by David Jester
The man in the cartoon pajamas didn’t answer, he remained standing in front of him, leering over him. Darren couldn’t see his face, it was too blurred, too hazy, but he knew that the man was smiling, knew that he probably wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear. He lifted his head to stare at him for a while, waiting for his vision to clear and the face to focus, but eventually his throbbing head tired and he lowered his chin to his chest.
He stared at his own torso and legs. Like the man before him, he hadn’t been secured to the chair by the torso or legs, they were free to move, to twitch, and to squirm, only his hands had been tied, but he was too beaten and too unsure on his feet to think about fighting the restraints.
He moved his legs, stretched them outwards to test his strength and his reflexes. He withdrew them when he saw what lay just a few feet away. He had assumed that he was in a different chair, sitting alongside the man whose throat had been slit, the man who had gurgled and warbled a series of unheeded warnings, but that man was lying in a heap on the floor behind of the man in the cartoon pajamas.
Darren realized that he was sitting on the same chair, that the wet patch underneath his backside, a patch he had suspected was his own urine, spent through fear, agony, or unconsciousness, was actually blood. His vision was clearing, as if the realization was forcing his brain and his eyes to synchronize once again. He raised his head, ignored the pain in his neck and at the back of his skull.
He saw his attacker’s face; saw the grin which did, as suspected, stretch from ear to ear. Darren realized that it was his turn. He was going to suffer the same fate as the lifeless, bloodless body that lay crumpled on the floor.
Malcolm waited for Smiler to attack before he made his move. He wasn’t much of a fighter, he used his experience and intelligence to avoid fights, but he’d had a few scuffles and knew how to handle himself. Despite a few close shaves with weapons and one kid who attacked him with a baseball bat, no one had ever attacked him with a knife.
As well as being armed, Smiler was bigger than him and considerably stronger, but Malcolm didn’t get disillusioned and didn’t drop his guard. He waited until Smiler was within touching distance and then he diverted his attention just past his arm, towards the door. He allowed his face to look shocked, his expression to crease in confusion.
Smiler followed his gaze and turned around. He was big and armed, but he was simple and naive. When his head turned, Malcolm kicked out, connecting his knee with Smiler’s groin, grimacing under the contact and the sound that his knee cap made as it crushed Smiler’s genitalia up against his pelvis.
Smiler squealed and dropped the knife. He pressed his hands to his groin but he remained standing and Malcolm could see the mischief fading from his eyes, being replaced by anger.
Still gasping from the pain, emitting faint squeaking noises, he lashed out with the palm of his hand. Malcolm wasn’t expecting it and the swipe caught him in the side of the face, slapping against his cheek and knocking him over. He collapsed against the toilet and felt his knee buckle.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Smiler announced, cupping his testicles and advancing on Malcolm who was trying to rise to his feet.
Smiler reached down and grabbed Malcolm by the hair, lifting him up by the locks. Malcolm felt like the top of his head was peeling away; he yelped and thrashed, his wild punches made contact with flesh but it felt like he was hitting a brick wall.
As Smiler continued to hold him by the hair, Malcolm felt an intolerable anger rising in him. He felt the desire to rip out Smiler’s throat and to vanquish that cheeky grin from his face forever. He let the anger boil so much that he couldn’t hear Smiler’s taunts, couldn’t see him as he bent over and picked up the knife with his free hand. The anger was so high that he didn’t even feel it when the knife pressed against his cheek and sliced open a small, warning wound.
He put all his might into one punch, catching Smiler on the wrist and forcing him to drop him, to release his grasp on his hair. He kicked him in the shins and then hit him once, twice, three times in the chest, still feeling the resistance but continuing until his hands ached, until he felt his knuckles displace and his fingers bleed. He pummeled the big man backwards. Smiler dropped the knife and sank to a stumbling, hunched fetal position as Malcolm continued to rain blows down on him.
He was nearly frothing at the mouth, muttering obscenities as his bleeding hands beat the life out of the big man. Smiler was groaning, nearly crying, but Malcolm continued.
Through the haze of his own rage, he saw that Smiler, crouched beneath him, was beaten. His face was battered and bruised, his mouth a mess of broken teeth and split gums. He turned away, picked up the knife, and then stood over Smiler.
Smiler looked up at Malcom with pleading eyes that bulged out of their sockets, already swelling beyond comprehension. He didn’t say anything; even if he wanted to, he probably didn’t possess the ability to. Malcolm aimed the knife at his throat; saw the fear and the helplessness in Smiler’s eyes. He pressed the knife into Smiler’s throat without breaking skin, testing his target, taking aim, then he pulled back and prepared to drive the knife deep into Smiler’s throat.
He stopped midway. He was still frothing, still fuming; his body was still on fire and he still wanted Smiler dead, but something stopped him. Malcom locked eyes with Smiler, saw a look of pity and fear where there was evil before.
He shook his head and threw the knife angrily to the floor. He felt the rage subside, felt his vision dim, felt the redness fade. He put his hands to his head, pressed his temples as if squeezing away a migraine. He held them there, staring at Smiler through a gap in his fingers.
He wasn’t a killer, no matter how messed up Smiler was, he didn’t deserve to die. No one did. He knew that, yet he had been ready—
He shook his head again and released his hands with a guttural moan. He thrust his finger at Smiler, began to threaten him, to warn him not to move, not to leave his cell and not to follow him. But there was no need, he was barely conscious and certainly in no shape to follow him.
Malcolm picked up the knife, closed the blade into the handle, slipped it in his pocket, left the cell, and shut the door behind him.
“Please, don’t do this.”
Darren felt anger and fear well up inside of him. He wanted to scream, to fight, to break down and cry. In reality, he couldn’t do any of those things and could only submit to the will of the psychopath in the cartoon pajamas.
“What is it you want?” he begged to know.
Cartoon Pajamas took his eyes off Darren, looked at the crumpled man on the floor and back again. He looked like he was ready to say something, but he stopped and aimed an ear towards the door.
Darren mistook the noise for the sound of his own pounding heart at first, but then he realized that the thump-thump-thump, that seemed to vibrate through the walls and floor, was actually the sound of hastily approaching footsteps. He thought of the man that had been chasing him, the one that had disappeared and left him to the fate of the psychopath currently standing idle in front of him, but it was two people who emerged in the open doorway, both looking flustered.
They were wearing white, one of them was covered from head to toe in blood, the other had a face like a drowned rat and didn’t look too pleased.
“Where are they?” Rat Face asked.
Cartoon Pajamas looked annoyed. “Go away!” he snapped. “This one is mine.”
“Where’s the other one?” he persisted. “The black one.”
Darren felt his heart jump, they were talking about Malcolm. He feared for his friend’s safety at first, then he realized that if they were still looking for him that meant that Malcolm had escaped. The thought made him smile, a smile that was noticed by the two men in the doorway.
Rat Face stepped forward. “What the fuck are you smiling at?”
Darren didn’t reply, his smile didn’t fade.
“You got a problem? You think this is funny?”
&n
bsp; Darren felt like saying he didn’t even know what this was, so there was little chance he would ever find it funny, but he didn’t say a word. Cartoon Pajamas looked annoyed at the intrusion and stepped in front of Rat Face, he held up his hand, stopping him from going any further.
“He’s laughing at me,” Rat Face accused, throwing his evil stare at Darren over Cartoon Pajamas’s shoulder.
“He’s mine.”
“But—”
“Mine!”
The sound of the venomous voice shifted the smile from Darren’s face. The man in the doorway took a step back. “Come on,” he said to his friend. “Let’s go.” He moved into the corridor, his steps trailing off loudly and slowly, but Rat Face remained, facing off against his new-found nemesis.
Darren bit his lip and waited for the fists to fly.
23
Eddie kicked the body in front of him and delighted in the dull thump that his foot made against flesh. He picked up the knife that the little man had been carrying. It was a boot knife with a sturdy black handle and a dull black blade. Its edges were worn and stained with dried and crusted blood. He turned it over in his hands, wondered if he was holding the knife that had killed the security guard.
He saw movement in the corner of his eye and looked up towards the doorway, anticipating another encounter and another fight. The room in which he stood was brightly lit by a light that emitted a constant buzzing noise, sounding like tinnitus in Eddie’s ear; the hallway outside was pitch black; no light escaped the room because something was standing in its way.
It moved as soon as Eddie caught it in his gaze, too quick for him to realize who or what it was. It bolted down the corridor, out of sight, allowing the light to spill out from the room and splash into the corridor.
Eddie edged forward, creeping slowly towards the door with the knife gripped tightly in his hands. He stopped inches before the threshold and held his ear to the open door. He heard nothing but the incessant hum of the light above, a buzzing that seemed to grow in volume the longer he listened to it.
He took another step, composed himself and dipped his head forward, turning to look out of the door and down the corridor where the shape had vanished. It was dark down there, lit only by the secondhand light from the room in which he stood, but he could see something shifting around in the blackness, something that seemed to swim inside the darkness.
“You want a fucking go as well?” Eddie asked, stepping out of the room and holding his head and his chin high. “Did you see what I did to your friend?”
The shape didn’t move, it seemed to stare at Eddie, testing him and trying to intimidate him.
“Come on!” Eddie punched his chest with his free hand, keeping the knife hidden behind the wrist of his other hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The figure moved again, turning out of sight.
Eddie gritted his teeth and allowed the knife to be exposed. “Fucking prick.” He walked quickly forward, darting into the darkness in search of his next target.
A wailing sound stopped Malcolm in his tracks. It was dark in the corridor, it felt cold and hollow. The sound was a cross between a laugh and a cry; a horrifying, warbling screech that traveled through the cold corridor, echoed off the walls, and dissipated into the darkness.
He felt a tide of goosebumps rise on his flesh, felt his muscles freeze under the rigid embrace of fear.
The noise sounded again, echoing louder than before. It sounded closer, stronger.
A small window, the glass thick and unbreakable, allowed for a square of moonlight to break into the corridor and aid Malcolm’s vision. He could see the outline of a pair of double doors further ahead, but there were no other escape routes and the noise that filtered down the corridor, creeping towards him like a threatening rush of wind, seemed to be getting closer.
A light snapped on somewhere along the labyrinth of corridors, Malcolm saw the orange splash spill into the hallway, filling it with a warm glow. He looked to the door and wondered if he should go through, and then back to the end of the corridor, now partially lit from elsewhere.
He heard heavy and quick footsteps that echoed thickly through the hallway. The noise continued, it sounded eager, desperate, and it wasn’t too far away.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He shot a glance over his shoulder. He knew he could go back the way he came, but he didn’t want to run into Smiler again. There was a good chance the big idiot had gone to find his friends, a good chance they were questioning him right now. Malcolm didn’t want to stumble upon them.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The feet echoed loudly. The laughter increased. Malcolm could almost sense the change in the atmosphere; a feeling that his air, his space, was now being shared with someone else. Whoever it was, Malcolm pondered, they sounded big, heavy; they sounded desperate and out of their fucking mind.
He didn’t want to face them. He had been lucky with Smiler; he wasn’t confident he could get lucky again.
He forced his limbs into action and threw them forward one quick step at a time. He made it to the door just as the echoes of footsteps reached their peak. Whoever it was, they were just around the corner, seconds from seeing him.
He closed his eyes, prayed for the best and then opened the door and entered. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t see another Smiler, didn’t see another huge idiot waiting for him with a simpleton smile and nefarious intentions.
What he saw was much worse than that.
There was a tense face-off when Darren’s two captors locked stares and tried to intimidate each other, a moment where nothing and everything was said in the blink of an eye. Darren watched indifferently, hoping for fists to fly, hoping for violence, but not sure that it would matter to him either way.
Rat Face looked the angrier, the aggressive one who was quick to attack, quick to fly off the handle, but Cartoon Pajamas had a dark side, an ominous air about him that suggested he could do a lot more damage.
Darren eyed them up like a spectator would watch two boxers at a weigh-in. He was petrified, facing his own mortality and possible hours of torture, yet he couldn’t help but be an interested spectator to what was going on in front of him.
As he anticipated, Rat Face threw the first punch. In one hot and intense moment, the scene exploded from one of restrained rage and intimidation, to one of full blown violence.
Darren watched, winced, and wished; hoping that, somehow, they would both perish.
Malcolm noticed the smell before anything else, it was hard to miss. It hit him when he opened the door and strangled the breath out of his lungs when he slipped into the room. It was the stench of blood, decay, and human waste; it was the stench of death.
The room had once been a recreational room, big enough for a couple of dozen people to gather and sit on the mismatched sofas and chairs and watch television, listen to the radio or play board games. The room was probably full of people on any given day, relaxing, conversing, and killing time. It was full of people today as well, and these ones had an eternity to kill.
Two lay slumped over the table. They had been sitting down playing cards when their throats had been slit. Another lay on the floor, it looked like she had put up a struggle and been beaten for her troubles. Her skull was caved in, her hair, coated in dried blood, lay at all angles around her sunken head like some thick, scarlet spider.
Three people lay strewn on the floor, involved in a brutal and bloody fight they had lost. Their blood lay in cursive splashes across the floor and the furniture, one of them had been garroted, their internal organs scattered over their body; another’s face had been mutilated beyond recognition and Malcolm thought he saw their lips and sections of their cheek lying a few feet away.
He raised a fist to his mouth to stifle a wave of vomit that threatened to unleash itself.
In the corner a black leather sofa and a tattered gray sofa sat around an old television set that had seen better days. The television was on, but it emitted no
sound and offered nothing more than a constant wave of static which swam over the washed-out screen in hypnotizing, pixelated waves. A woman sat on the leather sofa with her eyes on the screen, seemingly fascinated by the constant wash of black and white. She was as white as a ghost; whatever life had once been inside her was now long gone.
Malcolm paused when he heard a noise on the other side of the door. The footsteps had slowed, the laughing had stopped, the source of both was now standing on the other side of the door.
He held his breath, prayed that his heart would stop beating in case the madman heard the heavy, chaotic thumps as it strained to free itself from his chest.
He thought he heard breathing, the madman’s face close to the door, perhaps trying to pick up the sound of Malcolm’s beating heart.
His body was screaming at him to run, to step over the mess of blood on the floor, to weave through the corpses and to pick up one of the chairs. It didn’t matter if he made a noise, didn’t matter if the person on the other side of the door could hear, because he had already heard, he already knew that Malcolm was in there. Malcolm forced himself to move, to use the chair as a weapon against whatever came through the door, but something held him back, something stopped him.
When the laughter sounded again, this time inches away from him, he felt his whole body spasm as every muscle contracted in shock like a myoclonic jerk.
Footsteps followed the laughter and this time the footsteps were moving away from him.
Malcolm breathed a little easier when they faded. Then he heard a voice inside the room—a grating, gravely whisper—and his fear returned.
“Who are you?”
24
He followed the voice down a flickering hallway, where the remnants of light spat staccato bursts, lighting temporary halos on the floor that Eddie passed through. He didn’t see its shape. He didn’t see its face. It seemed to be in tune with the darkness, walking through only when it was pitch black, as if it knew when the lights would flicker.