The Portrait

Eduardo had grown accustomed to the rats that nibbled at his toes and the snakes that slithered over his legs. He had grown almost fond of them, after all this time down here in the dark. They were perhaps the closest thing he had for company now, certainly more so than the people. 

Each time he woke, he would feel the critters squirm as he moved. Waking to the inescapable darkness, he would grope blindly along the ground next to his reclining body. His fingers would sludge through the muck and grime before finally, he felt the wooden edges of a small picture frame lying next to him. He would lift it to his face, peering intently at the frame, eyes squinted in deep concentration. But he could only sigh to himself, the ritual proving as it always had, to be in vain. It was simply too dark to see the picture and it remained but a blurry square outline in his hands. 

Down here, Eduard's world was one vacant of the details of life and things. It was not total darkness, but rather a world of murky shadows, everything relegated to faint blurry shapes and outlines. Eduardo had kept the frame all the time he'd lived here, ever since that day the blue skies turned sickly green, and the world suffocated on that terrible concoction of noxious gases. When all fled to the only refuge possible. Below. Down the manholes, through vents and gutters to the cavernous maze of tunnels below the city, where the gas could never reach. 

Years on, that day still haunted Eduardo, a constant, terrifying loop replaying day in and day out. His life before it remained hazy to him now, a beautiful distant dream, but that day remained clear. He had been in his home office as he always was. The great scholar Eduardo Phariahs, renowned for his intellect, his ability to deconstruct and then reconstruct the most complex of human issues in his work. It was there, sitting at his grand desk, working on his dissertation that wife and daughter had burst in, claiming an emergency. 

“There is something wrong with the air! We need to go!” 

Had he not felt his throat close up at that moment and smelt the putrid nauseating plumes, he likely would have told them to leave as he had always done. Eduardo always knew being a great scholar required three things, space, silence, and sacrifice. That was the gig he signed up for, the family life was for other professions. But today their intrusion was different, and so he followed them, rushing after them out of the room. 

“Grab the picture.” his wife screamed back at him. He snatched frantically at a picture frame hanging on the wall. The lone family portrait amongst all his framed certificates. He shoved it into his coat. 

They had raced onto the street, lapsing immediately into spells of intense coughing, all sense overwhelmed by the thick muggy gas. A deafening siren blared out into the void as the shadows of others screamed by, all racing for some form of shelter from the painful air. Feeling his consciousness begin to fade, Eduardo called for his family to follow him as he rushed for the storm drain at the end of the street. Upon reaching it, he turned back to help them down its opening.

But they weren’t there.

So he rushed manically around the street, searching for them in the gas, feeling his lungs begin to squeeze and burn. Finally, dejected and defeated he had no choice but to hop down the drain himself. 

For years Eduardo clung to the picture frame, only releasing it when sleeping or searching for scraps on the filthy ground. His fingers would leave the contours of the frame and navigate through the muck and gunk. As soon as felt something vaguely foodlike he would scoff it down without hesitation, He had grown accustomed to the scraps and crumbs, the thought of a proper meal a long impossible concept. What Eduardo cared about was something far scarcer. 

For years he had been searching for the same thing, a light. A torch, a match, a flare, it didn’t matter, just needed to be something that would allow him to see that picture once again. To see the faces of those he so loved so cruelly taken from him. He knew if he could just see the details of their faces again in that photo he could rekindle their image in his mind. Spark again those memories of them, those brief moments he wasn't at his desk, memories which had now begun to fade and wilt. The memories he would feed upon while lying in that endless hibernation.

It was better to lay still here, assume a position, a nest if you will, in some secluded corner, and remain frozen. Partly this was functional to conserve energy and partly it was safer. When people first fled into the tunnels all those markers of civilization they had so relished quickly dissipated, any and all moral compasses abandoned for a violent, ferocious struggle for survival. In Eduardo’s quest for a light, he had only glimpsed one once. No sooner had the person shone it than Eduardo had seen him attacked, jumped upon by people from all angles. The light was quickly extinguished and Eduardo could only listen to the violence as they all fought tooth and nail for it. It was safer to lay still here, not draw attention to oneself in any way. He couldn’t help but relate the sensation to playing “Marco Polo” in his youth, only now there were far more serious consequences. 

...

Today as with any other, Eduardo stared out into the milky darkness, his eyes still perpetually searching for something to latch onto, but never finding it. Suddenly he caught sight of something. Out of the darkness, the faintest of orange glows, a tiny shiner in the distance. He rubbed his eyes knowing it was just another hallucination. But glow remained. He shot into a seated position, shaking his head to wake up, but again, the flickering orange light was still there. So he slowly raised himself to his haunches, eyes glued with an almost predatory glare at the tiny flame. He snuck carefully forward, trembling, his bare feet sludging through the filth below him, smut and slime seeping through his toes. He stepped on something sharp and grabbed his mouth just before he might let out some sort of yelp. He lifted his foot, sliding the sharp shard of glass from his heel, and continued forward despite the burning pain. 

Then his foot knocked into something in front of him. He froze, kneeling down to ever so gently poke and prod and find out what this thing was. So he extended his finger toward the shape, eventually feeling what he had long forgotten, the sensation of another’s skin. Immediately he withdrew his hand, but just as he did so a dark shape shot up like a striking snake and he felt a cold hand wrap around his wrist. He froze once again, at the mercy of this grip.

But soon he hears the faint scratchy, wheezy sound of snores below. So he ripped his hand away from the sleeping figure, heart now pounding against his exposed ribcage. 

He stepped around the figure, his eyes scanning the dark intently. Between him and the flame, he sees the faint scuttling and scampering of shadows, their shapes bent and deformed like giant rodents. Perhaps they had once been decent people like he had been.

Perhaps.

Eduardo clutched the frame in his coat, willing himself to continue on and so he crept anxiously through the sludge, each step nervous and deliberate. Sharp items grazed him, flirting with his skin, while hidden creatures hissed and snarled below. He felt a hand linger against his foot and froze, but something told him, as if a sixth sense, that it did not belong to any owner anymore. And so he gently pushed it away with his foot. 

Finally, the flame grew closer. He could vaguely make out a man standing above it, seemingly desperate to shield it from any onlookers. Eduardo crept forward towards the man and the flame, eyes glued to the tiny flickering light. It appeared magical to him, like a tiny fallen star here to free him from this incessant blackness. To bring details back to the world, to bring colours back to the world. The man had not noticed Eduardo’s approach, focussed intently on his workings below him. Eduardo stood above him, swashing his arid gums with whatever saliva he could muster. Finally, he spoke. At least he tried to speak, as what came out were no words but rather a ghastly, guttural, grating squeal. It seemed years spent mute might do that. 

The man whirled around in shock, staring up at Eduardo, his red, weathered eyes wide in panic. It was the first time he had seen the details of a human face in so long and it was not as he remembered it. The man’s deathly pale face was knarled and bare, covered in a terrible patchwork of rashes and blisters. His cheekbones protruded out like that of a skeleton, his charred lips barely covering his assortment of yellow, fractured teeth.

Eduardo then looked past him at his business below, barely visible in the light of the tiny flame. There a little girl lay squirming on the tunnel floor, clutching at her leg. On it was a deep cut, her flesh splayed out like the chasm of a canyon, revealing the crimson, bloody musculature below. Eduardo winced at the sight of it, returning his attention to the match. He tried to speak again, the gravelly words clawing at his throat before finally assuming their positions. 

“I need a match.” 

The man stared up at him and then at the match, he quickly shook his head, turning back to the girl. He covered her wound in whatever rags and clothes he could find around him, pressing hard against it. The girl’s eyes grew massive as she held her mouth shut, seemingly struggling against every impulse to scream out in agony. “It’s okay” The man reassured her, pressing harder against the wound. 

“I only need one,” Eduardo whispered to him. But the man ignored him.

“Please, there’s something I have to see, please.” 

His voice grew louder, wavering with the fear that this opportunity might slip through his fingers. “Just for a moment. One moment,” he called out to the back of the man’s head. He had opened his mouth to speak again but the man spoke first, “There’s only one left after this one and she’s hurt. I’m sorry, I need to see what I’m doing here.” 

Eduardo shook his head in disbelief, “No please sir.”

The match died and from the darkness, Eduardo pleaded again, “Please sir!” He did not care about the volume of his voice anymore. He could make out the vague outline of the man below him, searching desperately for the final match. Eduardo felt the frame in his coat once again, his fingers tracing the glass and wood, and then he looked out at the ground below him, at the faint shape of the squirming girl. His mind raced, oscillating between them.

Then he heard the delicate scratch of wood on cardboard, and the match struck. As it lit, and the world appeared again, Eduardo leaped onto the man, tugging desperately at the man’s wrist. The little girl screamed in fright at the sudden violence. The man struggled to buck Eduardo off him, both careful not to extinguish the flame themselves. With each movement, it flickered and wavered threatening to retire. Eduardo soon wrapped his arm around the man’s neck, squeezing with all his might. The man writhed and squirmed, struggling against the grip. Finally, Eduardo felt the man's grip on the match had loosened as the man slipped into unconsciousness. Eduardo delicately plucked the match from the man’s fingers, letting the man's body slip through his arms to the floor. 

He held the match up to his face, watching for a moment as the flame raced down its shaft towards his fingers. He stared entranced, enraptured at trembling little light. Then his ears had pricked up, hearing the faint pattering of growing footsteps. He looked up to see the scuttling of curious shadows emerging from the darkness. They crept into his light, equally possessed by the flame. Their bodies were mangled, deformed, covered in bruises and scars. Some cocked their heads in curiosity at him while others snarled, all eyes glued to the little stick in his hand.

Eduardo watched them a moment before ignoring them, remembering his mission. He reached into his coat, feeling for the frame. He heard the little girl call out, “Dad?” But no one answered. Eduardo struggled to rip the frame out from his coat, finally removing it from its place of hiding.

 “Dad?” 

She called out again, but Eduardo ignored her. His breathing grew even faster as he began to bring the flame and match together, lifting both to his face. His eyes were wide in disbelief. This was actually going to happen, he was going to see their faces again, not as his mind had construed them but as they were. 

He lifted the frame close to his eyes as he had always done, this time tracing it with the final embers of the match. But immediately, his heart dropped, and everything fell into numbness. He couldn’t even feel the flame now burning his fingers. In his haste, he had played his final trick on himself. He had grabbed the wrong one. 

There was no photo here, no family portrait, just one of the many frames that had read,

“Certificate of Scholarly Excellence Award,” 

And then it all went black again.