"Johann!" A voice whispered, a hand shaking his right arm, desperate for attention.
His eyes opened, his heart racing, to find the chaotic scribbling of Ms. Müller already filling two of the three blackboards of the class, and Anna looking at him with worried eyes.
Had he just blanked like that, in the middle of a Constitutional Law class, just a week before the exams?
"Are you ok?" Her hand still on his arm, now reassuring, while her eyes looked at him with the most analytic expression, like a detective searching for clues. "You might have a fever... I told you this morning, you should have stayed in bed." She smiled, so sweet, so concerned. "I can just bring you my class notes, so you won't miss anything... Just go home and rest..."
He looked at her twin sister with absolute disdain. He was in no way letting her in charge of his academic performance.
"You have an awful system to take notes, sister, not to mention all the colors..." he made a disgusted grimace at the overly cute notes in front of her. The pink pen in her hand.
She suddenly brandished it like a sword.
"I beg your pardon...!" The pen stabbed him between the ribs, so gently, as she leaned over his notes. "So elegant, so... oh, they can't be more boring, all black, and more black..." She finally rolled her eyes, to suddenly sit straight and focus on her work.
When Johann turned he found the professor looking at them. As usual, he offered his most charming smile before following her and going back to his notes.
"Can you give me a white paper, please?" She had forgotten to get more at home, for the third day in a row. Johann sighed, grabbing a couple of them from his backpack to handle them to her.
"Thanksss..." she sang, placing them in front of her to attack again with that neon pink pen.
He blinked a couple of times. She was right, he was exhausted, barely having slept at all last night, and now he was getting a headache, even when it was just the second class of the day.
Looking at his sister's handwriting he copied the missing paragraphs as fast as he could, to continue attending the class, which lasted for another hour and a half.
"Oh, boy... and we still have three classes left with this... monster?" Friedrich whispered the last words as the professor had just left the classroom, leaning backward in his seat, left of Johann, exasperated at the material for the exam that just kept growing and growing each day. "Johann, please, you are the student's representative, can't you... I don't know... convince her to stop? Pleaasee..."
Johann turned towards him with a serious expression, pondering the ways he could approach the professor. He was right, they couldn't be handled new material to study so close to the exam.
"Use that pretty face and convince her!" He insisted.
And then Johann arched an eyebrow, to finally offer a charming smile to his friend.
"Okay... I'll go to her tutoring hours, see what I can do..."
Suddenly a weight fell upon him, two arms surrounding his neck, almost choking him.
"I love you, big brother! Thanks for saving us once again from these merciless professors..." Anna's voice sounded overdramatic and theatrical but her hug was sincere. He could feel the weight of her head leaning over his.
Johann laughed, turning back enough to be able to face her.
"What would you do without me..." He teased, thinking already of how to get compensated in their already started break. "I need some coffee... you invite me, no, sis?"
"Of course!" She was still choking him. "Cappuccino, as usual?"
"Yes." He tried to distract his painful head with the images of the delicious pastries that were waiting for them in the cafeteria, the hot beverages. She finally let him free.
A few minutes later they were sitting on one of the canteen tables, the twins with their coffees and Friedrich with an apple juice instead. All of them wearing the same gloomy expression, the favorite style of any student with incoming exams. The lack of sleep didn't help either.
"How's the Tax presentation going? You have it on Friday, no?" He asked after drinking half of his glass.
"Yes." Anna answered, suddenly standing. "We finished more or less the slides yesterday, now we only have to practice..." She smiled at both stares. "I'm hungry... I'll get a snack." She headed then towards the vending machines.
Then Friedrich's green eyes were back at him, along with an exaggerated smile.
"You are so lucky, you can work on any project together and you don't have to meet anywhere..." His eyes, which had been following her, came back To Johann with the most hopeful expression. "Be my brother for a week, please, I'll return you after the exams... please... it's not fair, why is she the only one who has you at her disposal all the time..." There was some sincere desperation in his words, but they all needed the drama and more importantly, the laughs.
Johann chuckled, carefully leaving the cup on the table before looking at him. The coffee was simply perfect ad he already felt like a brand new person.
"I can be really annoying sometimes too, ask Anna... yesterday she was probably feeling like kicking me out of the house..."
"I don't care! I accept you Johann, and your obsessive perfectionism, I'll do whatever you tell me, just make me pass...!" His eyes suddenly opened wide, like he had seen a ghost. "Wait, don't you have also exams in the conservatory soon? You mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I forgot, sorry..."
Johann's smile slowly disappeared, to end up in a sigh.
"Yes, of piano and also music theory." He nodded, grimacing, painfully aware of the stressful couple of weeks ahead. In moments like that he was tempted of giving up his musical inspirations and focus on the most practical path. The piano was going to become a hobby eventually, and he had made that choice the moment he had decided to follow the conventional study and enroll in a law degree.
"Oh... what a mess.. how can you handle everything?"
"I don't know... but maybe I'll drop music next year and focus on school." He dramatized, his grades should go way worse for him to consider giving up music, though. "For the moment I'll do my best and try to survive it all." He shrugged, smiling at him again, who was looking at him like he was a lunatic. Ok, he wasn't making his own life one bit easier with his own decision, maybe he deserved that look a little bit.
Suddenly Anna sat back next to him, opening a bag of chocolate chips to rapidly make one disappear in her mouth. With a swift movement, he stole one, not flinching at her deadly stare, after placing the bag between them.
"Twiinssss...! Here you are!" As all of them turned to the voice on their back Klara and Bea appeared after a group of -possibly Business- students, heading towards them, and the miraculous two free sits in front of them.
"Hey!!" Anna waved effusively, despite having seen them that same morning, before the classes, in that same canteen. "Please, tell us Professor Müller didn't start with whole new material for the exam because, well, 'we just have the time'..."
Friedrich started laughing, desperately, which brought the worst news.
The rest of the recession time was dedicated to complain and vent, which they very much needed before heading to another class. The rest of the classes were uneventful.
All the energy the coffee had offered him had eventually disappeared into the night, leaving Johann with the bare minimum energy to drag himself home, meaning sitting in the car while Anna took care of the driving, as she usually did.
Afterward, all he had to do was leave the car and go upstairs, to let his body fall on the bed.
He could study later, but there was nothing he wanted to do now more than sleeping.
And he lied on the bed, losing consciousness and waking up several times in a period of an hour, his mind following confusing trains of thought between his academic life, his art, and those strange dreams he had had during the last week that made absolutely no sense.
At least they made for interesting conversations with Anna while having breakfast, so they could laugh a little.
***
Finally, the last paragraph.
As his eyes slid through those last paragraphs, his hand reached the cup, holding it between his hands until he reached that final word.
"What made me choose Law instead of..." he preferred to finish his coffee instead of that thought, considering it was a little too late to drown into an existential crisis. A few minutes past midnight to be exact.
Once the books and notes were back on his shelves he stared at the blank paper.
He had forgotten one of the pencils, now lying so close to the paper, so tempting.
Johann used to draw a lot as a child, both of them actually, to be forgotten at some point during their adolescence. He had eventually switched to music, he didn't remember when or why, and she had decided to dedicate more time to physical activities, swimming, some martial arts. It had been a hobby that had united them and was eventually forgotten and the twins diverged.
It made him sad, nostalgic. The truth was that apart from their academic life, which of course occupied most of their time, they had stopped sharing interests at some point. He didn't like that, not one bit.
He took the pencil, tracing some lines here and there, the schema of a drawing he hadn't conceived yet.
He started with some mountains. Distant, repetitive, uninteresting. That wasteland danced in some corner of his mind, like a gate to an unknown world, one he wasn't interested in exploring.
He continued with the memories of some trees, here and there, all of them long gone. He considered adding something more, some element that could bring that blank space to life but see, the problem was that it should remain lifeless for it to make sense. It had to feel like the aftermath of a nuclear war, the nothingness after total obliteration. So, in the end, it was perfect just as it was.
And then, in the middle of that nothingness, a miserable figure standing.
*This is me, who stands still in the middle of this doomsday scenario, alone, nameless, waiting for something to happen, maybe death.*
His voice was a whisper, a secret to himself, that he pronounced Czech to himself. The twins spoke it constantly as soon as they were left alone. It only made sense for him to do the same when alone.
His attention was deviated to that figure, the boy, the child, the monster, adding details on it, the clothing, the hair, leaving only the face like an empty mask.
I don't want a body, but I need one:
A brain to shelter my mind.
A heart to warm up my life.
And guts to survive the night.
But I will not refrain from destroying it.
I will build it before my soul becomes extinct, like a flame engulfed by the void. Out of ash, dust, and iron.
Out of bronze, flesh, and blood. Horror.
He was made of horror. It was there, lying beneath somewhere. Always there, waiting for a moment to resurface and engulf it all, all of himself. It might be a matter of time.
He just hoped it was a matter of a lifetime, most of it.
Without hesitation he took the pencil, the tip tracing the length of his index finger, continuing along with the hand, the wrist, where it turned around. Behind his skin, the blue lines of his veins were perfectly visible, tempting, so tempting. All secrets at reach, all that was required, a blade.
Changing the hold of the pencil to the other way around he brandished it as a knife, hitting down with all his might until the tip disappeared under his skin.
It went deeper and deeper. He kept pushing until reaching the bone.
First, there was nothing. He was looking for that horror he was made of but nothing resurfaced.
That was disappointing.
The pain came suddenly, sharp like another blade, predictable and easy to ignore.
But Johann wanted to see blood, so he dragged the pencil, following his arm along, making the wound wider and the pain stronger.
And finally, it appeared, with pleasant fury. The wound disappeared under a bubble of blood, just an instant until it overflowed, red threads painting his skin in all directions.
Then he stopped moving, letting it drip on the paper, his mediocre drawing now elevated to the status of art through violence. As an artist, he was willing to sacrifice his soul too.
The blood kept expanding in all directions and soon the paper disappeared beneath, the pencil at risk of the same fate.
He was still frozen in that place. Waiting for the horror. But there was only blood, so he dragged the pencil a little more.
The blood reached the sleeves in its course towards the table edge, mercilessly falling upon his laps in that menacing expansion.
It felt warm on his skin, the blood, and also comforting.
But he wasn't looking for softness, but the horror instead, that should appear any moment now...
It didn't take long until it reached the floor, the blood, until his body started feeling too heavy, too numb so he simply let himself hung on the chair.
He was waiting, still patiently waiting.
And there it was, the horror he had been looking for.
The blood was no longer red, but instead, a black fluid was pouring out of the hole in his skin: dense, slow, and steady.
Now, he would no longer be made of darkness, only flesh. A little bit of blood too.
But most importantly, he had purged himself.
The monster was dead, finally.
Or was it only the beginning?