The Descent to Madness Read Free

sprang up from where he’d sat frozen on the couch, spilling lukewarm Coors over his sock and cursing.
    “Wait!”
    He half-sprinted across the room, bashing his knee on the edge of the sofa, and hobbled down the stairs, sock squelching beer with every step. Out the door and into the storm he ran, before slowing to a halt halfway up the path. The boot of the Porsche Cayman slammed shut and a tall, suited man with an umbrella and immaculately gelled hair gave him a cheery salute before climbing into the driver’s seat. The engine fired up with a growl and the vehicle, and his girlfriend, disappeared into the storm.
    Stone stood in silence, staring after the receding red-lights, his tears invisible in the downpour. Orange sparks on the floor made him turn. Maciej stood in his doorway, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke from his freshly finished cigarette.
    “Chesh .”
    The door closed and Graeme Stone was left outside in the worsening storm , alone with his thoughts and his beer soaked sock. Lightning flashed and for an instant the windows of the factory opposite looked like a leering grin. A second later, the thunder rumbled, sounding for all the world like the mocking laughter of a spiteful god.
                 
    ***
     
    The face that stared back at him in the weak, fluorescent light of the bathroom looked double its twenty-five years. His sunken cheeks and poor complexion reflected his diet of Doritos and coffee. The dark circles under his eyes, the two years of early starts and late nights. His hair dusty and dry from working the press. The only thing missing was the thumbprint on his forehead. Or perhaps the word ‘Mug’ scrawled in permanent marker. Seven years, he’d been with her.
    Seven years.
    Granted, they’d been living at each other’s parents for the most part. Things had been great then , straight out of A-levels with hardly a care in the world. Trouble had only started when they’d got this place. Two years of soul-crushing boredom, giving up the writing he enjoyed for the factory floor - and for what? To be sat at home alone each night in the ridiculously cramped living room, his only friend the flashing green circle of his Xbox? And all the while she was off gallivanting of a night, with her friends from work. With Mark.
    A flash of anger surged through him at the thought and, in a moment of fury, he lashed out at his reflection, driving his fist hard into the mirror above the sink, which splintered into a spider’s web of fragments. With instant regret, he recoiled, clutching his mangled hand.
    “Fuck!”
    He looked down and blood was already welling up from a dozen cuts on his knuckles. He turned the cold tap on full blast and stuck his wounded hand into the flow, hissing through gritted teeth. His reflection in the cracked mirror looked pale, the blood drained from his features. He looked back down to check on his hand, the skin going numb from the intense cold.
    His reflection did not.
    Grabbing a flannel, he began to rub gently at the knuckles, making sure no glass fragments remained, as a prickling cold began to work its way up his spine, a cold that had nothing to do with the water and everything to do with creeping realisation. He slowly stopped scrubbing and simply stood, his mind unable to process what it thought it had witnessed.
    He quashed his ridiculous fear and looked up. His cracked reflection was staring back at him, same worn out face as ever; brown hair, green eyes, faint stubble. He looked left, then right. His reflection did the same. He let out with a great sigh the breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding – smiling with relief that it was only his tired mind playing tricks on him. His reflection gave him a reassuring wink as though in agreement with his thoughts.
    All in your head, Graeme. All in your head.
    Stone screamed.
     
    ***
     
    He ran, the deluge plastering his t-shirt to his bony torso, the thin, blue, Tesco own-brand jacket he was wearing no