Scars

Scars
Charlie Schmidt


A hood covered his face. He believed it hid his scars, and he feared to reveal them to others. What he didn’t know is that the scars went much deeper than his skin, and would take more than a piece of clothing to hide. He saw the name engraved into his worn leather bag. Charles. Everything he knows, all bound by that one name. Everything he’d ever seen, tied together by those seven letters. He looked up and saw a woman sitting across from him, staring intently at her coat.

The train shook.

The woman across from him had a sort of beauty, Charles confirmed. It wasn’t a supermodel kind of beautiful, but more of a comforting, familiar kind of beauty, like an elusive memory just beyond the strands of reality, something he couldn’t quite place. He saw her pick up her coat, and slip something onto her finger. This struck him with a wave of emotion, the memory from before beginning to solidify in his mind. A slip, a splash, and then the pain, excruciating pain, burning itself into his life and eating it up from the inside. He felt the scars that stretched across his face, hidden by the hood. He could almost feel the pain again. He was barely 14 years old, an orphan, and he slipped into the fire. The doctors said he wouldn’t live. He left the hospital the next day, with only scars to show for his incident.

The train bumped for the second time, and the lights shut off. Everyone jumped up, and Charles heard a few screams. He felt the pain in his face, spread across his forehead. He pressed his fingers to his face and recoiled in disgust. His flesh felt cold and pallid, like gelatin. Disgusted, he removed his hood, for the visibility of his features was greatly diminished in the dark. The lights flickered back on. Charles quickly pulled the hood back over his face and looked about him. His eyes met those of the woman sitting across from him. She stared into his eyes, and he knew she had seen. He had been careless, and now the woman had seen. She stared further into the darkness of his hood, and he closed his eyes, breaking eye contact with the woman. He clenched his eyelids, stopping the tears before they came. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t fair. He rocked his head back and forth and soon fell into a nervous slumber. A memory filled his mind.

Charles was ten years old at the time. His father was gone at work, and his mother had died the night before. As the sun sunk and the stars came to view in the sky, he stood, shaking on the wood floor. Before him stood his small refrigerator. A pungent smell filled the air. His mother hadn’t just died, she was murdered. There were no suspects at the time. The only known fact was that her head was missing. As Charles stood before the fridge, he realized he failed to recall what had happened the night before, when his mother was killed. He remembered sitting in his living room, the lights off, darkness veiling the driveway outside. Then he remembered his father waking him up. What had happened in between he didn’t know. Charles gripped the fridge handle. He wiped his palm on his pants and took a deep breath. The door was pulled open, and the contents spilled out. A dark liquid stained the floor, but he was already unconscious.

Charles awoke to find the woman sitting across from him had moved. He looked about. No, he thought, she hasn’t moved. I have. This struck him funny, as he had never been one to move in his sleep. No. He must have been moved by someone else, perhaps the woman herself. She was looking at him again. He reached up for his hood but found it was gone. He looked up, searching for the sweatshirt. The woman still stared. It began to fill his heart with fear, fear of this woman, fear of what he had seen, and fear of what he hadn’t seen. Fear of where he had been the night his mother died.

The train shook again, and his eyes closed.

Charles was older this time. He was almost a teenager, and reading the paper had become a hobby of his. Usually it was trivial events, no more than wins and losses of the local sports teams. But today there was more. Not much happened in his quiet hometown, so a killing would always make the front page. As Charles read the article, he had the odd feeling that he didn’t know what he had done the previous night, similar to when his mother died. Like before, this was murder with no suspects. He smelled a faintly familiar odor, one that flooded his mind with memories. His mother, missing a head. The fridge, its contents unknown. And a feeling Charles had come to know well. Fear. Fear of the unknown. Charles glanced up. His fridge towered in the corner, like a beast about to strike. He dared not look inside. The next day, his father left, nowhere to be seen. He was there and then he wasn’t. Gone. Missing. Many thought he had left in grief, or in search of a new beginning, but Charles knew the real reason. His father had left because he was scared. He lived in fear of death. And everywhere he went, death seemed to hide behind the corner.

The train shook and woke Charles. It was dark outside. The train rumbled along the tracks. As he looked up, he realized the woman was gone. She was next to him now, and her eyes were closed. As he studied her, an even stronger sense of familiarity enveloped him. He was now almost sure he had known this woman. The woman stirred, and he looked away. His eye caught another man on the train. With a sense of apprehension, he realized he recognized that man too. And the man sitting next to him. His breathing was quicker now. He looked around the train car, and he recognized every face. He stood up. His palms were shaking. A growing sense of dread grew in the pit of his stomach as he saw a shadow rise next to his. He turned and saw the woman. Well, part of the woman. Her head was missing. Her fist came back and reared forward. Charles tasted blood. Then his vision went black.

January 3rd, 2001. A boy died walking home in the dark. Parts of him were missing, but he wasn’t found until a day later, as his mother was killed too.
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February 3rd, 2002. A 30-year-old woman was found hanging upside down from a tree, dead. Her eyes were still open.

March 3rd, 2003. A boy awaited his mother, lying on his bed. All that remained of him was his body. His head sat staring forward on his nightstand.

The killings continued, consecutively in every month, each death on the 3rd, all the way up to August 3rd, 2008, when a limp body was found dragging behind a train, most of its skin stripped away by the rough rocks. And after every death, Charles could not remember where he was the night before.

After the woman hit Charles, he dreamt one final dream. He was on a train, in fact, the very train his body resided in. There was no one else on the train. He got up, losing control of his body. It seemed to move with a mind of its own, walking up and down the train car, looking for something. Charles didn’t know what. Something caught his eye. A chandelier hung in the middle of the car, and Charles walked towards it. He wrapped his fingers around a sharp piece of the chandelier and pulled. The piece came loose. It felt heavy in his hands. Against Charles’ will, he walked towards the next train car and opened the door. Once he was in the other car, he kept walking, nearing the front of the train. Charles tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. His hands gripped the chandelier. He sped up.

Charles was now in the last train car before the engine. He gripped the chandelier even tighter as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. He reached the door leading into the front car. He saw the conductor inside. He opened the door and strode through the opening. He raised the hand gripping the chandelier and drove it straight through the base of the conductor’s spine. He made scarcely a sound. As he flipped him over, he glanced at the conductor’s watch. The date was September 3rd, 2009. High time for a killing. The chandelier was removed and used to cut the man’s chest open, starting at the belly button and following up to the base of the neck. Next, he removed the head and placed a burning piece of coal in the dead man’s mouth. He then placed the severed head on the chest and left the train car. He felt blood on his hands.

Charles opened his eyes. His hands were tied up, and he laid on the floor of the car. He saw blood on his hands. Across the train, he saw the head of the conductor. He had killed a man. Not in a dream, but real life. He tried to lean over, but his head was forced straight by the woman he had seen in the train car. He threw up and choked on his own vomit. He was pulled up and saw blood on the floor. He was forced forwards by unseen hands behind him. The door opened. More people above him grabbed his hands and dragged his limp body on top of the train. More hands pushed him forward until he staggered to the end of the train. A voice sounded behind him.

“You’re dead, son.”

He turned around and saw the woman.

“I’m not your son,” Charles uttered in disgust as he saw the woman before him transform into a monster, her head held on by mere strands of skin. In horror, be realized all the passengers behind her were doing the same. His scars burned. He felt his face and recoiled in disgust as the tender skin melted underneath his fingers. He pulled his hands away. Blood covered his fingers. The pain in his scars was now excruciating. He heard the woman speak.

“You are dead! You always have been!”

A final memory revealed itself to Charles in detail, there on the train. He was 14. He slipped and fell into the fire. He thought he had survived. He hadn’t. The woman spoke again.

“Don’t you remember me?”

Charles shook his head, and stepped backward, away from the crowd. Blood scattered along the train.

“Why you were the very one to kill me, Charles. Don’t you remember your victims?” The woman gestured to the gruesome crowd behind her.

With horror, Charles realized he recognized all the faces from the paper he had so curiously read every morning. He had killed them.

The woman stepped closer. He felt her hands on his shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. His mother’s eyes. She shoved him, and he lost his balance but didn’t fight to regain it. He lost his footing and fell off the train.

Charles was ten years old. His mother had died the night before. He stood before the fridge and opened it. His mother’s bloody head tumbled out. Charles suddenly remembered where he had been that night.

Charles hit the tracks, but he was already dead.