I Have No Clue Who This Guy Is Actually

Bbeganny26 is the weakest of individuals. A portly runt with his hatred for the world second only to the hatred for himself, He grovels for the attention of others, almost as if he were begging to sip from the fountain of youth, though he refuses to admit he cares that much. He wears a black mask in public, god knows why, you could ask him and he’d give you a different answer every time. He’s sick, he’s horribly scarred, to tell you the truth, he’s just plain ugly. The skin beneath his eyes is stained a dark grey, his face pallid and sickly, beneath the black cloth you’ll be met with a somber pout, that being if you catch him unaware, otherwise he bites back his lip and pretends he’s a different man, as if it changes things, I know, he knows deep down that it doesn’t.

He’s exactly who you’d think of imagining a sinister man following you home late at night. a tall, dangerous thing with a way about him that screams at you to get home quick, quickly now, before he catches you. If you were too slow he’d run up and tear you apart, he’d tear you apart and he wouldn’t feel a thing. though he would never hurt a soul, he’d much rather take a bullet than kill an ant. He just watches, it depresses him but he just watches. He’s not dangerous, a toddler could put him on his back. A frail colossus, the heaviest paperweight in the world. If you’d let him catch up, get too close, you’d see his left eyelid holding a deflated look, drooping slightly, His yellow teeth working in tandem to create a disproportionate mess of a face, he’d flash a nervous smile at you with those dreadful teeth but his eyes wouldn’t change, You might just catch them lighting up for a short, fleeting moment before fizzling out like a dying flare. Those hazel eyes were begging to be shut, they were screaming at him to stop, they saw nothing, yet they pretended they could see it all. He’d study you with those tired eyes.

Once he was standing before you, he’d linger around you awkwardly like an old dog, the most exhausted kind of loyal. If you’d spoken to him he’d shuffle and hug the rim of his coat with his chubby hand, dirty long nails digging deep into the fabric. He’d look up from your feet, stop smiling. You wouldn’t think it was possible but his eyes would die again, his head lowering, looking at your shoes one last time before slinking away. He would look like he had wanted to say something, instead he would just limp and fidget, making his slow, cowardly escape. That disproportionate face would translate to his demeanor, Shuffling like the world was too cold for him, like he was freezing to death. He was an old dog, a sick one. His back turned to you now, his poor posture evident. The disheveled hair behind his head slicked from his bed, you might have heard him mumble, he let out a weak “I…” though he never finished. Before you knew it he’d be gone, an apparition who you could swear you saw, yet you had no proof. It felt like nobody had left, like nobody had been there at all. He didn’t exist, and you’d be just so relieved that the meek man was fiction that you would whistle all the way home, snapping your fingers because of just how lucky you were. Thank god he wasn’t real. Thank god.

Bbeganny26’s avatar is somewhat complex compared to other flags, drawn hastily with a poor coloring job that looked like static on an old television. It starts with a hazel circle, a black dot in the center of it, looking to be an iris. Around that circle sat a white oval with tones of grey creating an almost three dimensional look, adding to the theme of an eyeball, The spaces above and below the oval house black lines serving as eyelashes. In each corner is a brown trapezoid glued to the black walls of the avatar. Immediately your eyes go to the completed piece, an eyeball being what seems to be the entire design, the brown trapezoids cradling it in an imperfect box. the soft green being the only truly interesting color in the mixture. I asked him what the circle in the center meant.

 “Film, music, pick your favorite color. It encompasses two of my favorite things.”

A simple answer, his face changed, he seemed surprised that he had answered at all, like a nervous tick he had suddenly become aware of. Next I asked about the eye, why he decided to choose it, he spoke softly, almost ashamed of his next words. 

“Horror, it means a lot to me, I chose an eye to represent body horror.” 

I followed that by asking him why he liked horror, he looked confused by me, tilting his head to the right and squinting, as if he was shocked that he had to explain himself. His gaze turned to the room around him, finally landing on my legs again once deciding on his answer.

“I like to have something fake to be scared of, and, maybe someone else is scared too? That sounds really nice to me.”

He looked, sounded sincere in saying that, he seemed as weak as he was genuine in that moment, his voice hoarse and flustered. I decided to ask him about the Trapezoids next, what they meant. He shook his head from left to right like a moving bingo roller, most likely reciting his response in his head before responding.

“Art… I like to paint. I thought of the rear of a canvas and just threw it in there.”

He took a moment to collect himself, eyes lowering to his own feet now, one shoe superimposed over the other. I continued the interview, asking him slowly as not to startle the man, did the oval mean anything?

“Ups and downs I guess…”

He didn’t elaborate, I didn’t dare to ask. His eyes were on the ceiling now, anywhere but on mine, his knee bobbing up and down, shaking the desk he sat beside. I moved on to the lashes.

“days going by, real fast and junk… kills me, how slow it gets sometimes though…”

I never had him explain that one, but I don’t think it needed explaining, he said what he had meant. His cheeks raised from under that mask, he smiled at me. That smile being the barrier concealing the internal meltdown he was no doubt experiencing at that moment.

“I’m gonna be thinking about this for… for weeks…”

His eyes widened before shutting tightly, he shook his head and placed his palm over the unprotected half of his face. He must have realized how creepy that had sounded and given up, nodding at me with a look of such pure defeat it made you wonder why he even got up and tried in the first place. That was the end of our interview. The frail colossus rose to his feet and hobbled away, a weak limp like some kind of wounded animal. Thinking about this for weeks… Judgment, he was scared of judgment. I gazed upon his hunched back as he fled the room, and then suddenly, it was like he had never been there at all. Thank my lucky stars. I was relieved, oh how I was relieved.

His design and mine had gone in opposite directions, His lived in a different world, unnecessarily shaded and hastily done to the point it felt cheap, mine was a solid grey rectangle with a charcoal black square in the center. He did too much, you could argue that I did too little. My guess is he made it to stand out, begging for an ounce of attention even through an unmeaning school project, an eye made not to express interests but to scream “look at me” from the top of it’s nonexistent lungs. I had a square. I had a square because I have no interests, and so I made the spitting image of mediocrity. Black, gray, shape, done. Bbeganny26 is the weakest of individuals and I believe that as a fact, I hold no hatred for him, disappointment maybe. I thought he was more, but there he was, watching, and there was nothing else to him, a simple man with simple loves and hates, a simple waste of my time.

“Man From The Dark Side” by damien_thorne is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.