A Murky Evocation

We all know what’s it like to feel after loving and losing someone. A concealed pain, buried deep inside the mind trying to emerge out, but only suppressed more because it elicits memories nobody wants to recall. But the worst of pain is felt when you lose yourself, having loved more than everything once. That’s how it was for Arnout. Walking down the sordid lane of Coober Alley, hiding his face with a lacerated and attenuated scarf which was hardly able to cover his face and his mushy breathing, wiping off the sweat with his rough and rugged palm, itching the nape and anxiously twitching and moving his fingers, he looked around nervously. Was the host still following ? Did he lose him? Turning around to confirm would only be an ignorant idea. Surpassing the hotdog stall, his stomach growled. Stealing a wallet filled with dollars and visiting cards was not unusual for Arnout. He was perfect in his job and this time too, had evidently lost his host way behind. His pace quickens, he frantically looks around for a place to eat. As he walks, he notices the host coming towards him. How had he been able to find him? There was evidently no point in asking questions, Arnout took a sharp turn towards his left into the adjacent shop immediately, puffing and drawing large breaths. He wouldn’t want to go behind bars again now, would he? A quick check. He had lost his host yet again. Walking towards the counter, he was caught by a faint scent. No! This couldn’t be it. Was it the same smell he cherished over a million years ago. Arnout turned around, only to his absolute disbelief, he noticed a customer eating Pasteis de Nata. It was the same dessert he had loved at one point, back in his golden days. It was the same smell he had endeavored to abolish from his mind and the same smell that would take him back to the obliterated blissful period of happiness and joy he wanted to forget. 

 The sunflowers in the aisle looked pretty. Were they facing the sun? He couldn’t remember. The grass was greener on this part of the neighborhood, atleast that’s what his faint memory said. Arnout was taken back to when he was only 7, a naive age,full of life and contentment, an innocent age full of questions about why the sun disappears at night and why the stars wouldn’t come down to kiss him goodnight. As he strayed across Coober Alley with his parents, he inquisitively asked them why were there only white and brown rabbits, not pink ones and why were his teeth beginning to fall off, even though his parents had beautiful sets of teeth he’d ever seen. They walked down the street until they reached The Sun’s Court, a small, clean and aromatic shop selling the most delicious food and mouth watering desserts he could ever recall. Is that when he smelled that particular scent for the first time? Yes! That was 35 years ago. Life was way simpler back then. He chose the Pasteis de Nata with some cinnamon and icing sugar for dessert. Delicious! 35 years later now, as Arnout stood amazed in the same shop, glaring at the customer enjoying the delicacy of those tarts , he couldn’t help but remember his golden days. His stunning parents, jovial life, a cheerful home and merry friends. All that he could ever ask for. The good days turned around soon and he witnessed the suicide of his mother. The slit wrist, blood stained carpet, and scattered glass all over was all too severe and traumatic for him to witness when he returned from school one day. He didn’t understand the situation until one fine day they were packed and gone far away from that town, far away from Coober Alley that once gave him such pleasurable and sweet days. His once gay life was gone in the blink of an eye and dark days dawned upon him ever since. 

His father, an avid drug user and alcoholic, only neglected him. Arnout’s earliest recollection of his memories were of his teenage days when he was suffering from the intensifying urge to try those happy pills that was making the peer around him so ecstatic and elated. Down slithered the resistance and cascaded into serious drug abuse. Now, with the loss of his father as well, he was left all alone in the world. Arnout remembered struggling with bad health, irrational and temperamental behaviour, erratic thoughts, and the need of drugs to sustain him. He squandered the only money his dad had left. The young adult soon furnished himself into a cunning thief,and allowed his habits to turn him into an acute robber and shoplifter, that almost immediately paved his way with ease into criminal activities. The need to get huge amounts of money and luxury felt trivial when he had his first kill. A homicide. 

The first murder, it blew his mind. Arnout was satisfied to the extent that he wanted more liquidation. He wondered why his mother left him so abruptly and what could’ve happened to her mind that made her want to abandon him at such a young age and destroy their happy family. He had never been able to satisfy himself with an answer until he got his first victim’s body mutilated in front of him. Even though the corpse did not have an answer to his mother’s self destruction, it did give him some peace of mind, a part of him felt satisfied and happy, happier than those pills could ever make. His mind urged for another corpse. He continued his manslaughter, very slyly, not being caught and fooling the police everytime. The filching was only a mantle that covered what the actual mind of Arnout’s was. A clever murderer and psychopath, doomed by his past and saddened by the years of abnormalities he’d faced and had grown up to learn. There was no regret in him. He only knew how to run away from the past, the mass murders helped him calm his brain, he would never know how to face his fears. He had loved himself when he was a young boy of 7 and now, he was his mind’s biggest enemy. His mind only wanted answers to his mother’s untimely departure in that horrendous way, and figured that the only way it could be calm was by killing others. Their screams compensated for the ones he couldn’t hear from his mother. He despised these memories from the past, but in that shop, they all came back rushing to him, surrounding him, screaming his deeds to him, cursing him for what he’d become and how he was responsible for his family’s destruction. Unable to cope with this inaudible blame, he led out a loud shriek and rampaged the shop. There was shattered crockery everywhere, people screaming, fumes and fire, all turned upside down. He physically assaulted the customer enjoying his last Pasteis de Nata, banged his head against the table, and slit his throat with the broken cinnamon sugar plate lying on the table. All of this happened in the blink of an eye until he felt a huge thud on the back of his neck, he felt around, blood was gushing out. He felt a sharp pain in his head and fell unconscious. 

He woke up in a hospital room and om recovery, was charged with the first degree murder of Mr. Baxter, the customer who was eating the last dessert of his life. His faint evocation spoke something about trials, judges, accusations, no plea, jail and ultimately he found himself on the electric chair that led to a mometary pain and final peace. All of this, while the actual number of his killings remained undiscovered. Would his mind let him enjoy peace now?