexity at that. One moment he was speaking gibberish then next he talked to me in English. Perfect English might I add.
He said, ‘Forgive me for I had not seen you in my way.’ or something like that. Sorry, I can’t quite remember the words. It just sounded smart. (Laughs) After we resolved the accident, and really he sounded so guilty that I wouldn’t even dare to refuse his apology, my curiosity got the better end of me and I asked him what language he had used then.
Then, he just looked at me. Like I was the one who said something weird. Which, it hadn’t even been more than five minutes since then. I had a suspicion that he was a mental patient who went loose, with his ailment being the multiple identities disorder thing?”
“Dissociative Identity Disorder?”
“Uh yeah. He just looks, halfway around. And it got awkward. I didn't know what to say next so I just stared. (Nervous chuckle) I stared for half a minute at his arm, and it was then that I noticed a particularity. It’s almost indistinct, even insignificant. So small and so impossible to find unless you were really looking for it. Like uh, well, track mark or something I’m not suggesting that he was using drugs, he didn’t look like he even had the money to be able to afford even the most watered down version you know? It was just… those faint marks, like the blood on the vessels coagulated in the middle of flowing around. Or maybe they had a clash.
After uh, noticing that, I started to find more on his body. On his flesh. It was pretty much everywhere. Those faint, inconspicuous marks that makes me feel like I’m seeing a puzzle. I’m not really sure why, but I feel like the man in front of me had his body rearranged many times until he’s what I saw now. This sounds really ridiculous, but I think that he replaces his own body part. I know, it sounds insane and I don’t even know where this assumption came from, but it’s just what I got from it. Though, if I may, I would say that he’s not doing it under the desire of becoming a perfect person, it just feels to me like it’s what he needs to do in order to keep on living.
Now, I’m aware that you wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t either. I wish to say that I immediately ran away from him the moment I found all those suspicious marks, but I didn’t. I stood there, frozen as a statue while I waited for him to answer my question. He didn’t. He told me that he had something to do now and went away, scratching his neck with his index finger. The left one, I believe. I’m not even sure why I vividly remember his hand. Or, it was… the black-ish hue of that one finger that was somehow detrimental to me.
He left abruptly. So abrupt that I didn’t manage to catch my own thoughts before trying to rush after him. This, I don’t even understand what my previous self was doing. I just, ran after him, went back the direction I had walked through, yet I found no sign of him.
I looked around, hoping to find an inkling of those raggy clothes, but I got none. My best bet was to ask the passersby, and almost every single one of them didn’t even notice him. As I’ve said before, he was like a ghost. Phasing through the crowd without anyone noticing him.
For some reason, I had my mind haunted with him. This odd young man who had a haunted look in his eyes with marks that makes me feel like I’m seeing a puzzle kept reappearing in my mind. It’s not even in a romantic sense. I’m sure if you were one of my mates you would say that he struck my heart. And to a certain degree he did, just not in a good way.
Now uh, remember Paragon, the one who I mentioned earlier? Well, not too long after I gave up on looking for the man, I ran into him. And… it’s the index finger. I think I have such a clear memory of the man scratching his neck because, Paragon, my good friend, his uh—he got his index finger while trimming one of the hedges. It’s not probable, he’s had years of experience with those scissors of his that such an accident shouldn’t occur.
But it did. And from the small glimpse I saw of what’s left, I believe it was a clean cut. Too clean in fact. From some morbid fascination with the run-in with the young man, I asked Paragon where his finger was. He told me it’s in the garden. We split up, him to go to the hospital to get it checked in, and I, well, I went to his garden.
I’d like to think that I was drugged. That I got infected by some mad disease that made me so inexplicably thirsty for knowledge. Now, as I got in his field, I could see the bloodstain on the blades. It wasn’t thick, just a small circlet in a corner. But, no matter how much I searched for it, I couldn’t find his finger.
I’m not sure what that means. I’m not even sure if this was just some fever dream I was having that day if it weren’t for Paragon to still be nursing a bandage on his left hand. And look, I’m not even sure why I went here in the first place. I didn’t even tell anyone this, and I don’t know what made me think that some random poster on the side of a signboard would help in uncovering this experience of mine, much less why I even went through with my plans and got here. I’m sure you’ll just put this event in a random place and let it gather dust until someone new comes here and opens it again only to repeat it. And I’m not offended, I don’t really know if I—Um, are you sure you’re fine? You look really sick.”
“(groans) Don’t worry Miss White, we will do our best in investigating your puzzleman. We’ll notify you if there is an update to it.”
“Uh? Are you sure you’re alright? Maybe I should call an ambulance.”
“No. We’re done here Miss White. You’re excused.”
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