“I remember the first time I met him.” my grandfather paused for a moment; contemplating something. “Oh yes I do, it was…..” Grandfather got into another coughing fit as he so often did in those days so I quickly got up from his bedside and poured him some water.
“Thank you Jessie” he said as he took the cup from my hand.
These coughing fits had become a regular thing for him. He was always the healthiest person you’d ever seen, in fact I don’t remember him getting sick but about 6 months before the day he told me this story he suddenly fell ill one day and after that he kept getting worse.
“Grandpa…” I try to speak but he cuts me off.
“No child. I must tell you everything while I still can. Someone has to know what happened, even if no one will ever believe you or you believe me” he said wearily as he looked at the door like he was waiting for someone.
“I remember that day; oh I remember it too well. I had waffles for breakfast at Betsy’s. It was a diner down town; I went there for breakfast every day and I used to have the biggest crush on the waitress there” he said with a smile that brought youth back to his old and wrinkled face.
“Grandma?” I asked him.
“Oh no, I hadn’t met Jen yet. I met her…. Uhm Yeah, yeah I met her much later”
“What was her name?” I was curious since he would rarely talk about anyone from his younger years that wasn’t my grandmother.
“Her name was…. It was…. I don’t think I remember her name…” He looked sad and regretful at the moment, more than anyone I had ever seen.
“So what happened with this mystery waitress” I asked him.
“I dated her for a while after that day but….” He had the same sorrowful look on his face again.
“I’ll get to it later, but first I need to tell you about the man in black. No, no I need to warn you about him.” his trembled and I could notice a slight quiver on his lips.
“Warn me?”
He seemed to not notice my question but instead started to almost ramble about this man in black “He was dressed in all black; everything he wore was black from his hat to his boots even his aviator sunglasses were black. That shade of black was the darkest I’ve ever seen, at first glance it looks normal like nothing is out of the ordinary but it happens when he wants you to see and when you really look at him. Only then do you see the unnatural darkness in his clothes that is void of any color, it felt like you were staring into a black hole. And that damned grin on his face” for a moment I thought his veins would pop with all the hatred and anger that flushed over him. I had never seen him as angry or sad as the day he told me about the man in black.
“He sat down in my booth and called for the waitress” He seemed to be trying to recall her name in his head again but to no avail and the sorrow returned to his eyes.
“Coffee, black he told her and turned to me. ‘Who are you?’ I asked him.
Don’t you remember me Max? It’s me! He said to me like he was an old friend I had lost contact with. The waitress got him his coffee before he could answer me” I could hear the pain in his words; it really pained him to not remember her name.
“Thank you darling. He waited for her to leave before he spoke to me. Cheer up Maxy. What’s gotten you so down? The waitress I presume. The way he said it made my blood boil and somehow it made me hopeful for something. That was the thing about him, I felt uneasy, every fiber in my being screamed at me to leave but when he spoke or looked at me, all of that subsided and replaced with this abnormal sense of hope.
You never see him unless he wants you to and when you do notice him there is a brief moment when you’re disgusted by his presence but that moment doesn’t last.
Because as soon as he speaks the revulsion dissipates and he gets charismatic, like the most likable fellow in the world, a few sentences in and you will feel like you can trust him with your life. In a moment you are willing to give him the reins of your life and let him decide everything for you.
He spoke to me about old days; what he had done and where he had been. He spoke about them to me like I was there with him through it all. As if I was his friend from days of old.
And then he took off his sunglasses and grinned in a way that showed teeth that didn’t look human; hell it didn’t even look like animal teeth. There was something unhuman about him; I felt it the moment he came to me but I didn’t know it until I gazed into his eyes. They weren’t eyes at all; they were two voids in his skull. In those voids I saw what I most desired; I saw the life I could have with uh…. The waitress.
He told me I could have all of that and more and all I had to do was to get up, shake his hand and go home. He said that when I’m back at the dinar tomorrow she would talk to me…..
I didn’t have any real control at that moment and how could I? Oh Jessie, the life that I saw in his eyes…” He sighed deeply and continued “When I gazed into the abyss that were his eyes I lost all control within me so I did as he said; I shook his hand and left for home.
I’ve relived that day every night since; there was no way I would have declined his offer even if I can go back to that moment again, the second I look into his eyes it’s over.
Everything he said came true but in its own twisted form.
I went back to the dinar the next day and there she was as every other day; she was serving coffee and taking orders. I sat at the booth I always sit, I ordered the same order as I always do but nothing happened, at that moment I was sure that the events of the day before had been nothing but a fever dream but then she came to me.
It took me some time to notice it and I’m so ashamed of that.” He paused for a moment; his eyes drifted from mine to the window.
“A month or so later I…I finally saw it, I finally saw what she had become. She was cheerful as ever and she seemed the happiest person alive but her eyes they were…” my grandfather got into another coughing fit so I grabbed him more water. He hadn’t spoken this much in weeks. I was both worried about him and intrigued about this story.
He laid there quiet on his bed for a while before he spoke again.
“Her eyes, they were empty; empty of everything that made a human; empty of everything that made her, her. I started to notice weirder ticks about her. I won’t bore you with those details, the sun is almost setting and I still have much to tell you.
I left her soon after. I had to find the man in black and force him to take back what he had given me. For a year I traveled everywhere to look for him; I had spent every dollar I had to my name when I finally found him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
He came to me in the streets of Spain. I was ready to hit him the second I saw him. I was ready to strangle him. God I was even ready to kill him but like the first time as soon as he spoke all the rage I had evaporated.
Well what did you expect Maxy? You’ve been going to that dinar everyday ever since you moved to the city and yet she never noticed you. The real her would’ve never noticed you so I had to get creative.
‘That’s not her, that’s a husk of who she was’ I told him but he only grinned and showed me his inhuman teeth. What’s given cannot be taken back Maxy. The deal has already been made and the promise fulfilled. This time he shook my hand I’ll see you at the finish line Max. He said as he took his sunglasses off. This time I saw what was really inside the voids that were his eyes; I saw millions of souls inside them, all of them screaming in agony and I saw her there too….” Tears rolled down his eyes and that was the first time in my life I saw my grandfather cry…
“Was he…” I couldn’t believe what I was about to ask him “Was he the devil?”
“No, he is something much, much worse” He gazed out of the window; where the sun was setting softly before he continued.
“I knew that thing back at the dinar wasn’t her and I knew I had to do something about”
“Did…did you” he cut me off before I could finish and said.
“Yes I did, I couldn’t let that thing live. For a time I tried to convince myself that what I saw when he took his sunglasses off wasn’t real and for a time I believed that until one night when I went to her house.
Through the window I saw her sitting in the living room motionless and expressionless; her eyes were voids themselves. I had cursed her.
She wasn’t herself anymore and that bastard had done something horrible to her so I knew I what had to do.
He said we’d meet again at the finish line. I’m at the finish line Jessie and I can feel him, he’ll be here soon. Please for the rest of the night, no matter what you hear don’t come into this room. Lock the door to your room and stay there I beg of you, please”
He looked like a shell of himself then so I assured him I would do as he said.
“Good, good. Now please leave me I need to rest. Eat your dinner and go to your room and lock the door, remember to lock it good.”
I tried to listen to him, to do what he wanted but I just couldn’t get it off my mind. He was expecting this man in black to visit him tonight, and I didn’t want to believe this, he wasn’t expecting to make it through the night either. He had this sense of someone who had accepted his fate. Something was really off with him, I didn’t know if believed him or not. I mean it all probably seems to you like the ramblings of a dying man who had long lost his mind but some part of me back then believed him even if it might have been tiny little part but it was enough.
I stayed in the living room close to his bedroom. He wanted me to go to my room and lock the door but no I couldn’t do that so I sat there waiting. I certainly didn’t believe a man in black would show up but he seemed certain that that night would be his last.
He called out to me at 10 pm. He knew I wouldn’t listen so he scolded me for that; something he rarely ever did.
Around midnight I couldn’t take it anymore so I sneaked into his room and hid in the closet and fell asleep there despite my efforts not to.
It was 3 am when the man in black appeared.
I was awakened by the sound of my grandfather’s coughing fit, I instinctually tried to go and give him some water when I heard the footsteps from the door making its way to his bedside. I gasped and fell backwards, holding my breath I peeked through the closet door. And there he was the man in black just as grandfather had described him. I felt the same thing my grandfather felt when he first met him. For a moment I felt revolted by him but only for a moment.
He poured water into the cup on grandfather’s nightstand here you go Maxy. He sat by him and waited for grandfather to finish his water and the fit to calm down.
It’s been a while Max. How’s Roxane? I couldn’t see his face but the grin was visible. His voice is something I can never forget; it felt like it was crawling on my skin, the syllables and everything about it was wrong. This wasn’t the same man in black grandfather had met at the dinar all those years ago. The inhumanness in his voice suggested he wasn’t here to pretend to be an old friend; he was here to hunt a prey.
“Roxane” grandfather said sorrowfully with so much pain his tone.
You will be with her soon enough, although she never knew you did she?
“You bastard” grandfather said but the man in black only grinned like a predator.
“Just tell me one thing”
And what is that Max?
“I know you didn’t give me that curse for free. What did you take from me? WHAT?”
The man in black laughed the vilest laugh anyone could laugh and said Well Maxy I only took the world.
“What do you mean?”
Do you know why I came to you out of all the people in that dinar? Do you know why I told you to go home that day? Of course you don’t know because you don’t remember what you were supposed to do that day. You see Maxy, time is a delicate construct; the strings of fate are weaved intricately and delicately and with but a small push you can shape the future however you want.
You had an interview for a job that day; a job that if you got it would have led to a series of interconnected events that would have led to an outcome that I quite didn’t like.”
“Why? What do you gain from all of this?” my grandfather, his voice merely a whisper in the wind now, asked
“Why? That’s what you ask of me?” The man in black chuckled “I have travelled many worlds, dimensions and so on but have not encountered anything as strong or pungent as human souls, especially those in pain.”
“You feed on our souls….”
“Not that simple, your puny mind can’t comprehend what I am Maxy.”
“I… have …. condemned them all.”
“You still don’t get it Maxy, most will perish but some will survive. Your kind is too precious to let go extinct.” There was a predatory hunger in his voice “You will witness it with me Maxy. After all you’re the man who sold the world it’s only fitting you see the deal to its completion.”
He took off his glasses and leaned close to grandfather’s face. Silver white mist started to pour from grandfather’s eyes, nose and mouth.
The men in black’s eyes, that my grandfather called voids, were absorbing the mist. He was eating his soul.
I fell backwards into the closet, my hands around my knees. I was shaking back and forth and saying “this isn’t real” over and over again softly. I am not sure how long I stayed in that trance but I woke only when I heard his footsteps coming towards the closet. He kneeled down and said why you don’t come out here sweetheart so we can have us a chat. I yelled at him with all my might to leave, there was an umbrella in the closet with me. I grabbed it and charged out to attack him but he was gone except for a lingering laughter “we will meet again” and grandfather was laying there motionless.