The fiend

Descenting into an evening alike this one, you could not just saunter away, but in the delirium of that startling cold, past the twigs fashioned by the frozen breath of winter and the freezing heat which derived from each breath taken, could only put a halt to your trotting legs and give in to the fiery spectacle of that evening where light danced all across the air and the laughter never seem to want to put a stop the the demands of the heart. The human spirit, possessed by the gaiety and gladness of life had taken hold, bashing away the many undesired and despicable aspect of the intellectual mind of the men and each of the inhabitant of the town had taken in their account to be as merry and jolly and their miserable witnessing eyes could let them be.

Yet somewhere inside the wall of the university, hidden from all eyes, lay a horrid scene. Away from the choking crowd celebrating down the streets, through the mildew which grew rapidly onto the cold naked floors and walls of which was hidden from the natural light by the high vaulted ceiling and held captive no hidden soul, a mark in the trajectory of its history was taking place. And only one witness was about to be the singular spectator of such a chilling scene.

The long haphazard hallway which led to the unfathomable cold seminar rooms and lecture halls where the students took futile refuge from harsh winter’s nights, had emptied itself from any human presence and it was, not as oddly for that time of the nocturne darkness, as deadly cold as a graveyard in the midtime of the fleeting night.

The door was knocked thrice, with a frantic echo each time and each hesitantly halted. With great pause in between one another and with a mild uncertainty, when no one ushered a sound, the young man sidled in cautiously. The strong stench of foul alcohol struck him instantly in the nose. Mixed with a distant putrid vinegar scent, the death whiff had taken hold of the whole room plan and had spread its dank wings in each corner of the ivy-covered grey walls whose color were hardly noticeable. Other smells dwell in there such as: an oddly vivid grassy or lemony scent; a cinnamon perfume from who knows where, since the intruder knew the owner of the room hadn't ever had a particular liking to its nauseating aroma; a hint of rotten eggs could be detected and the amplified smell of benzene which was of a bilious attack to the sensor of the man who was on the verge of bolting out at any minute. A strong smell which the boy had not encountered before made his stomach churl even further. The aroma of the wet books left on the table and all along the shelves had a significant smell too, yet it could only be traced if you went as far as almost two paces away and tried really hard to smell them, as otherwise their smell could easily be canceled out by the pungent franglance of the a few sets of garlics set upon the table loosely and the fishy smell nearby which was more concentrated than in any other part of the quarter. A few seconds in and his head had begun to ring at once.

 The dorm was hardly worth setting your eyes upon, something he had already very clearly anticipated. Few flowers standing coyly at the edge of the ledge of the window had begun to wither more than necessary, having left already some of its dry petals spread around the vase. The windows tightly shut made a creaking wreckage of a noise from the hostile wind which had picked up since that afternoon trying to judder it open. He saw that some of the food placed on top of the counter had already grown moldy. The air was stifling. Everything in that compact room held a disfavoring air of rottnest. As he went to fetch the bin which was inhabited by all sorts of webs and dead insects, close the small dusty couch, he noticed that small lumps of mold had invaded most of the wall there for quite some time. Something which even he was informed about. None of it was really as indubitably as one might experience them in this situation, yet the young man couldn't help but wonder how well it would've been if the mold wouldn't have formed. But as much as he wanted the mark gone, none of wishful thinking could really cease that paint over the wall. 

The room had turned into this sad version of itself and the boy was in quandary. Faced with this situation, he began doubting his ability to stay tranquil. He couldn't be surprised at such a villainous state of the room nor could he utter that he had not foreseen such a turn of events. How the malevolent spirit of the room had now arrived at its peak and how the boy wished he was back at his own place, in that clean haven of most virtuous conditions of purity. How he wished instead of having met the principal that damned morning he had done the other way and had passed through the cobblestone path which directed with ease each foot toward the garden of tranquility. Instead he had taken the road of gloom and had crossed paths with the old man of few words (though that day he led no words unspoken nor unsaid) and had such a conversation with him as if they had been colleagues of another life. That cursed old man had even gone so far as to shake his hands with his own withering and bony one and at such length had he held them intact, he had begun to feel a  stiffness as if his illness of decrepitude was emitting through the veins and was climbing into his youthful and passionate heart.  Such a revolting  experience had been in his part that he had almost felt their blood cells link. It had taken all he had got in his soul and spirit not to shamelessly jerk his hand free from the old man's flaky fingers and not to stride away from him. That despicable man had given him a task of such severity, he had stood appalled in front of the old geezer, and it had taken him a few seconds before  he had  finally agreed while yanking the man’s  hand even harder toward his equilibrium. As he had parted ways with him the choices he had made seconds ago started to finally regain consciousness and he had almost taken a toll right there on the front had it not been for some passing students walking down the hall.

That morning the sky had been clear and the chill of the hazy morning had been most vacant. But as the day had progressed that very chill had managed to somehow make itself present in each room, lobby and in each devious crank of the wall. As the archaic university held inside some of the most prominent figures of that time, it also held the same amount of hollow souls you could ever imagine. Where the towers of gleam drew height the detached attitude of the residents striked down. And such he was inhibited not to make a fuss when men walked the path with such little agility that they seemed like corpses, not humans, walking through those school grounds. The mood of that morning weather had been so perfectly balanced to their customs and while the sweetness in the air had rapidly dissipated, the students had taken a rather unpromising approach to this change and had gone to celebrate nevertheless to the town's boulevard. All day had he been haunted by this task that his professor had given him. A task such unfitting for his attitude and revolting of pride. All day and each minute he had spent in agony and had not been able to achieve anything desirable during the moments of his domineering peace of labor. 

Having finished all his classes and when the school ground had left little to no students or staff members, he had slowly made his way along the hall where he had not stepped in a long time. He walked across the familiar routes toward the room of mortal doom. 

His inability to remain calm and this terrorizing attitude toward one simple task such as this came from a place of self benevolence. This sickening natured feeling such interaction summoned in him and which was about to take place had been something which had not inhabited his heart up until a few weeks ago. And it all had been for the fault of his ill natured friend. This piece of work held into his soul something he had not been able to see before. Something dark and sinister. 

For a long time they had been friends. Yet because of an accident things had been fiddly between them.Rather than an accident it had been something of an accidental discovery, a truth which the other party had mistakenly let slip out. The young man was still unsure if the other one had taken knowledge of him discovering this tragic truth but he had not wasted much time in ruling out the possibility of him knowing that he possessed such information. Slowly he had begun to detach himself from friend in fear he would have spotted this change of heart on like a blood sniffing dog he now saw him to be. His hovering heart had taken a calmer attitude since that day but could not shake this dreading feeling in him. One thing was for sure. When he had entered the dark tiny room behind the flamboyant fake shelf in his friend’s room, the darkness of that room had made it difficult for him to distinguish what object that room held inside. Which is why it might have been the light or the gassy smell which had made him think that instead of something else he had seen the jar of severed fingers. The terror had taken such a strong hold of his body that he hadn't been aware of the startling voice of his friends that had called him from outside the room. That boy of short stature and bony body had been standing just outside the room then the young man had descended from the room, barely breathing in horror. Yet he had been able to preserve his panic to the best of his abilities and so he had been fairly sure his friends hadn't seen him emerge from his room which he had walked into unwittingly. 

And as all his effort had been for nothing and as he had let himself steer through the corridor, his bones had felt nothing but raw terror. But despite all that nightmarish confluence, when he had finally ventured into the room, all his visceral compulsion and unbridled emotion had been completely supplanted by the pernicious odour of the room and for a rapid second, at juncture of such severe shift of sentiment, he had found himself to feel somewhat consoled amidst all these frequent influences.  At the sight of the empty room he had been quick , rather impetuous and engulfed by his solitary state, to avert his eyes to the big shelf standing so ominous under the huge crystal chandelier. So forsaken he felt at the moment, perching there on his own heart in his hand and only his shadow as his companion, he felt the rush of his testy blood and before he could govern this chancy agitation, he had begun to march toward this vile woodpile and had almost immediately stopped himself as if his heart had pulsated as if to signal him not to take his pursuit further. So easy it would have been for him to  mold each word to his liking and simply run to his professor and  reassure his heart with all kinds of fabrication, to tell him all he wanted to hear and then leave and have nothing to do with any of these grotesque arrays any longer. But these sequences of thought only made his resolve stronger. Why should he feel weakened by these revolting insufficient attempts of his old friend? They had been friends for the longest periods, damn it!  As if he could be frightened by such abhorrent ways. Cursing under his breath with a shaky voice he began to take steps further. The shelf once again had once again come undone and was unlocked just a bit so there he would fit himself swiftly without as much ordain as he had imagined. His shirt got caught in one of the nails which had come spiraling out of his place but he paid no mind to it as it was but a small slit. And as he went in, immediately he was baffled by the horrendous scene. The previous room had been so full of chemicals and intangible reeks, he had failed to animate the strongest stench of all among the other smells, the one of one singular rotting organism. The room among the rotten smell had the most distinctive sour smell of moldy wood. And the steps he took on those thin planks cracked distinctly and crispy. The room was poorly dimmed and some old lamps were placed at the entry and illuminated the chamber giving it a strange dreadly nuance. The dull light gave the room a contrived and more secluded appearance. Straightaway he noticed all sorts of containers, sealed jars, flasks with what seemed to be liquid on closer inspection, tubes which connect them with one another, all of them placed on top of the main counter. The room resembled the structure of a small laboratory if not to say it was that specifically. All of them were full of placid liquid with bubbles trapped above the liquid and there laid what seemed to be embalmed fingers and toes. He saw them first above everything else and he realized what he had witnessed those week weeks had been just that. These were the horrors closer to him and as he advanced further down to the cabinets arranged above and the rack along it . He saw bone mounted in armature, hung height in the wall as frames all across that corner of the dark chamber. Further from the light in one of the other corners, was a miniature shelf with glass covers and there placed in bigger jars were all sorts of rodents. One of them was even in the previous table as he recalled , because in the moment of fright he had not been able to recognise it before, and as he looked again the rodent was butchered all through his stomach and as he laid wide open, no blood was apparent. His blood drained of his face at the thought of someone having done such macabre work, deriving all his blood away in ways he could not even begin to think. Its insides were almost arid of moisture and all its content was gone except of the heart and the lungs which were still unscathed. And all of this work was done so shoddy and had given barely mediocre efforts and not to mention the unprofessional conditions of such an underground lab was that the result of whatever the doer had wanted to achieve had been completely useless. His muscles were now all soggy  having witnessed such a bone-chilling scene of crime, all he could do was look around the room and take all of fit in. Finally his legs gave out and he fell backward. The ground was solid and hard but where his hand had landed he felt something soundless squishing along with something that felt a little spiky. As his hand at once recoiled in such terror he mumbled a mute scream. The flinch caused by the blood curling sensation he had felt left him frozen in place before tuning to see what had brushed his hands. At his continuous horror, when he spun what he saw was so alarming he almost gave in to fainting. A body in the most unnatural stance laid there unmoving. A corpse. The face of which was of his friend, and now stood eye-open looking at the void in front of him. Who could have done such a thing? All this time he had blamed his friend for the treacherous crime he had witnessed not taking into account it could have been someone else. What if someone had threatened his dear friend and instead of helping had left him in his mercy all alone. He placed his hand in his mouth in horror and let out a low cry of fear and backed up and met the other side of the chamber as it was quite small and once again at the sensation he retracted immediately feeling something wet touch his outer garment. But that had done it. He was to leave this place, get help and never set foot inside there so maybe his friend's soul could rest in peace instead of such a disturbing place. But as he was backing away his leg tangled somewhere and once again he laid on the grounds. What had been that had made him fall was a small wooden plank and letter attached to it. All it read were a few small words but quite disturbing.

“Farewell my friend. 

do not be scared, 

they will help you as they generously did with me.”

 And suddenly his sight went to the body of his friend. Petrified he saw what he had not seen before. One eye socket was empty, one of his arms severed and all his fingers gone. And suddenly a chilling gentle breeze touched his skin, the breath of an ominous entity.