The Maltheistic Man

The man knew when Savva had arrived at the festival. He was currently ambling from stand to stand with his friend. 

“Hey!”

Someone bumped into her, sending Tanya into Savva’s shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” the stranger addressed her in a honeyed tone. “Dear…,” he added, then raised a finger to graze her ear lobe. 

Tanya staggered back, but challenging the man’s gaze turned deep. Savva was sure she was about to say something about the improper gesture, but then the man turned his focus on him. His eyes were so unusually dark that the glow of the fairy lights hanging in the square was reflected in them. As he moved past, the friction between his cashmere forearm and Savva’s cotton shoulder made him turn after the man. But there was no one to trail after for he had vanished in the crowds.

“Let’s find some place to eat. I want to forget about that freak,” Tanya grumbled. 

Savva agreed and tried to shake the feeling as one would snap a bug out of their face. He resumed strolling through the stands, yet those eyes lingered. Why did he feel he had been supposed to read something in them? And the reflections. He would blame them on the trick of the light. This decision proved efficient, shutting his thoughts, bringing him back to the gleeful festival. 

The square had been metamorphosed into a site of exchanged laughter and waves of colours. There were huge cardinal balloons knotted by old light poles, strings of fairy lights in juxtaposition with garlands, accompanied by bows and fluttering purple flags with the festival's name. It was a bundle of voices, played strings, speaker announcements and shrill feedback. It promised a night outside the normal way of life. 

Tanya adored its possibilities while Savva’s nature was inclined towards the quieter spots. Nonetheless he was curious. 

And hungry. They were both very hungry. 

“We could try that place,” Savva pointed to a small caravan with a green tarp on the other side of the square.“We should hurry, I think there’s a queue.”

“Wait, what about this one?,” Tanya underlined a name with a black nail-painted finger on the brochure she was holding. “I heard of it before. Where… there it is! Let’s go there, it’s much closer.”

Savva squinted at the food truck. 

“It looks deserted. I don’t trust deserted restaurants.”

“It’s not a restaurant,” Tanya noted. 

“The concept is the same. There’s a bigger chance to get fooled by people whose food no one buys.”

“Have you thought that maybe that one is overpriced? Last time I checked, the art critic's career wasn’t a goldmine to you.”

“It’s harder after… that.”

“I didn’t say it to discourage you. Only spoke facts. And you know what else is factual? Your wallet.”

“You know what? I’ll flip you for it.”

Tanya fretted. “I never win at these things.”

“That’s not factual,” Savva teased, reaching into his jacket’s pocket for change.

“No, no I don’t want to—”

“What’s this?” 

His fingers closed around a heavy coin. Opening his palm, it became certain it was ancient, the metal rusted in between creases. Frowning, he bowed his head in vigilant study.  

Its uneven contour, Savva guessed, was the product of gruesome skill and the erosion of time. One face was unmarked— no heads or tails, or any emblem of that kind. He flicked it over. 

In the festival lights, it could’ve been a trick, just like the eyes of the stranger. But the more he looked at the letters, there was no way to deny that they spelled his name. He felt himself still.

“Flip it,” Tanya ushered. 

Savva shook his head. “I don’t want to flip it, Tanya. I don't know what it is,” he whispered.

For whatever reason, the only explanation for this piece of metal was that it was simply meant for him. He didn’t have the faintest idea why, but by any extent, he had been chosen.

“You have to flip it, Savva.”

It was the way she said it which unsettled something in him. 

“Why? I thought you didn’t even like the— Tanya, look at me.”

Her brown eyes had been swallowed up by the irises. In them Savva saw his reflection, as in a smoked mirror. His instinct drew him away, but she made a move to grab him, abandoning the brochure on the pavement. “You’ve been given it. You have to flip it, Savva. To arrive. It is set, it is beyond you. Otherwise he’ll have to force you.” 

“Who?” He was stammering back, trying not to knock over people. To his surprise, no one seemed to notice them.  

She ignored the question and went for his closed palm. “Flip it!”

“Tanya—  Stop— ” 

“Flip it!” She managed to seize his wrist, digging her nails into the skin. 

“What is wrong with you?” Savva wrestled out of her grip, but she held on, her nails drawing blood. 

“He shall haunt your nightmares and your steps, persuade the very fate to bend your hand to flip the coin, for it has been done and this is the other part of the bargain, Savva.”

He had to bite his bottom lip from the pain. “I’m sorry.”

Savva twisted her with his other hand so that she was pinned against him. Only Tanya bashed the top of her head into his nose, the impact stealing his balance.

It was over in seconds. 

She got away from his grasp and he dropped the coin. Tanya made a swipe for it. At the same time he flung his hand to his nose. In the motion, his fingers struck the coin and flipped it in the air. It landed on the ground with an unbecoming sound, but the crowds didn’t react. 

The thud of the fall reverberated into Savva’s very bones and skull. Pushing past the sensation, he kneeled to pick it up, but hesitated. 

It had fallen face up on the side bearing his name. In slow motion, the letters merged to create the abstract, yet deductible, form of a staff. 

This wasn’t real. 

“What’s that?” 

He jumped at the sound of her voice.

Tanya looked openly at him, then gave a start. “Savva, what happened to your nose?”

The concern in her voice was genuine, washed over her body and gestures was the worry of a friend. She was back somehow. 

“You don’t remember?” Savva inquired, retreating. 

Before she could give an answer, the coin hissed in his palm. Then it disintegrated into sand cascading through his fingers. 

“Did you see that?” Savva whispered, but Tanya didn’t register. As she raised her hands to inspect his nose, her brown skin cracked and the crevices filled with purple paint.

“Tanya! Tanya, no— what is this?”

Her body had gone stiff, her eyes glassy and her hair turned synthetic. When Savva grabbed her shoulders she disassembled, arms and torso and legs and head collapsing just like the pieces of a mannequin would. 

Savva erupted in screams. Were they from terror, from madness, from the terror that he was going mad? He must’ve screamed her name, screamed at the crowds, but where were they?

Alarmed, he scanned the square, but he wasn’t surrounded by people, rather flashes of them. It was like one of those photographs caught mid-movement, the silhouettes smudged within the foreground. Savva scampered towards them hoping that, by catching someone’s arm, the vertigo would stop. However, his head felt fine, if he didn’t give in the fear. But he was insane, wasn’t he? He felt out of existence, as if he had entered some horrific version of reality. It was getting harder to breathe. 

Savva’s wrist began to hurt, where Tanya had dug her fingernails. He raised it to inspect the wound, but there were no more than four thin crescent scars. There was blood on his arm, though— no, not blood. The colour was too bright. 

It started to glide along his skin— on the other arm, too— the streams merging in the air into a waterfall. It snaked across the pavement. Savva scrutinised his skin, but the liquid was coming from nowhere. It just was. 

Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps he hadn’t even got to the festival. This was the night before and he’s been sleeping in his bed in the apartment he was sharing with his best friend Tanya, who wasn’t real here because she’d disassembled.

The non-blood continued to flow across the square, until it reached a silhouette. Indeed, nothing was real anymore. 

It may have been an underlying proof, due to the state the aftermath of their encounter left him in— of the strangeness with no explanation found except perhaps in imagination, because this is what the man in the black cashmere coat must’ve been.

He was standing on the sidewalk in front of a boutique, hands in pockets, head cocked to the side. The building was decomposing and tangling into innumerable braiding patterns, but he appeared normal. Therefore Savva strolled to him. Soon the waterfall splashed on the ground in a long puddle, then the non-blood on his hands washed away, like it had never been there. 

Crossing the street, the pavement began to shudder under his feet and big blocks raised in levitation. Savva hesitated in his tracks, suddenly frightened he might fall through a gap.

“You won’t fall,” the man spoke from his place on the sidewalk. Behind him the building had already crafted an intricate pattern of itself, ribbons of shirts and glimpses of windows tangling. 

To prove him, the man climbed down the sidewalk straight onto a gap, as if a sheet of glass had been placed above it. 

“See?” he said, approaching.

Savva didn’t respond. That feeling was slowly building up again. It was something about the man, the way he carried himself, the dip of his smirk, those eyes. Those eyes which still reflected him and the transforming buildings and all the madness bursting around. Just like Tanya’s did.

“You did that to Tanya,” he blurted. Even his voice came out bizarre. The cadence of his tone was distorted, the vowels ending in echoes.

“I had to bring you here.”

You have to flip it, Savva. To arrive. 

The way he felt when he saw the coin—  like he had been chosen. He had to be here, in whatever twisted shape of the world this was. 

Was it the world though? The man looked as before, but nothing else did. He couldn’t have gone insane, but why would he now? At a festival with Tanya? 

It was a dream. The only reasonable explanation. 

“Are you a guide?”

The man let out a rich laugh. “I am no guide. There is no guide. It would ruin everything: the fun, the despair.”

“Then who are you?”

He pondered, a small wrinkle between his dark eyebrows. “I suppose you could say I’m an intermediate.”

Savva considered. “Between who and whom?”

“Ah, Savva, so many questions, so forbidden to answer for how intruding they are. There is a certain degree of privacy which must be kept in such bargains. If there wasn’t, it would be just like everything else.”

“Everything else?”

“Everything else which pushes people to their darkest nature. There must be a place where integrity is vital, otherwise not even that purpose, vain and abhorrent— but aren’t you all?— wouldn’t be accomplished.”

“That purpose– what script from my head are you reciting?” Savva jeered, for he was feeling his patience wearing thin. 

The man turned his palms up and the world glitched in and out of form melting and snaking towards him, left barren save for inky sketches of where solid shapes had been. 

“Savva… I am only reciting the terms of a wish.”

Then everything settled onto the architectural sketch of the city, with paint splashes of mixed hues in the centre. 

For some reason, the landscape looked oddly familiar to Savva. Even the way Tanya’s body decomposed rang a bell. And he swore he’d seen the pictures of people somewhere else. Except for the man– the man was a new element, something his imagination conjured without outside inspiration. 

He analysed Savva, amusement coating his features. 

“Is this the wish?” Savva ventured.  

“To destroy your reality.” 

He was overcome by laughter at the ridiculousness of it. A reinterpreted Wonderland was destroying his reality. To think of the wideness of his imagination. He weighed whether he should play. It did intrigue him and he didn’t want to risk waking up and not finishing the dream. So he made the move, curious where it would get him.

“Who made the wish?”

“The creator hides himself in his work. I know you're on your way to figuring it out.”

Savva raised an eyebrow. He scanned the world once more, taking in everything and translating it into the language of art– there was a medium he saw the artist use many times, there seemed to be hidden a part of his tumultuous life, the colours hurt if you focused only on them. The chaos was turning into a kaleidoscopic map for madness.  

“Patrick Buer” Savva concluded. 

The man flicked his fingers, satisfied. The coin materialised once again from sand. Then the man threw it in the air, moulding the metal into a staff which floated to Savva’s side. 

Lastly, the ribbons of the boutique untangled enough to let a man pass through.

Patrick Buer, the artist whose paintings didn’t enter the exhibit because of Savva’s critics. He had examined thirty of his paintings and it was clear he had no style, his ideas a replica of an idea of what art should look like to sell well. He told Buer as much. 

But it still had left a stain on Savva’s conscience. Maybe his mind was looking for a path to redemption. Yet Patrick Buer wasn’t innocent either. He might’ve been harsh with the painter, but what he did to Savva was despicable. 

To destroy his reality. Wide imagination, he possessed.

Savva turned away Buer and the judgment on his face to the staff. 

“What is this for?”

“It’s your way out of wish,” the man challenged.

“If I know who made it, doesn't it end? Isn’t the purpose to face him?”

“No, the purpose is for you to suffer because of him. But since you know the creator, now I am coming to you with a wish of my own. If you make it true, then I will end his.”

Savva waited. 

“Pick up the staff, and kill Buer.”

He wasn’t sure he’d heard right. 

“What?”

“Pick up the staff and kill the creator of your misery. That’s my wish.”

Savva considered. It was a dream, but he didn’t want to do it. Even if it wasn’t real, a part of him was telling him something was off. 

“What's in it for you?” he demanded.

“Human nature,” the man smiled, a terrifying thing.  

Savva was backing away. “I think I’ll wait until I wake up.”

“You still think this is a dream,” The man shook his head, and the splashes of paint followed the movement. “If you're so sure of yourself, why not go with it?”

“I thought you were an intermediate.” 

“Are you more concerned about my role or about how this might end? Dreams are not what they seem, Savva. And wishes must be fulfilled to the end.”

Suddenly, the man was whispering in his ear. 

“I can feel you itch for it, Savva. You were frightened at first, but now this landscape entices you. What must this all mean? Does it count for anything, does it have a moral code? Maybe it’s your chance to put to sleep the ghosts haunting you from your encounters with the man who stained your career. You did nothing wrong, did you? You told him the truth. Told him to go be original. It was his fault he chose to have the last word, to flaunt his ego. Maybe it’s time to grant yourself some peace, Savva.”

The man tilted Savva's head towards the staff, grazing his ear. 

It was a morbid thing to ponder on. 

Or maybe not. Because this wasn’t real and a part of him just wanted to wake up from the dream already. But because he also wanted to stop wondering about Buer, what he was doing with his life, if indeed he was so cruel or if he simply couldn’t handle criticism. So maybe he could let go in his head. 

And because he was in the game, Savva grasped the staff.

It was over in seconds. 

Once he touched the cold surface, in the next movement it was coated in blood, Buer at his feet, his head smashed. 

Savva woke up with a start, the man's laughter ringing in his ears. He was covered in sweat, shaking, but he recognised he was in his bedroom. The blinds were seven inches drawn up like always. The dark blue sheets tangled around him. 

He put his head in his hands as the images bloomed in his mind. The man, the coin, the transformed version of the world, Buer, the wish. 

The alarm chased them away. He was already reaching to turn off that horrible ringtone, when he glimpsed the date on the screen. It was Saturday. The festival was tonight. Of course. Of course, because nothing had been real, even though his head still hurt and he had to force air down his lungs. 

Placing the phone back on the nightstand, he noticed four delicate crescents on his wrist. Nail marks, thinly scarred. 

Startled, he rubbed at his eyes, but to no avail. 

How can a dream wound remain?

He wasn’t insane. He didn’t believe it for long in the dream, either. 

A loud thud from the kitchen sounded and his spine straightened. 

He was scared to ask. Not because of what happened, but because of what was now on his skin. Because it might’ve been…

“Tanya? Tanya, is that you?”