The Ruined Man by Juliet Goulet

The Ruined Man by Juliet Goulet

The ruined man stalked my nightmares, but he had never ventured into my daydreams until today.

It would be today, of all days. I had avoided checking my calendar all week, knowing that this date was about to pop up like mother’s prize-winning marigolds.

The same marigolds that she had planted over father’s grave, twelve years ago today.

In my nightmares, the ruined man liked to chase me through the halls of his home. He would command them to bend over me, to squeeze me into a small, insignificant thing. Sometimes his stairs would fall away, and I would end up in his boiler room, feeling my flesh start to melt and drip off of me like wax from a candle.

But I wasn’t sure what he would do in my daydreams.

I had only let my mind wander for a moment. I had held it on such a tight leash all day, and it had been clamoring to run wild for a second, just a second. Drinking my afternoon coffee in the park by my apartment seemed a near-perfect opportunity to let it loose. But when I exhaled and released it, it darted off and I’d soon lost track of it amidst swirling thoughts about work, my neighbors, the cute barista I had seen that morning. And, when it came back to me, it came back with the ruined man in tow.

I hardly recognized him at first, this man who had dogged my nights for so long. His hulking body was partially hidden behind the park’s fountain while his red baseball hat covered most of his misshapen face.

But then I smelled him. Always acrid, always burnt. I had never smelled such a thing before I’d met the ruined man, and it soured the coffee on my tongue, set my heart thumping in the cavity of my chest.

He took a shuffling step forward.

A squirrel ran across my foot and I startled, shooing the thing away with a bit too much gusto. When I looked back, the ruined man was gone, my daydream mercifully ended.

I locked my mind back up, pressed it between calloused fingers until it stopped shaking. I dropped my still-full coffee into the trash and headed home, the smell of the ruined man stalking each step.

That night, I lit every candle I owned and threw open each window my tiny brownstone afforded me.

But I couldn’t get his stench out from my nose, where it had curled up and laid residence.

A chill ran through me, and I suddenly had the urge to light the furnace, thinking perhaps it would keep out the draft. The heaving beast slumbered in the basement, it only needed me to stoke it.

I turned towards the basement door, reached my hand out towards the brass knob.

Only…

Only I lived in an apartment. And I had no basement.

Shhh…don’t tell anyone, okay? It’ll be our little secret, down here.

I cried out, was it a memory? Or a ghost? But my hand latched on to the doorknob and even though I knew what I would find, I twisted it. Kept twisted and twisting until the basement steps opened up in front of me, spiralling down into the dark.

Where the ruined man waited.

Come on, Delilah. Come down.

He had a nice voice, once. The memory of it floated through my mind. But now — warped, burnt, scratched. His voice sounded like fire itself, and I had to follow his smoke.

Don’t forget, that bottom step creaks.

I skipped over it.

The furnace was already running when I hit the concrete floor, a flickering orange light to guide me. It was warm, and felt like home, even amidst the unfinished basement rock.

I’ve missed you.

I spun towards the voice behind me, and there he was. The ruined man.

Impossibly large, his once inviting face was warped by burn scars that clung to his entire left side. His ear was melted, his eyebrows and hair gone. His sinister smile remained though, cracked and bloody lips opening wide to show two rows of blackened teeth. A hammer was partially lodged into his skull, balancing there as if by magic. And all the while, a single blue eye peered down at me.

“You’re not real,” I whispered, backing up slightly until the fiery heat of the furnace nipped at my legs.

Don’t be afraid of the monster you created, Deli.

He lunged towards me, and I was a twelve-year-old girl again, trapped in the basement, broken but never quite alone. I saw myself hit him with the hammer. Then, flames licking his prone body as both the furnace and I vomited ourselves onto the ground.

Now, his hands found purchase around my throat, his skin flaking off onto mine as he raged over me.

The last thing I saw was his ruined face. The portrait of my own making, snarling and crying. I wished for the furnace to save me, one last time, from this ruined man.

I blinked.

I was back in the park, and the steam from my coffee had yet to dissipate.

A daydream. It had all been…a daydream.

I stood, abandoning my coffee cup on the bench in my haste to return home, where I was nearly certain there’d be no basements or furnaces.

Excuse me, Miss?

“Yes?” I said, turning my gaze to meet a single blue eye peering down at me from underneath a baseball hat.

Don’t forget your coffee.

—