Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

CHAPTER TWENTY

  The dungeon was cold. There was a constant draft that spilled refrigerated air from cracks in the roof. It didn’t bother The Man too much. He slept naked, but under the mound of blankets, he slept warm. Alex, on the other hand, had nothing but an old shirt to keep him warm. He shivered his way through the night and though he woke up here or there, it was exhaustion and disbelief that set his mind back into sleep and had him ignore the jittery lumps all over his body.

  The Gruff didn’t sleep. He had no need for it. He used to pretend from time to time, like a game, to help his little boys go to slumber. Every boy loved to fall asleep with their favorite toy pinned to their chest. And for many sad and lonely little boys, The Gruff had been that toy. And at night, The Gruff would visit them all.

  There were seven rooms in total including the shower and the kitchen. Alex and The Man, they both had one room each; Alex at the far end of the corridor and The Man, in the master suite, by the dark stairway that led to a stony wall.

  One of The Gruff’s favorites, if that could be said, was room number four. He spent a lot of time in there when Alex and The Man were sound asleep. He would moan and he would weep out loud, but it would never be loud enough for any of the other rooms to hear. And after some time, he would leave into the darkness and close the door behind him. He would trap in there, whatever didn’t belong in any of the other rooms. And he would lock the door and he would keep the key close to his heart.

  When he was done, The Gruff walked into Alex’s room. It was his room now. Before it was something he was trying to escape. Now it was somewhere for him to go at the end of a day and to lay his head and sleep.

  The Gruff liked to watch. He liked to stare at Alex while he slept. He sat cross legged right in front of him with his little hands tapping against his boot as his friend breathed his heavy sleep.

  The Gruff liked the way his mouth hanged open when he was really tired. It looked like he was about to sneeze and he got stuck in that position. He lay himself down and copied his friend. He curled his legs up to his body and he stretched out the muscles in his face and he cemented his eyelids and lowered the anchor on his heavy jaw and he breathed heavy and churning, like a bear, clearing phlegm from its throat.

  As much as The Gruff liked to watch Alex sleep, the things he did, like pretending to sleep and snoring out loud and creeping up to his freezing belly and tucking himself between his arms, they were done to wake the boy up more than anything.

  The Gruff hated to be alone.

  He felt abandoned when the children went to sleep. They were right there beside him and even though he could touch them and he could curl up with them, the one thing he couldn’t do was to go with them, into their dreams.

  And this made him sad.

  The Gruff watched Alex’s eyes twitch and he ran his little fingers along his arms and he felt the rising bumps of shivers all along his body. Then he felt his own arm. There was nothing. Not a single shiver.

  Alex was mouthing something. He must have been talking in his dreams. The Gruff wondered who he was talking to. Was he talking to him? Was there a Gruff inside his mind? And were they as good of friends as they were in real life? Was there a man too? And was he going to take Alex away?

  The Gruff leant close to Alex’s whispering mouth. So close that he almost kissed his cheek with the slight touch of his lips. He could hear Alex speaking. It wasn’t coherent, but he could hear him speaking and in his dream, he was plotting an escape. The Gruff leaned forwards. He could hear his own name being spoken but about what, he did not know.

  He imagined that he and Alex were somewhere dark in his imagination and Alex had drawn a spark of invention. He had found a way out of wherever they were and he was conspiring on what had to be done. It sounded like so much fun. Like when they ran up the dark winding stairs and Alex thought they had a chance of escape and The Gruff said nothing because it was so much fun to watch Alex try.

  He leaned into Alex with his own plastic lips grazed against the fine hairs. His musky breath crept into the boy’s ear. It formed his words.

  “I love you Gruff” he whispered. “I love you too Alex. And I love you more than anyone. Hey, Gruff? Yeah, Alex? will you be my only friend? There’s nothing I want more.’

  The Gruff whispered over and over in his ear. He fed the idea into the young boy’s mind and as he slept, his fingers and his eyes twitched.

  Alex’s eyes stopped flickering. He went into a deeper sleep. His mouth dropped back open and there was no chance of waking him. The Gruff tried, though. He pulled on his fingers. He climbed on top of him and yanked out some of his hairs. He even licked his own finger and squashed it inside Alex’s ear. None of it was sufficient to wake the boy.

  The Gruff started to fidget. He was getting anxious. He could tell that Alex was away somewhere else and he was having fun with someone or something other than him. It wasn’t fair. Alex should have been awake. He shouldn’t be allowed to sleep, he shouldn’t want to sleep. He should want to stay awake and play all day and all night. He shouldn’t have other friends in his head.

  The Gruff was angry. He was standing on Alex’s shoulders, looking down at him as he slept. He wanted to unzip his pants and urinate on him. It’s how he made him feel; dirty and neglected.

  “Wake up Alex” he whispered. “Alex, I want to play.”

  But Alex didn’t wake up. He didn’t even stir. His snoring only grew louder.

  The Gruff groaned.

  “It’s ok Alex. It’s just us.”

  Still nothing.

  The Gruff jumped off Alex and he paced back and forth. His fingers twitched and his arms couldn’t sit still. The last thin slice of his patience spilled off of his plastic tongue. He gurgled and spat out what he brought up. The white of his eyes filled with hate. They glowed a fiery red. He stood still, in one spot, but he was rocking back and forth and his fingers were clenching into his plastic legs, cutting through the fabric of his pants.

  There was nothing funny about the way he looked. He wasn’t angry. He was left behind. He didn’t want to scream. He wanted to crawl inside Alex’s skin and tear his way out. He wanted to scratch at his skin, tear off his nails and bite off his ear and say “I’m sorry” a thousand times over; enough so that he’d know it was true.

  Alex slept peacefully on one end of the room while The Gruff stood manic on the other. The boy had no idea what was happening just a foot or two away from him. He had no idea the doll was making a fantasy of his suffering. He had no idea of the things that the doll was imagining being done to him. He had no idea of the extent of the horror that a living thing could conceive.

  He had no idea at all.

  Hell swept through The Gruff’s body. He could hear a thousand laughs all echoing in his mind. They insulted him. They mocked him. They danced around inside of his head and they dared him to do what they said he had not the courage to do. They pointed their fingers and they stuck out their tongues and they danced around him in circles.

  And they sang.

  “Nobody loves you; nobody likes you, all alone and you got no friends. Nobody needs you, nobody wants you, all alone till the very end” the voices chanted.

  They were children’s voices. They were children’s faces. Some of them had their smiles smeared with blood. Some of them didn’t even have mouths. And their eyes, where they once had been, were stuffed with paper and their necks were channeled and grooved. And they danced around him in playful reverie. They joked and they sang and they laughed as his worry grew.

  The Gruff tried not to imagine them. He tried to look somewhere else. Somewhere less dizzying. But when he stared through the dancing children, his sight floundered upon a young boy crying in the back on his imagination. The boy was sitting alone on a bed. He had a leather strap in his hands, a man’s belt, but he couldn’t make a knot.

  “Stop crying” The Gruff shouted.

  But The Boy didn’t listen. It wasn’t mocking or laughing like the other children. It hadn’
t succumbed to his wrath like any of the others had. There were no cuts on his body. His ears were still where they should have been. His hands were not bound or chained. They bore no marks of whips or small cutting knives. There were no cuts along his chest or on his penis and there were no bruises upon his face.

  “Stop crying” shouted The Gruff. “He’ll hear.”

  But The Boy couldn’t hear The Gruff, or he chose not to listen. And then came the sound that The Boy dreaded. First the creaking of an opening door. Then the casual banter.

  “I’m just getting a soda,” said the voice behind the door.

  “Make me a sandwich while you’re there,” said The Boy’s mother, unaware of what happened each and every night.

  Then came the footsteps through the hall.

  They didn’t stop at the kitchen.

  They came to his door.

  Still, The Boy wept.

  The Boy knew what was coming. The Gruff knew what was coming and the boy cried. He cried loud and wailing. He shouted out the name of someone but that someone didn’t come. That someone never came. Then he shouted out “No!”

  The door opened and a man walked in.

  He had his belt in his hands.

  He had a smile on his face.

  “Shhh,” he said. “You’ll disturb your mother.”

  The Boy threw the box against the door.

  The Gruff could feel his mind shaking with it.

  “You don’t like your present?” asked the voice by the door

  “I don’t want it” The Boy shouted.

  “But it’s yours,” said the voice by the door.

  “I’ll tell my mum,” said The Boy.

  “You’ll do no such thing. If you tell your mother she will be embarrassed at how filthy you are, at the filthy things you do. She’ll kill herself. She’ll take a rope and tie it round her neck and she’ll kill herself because of you. Because you told her. Do you want that to happen? Do you want her to die?” asked the voice by the door.

  The boy wept.

  “No,” he said, his words, caught in a stream of tears.

  The voice by the door made a kissing sound. He turned and closed The Boy’s door and snipped the lock quietly. As he walked towards The Boy, the buckle on his belt shook and it rattled. The boy hated that rattle. And The Gruff, he hated that rattle too, but not as much as he hated the sound of the boy crying.

  The Children were no longer dancing around inside his mind. All that The Gruff could see now was the boy, sitting on his bed and weeping. He wasn’t moving. There was a small trickle of blood running down the inside of his leg. And as the boy wept, The Gruff listened to him. There was nothing else that he could do.

  In his mind, he was only reliving a dream, something he had spent the entirety of his life trying to forget. And in the dream, he was inside that box, having watched unspeakable acts being done and having no voice to speak against them. Being inside that box and watching the boy cry and not being able to console him. Being inside that box and watching the boy with a leather strap in his hands and being unable to stop him. Being inside that box and watching the boy tying off a crude knot and not being unable to stop him. Being inside that box and watching the boy hanging from the ceiling and not being able to look away. Being inside that box and hearing only the echo of the boy’s desperate sobbing before he took his own life.

  The Gruff screamed. He looked at Alex sleeping on the other side of the room and he saw the boy in him. He had to help the boy. He had to save him. Rage swelled at his fingertips and his fingers, they clawed at his legs. He tore at the fabric of his shirt and then he dug his fingers into his eyes and he ripped back on his hands so his plastic skin peeled and snapped.

  He screamed; “God damn you!” as loud as he could.

  The pain rode through every vessel in his body. It shouted from the tips of his toes to the furrow of his brow.

  Alex woke. He jumped from his sleep. He looked through the dark. It only took a second for his eyes to settle. He heard The Gruff screaming. He was at the other end of the room. And he ran to him. He saw his shadow lying on the floor. He didn’t even think. He swept him up. He took him in his arms. He brought him back to his corner and he watched the door. He watched it like a hawk, waiting for The Man to come in and finish them, to finish what he’d started.

  The Gruff was screaming. His hand was clenching something, but Alex couldn’t find out what it was. He was trying to settle his friend down. He was trying to quell his madness before The Man returned.

  “What happened?” shouted Alex.

  The Gruff took Alex’s hand. He pulled it over his face.

  It was scratched.

  Deep, thick scratches.

  And there was a hole where his eye should have been.

  “Who did this?” he said. “Who did it? Was it him?”

  The Gruff nursed at the palm of Alex’s hand with his fingers like a newborn at its mother’s breast.

  “Don’t leave me alone,” he said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Alex. “But we have to do something.”

  “He wants to hurt you. He’ll try to act like friends. But he’ll do bad things. He did it before. He told me. He won’t let you be my friend. We have to stop him Alex. I can’t do it alone” said The Gruff.

  The Gruff, he reached out and he took Alex’s hand. He squeezed it tight.

  “I’ll help you,” said Alex. “What do I have to do?”

  The Gruff smiled.