My Last Supper

It was late in the evening. We'd all gathered in the living room for supper. The TV was blaring while Mum kept glaring at Dad who sat serenely, staring at the idiot-box with the remote safely tucked under his crossed arms. It was pouring cats & dogs outside - I was pretty sure I heard a couple of chihuahuas thudding against the neighbour's roof and dislodging a few loose shingles. All of a sudden and without any warning, the doorbell jingled. I was halfway through a rather large bite (more than I could chew), so Mum got up to answer the door. The chunk of food in my mouth turned out to be small enough to swallow and choke, because that was exactly what I did when I heard the voice emanating from beyond the doorway, addressing my Mum. A voice I hadn't heard in years, in ages, cheerfully helloing Mum and claiming its owner to be "an old friend" of her son and would she excuse him so he might speak with him privately ("her" being Mum, first "him" being me "he" being the owner of the voice and the second "him" also being the same as "he"). By now I'd finished choking and when Mum turned to look at me she mistook the tears in my eyes for tears of joy at hearing my friend's voice again. I excused myself from the table and fortified myself with a swig from my water glass before proceeding to the door to take up the post recently vacated by Mum who had occupied her seat across Dad and resumed throwing dirty looks at his insensitivity.

I had kept my eyes defiantly glued to the ceiling and had so far, avoided glancing at my visitor but I hardly had any choice. In fact, my only choice was, literally, between "my old friend" and the deep blue sea. What with my freestyle being no better than my breaststroke and the mere mention of backstroke raising a cloud of butterflies in my stomach, I had no option but to let my eyes slowly travel down from the burnt-out 60 watt bulb in the middle of the landing ceiling to finally rest on the eyes of my caller. I shuddered. His eyes were pitch black, rather like empty tunnels, black holes from which even the proverbial "twinkle of the eye" wasn't allowed to escape, deep, penetrating orbs they were. I had a feeling they were, right there and then, staring into my very soul.

He broke the ice. His voice was much like a glacier rolling ever so slowly down my back. "Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name!", he said, imitating Mick Jagger (very badly, I thought with distaste). I kept my mouth shut and did not answer. He beckoned me forward with a crook of his finger and turned around and began to walk to the stairwell. I stepped over the threshold and pulled the door close behind me and followed in his footsteps. At the edge of the staircase, he turned around and stared at me. I realised then, that this was not him but someone like me, someone he had beckoned before, someone who followed him back then. He suddenly started laughing his head off. If his voice was glacial, his laughter was chilling - right to the bone. It was hollow, mirthless, echoing, booming laughter. Endless, it seemed. For what seemed an eternity, we stood there - him laughing, me watching him nonplussed. He finally stopped and wheezed at me, "I'm so sorry". Then he leaned over backwards and before I could stretch out a hand to grab him, he was falling down the stairs. Halfway down the fifth step, he began to roll head over heels, his body bending in unnatural angles that would have been quite impossible even for "Eraso the Amazing Rubber-man" I dimly recalled watching at a circus I went to see as a kid. Before I could recover from the shock, he was lying broken and bleeding on the landing of the lower floor. I ran down the stairs, two or three at a time and reached the bruised pulp that was his body. Somehow, he managed to raise his head and grinned at me, "S-sorry!"

The next moment, I saw something black and fluid-like (like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a liquid or a gas but decided to be black anyway) emanate from his slack jaw. The entire scene went dark. The black fluid rushed at me.

I opened my eyes. I was staring at the ceiling. I noticed the bulb was burning alright on this floor. I turned my head around. I seemed to be sleeping on the landing. "This won't do", I said to myself and stood up. The stairwell around me was quite empty. I vaguely recalled someone interrupting my supper. I couldn't be bothered about it. My brain played an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog inside my head. It was one of my favourite Courage episodes. It involved a psychopathic barber and like him, right then, I felt "quite naughty!"