Street Magician

A man wakes up on the floor, a floor that is covered in a pattern unfamiliar to the man, the apartment does not belong to this man, it is not his home. He gets up from the floor and begins scanning his surroundings with his sight; He is inside a living room. A Television set stands at its center, in front of the set there are two small sized couches, a coffee table, beside them stands a large brown leather sofa, and fancy rags adorn the room’s walls. The man begins to wonder how he had gotten inside this apartment.

A strong smell of iron invades the man’s nostrils, it is a terrible yet familiar scent, and he begins roaming around the rooms until he finds the source of the scorching odor. A bedroom with a single king-sized bed on top of which lays a lifeless body of a man riddled with holes and covered in blood, blood also covering the walls and on the ceiling, a text is written in blood, “I’ve got you… Ha Ha Ha”

The man clearly shocked by the sight he’s beholding upon, soon enough his shock turns to anger and he clutches his head between his arms and begins yelling, “No, no, no… Not again! No! No! No! Not again! No! No! No…”

The man lets his anger overcome his sense and he begins throwing around furniture, slamming it into the walls. By the end of his tantrum the apartment looks like a tornado has been inside it. The man then reaches a mirror and begins washing his face; he splashes some water on his face and looks at the mirror observing his reflection, much to his surprise the reflection begins changing its appearance; it gains a satisfied smile, its hair is slicked back unlike the man’s messy wild hair. Upon seeing the changes in his reflection the man yells at the mirror, “Leave me alone! You’re not real!”

The man’s reflection yells back at him, “I’m as real as it gets, brother, there is no more real than that!”

The man feels like throwing up but manages to stop his gagging reflex, he lowers his head and says to himself, “Just calm down, it’s all fake, nothing here’s real… all’s good, and just relax.”

The man’s reflection begins laughing hysterically, “Are you kidding me? You are me and I am you, and on top of that, I’m also your bloody brother!”

The man yells back while punching the glass the mirror is made up of, “I don’t have a brother, I never had one! Shut the hell up!”

The reflections smile widens to almost unnatural proportions and it calls out, “Oh yeah? Have you forgotten so quickly what our parents had told you? Let me refresh your memory, they said you, we… we were born twins, one living one dead with the placenta still wrapped around his cold body, and you became traumatized, you’ve gotten fucked over but your own grief and self loathing, you became stuck with me…”

The man keeps punching the mirror until it breaks whilst yelling, “You are not real, you’re just in my head, that’s all there is to you! Right now I’m going to make you disappear…” The man pulls out a bottle of pills from his pocket and is about to swallow a pill when the reflection stops him with its words;

“How do you think you’ve gotten here? Huh? Aodhan O’Cathain, do you really think you could’ve left so many holes in that man’s body? No… you could not, you can’t even hurt a bloody fly. I unlike you can and did.”

Aodhan fell to his knees and began crying when suddenly he heard the sound of the door lock being twisted, the reflection told Aodhan he better leave the apartment before its owner sees him and a loud woman’s scream came from the living room, Aodhan got to his feet, opened up the bathroom window and decided to make the jump. Hearing Aodhan’s landing the woman rushed to the bathroom only to see a man in a hoody running underneath her house.

Aodhan reached his so called home, it’s an abandoned building and Aodhan has been living there ever since his darker side started showing signs of life a few years ago. Even though Aodhan was a homeless man, he made a few pence here and there by performing as a street magician. Aodhan set in his usual corner and began rethinking about what was going on with him, he began laughing, he laughed so hard he couldn’t stop himself at which point another kid residing in the building with his mother approached him and asked, “Mr. O’Cathain, is everything alright?”

Aodhan stopped laughing and exclaimed pleasantly, “Mr. O’Cathain is kind of busy right now, I guess you should be able to settle for Mr. Abel for the while.”

Two hours after Aodhan had made his return to the abandoned building a massage was announced through Belfast’s PA system, “Dear residents of Belfast, I am glad to inform you that you all will be participating in a social experiment, like it or not. I have here with me twelve homeless people, they are at the bottom of their social ladder, nobody cares about them, they don’t even care about themselves, and I’m not going to mention my own lack of care for them.”

The local police immediately began looking for the source of the tape while the massage kept on going, “I am planning to make a human soup soon, if you do not find me and apprehend me until midnight, one of them will burn every ten minutes and just so you believe me, Come here, boy…” The man yelled, “Come here!” and then again spoke in his softer demeanor, “Go on child, tell them what will happen if they don’t stop me in time”

A child’s voice could be heard in the PA system, “He will kill u…”

Aodhan’s voice could be heard again, “That’s enough, get back to your mother, kiddo. By the way, the name is Aodhan Abel, that is A o d h a n A b e l… Good luck ladies and gentlemen!”

The chief police officer of Belfast ordered the city’s police forces to find the source of the message and also let out a message of his own through the same PA system calling out to the residents of Belfast, “As the man in charge of this city’s police force I am not willing to let any resident of our great city get hurt. so please, get back to your houses safely and don’t panic, the city is entering an emergency state, I repeat the city is entering an emergency state, however, I ask all of you to remain calm and collected.”

Belfast’s police force began looking for Aodhan Abel without any success, they could not find his location nor any kind of information regarding his identity, soon enough they assumed he is probably using a pseudonym to remain hidden and gave up trying to find any personal information regarding Aodhan.

The Big Ben began ringing for midnight, the police force ran out of time, they froze for a moment but then kept on looking for Aodhan. All the screens citywide began displaying a picture of a darkly lit room, with a man dressed in a tuxedo and a mask to his face at its center. The mask the man was wearing was made out of plastic, it was painted white and had two large black rings around the openings it had for eyes, also there was a wide grotesque Glasgow smile printed on it. The man grabbed his head between his two hands and began crying in Aodhan’s voice, “I knew this would happen… Just like it happened in Scotland a few years ago, five kids were murdered but the local authorities blamed it on accidents and romantic stupidity… No, there were no accidents, I know who did it, I’ve met the lady.” The man turned around from the camera dropping his hands to his waist and said, “Well, you’ve another ten minutes to find me wherever I may before the first victim bites the dust. Every ten minutes I will transmit someone becoming fried pork, good luck lads.”

The screens went back to transmitting the content they were transmitting before Aodhan’s pirate transmission. The police began losing their hope but they kept on looking, ten minutes later, Aodhan was still not found and the screens around Belfast again changed their content to Aodhan’s location. He stood there, pointing at his watch with his fingers, “That’s a shame; you didn’t find me on time… Ha ha ha ha ha ha… Well you still can save eleven people, that’s something too, isn’t it? Now if you’ll excuse me I have a bird to fry.” Said Aodhan as he was waving a flamethrower in front of his camera.

Aodhan aimed his weapon at something unseen to the eye of the camera and pleading screams could be heard coming from that same direction, “No… please… I beg you… no… don’t do it, don’t do it… please no… ahhh…..”

Before the person could finish his sentence, he was set on fire and his pleading screams were replaced by screams of pain and hysterical laughter. After a few moments of unseen carnage, Aodhan stopped and turned at the camera again, he said, “Well see you in ten minutes, lads, actually make that nine…”

The transmission went off again.

For the next fifty minutes, the police forces could not find any traces of Mr. Abel, and every ten minutes footage of him gleefully burning a human being was transmitted to Belfast’s screens.

During the transmission of the sixth video a female police officer came across a man in a tuxedo and a blank white featureless mask, she approached him silently from behind and tapped with her handgun on his head, “Identify yourself” she said calmly.

The man took a step forward and turned around to face the police officer while kneeling to her saying, “I used to work for Mr. A but he’s crazy!” The man rose to his feet and continued, “He speaks to himself as if talking to someone else while there is no one else in sight, so I thought I might help you find him… You know, before his madness gets to me too”

The police officer approached the masked man and asked, “How can I trust you this is not some kind of trap? Huh?”

The man raised his hands in the sky and said, “Well you can’t know for sure, but you can give it a try”

The police officer took a step towards him and said, “Fine, lead me to this maniac, but your hands are where I can see them, up…”

“That’s fair enough…” said the man and started walking, leading her into a dark alleyway where there was a wooden door on one of the walls. “Here…” exclaimed the man and the police officer made him open the door, once his hand was on the doorknob he made a sharp turn towards her and knocked the gun out of her hands. The man then pushed the police officer on the wall at the opposite side of the alleyway.

“Well my dear, you’ve found me!”

The police officer’s eyes widened, “you…”

“Mr. Abel in the flesh!”

The officer’s eyes grew even wider, “if you’re here… how are you on the screens too?”

“How does television work, my darling?”

“They’re dead… It’s prerecorded, you’ve murdered them…” The officer’s voice was a mix of sorrow and anger.

“Smart one, aren’t you, missy? Well how’s that for a common street magician? I fooled you all!”

“What now, will you kill me now too?” called out the officer

“He should be any moment now” muttered to himself Mr. Abel while he was looking at his watch, “Do you know why I’ve picked you? It’s because you’re smart and I’m not stupid and because you see me every day before going to work and after returning from work, because you know everything about me. You know what my face looks like” Mr. Abel pulled out a knife and pressed it against the officer’s neck, he turned her head to face him and kept on going “look at me when I’m talking to you… oh and by the way, I’ve already killed the driver so there’s no point in killing you, madam.”

“Which driver?”

“This one…” answered Mr. Abel as two large lights flooded into the dark alleyway lighting it’s dark features. A car came racing into the Alleyway, Mr. Abel jumped to its other side avoiding the car but the officer was not quick enough to react and she found herself in a painful contact with the metallic roof of the car. By the time the officer noticed what was going on she was not on the ground anymore, she was in mid air and after a moment, she fell on the ground. The impact she made with the ground hurt her even more than her collision with the cars metallic body, she slowly began losing her sight and the last thing she saw was Mr. Abel’s back as he is taking off his mask and throwing out a body out of the car only to take its place inside.

Mr. Abel made himself comfortable in the car and began driving, some time into his ride his reflection changed into the depressed and broken appearance of Aodhan O’Cathain. Mr. Abel noticed it and called out to himself, “Oh Brother, soon it’ll be over hahahaha” after doing so his reflection changed back to its current maniacal energetic form. As he’s driving Mr. Abel opened up the glove compartment to find a gun resting inside, “Hmmm lovely…” he thought to himself, he tried loading the gun only to find it was fully loaded and so Mr. Abel opened up a window, crawled half way out of the car and began shooting into the air as he laughs uncontrollably.

Mr. Abel kept on driving until he reached a private clinic named Kingsbridge clinic, he stopped his car and went to its trunk. From the trunk he pulled out a black biker’s helmet with a large smile printed onto it; he put on the helmet and pulled out a baseball bet signed “D. Angel” and a glove shaped electric shocker, “Oh I love classics!” he exclaimed as he closed the trunk. Mr. Abel entered the clinic and called out, “Do not worry good people, you’ve nothing to fear, I just came in to grab something and leave as long as you don’t bo…”

Before Mr. Abel could finish his sentence three guards came running at him with their batons, Mr. Abel dodged all of their swings, hit one of the guards with his bat and stunned the other with his glove. The third guard managed to land a hit on Mr. Abel’s abdomen to which he called out from a crouched position, “Oh… you got me there good, mate” The guard was about to hit Mr. Abel once more but Mr. Abel grabbed him by the neck with his glove, electrocuting him. The guard fell down to the ground, his body spasming from the electricity and Mr. Abel ran his hand over his helmet and looked at one of the nurses watching the whole ordeal, asking, “Do you smell something burning here too? Hahahaha”

Mr. Abel grabbed his baseball bat and began searching the clinic halls for something, when he reached his destination he shoved the door open, only to find a young doctor sleeping inside, he tip-toed to a touch’s distance from the doctor and then whispered, “Sweet dreams” before touching the doctor’s shoulder with his glove. After doing so, Mr. Abel put the doctor over his shoulder and began walking out reminding any one in sight it’s pointless to inform the police and they are already on the look for him. As he was leaving, the medical stuff of the clinic just watched him go, helplessly, unable to do anything to stop him.

The young doctor opened his eyes but could not see a thing because there was something covering his face, he tried to move but found himself unable to, as he was tied to a chair. He tried to get up, but all he managed to do was to fall flat on his face. Mr. Abel heard the thud the fall had caused and approached the fallen doctor. A cold liquid began flooding the doctor’s face that began chocking because of the water, once the garbled sounds he made became clear to Mr. Abel; the letter stopped pouring water on the doctor’s head. “Oh I’m sorry; I forgot you could drown a man by putting a sack over his head and pouring water on him”. Mr. Abel pulled the sack off of the doctors head and revealed to him a shirtless man covered in tattoos wearing a black and white paper clown mask.

The doctor began shouting while trying to collect his breath, “Who the fuck are you? What do you want from me… let me go, you’ve no idea who you’re messing with”

Mr. Abel pulled off his mask and threw it on the floor, he then picked the doctor’s chair up and turned it in the direction of a table full of various tools, after doing so, and he went to the table and took a bat from it. He came back to the doctor’s chair and said, “You are Doctor John O’Dwayr, Oncologist… and now you’re a part of my social experiment, get it? I want to see how much the folk of good ol’ Belfast cares about a person based on their social standing.”

John interrupted, yelling, “And what it has to do with me, you freak?”

Mr. Abel began walking closer to the doctor as he holds the bat with both of his hands, he looked down upon him and asked, “Why is every so impolite lately?”

John’s pupils dilated and he began stuttering, “P… p… P… lease… Don… don… Do…n’t… Hu… Hurt me…”

Mr. Abel raised the bat and brought it down upon the doctor’s chest, the blow was so powerful the doctor fell backwards and Mr. Abel kept striking at him, laughing louder with each blow, after a few blows it sounded like he had lost control completely. Mr. Abel stopped hitting the doctor and took a moment to enjoy the beaten doctor’s moans and groans of agony, then he pulled the doctor up by his shirt and said, “Oh, you’re gonna love my toys!”

Mr. Abel began walking to the table again and John called out weakly, due to the pain surging through his body, “No… no… please no… I’ll do anything you want, just don’t kill me, please stop…”

Mr. Abel came back to John with a vices in his hand and began laughing, “Look at you; a few broken ribs and you can’t even speak anymore… Hahahaha… God… Fear not death, they will find you, and rescue you… hahaha, a man of high status, a doctor, they’ll do anything to find ya… I’m not really planning to kill you, or am I? You can’t know for sure, what you can know, however, is that now we’re going to play The Dentist and the Dental patient, now open wide!”

Mr. Abel grabbed John by the jaw and pressed on his jaw muscles forcing his mouth open, he then shoved the vices into the doctor’s mouth and closed the tool tight around one of the teeth, “Are you ready? That’s going to hurt, a lot!” he exclaimed before pulling out the vices from inside of John’s mouth along with a molar tooth. The doctor screamed at the top of his lungs and the outburst splashed Mr. Abel’s face with a few drops of blood. Mr. Abel smiled inspected the tooth and called out, “Oh what a perfect molar we have here, sir…”

Mr. Abel grabbed John’s face again, this time he was faced with greater resistance however; he straightened the doctor’s face and repeated his procedure, yanking out another tooth while yelling out in joy, “Bingo! Ha ha ha ha ha ha” John screamed even louder and began losing feeling in his face due to the pain.

John spat some blood in Mr. Abel’s face and yelled out at him, “Go fuck yourself, you fucking Sadist”

Mr. Abel faked a frown and walked to the table again, he picked up his shocker glove and wore it on his hand, “Now, to my favorite toy!” called out Mr. Abel before going back to John and grabbing him with the glove. The electric shock surged through John’s body making his muscles spasm uncontrollably, it was so bad the doctor could not even utter a sound and he began foaming at his mouth. Mr. Abel smiled widely, called out, “It looks so fun, let’s try this time together!”, and then placed his free hand on the doctor’s shoulder before grabbing him again with the shocker glove. As the doctor set trembling from the electricity in his body, Mr. Abel chuckled to himself and said, “Oh how could’ve have I forgotten that my second glove is made of rubber?! Hahahaha, well how are you feeling, doc? You don’t seem that well…”

John managed to garner enough strength to head butt Mr. Abel and send him to the floor, Mr. Abel shaken began getting back to his feet, wondering what is happening to him. He saw the doctor and immediately began losing his cool, “Oh God… no, no, no, no, no, not again… no… no… no…!”

John noticed there was something wrong with Mr. Abel and asked with great uncertainty, “wha… what… is going on?”

Mr. Abel noticed the table and walked towards it, he saw a rope lying on it and grabbed one end to form a firm noose out of it. He went back to John who got terrified of the rope and started thrashing his body from side to side until he fell backwards. Mr. Abel picked him up back to his feet, went behind him and began releasing him from his binds. As he does, he began explaining, “My name is Aodhan O’Cathain and I am suffering from an extreme form of a dissociative personality disorder. As you can probably tell my other personality is quite the monstrosity. I need your help now, I need you to hang me and leave us both here.

“What?” explained John, puzzled.

Aodhan put the noose over his head and told John, “Just hang me over one of these beams”, pointing to the wooden beams holding the ceiling in place. John stumbled back, confused, and Aodhan flew into rage, “What is so fucking complicated it? You’ll die here if you do not hang me now… So fucking hang me… Finish me… Do it!”

John stumbled back again, still confused, he did not reply to Aodhan and Aodhan just punched him across the face, “Do it already!” he shouted and the bloodied doctor.

A laughter began creeping out of Aodhan’s mouth, a terrible laughter, John was now convinced, he grabbed the rope from Aodhan before it was too late and threw it over a wooden beam he then proceeded to pull it up until Aodhan’s body was suspended about three feet above ground. He then heard a “crunching” sound and noticed that Aodhan’s body was now swinging lifelessly. As John let go of the rope he could’ve sworn he heard a soft “No” coming out of Aodhan’s body just seconds prior.

John fell to the ground and began breathing, he was happy that this nightmare had been finally over, he began thinking about how he’s going to get home and how everything’s going to be fine for him from that point onwards. He just sat there and stared at Aodhan’s lifeless body, softly swinging from the ceiling, the notion of killing a human being made his eyes tear up and before he could burst into crying he heard the sound of clapping. John began calling out, “Hello… I’m here… I need your help.”

A figure stepped out of the shadows, a figure that made John O’Dwayr’s blood freeze, the figure was identical to the person he had just hung, John froze in his place, with his mouth open agape. The figure began approaching John and explained, “You’ve nothing to fear, pal, I am the real Aodhan O’Cathain, and this is my brother, Fionn O’Cathain.”

John simply sat frozen on the floor contemplating the possibility that someone might torture him again, or worse kill him.

The man claiming to be Aodhan walked towards John who crawled backwards with each step the man made. The man claiming to be Aodhan O’Cathain realized it’s best to speak from a distance and he began speaking from afar, “You see, me and my brother, we had nothing, but there is one thing we did have – our street shows, we both loved magic tricks since early childhood. We also had each other, but then Fionn was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and so he approached me for one last street show. He wanted them, all of them, to remember him and he wanted them to believe in his magic, and so with tears in my eyes I helped my brother set this whole thing up, this one last magic trick.

“You see, his impending death made my brother a little histrionic and that’s why we put on such a show tonight! You know how hard we had to work for this one. Nobody died today, besides my brother that is, all the corpses you could find today are corpses we dug out, I really hope that families of the recently deceased had time to pay their final respect for their dead relatives, because the fresh graves of Belfast are full of nothing but stale air. We also used recorded actors… to convince everybody he’s burning people alive… there is so much talent in the streets, you can’t even imagine. Even that woman, the cop, she’s alive too! A bit wounded, but very well alive… We just had to start somewhere, and there is no better place than a cop’s house full of cameras. All of this brings me to you, my friend,  he hated doctors, they’ve condemned him to suffer until the cancer takes his life because he had no money and so he began hating on you people, that’s why he put you through this hell before letting you do your job and rid him of his misery.

The man claiming to be Aodhan O’Cathain began walking away from John, after a few steps he stopped and said, “One last thing, the cops are on their way here and they know that there is a man with a dissociative personality disorder here. They also know it’s not my brother, my brother was just a homeless street performer who ended up as a victim of a mad man…”

As the man claiming to be Aodhan O’Cathain began walking once more, John began sobbing to himself once the realization of him being framed set it, the doctor began crying out, “No… no… no…. It’s all just a big bad dream… It’ll all be over once I open up my eyes… this is all just a nightmare…”

Once John O’Dwayr closed his eyes and opened them up again, he found himself in his sweat-drenched bed, in his small warm room.

Alone…

“It was all just a dream, John, everything’s fine…” he muttered to himself and then turned to look at the clock on his desk, the clock indicated that the time is 2:17AM. John O’Dwayr was about to go back to sleep but the illumination from the clock made him notice something on his desk. A piece of paper he did not remember leaving there.

There was a text on the piece of paper, it read; “Not bad for a common street magician… Ha Ha Ha Ha”

John O’Dwayr’s heartbeat skyrocketed and he shot out of his bed towards the door of his room, he began frantically banging on the door begging to be let out and screaming that someone was in there with him…

Too bad for John O’Dwayr that the doors of patients’ rooms do not get opened from 11PM to 5AM in the mental hospital he’s currently residing in.