There is someone I knew in my childhood who has a unique place in my mind. I don't remember his name now, but his face and especially the shape of his eyes are clearly etched in my mind. His house was located behind the school with a large garden, located right across from our family house where I was born and raised. The school had an old building with a gray roof, and his house was on the bottom floor of an old 3-storey building that was almost ruined. I don't remember anyone living on the upper floors. Now I don't think that building is still there because it looked so old that it only took a small storm to collapse. There were two streets between our houses and I would often see him playing games on the street. He was a tall, thin man with red hair and a beard. The white underwear he hung on the balcony of his house were now gray and tattered. His appearance was similar to the place where he was sitting, he looked so weak that he seemed that only a small wind was enough for he to collapse.

One evening, my mother had cooked a meal that my brother and I loved very much, and she asked us to take this wonderful dish, which we couldn't wait to eat, to that man, too. She told me to go with my brother, that the man looked spooky and that we should be careful because no one around knew anything about him. Despite these thoughts, it did not occur to me at that moment to question why she wanted us to bring him food. I must have seen it as a game and the food we would bring to the man as an "adventurous journey". Before starting the game, I told my brother that I was a little scared, but I was also very curious about the man's house. My brother felt the same way, we had to go back and eat before it got too late. We left the house and walked two streets south and stopped in front of the man's house and looked around, at the lights in the building and the entrance door of the building, which was slightly open. "Clean" clothes were again hanging on the balcony, a few headless mannequins, a rusty shopping cart, 3 kittens and some electronic scraps were standing in the junkyard-filled garden in front of the house. Then we started petting the cats as if we forgot why we were there, and at that moment we noticed that the door was open, the red and dusty light reflected from inside illuminated the outside, and the shadow of the huge bony body standing in front of the light falling all the way to the road...



December, 2023
 by Demon Ego