The Cleansing

"Artists corner. Here you can post your stupid little peices of prose that nobody cares about, or if you're feeling adventerous, you can actually comment on them at the risk of being burned down by the all too conscious creator!" - what fun, I think I may post a short story I wrote!

The Cleansing
He was looking through the dusty window with the air of someone who wished to feel superior, much like a peasant would look upon his kind, or a knight among his, trying to climb the social ladder and, with time, overthrow the king.

It wasn't for lack of trying, he thought amusedly. He had stood on many people's heads, on acquaintances, friends and plenty of others to try and climb that ladder. He wanted to be above what was going on outside below in the streets of London, busier than ever. Above the seething mass of people jostling this way and that, as a whole, looking like some sort of unhindered growth that spread slowly through the square, seeping through back alleys and crawling along streets with the patter of many worn feet upon the concrete.

If one were to look closer, they would see many harried individuals all performing some urgent task, as was betrayed by their sharp looking, 'talk to me not' expressions. They dodged this way and that among the crowd in a near comical looking dance, a cursory turn here, a strafe there, and the occasional half-spin that looked very much insane and unnecessary, but a requirement if one were not to be trampled upon.

Today was going to be no different, he thought. He sighed, resigned to the task before him, and picked up his case, the leather feeling cold on his palm, and left his apartment and was soon outside in the mild weather. The route was a well worn one in his mind and clear as crystal. He was to take the underground to his offices, and from there, stand on some more heads, shake a few hands, and hopefully climb the ladder a little more. Sure, it didn't make him the most popular man on the planet, but who was he to give a damn?

The glare scraped against his eyes as he squinted up at the sun, which carved a ghost of itself into his eyes in moments. He looked away suddenly, slightly confused. He shook his head and continued down the road, an blueish orb of light superimposing on his gaze for a while down the street. He bumped rather hard against a few people as he meandered along, still a little dazzled. The people were jostling along with definitive goals as always, like zombies, and were too busy to really stop and begin shouting at some insignificant figure - no, an important character, he told himself - passing by, probably just as busy as them. Mutual waste of time. Pointless.

He hurried along, but now taking more care not to crash into random people. He had relied on Maxwellian tactics to get to the point he was at today. He stopped, feeling smug about how well he did for himself, when he thought about all those incidents. As he did this, the eerie ball finally faded away, and he snapped out of his little daze, continuing unimpeded down the stairs to the underground.

He trotted down the stairs, the light gradually becoming more artificial, more...plastic-like, he supposed, as he descended further. A feeling of deja vu overcame him as he continued into the depths. It reminded him of a time, quite some time ago now, he remembered. It had been a day quite like this. Some years ago...

"We can't have this! There's no way you are going to get away with this any longer," the bulky, suited man was telling him. His face was an alarming shade of red adorned by a vein which throbbed in his temple. As he spoke, he spat at him - intentional or not, he couldn't tell - brandishing several sheets of paper in front of him with unnecessary force, crumpling each one with his fist as he continued shouting. All of them were detailing his work hours and his productivity output in excruciating detail. The figures were dubiously low.

"Yes sir," he said meekly. He hated doing this. He didn't like the responses he had to make if he was going to play this one out – the prospect of which was becoming ever more dimmer as each second passed – or the way his rejoinders invariably began with a sarcastic tone, only to fall moments later into more shouting and near incoherent complaints. There was no way he could continue to stay in this office and keep his cool façade for much longer.
How did this...baboon think he could get away with shouting in his face like that? He was a businessman! And not just any businessman. It wasn't the first time he had a run-in with this man. He was inconveniently sharp, aware he was not working as he should and, to a point, that some backhand 'deals' were going on his midst. It was just a sorry situation that this man was his boss with the capability to fire him – which he had been trying to find a reason to do for the past year. It had led to many hostilities, but this was truly the largest yet.

He listened to another cuss-riddled sentence and felt something inside him go tight. This couldn't go on any longer. He'd had to fend off this man for so long he probably couldn't keep it up for much longer. The amount of times he had broken a deal or stopped him from grabbing that next station of power had come thick and fast. So that was that. He knew plenty of connections that would sort him out, for sure. He wasn't going to last more than ten minutes after he had left this room, he'd make sure of it.

What's more, he thought, this entire room was not for someone of his calibre. The lights were murky, the desk fan looked like it had seen better days. It did, indeed, feel like the underground. It wasn't good enough for him. He could do better.

"Well?" the man was demanding angrily.
"Well what?"
"What? What the hell? I may be the only one in this company that knows what you've done, what you're up to, and there's no way you're going to last another moment! Not an- what, where are you going? Turn around, I'm not finished you idiot!"

He turned around, the cool mask cracking and melting in the red-hot rage that boiled up inside him. All his self-control and calm consciousness gave way to a raging torrent, his face contorting in a look of sheer anger. The man was struck dumb, seeing the inhuman sight before him.

He scared even himself for a moment as he caught sight of it in the mirror. He wasn't usually like that, was he? “Yes, you are”, a grimy voice told him in his mind. “What, you're going to take this?” it said with a leer.

It didn't last for another second. He advanced upon him threateningly – a sudden crash and screaming marked the entrance of security, the rest a blur. He found himself and his calm collectedness out on the street, case and all thrown out after him. A week later, he was reading the newspaper. His boss had been found dead in his own home. Nobody noticed how unsurprised he was when they told him this information. He'd rung up a few people, pulled some strings. He'd killed the guy that thought he had the power to cross him.

It had gone downhill from there. Fast-forward ten years, roughly, to now - and he was a well known mobster in his eyes, and to an extent (though not so much as he would fancy), he was. After that first time, he'd never looked back. It was easy to kill when you weren't the one getting your hands dirty. His conscience had been successfully eradicated from himself. On occasion, he'd get a funny pang - he killed someone over such a stupid thing... But it stopped easily. Nip it in the bud, that's the way.

He stopped. All those years of being a slippery being had taught him something - he had a sixth sense, he liked to think of it. Something wasn't quite perfectly right here. He couldn't place it... it seemed to be a whole range of things. The entire morning. A twinge. It was like leaving a room then coming back to something slightly out a position – just that.

He took the final steps down the stairs in a guarded manner.

The gritty looking tiles met him with a tired air. They felt like they were about to give way to some abyss below him, submissing to his weight exhaustedly and with a slight protest from his feet. He began to thought about the day ahead of him. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too bad. He'd been lucky to get the job, he thought bemusedly, after the bad comments from his former employers. He wondered ruefully if that was why grabbing power had become so hard. Nobody wanted to really work with a well known 'dodgy guy', a title he had unwittingly acquired while making the first few contacts in his new location. They had been a bit touch-and-go, but all of them had turned out sour, stopping him from getting established as easy as he would've hoped.

These thoughts were pushed from his mind. Hundreds, thousands of people were all sitting down in various positions along the sides. The building seemed to be larger than usual. Probably the result of all the people being here, he guessed. They all looked run-down and weary, and he thought stupidly if there was an air raid going on. He hadn't heard it. Something wasn't right now, definitely. What if - he snapped out of this chain of thought and came back to the present time with a crunch. He felt like he was being choked, clawing vainly at his throat and falling to the ground.

As fast it had appeared, it stopped. He got up and composed himself a few moments later, conscientiously feeling his neck. A thought struck him and he glanced left and right; had anyone seen his break in character? It had flitted past so suddenly, he wasn't sure if it had even happened.

It appeared they hadn't. He began to walk towards the trains, slightly unnerved. The tramps, bums, whatever they were, were whispering furtively. Their voices overlayed his thoughts like a suffocating layer of smoke, growing in intensity in waves, ebbing in, reaching an almost screeching point, then just as suddenly subsiding again. This repeated several times, unintelligible words being passed around with speed, conversations casually tangling and cutting through each other. One conversation was not important, but as a whole, it sounded like the inside of any underground. Just slightly more...pointed, he reasoned.

Before he knew it, the whispers had grown to shouting, screaming, and with a particularly new feeling to him - a feeling of helplessness - he fell to the floor clutching his head, trying to scratch the voices out of his ears. They were inside him! They were gutting out all of his feelings, they had no mercy, the smoke was truly strangling him, his mind screaming helplessly as it was throttled by an unseen force. He turned to look at one of the tramps, trying to convey a message of help with his eyes, his mind. He shouted with all his will. "I'm dying!". His body was shaking. He wasn't accustomed to being put into situations so suddenly. Usually he would plan, have escape routes. Not this time. Everything was descending on him like a pack of starved vultures, all at once, violently battering him and his will to live.

"Oh, no you're not," the tramp responded, a grin playing around his features like a serpent, sliding this way and that.

The voices shattered like glass, bouncing off the tiles and settling in unison. With the absence of any noise, a sudden silence rushed through the entire station. Everyone was looking at him. He could hear his own heart beating, the thumps echoing slowly, like the slow march of an army. It was like a switch suddenly clicked - thoughts began to run in flurries through his mind, discarding several possibilities while heaping on many more - how was he getting out of this? What could he do? Who? Why? But...suddenly, they all ceased. A realization struck him, silence back once more. The tramp had answered him. He hadn't spoke.

"What are these voices?" he gabbled. "Who, wh-"
"Don't you understand?" he said, grinning even more widely. "You're already dead."

The silence continued. A howling wind glided past outside the station, screaming. It was echoing his mind.

"The voices? Dead?"
"The voices are the others. We all know you've been a very bad, bad man."

A disgusting, sordid sliding noise crawled through the station. It was the sound of everyone's head turning in unison, everyone blinking. They were all grinning now, grinning at him ravenously, yellowing teeth revealed in differing states of decay.
He continued. "Oh, yes. We do. Those voices you hear... are your predecessors. They've been here too."
"Predecessors?"
"Yes," he said. "Your predecessors". His eyes were sweeping over his body quickly, the grin one of close insanity. He could tell that somehow, he was driving the tramp mad, just by being there, kneeling on the floor as he was.

"All you liars, cheats, whores, thieves, spies, murderers... But you know the saying, don't you? 'What comes around, goes around'? I believe you're well acquainted with it," he said, grinning even wider. "Look at us," he gestured at the people sitting up and down the station. The silence still gripped the place like a slimy spectre, its cold grip slowly wringing all life out.

"Look at us," they muttered slowly. "Look at us". They echoed the man's speech grimly, with a distinct drone.

He looked, and recoiled in shock, falling into the arms of one of the tramps. But they weren't tramps. All of them had scarred faces, yellowing teeth, and their eyes - they looked so blank, so dull. And yet, there were seeing deeper, below his layers of carefully built lies, delusions, punching a hole through him and gorging upon his insides... Suddenly, he understood. He understood where he was, what he had done, what was going to happen.

But it was too late. He was here. A chant began. "Take, take, take, take", they all said slowly. "Take, take, take," they continued. Slowly, they began to draw in, their faces coming closer, his arms being pinned back by another. He could feel the breath on the back of his neck, disgustingly coiling itself around him like a filthy entity, infesting, complicating, forcing. The weight of everything hit him. Everything he'd ever..

"..done", said the tramp. "Oh, yes. We know. We know."

FIN

Yes, I already know that the character himself is like a vortex, sucking up all coherence and making plot holes everywhere; but this was a homework assignment and I was already over the word count and it had to be a "ghost story" of some sort. Case in point: skinned apples.