Refraction of Beauty
Shaanzaè Shahid
Published by Vohh Books
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Copyright 2013 Shaanzaè Shahid
The Magic Building
Table of Contents
Memories
The Meeting
The Past
Strange Reality
A Huge Traumatic Blow
The Next Transaction
Destination Holstridge Manor
Coming To Terms With It
Wandering
Getting Hotter
The Transformation
End of Flashback
Reunion
A Brief Meet
On and Beyond
About the Author
-- CHAPTER ONE --
Memories
Whenever we look back and try to replay our memories; a sense of indifference envelops us. Unless you’re one of those people who look back and savour honey coated memories, where you did everything judiciously and just couldn’t believe your luck with all its richly bore fruit and everything…then don’t think you will be capable of understanding what I am experiencing. Are you a psychiatrist? A know-it-all ‘analyzer’? One who delves into people’s minds and heroically claims to find the point of irritation and befuddlement? If yes, then I’m afraid I can’t be helped. All that I mean to say is, I have long foregone that time of my life when I would care about whatever the hell people would have to offer me. Good advice, alternative suggestions, the painfully clichéd ‘forget it, don’t think about it and move on’ consolations and those dreaded comparisons with ‘ordeal-conquerors’; are all time wasters for me. It’s pitiful, disgusting and pathetic. I don’t need it. I feel like my heart was dipped in lye and the rest of my skin succumbed to its excruciating corrosiveness. Like a thousand forks, bleeding with hot, boiling wax were repeatedly casting crescents of blood on my face, and then filling a crescendo of pain by wrenching the flesh off my bones. My soul is on fire; I’m burning. Don’t you see? I’m already in Hell, because I’m not dying. Because, I’m cursed to living a wretched existence in a capsule of gory memories. My mind has been forever coated with black glitter. Glitter that is pukingly blinding it from seeing clearly…preventing me from resting. It’s like mental seizure that won’t stop because the constant infernal shining and glitz is madness, driving you off the edge every second of your creation. Black because of death; that refuses me.
As usual, it’s raining. My window is stained with the bluish-grey dews of pelting water from the bluish-grey sky. It’s exactly 4:33 p.m. and it feels like time had been paused and been coloured by a singular grey crayon. My apartment is dark from the inside. It feels like those mid-nineteenth century rooms where electricity was a novelty and dim, dull candles illuminated the way; except, I have not candles either. The only light that prevails is the half-glare of my window, which will soon evaporate and leave only further darkness to permeate my room. The halls of this building are as silent as a graveyard. My television set is a big box of concentrated blackness that looks as if it will switch on automatically, just to scare me. There is so much horror to be found in them. Tomorrow the people will come and take it down and rid me of its presence forever. Nasty thing was never really used by myself either. Always observed its screen from the corner…for not even the slightest, smallest crack. That’s why I need the ghastly contraption out of my domain as quickly as possible. There is not a single mirror in my room. No bathroom mirror and certainly no small pocket mirror either. There can never be a crack on the side. Thus forth, I have never looked at my face. I feel my hair around to tame any unruly or electrified strands to their limp, dead and hanging positions. Next I use my fingers very precisely and circulate them all over my face for trace of any extraordinary minute defect that could render me incapable of public presentation. And clothes, I believe they look the same as they are off me. Red is not a part of my wardrobe and I refuse to wear anything that is of the particular hue; at least, ever since those…eyes. It is useless to bring it up. A blotched recollection of nails scratching a blackboard…and your own long, sharp nails perpetrating the act is all that’s left of it. A feeling of immense irritation that is almost palpable. Irritation, pain and fear. But not your average kind of fear, either. It is instead, the kind that can leave you wide-eyed in a never-ending and inescapable nightmare. Imagine the overwhelming terror of actually never leaving it. Having it go on and on…and on.
-- CHAPTER TWO --
The Meeting