Fiction: This Has Happened to You Before

By Aidan Scott

From back in January 2014, which seems now to be eons ago, I can discern the whirr and clatter of a film reel; the light passing through shades of captured time like a millwheel of fixed memory, architecture so imprecise in its folds and corners that time itself is literally reshaped out of some necessity for ocular reconfiguration. I was sitting in a movie theatre, my best friend at the time sitting beside me as the credits rolled for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second entry of a trilogy I can only describe as adaptationally baffling. We were fourteen at the time.

Standing, we shoved the McDonald's burger wrappers back into our backpacks so the cinema staff wouldn’t know we’d snuck them in and stepped out into the hallway. We dragged ourselves along the carpeted floor past entrances to other theatres and posters bordered with neon frames, the walls painted black and red and the lights overhead dousing the whole place in a patina of luminous greens and blues and golds. My friend was asking me to describe in great detail the differences between the book and the film, which in turn caused me to explain my displeasure at the changes they had made. After patiently listening to my rant he just quietly said: —I don’t know, I thought it was cool.

Outside, the Australian summer evening was cooling to just below 35^°C. The moment we emerged from the glass doors the humidity consumed us and immediately sweat began to form along our brows and down our backs.

—Mum’s not gonna be here for another five minutes, I said.

—What do you wanna do?

—I don’t know. Maybe we can get a soft serve from Maccas.

—Yeah, mate. Let’s do that.

We turned round to make our way along the street to the McDonald's just up the road and we were stopped immediately in our tracks my someone.

—Hey guys, d’you reckon youse could gimme a hand?

Waiting before the door that led into the shopping centre was a man in a wheelchair. His hair was bathed in sweat and he wore an army vest over the top his t-shirt. He had no legs, amputated at the knees. But the strangest thing was that he hadn’t been there five seconds earlier when we had been facing that direction before we turned to go toward McDonald's.

—Yeah, what do you need? Are you okay? I asked.

—Do you think you could… uhm… do you… do you think you could help me open this door?

—The door? Into the shopping centre? They’re closing it all up.

—I know… he cleared his throat; I just need to use the toilet but I can’t wheel myself in and hold the door open at the same time.

—Yeah, no worries, mate.

As I moved to open the door, he wheeled himself through, all the while repeating breathlessly: —Oh, boys… oh, thanks boys… oh, boys, thank you, boys…

—Yeah, no worries, I said.

Just as we were about to turn and leave, having opened the door for him, he put his hand on my arm – not aggressively but as though merely to obtain my attention.

—Uhm… he cleared his throat again… Do you think you could come up with me to the bathroom, the two of you? I’ll have the same problem with the door to the toilet.

My friend was looking at me, panicking and shaking his head.

—Ah, I think we better just head off. My Mum’ll be here in a minute.

—Nah, nah, boys, nah… come on, boys; I just need a hand…

—I don’t know…

At this point my friend looked ready to bolt in the other direction. The man’s hand was pinching the fabric of my shirt and I began thinking about what an impossible situation he was in. He was eyeing me pleadingly and he was trembling.

—Okay, I said.

—Oh, champion! Champion! Thanks, boys… Oh, thank you, boys…

We went slowly with him into the shopping centre, the light all dim and distant like they were on somewhere else in the building but by some measure of glass and mirrors had spun themselves off into unseen corners, eventually reaching us where we walked in silence. My friend was huddled close to me as we reached the small hallway branching off from the main shopping area leading to the toilets. There was nobody around, all the display windows dark and shadow-filled, the mannequins arranged like dead things mimicking humanity’s various poses. The whole place was so dim that I had to adjust my eyes to it and when I saw the small hallway it was like somebody had thrown torchlight directly across my eyes. In all the deep dark space around us, this passage was the only one containing any substantial brightness and it was so bone-white that it would blind you had you looked for long enough into it.

I stepped through first, my friend following, the man moving up behind us. We tried opening the door to the disabled toilets but it was locked. We followed with the men’s room and women’s room but had no luck. —Oh, come on, come on, boys, come on… he chanted. My friend was frantically pushing on all the doors while I stood there unable to think. It didn’t make any sense. All the lights were on in this passage but the doors were locked. The lights were on! I could hear them humming. Finally, I thought maybe we could open the sliding door leading to the changing room at the end of the hallway where mothers take their babies to change their nappies. The man began to groan, a deep and dreadful sound. He began to say: —It’s all right, boys, it’ll be all right, hey? This has happened to you before, yeah? It has, yeah? Again and again, yeah? Oh, it has, it has….

At this point, my friend and I were up against the door to the changing room, him behind us and the exit behind him. We were both trying to pull it open when suddenly, I felt all the hairs go up along the back of my neck and a chill catch my bones. The whole hallway began to hum. Neither of us were looking at him but we began to hear him groaning louder and rubbing his hands against the fabric of his trousers, louder and louder. My friend began whimpering, tears filling his eyes, and he grabbed hold of me in terror. From behind us, accompanying the other sounds, we began to hear a drip, drip, dripand a light trickling sound. —Oh, boys… Oh… This has happened to you before, hasn’t it? This has happened to you before… Help me… Will you help me? My friend started to say my name, pleading me to get us out of the situation. He was on the verge of sobbing and the door hadn’t budged an inch. My heart was beating so fast, I thought it would burst. Slowly, I began to turn my head. My whole body was shaking and I could barely stand. As my head turned the lights above us, those alabaster bulbs, began to flicker gently. My eyes only landed on him for a split second because the instant they did, he let out a bellow that seemed almost inhuman, like he spoke with two voices, one lower and one higher, and he roared the words: —DON’T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME! The lights burst into erratic flickering and inexplicably the room swelled and rumbled. I immediately spun back around and grabbed hold of my friend, weeping. All I’d managed to notice was the lower half of his face, drool spilling down his chin from a mouth so red it looked like he was bleeding, like he’d bitten his lip open. I don’t know why, but I turned around again almost immediately, grabbing my friend and lunching us up the passage and past him toward the exit. I only saw the man fully for an instant. He sat writhing and squirming in his wheelchair, his hands rubbing against his legs, fingers pinching fabric of his trousers near his crotch, all of it soaking wet. Something was pooling on the floor below him. His whole face was red, his eyes welling and swollen and bloodshot. As we passed him, he shot out an arm and tried to grab at us and he cried out: —Don’t! Don’t! Come back, you have to help me! Help me! Help me!

When we got outside again, it was dark. I checked my phone and there was a missed call from my Mum and a text saying she had arrived and was waiting in the car park just across from the cinema. My friend had collapsed next to a bench and was grabbing onto it as though if he had let go, he would have been taken someplace else, someplace terrible. Neither of us could breathe and I was grabbing hold of my chest frantically because I could feel the sensation of my heart giving out.

—Can we go? Please? Is your Mum here?

—Yeah, she’s in the car park, I choked.

—Why did you say yes to him? my friend sobbed.

—I’m sorry.

—I knew we shouldn’t have helped him…

—I’m sorry.

I didn’t sleep for days afterward. My friend would call me at two in the morning crying and trying to remember what had happened, as though it existed only in abstract shades along the periphery of memory. He kept telling me he thought someone would be waiting for him in the hallway outside his bedroom. I didn’t tell him but I had the same feeling myself. It was never the same between me and him after that. He would look at me as if he sought the answer to some unspoken question – like I had the truth somewhere hidden inside my head and wouldn’t reveal it to him, like I had led himknowingly to something wrong and terrible and dark. In 2018 we stopped talking for good. I don’t know for sure what happened to us that night but I still have nightmares about it.

Aidan Scott is a 22 year old writer from Canberra, Australia. He mostly writes fiction based on history, mythology, the occult, and dreams. His book The Garden is out now with Anxiety Press.