Gallery of the Dead

Five

The man was jolted awake by the loud sound of a motorcycle in the streets outside. For a while he lay on his back, immobile, staring up at the ceiling. The room he was in was illuminated only by the weak moonlight that came in through the large window on the wall to his left, but he didn’t mind the darkness. Actually, he preferred it. The way he saw it, it matched the color of his soul.

The man concentrated on his breathing, trying to calm it down. In through your nose, he mentally told himself as he breathed in. And out through your mouth. He exhaled. In through your nose. Breathed in. And out through your mouth. Exhaled.

Slowly his rapid breathing began to steady itself again.

The man was soaking wet, drenched in cold sweat, just as he always was when he woke up from ‘the nightmare’. The visions were always the same — violent... grotesque... painful — but he didn’t want to think about them. He never did. So while focusing on his breathing, he banished the images back to the darkest places in his mind, with one certainty — sooner or later they would come back again. They always did.

It took him ten minutes to finally move from lying down to sitting up. Most of the cold sweat had dried against his skin, making him feel sticky and filthy. He needed a shower. He always needed a shower after ‘the nightmare’.

In the bathroom he turned on the water and waited until steam began clouding the room before stepping under the strong and warm jet. The man closed his eyes and allowed the water to splash against his face... his skin. He could practically feel his pores dilating, welcoming the cleansing.

He adored that sensation.

The man thoroughly washed his entire body twice over before retrieving a razorblade and a bottle of baby oil from the shower caddy. He poured some of the oil onto the palm of his right hand and slobbered it all over his left leg. The process was then repeated — left hand, right leg. It was always done in that sequence. He placed the razorblade under the water jet for a couple of seconds before bending down and bringing it to his right shin.

Years ago, a prostitute had told him that to avoid skin rashes when shaving off body hair, especially underarms and around his groin area, he should use baby or coconut oil.

‘You should try it,’ she had told him. ‘Rashes and skin burns will be a thing of the past, trust me.’

She was right. It really did work. Not only did it free him from rashes and skin burns, but it also made his skin feel smoother than ever.

The man shaved his body daily, sometimes even twice a day, from his head all the way down to the little hairs on his toes. He did it not because he was irrational, or a fanatic, or because voices told him to. He did it simply because he enjoyed the way his skin felt in the absence of hair. How so much more sensitive it became. The only part of his body he wouldn’t shave was his eyebrows. He’d tried it once before, but he didn’t like the result. It made him look odd... creepy even, and he was yet to find fake eyebrows that looked as good as real ones, unlike wigs and fake beards, which he had quite a collection of.

The man finished the long shaving process, turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry. Back in the bedroom, he stood naked in front of a full-sized mirror, admiring his own body.

Full of pride, he turned to his left and switched on the large pedestal fan he kept there. As the gust of air came into contact with his smooth skin, his whole body shivered, sending a wave of ecstasy up and down his spine more powerful and pleasurable than any drug was ever able to achieve. It was as if the shaving ritual had enhanced his skin’s sensory receptors tenfold.

The man bathed in that bliss for several minutes before finally switching off the fan.

‘I guess it’s time to go get ready,’ he told himself, his body shivering one more time, this time from the pure thrill of anticipation.

The man just couldn’t wait to do it all over again.