He is in every way a grotesque, and if any person – even the most trusted – had related to me the traits of his personality and manner in a complete and truthful way I would likely dismiss them as nonsense, so very grotesque were they, like elements from a checklist of grotesquery so thorough that they have become almost parodic. He wanders the offices and corridors of our shared building like a giggling child, his oily greying hair glistening beneath the strip lights, his forehead a great tall beacon as smooth and white as a shell, and he gestures endlessly with nail-bitten fingers, towards equipment, people, paperwork and similar, gestures incomprehensibly. He sidles up and urges himself upon flanks and forearms and buttock-curves in ways so imperceptible that few, if any, perceive these urges, but they are there and I perceive them upon my own person and others. He inhales deeply the passing hair of the reception girl – whose firm perfectly bowed legs and profound shape filled her trousers as though the flesh itself yearned for release into waiting hands or mouths, the sinking between her two buttocks like the grassy declivity of a precious valley protected by government writ or other legislation, some site of specific interest – which is intensely fragrant with shampoo products and long and dark, an inhalation both creepy and idiotic in some balance; he revels in the heady incense and pictures beds creaking under their shared usage as she passes, and though she hears his sniff – his nose ever stuffy, unblown – like an aural marker of her passage (she moves so faintly: her shoes a whisper on the coarse mucky carpet! her tiny feet!) she either welcomes the purported harmlessness of his attentions as flattery or office good-humour or else presumes – and fairly – the sound to be symptomatic of some ailment or illness it would be insensitive or discriminatory or in bad taste of her to mention. He draws deeply through flaring nostrils and leans in slightly to the long dark hair, the intensely fragrant shampoo products, the firm perfectly bowed legs and profound shape etc., then groans aloud in reverie long after the clattering of her washed teacup has ceased and the girl has conscientiously returned to her post.
I once heard a preposterous story about my colleague and his past, a story suggesting innumerable facets of particular relevance to a dissection of his character, or what little character there was in evidence. The story related to his “collections”, myriad groupings of thematically linked items which were prevalent throughout his childhood and formative years and which took varied and differential forms each meticulously catalogued and stored. He collected anything, he said, it was within his personality, he couldn’t help himself. If he possessed even two of a thematically linked item he would begin collecting further exemplars of that item forthwith, until hundreds were in his possession. He collected rubbers, like most, figurines, pencils, stickers, egg boxes, bottle tops, dreams, also nails clippings (his own, finger and toe, the sum of some ten years clipping a good couple of centimetres deep and stored within a Ben Sherman tin that stank of feet), pirated VHS copies of banned videos (his collections reached a zenith in the mid 90s, when many horror or adult films now considered classics of the genre(s) had still not been granted release by the increasingly relaxed/culturally pliable BBFC; my colleague would respond to advertisements placed in the rear sections of underground publications, and then furtively receive printed lists on orange paper of the strange and wonderful films available to order, send postal orders to PO boxes, the incredible thrill of illegality, waiting for the letterbox to flap), hairs, almost used lipsticks (he inhaled the odour and was dizzy with lust), soiled underwear. His most unusual collection, however, was the focus of this story. According to the legend detailed at some length in the story as told – that had followed him in whispers for half a generation like a retarded youth – and that I had heard regarding my colleague’s most unusual collection, the items in question and of which there were between thirty and forty in number were what looked too all intent and purposes like pelts of some description, the attached fur or hair of varied colouring and the skin below still either slightly tacky from, one presumed, the freshness of the bloody flesh of its undercarriage or else dried and brittle and somewhat curled at its edges like the rind upon fried bacon rashers. The story made clear that these pelts were of human rather than animal origin and were in fact the scalps of children that my colleague had in some way accrued through unspecified means (perhaps through associates within the hospital portering service, student doctors, mortuary assistants and so on, if not through violent murder perpetrated by he himself). It was reported that he tended to this pelts with loving devotion, brushing and even styling the hair, carefully washing the clumps of blood and gore from them, storing them neatly rolled and fastened with lengths of ribbon of appropriate colouring for the shades in question, draping the pelts or scalps across the cupola of his own head like a ritualistic fancy dress, inhaling their varied and complex odours, tessellating them atop his pillow and sleeping against them. Although my colleague refused to indulge in details pertaining to these pelts and how they came to his possession, the story details how in his personal notebooks there were extensive and lifelike illustrations of between thirty and forty children, each adorned with what appeared to be “incision marks”, as well as gruesome and anatomically valid illustrations of the same children following the forcible removal of these pelts from their person(s). There is of course little if any evidence of these pelts today, or the incidents surrounding their origin; the story, however, persists, and beyond that is as credible (if not more so) than it has ever been, given the extensive catalogue of grotesque and socially anomalous traits and habits in which my colleague routinely engaged. Whilst a more patient person could investigate the veracity of this story in more depth, cross-referencing the claims and chronology with dead or missing children in the area at that time and the like, I do not consider this a necessary use of my time; the formal “truth” of the story is of little relevance, and as an allegory it remains especially potent and a more than sufficient indictment of my colleague’s character, should such an indictment be required. In the permanence of its legacy, fiction is often truer than truth, superseding the happened with the terror of possibility.
His ever moist palms are very warm and reek of flatus and their rank moisture and odour can be detected from several feet away in the relatively enclosed spaces of the office. On the thankfully rare but nonetheless real instances on which I have occasion to visit his personal office – archaically, small rooms and doorways rather than open plan spaces were the preferred format for this particular workplace – the smell was unbelievably repulsive, stagnant breath and captured flatus, and I caught sight of an eaten tub of barley or couscous or bulgur wheat salad in the wastepaper basket at the foot of his desk, crisp crumbs and streaked coffee cups also, and the olfactory cocktail made me woozy, pressed into awareness and higher function only by his happening voice. The tundra of his milky skin and beetroot lips was broken by feeble pointillist beard growth in troubled pinpricks, and as I listened to his instruction his face became a simple palette of the rain-soaked brush strokes and glooping oils of a moron, an entirely alien representation of some incomprehensible notion of human anatomy. I nodded at intervals throughout his soliloquy and left as soon as I could assume to be appropriate, expecting him to call me back or to admonish me, neither of which were the case. I gagged then swallowed a small amount of dreadful acid into and out of my mouth when I considered his hands, their digits, their singular stench.
After around six months of our working together my colleague was seriously injured in a car accident but a stone’s throw from our office. He was struck by a vehicle as he crossed the road and for reasons unknown the vehicle had failed to stop or assist him. I watched him struggling in the road as I approached the scene and thought about his hands and his gestures and the hair of reception girl, and I cycled past him as he lay sobbing at the edge of the roadway. He reached one hand out towards my wheels in a way that struck me as cinematic and pitiful. His pleas for assistance faded as I rode around the corner and towards my home.
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