Featured Story Written By: Nagham Aljalous
With black thick hair like strings of thread intertwined and honey suckled eyes capturing every waking minute, his daily customers greet him with warm smiles. In a t-shirt, khakis, black baseball cap, and pointed dress shoes, he stacks each book upon dusty shelves. His eyes moving left to right, skimming every title of every hard and soft cover that meets the touch of his hands. Looking down, the time is now five in the afternoon. Turning the key, he locks up and heads home. Let Me Down Slowly by Alec Benjamin starts to play as he’s cruising down the empty streets. The song melted into the backdrop and he saw a small town, not far from the big city, where the leaves turn colors and the wind howls in the dark of night, you can hear the crunch of Autumn leaves and the naked trees. The children laugh all snuggled up in their coats and the aroma of pumpkin pie sweeps the air, where the stars shine and lights flicker. In a tiny home, hidden within the towering trees, lies a twelve-year-old boy who’s innocence is vanquished.
He heads home, a place where the sun shines directly onto the tree in the corner across from his tv, where his fridge is bare and his walls are empty. No one ever comes by; he’s afraid of connections with others, but doesn’t avoid people. He’s afraid of himself.
On a night, unlike any other, a young sailor was sailing through the seas. The sea would rumble so loudly; it would make the ship sway back and forth. The storm kept growing rapidly. It made the sailor lose control of his ship. The ship was large and had two cabins. In the recent past, it carried countless numbers of passengers, but they all got too sick and starved to death. The sailor was previously the captain and he was responsible for protecting all the people on board. Nowadays, the young sailor sails the abysmal seas alone.
One day, as he was still on his way to deliver medical supplies to Alaska, he saw an odd passenger in a rescue boat. The past flashed before his eyes and he remembered to have taken all the food and starved his passengers to death. Their cries for survival echoed softly in his ears. Rubbing against his ears, the sailor, deflated, headed toward the rescue boat to find out why they were floating indeterminably in the middle of nowhere. When he got to the boat, he found out that it was a young man with a baby’s face. He kept hearing him screeching the same words repeatedly, “SAVE ME! SAVE ME!” On his face, he had a look of agony and dread. His presence was galvanic. The sailor saw a vague memory of women and children hungry and thirsty.
Frowning, the sailor asked him, “Can I offer you a place to stay in one of my cabins?”
The man asked so politely, “How much do you charge?”
The man replied, “Not much.” When the old sailor took him to the cabin, he noticed that the room itself, so far as he could see in the darkness, was filled with alluring furniture.
“Is there anyone else here besides me?” he asked calmly.
“No, young man,” he said. “Only you.”
As the sailor leads the innocent man to a room, he looked about the ship shivering convulsively and his eyes wide open as though he feared the place tremendously. He couldn’t help think about what it was telling him to do. What it made him do to every person that helped him, or loved him.
He walked carefully into the room the sailor had offered to him. Before the sailor walked away, he asked politely, “Could I get your name?”
“James,” he said quickly, “James Cloverfield.”
“You seem a bit scared, fella,” the sailor remarked. “Are you feeling ok?”
James didn’t say anything. The sailor didn’t want to ask him again because he didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. The sailor then closed the door making sure it was unlatched. Before he walked away, James grabbed his arm. Holding tightly, he took his hand and asked him curiously, “What’s wrong?”
Looking straight into his eyes, James said, “I…. have a condition, a disease. I do things without knowing exactly why or how. I don’t ask questions and I can never answer my own. I do not have any pertinacity to do it. I do these things……because I have to.”
Confused and suspicious, he asked him, “What is it that you have to do?”
“Let me show you,” he said with a deadly locution. Holding his hand, he took him back to his room on the ship and he closed the door behind them. There wasn’t a sound or a whisper. Suddenly, a tumultuous scream came from within the doors. It was a scream that didn’t come from any woman or any man before, but was a scream that seemed to come from the depths of hell.
The knob started shaking instantaneously. The young man came out the room transiently, calmly, quietly, and his eyes wide open. Behind him, he was dragging the body of the young sailor. Dead, the grotesque body made a path of blood as he was dragged away off the ship. The young sailor was conscious, but losing strength quickly. In his hand, he carried a rope. He dragged the body all the way to a pole on the boat. He tied the rope around the revolting spectre of the partially severed head and hung him on the top of the pole.
Before leaving the scene, he left his mark. He had taken a dagger, dug it into the corner of the face and drawn a line across the face. He did the same on the other side. He had carved a bloody “X” on the face of the young sailor. His face was dripping blood all over the deck. “I’m so sorry. And thank you for the room,” he told the body as he cried and walked away. He left the boat stranded.
When James was in seventh grade, a family settled into the home next to him. They had a daughter possessing the same age. They called her Lizzy. She had short golden curls that hid her soft glowing skin, wore a small detailed necklace that read ‘XOXO,’ dressed like a boy and dreamt of a world where beings unknown to man existed. She imagined they lived in the forest behind his home. They would submerge themselves in these woods every day after school. One day, they stumbled upon shallow, rocky waters and built a rope to swing across it and built a treehouse not too far from the waters. As time passed and they hit the age of fifteen, James developed strong emotions for Lizzy. These emotions grew stronger every day, until he loved her. Loved her enough to lose her. For three months, search parties were arranged every night, but no one ever found her. She was declared dead after six months. The tears he bled every night exhibited numerous questions: “Where are you? When can I see you? What did I do? Are you going to come back?” thought James.
Next morning, he found himself in an alley way. A young woman found him in a state of delirium, and decided to help him. He lived with the woman for over two years. James Cloverfield was incognizant of his actions in the past couple years. His memory of everything had been erased from his mind all at once. Vague images ran through his mind of all the past murders he had done, but he couldn’t put them together. James wasn’t any ordinary man, every longing night, Jay rose from his wearisome nights. He existed in secret. He bared the physique of James, but the face of a child.
As the sun set and the moon rose, James asked the elderly woman in an eloquent manner, “Could I talk to you privately?” The woman nodded worriedly and went with James to his bedroom. Hellish screams escaped the room deafening every body within proximity. In silence, a figure approached the doorway. When the door creaked open and James walked out of the room, he was carrying the dead woman in his bloody, murderous hands. He had taken the body of the woman to a tree and hung her up. The sensation of stupor that oppressed him had vanished in that moment. Looking at this woman, James saw a strange image of her that appeared in his mind. He had seen her before. This time he hung the body up and left a rose under it. Insanely, before he walked away, he hugged the body of the woman and cried. This woman he had just entombed wasn’t any stranger, it was the woman that gave birth to him and raised him. Tears ran down his face as he tremulously walked away.
Daylight strikes on a Friday morning as he gets ready for work. He drives in a silver 2016 Honda Accord wearing a patterned red dress shirt tucked into black dress pants. Like every other day, he stacks every hard and soft cover books on the shelves. Customers rain in and then die down when the sun sets. As James locks the doors, he find a small note stuck to the exterior pf the main door. It wrote, You happy yet? I got rid of them for you. James assumed it was his boss, but he never comes by. He crunches it up and tosses it into the dumpster.
“Hey you dumbass,” said a distant voice. “You could’ve killed me!”
Holding his head, James opens his eyes and the voice gets louder. “Do you know how to drive?” older man asks.
“I’m sorry,” said James. “What happened?”
“What happened was you stood in front of the damn street talking to yourself,” he said. James’ ears kept ringing.
“I’m sorry,” said James. “Could I talk to you over there?” Upset and confused, the man followed him into the trees on the side of the street. Grunts and sighs softly broke free. A figure came out of the darkness, it was James, alone. Deep within the tall, verdant trees, lies a hung body with a slashed “X” on his face. Crying, James drives away. Memories of Lizzy cross his mind making him stop dead in his tracks. There she is laughing behind her golden, beautiful hair.
“You did this,” Jay whispers. “She’s gone because of you.” James struggles to get the thoughts and voices out of his head.
His knees hit the ground, he looks up and yells, “Go Away. I’m so sorry.”