by West, Sam
What the hell just happened?
Someone had bodily picked her up and chucked her to the ground. But who? There was only Jim and Nigel with her. Her head swam with confusion.
“Georgina!” Jim cried, taking a step towards her.
As soon as he made his move, the ground beneath her began to shake. A crack in the ground of around a metre long opened up parallel to her ankles and she did the crab-shuffle backwards, staring in disbelief at the split in the earth. Accompanied by the sound of stone grinding against stone, the gap widened until it was big enough for a person to easily fall into. Flames shot out of the opening, obscuring the view of Jim and instantly her tears sizzled and dried on her face.
The shooting flames ceased, and standing on the other side of the crack in the earth was Eric Flu. Or her version of him anyway; the tall, gangly guy with the straggly hair that had almost raped her as a teenager.
“Who are you?” she gasped, still on her arse and paralysed with fear.
Eric smiled at her, and it was the cruellest thing she had ever seen.
“You know who I am, Georgina Blake.”
“Georgina!”
Eric Flu’s head whipped round at the sound of Jim calling her name. He lifted up his long, thin arm and pointed a bony finger in Jim’s direction. A bolt of white lightning shot from the tip of his finger.
The bolt of lightning was on-course to hit Jim square in the chest, and it would have done if Nigel hadn’t of seen Eric raise his finger milliseconds before Jim did. Nigel threw himself full-force at his friend, taking the bolt of lightning in his shoulder. The lads tumbled to the ground with Nigel on top.
“I have plans for you two in a very short while. And in the meantime…”
From out of the crack in the ground, a pole emerged horizontally. At first glance it looked like an ordinary, scaffold pole. Except this pole was sharpened to a vicious looking tip and the length of it glowed white hot in heat patches that were visible here and there beneath the rust. It pushed slowly upwards, like someone was feeding it through the small chasm from somewhere below. It stopped when it reached two feet or so.
The sight of it chilled her heart and broke her paralysis. She scrambled to her feet and lunged away from the nightmare scene.
She didn’t get far. Something struck her between the shoulder-blades, and she fell forwards, flat on her face. It felt as if a ton of bricks had toppled onto her back, only worse.
A lightning bolt. I’ve been electrocuted...
In that moment, with her mouth kissing the concrete and every part of her battered and bruised, she wished the charge had been enough to finish her.
“Strip her, then feed her onto the pole. I’ll let you choose the hole.”
Georgina heard the words, but she didn’t understand them. Not even when Jim and Nigel were suddenly flanking her either side. Each man scooped her up under an armpit and dragged her to her feet.
“Hey!” she gasped, wriggling in their grip.
But she hurt too much to put up much of a fight.
“Jim! What are you doing?”
When she looked up into the face of the man whom she felt sure that, under different circumstances, she could have loved with all her heart and soul for the rest of her life, she realised it wasn’t the same man.
“I’m going to enjoy watching you squirm, bitch.”
It was Jim’s voice. It was Jim’s face. But it wasn’t his eyes. He was possessed by the devil and now she was going to die.
In her weakened state, Nigel was easily able to hold her arms tight behind her back and Jim unzipped her anorak. Beneath it she wore a sensible, white-shirt tucked into blue-jeans.
In one swift movement he ripped her shirt down the middle, popping every single button. Her plain white bra was exposed to him, the cold November air goose-bumping the bare skin of her flat stomach.
“Jim, I know you’re in there.”
“Wrong, bitch.”
Just like that he fell on her like a wild animal; ripping, tearing and jerking every last shred of clothing from her body. Even her shoes were wrenched from her. She sobbed helplessly throughout the ordeal, the single word ‘Jim’ on her lips. She didn’t know why she said his name over and over. Maybe because she hoped she could somehow still reach him. Or maybe it was merely a prayer for what might have been.
Despite the uncontrollable shivering that was partly born of terror and partly the start of hypothermia, she looked bravely up at him.
“I just want to say, if you remember doing this, then I forgive you. I’m so sorry we met tonight.”
Jim laughed and nodded over her tear-stained face at Nigel.
The men dragged her the short distance to the fire-spitting crack in the ground and kicked her legs apart directly over the pole.
New strength imbued her and fresh screams escaped her lips. She bucked and writhed and screamed some more, but to no avail.
All coherent thought flew out of her head when the pointy end of the pole pricked between her legs. It burnt her where it touched her, instantly searing her flesh. She was beyond fear now, in a dark place where only pain and suffering and terror existed.
“I say we do it in the cunt,” Jim said.
Nigel shrugged casually. “Whichever. Her suffering will be eternal, either way.”
They each tightly gripped a thigh, lifting her above the pole and holding her over it for a second as if savouring the moment before pushing her down. And push her down they did, like she was nothing more than the plunger top of a coffee-pot.
The agony was unimaginable. The white-hot spike split open her vaginal canal and cauterised her simultaneously. With slow deliberation they lowered her onto the pole. Her mind split like a glass shattering into a thousand pieces when she felt her womb rupture. Then they stopped pushing.
They’re fighting him…
No. The pole was coming to her, she wasn’t going to the pole. The two lads held her steady as the pole slowly rose up through the earth and penetrated her. She felt something else explode inside of her, she heard it go pop and beneath the agony was the strangest sensation of a massive splatter against the walls of her midriff.
Through her haze of suffering, through her insanity, one single, coherent thought came and went like the ebbing tide.
I’m not dead. Why aren’t I dead?
The pole edged upwards through her body and the once vibrant young woman was reduced to nothing more than a worm on a hook. The pain consumed her, it became her.
She screamed and screamed, but no sound came. The pole was getting higher, cutting a blazing path through her lungs. When she threw back her head in the throes of abject misery, she saw the spike emerge past her lips.
And still that one thought flowed in and out of her mind on a wave of torment:
Why aren’t I dead?
7.
Georgina was now fully impaled on the pole. The bloody spike extended a good few inches out of her mouth with her head thrown back and her mouth wide open in a silent scream.
When the deed was done, Jim came back to himself. He actually felt something leave his body; an invisible jolt of energy that made him let go of Georgina’s thigh and stagger backwards, landing heavily on his arse.
The full impact of what he had done hit him full-force and he stared in wide-eyed horror at the spectacle before him. Georgina’s long, blonde hair hung down in bloody strands past her small, but shapely backside, her arms dangling and swaying slightly in an invisible breeze.
“Dear God, no,” he mouthed soundlessly.
Six pints of lager and a bag of pork-scratchings did a little jig in his stomach before rising up his esophagus and erupting out his mouth in steaming hot jets. Some of it landed on his thigh and soaked through his jeans, scalding his flesh before cooling.
This couldn’t be happening, he couldn’t have done that to that lovely girl…
The sight before him proved otherwise. Just then, her left leg twitched. Then her arm.
How is sh
e still moving? She can’t still be alive.
It was just too awful to contemplate and he pulled up his knees under his chin and began rocking back and forth like the mentally disturbed young-man he had become. Georgina’s twitching grew more violent, and it took a moment for Jim to realise that the pole was moving downwards, taking Georgina with it. When Georgina had disappeared up to her waist into the earth’s crust, she was sucked down at speed by an invisible force and the earth closed over her head. The crack in the concrete sealed over, leaving not so much as a hairline fracture in its wake.
The sound of Nigel’s voice snapped him back to grisly reality.
“Jim? Oh God.”
Nigel appeared at his side and sat down next to him. He put his arms around his friend and held him tight. Jim allowed himself to be petted and rocked, giving in to the hot rush of tears.
Nigel cried too, although not as hard as Jim.
“Jim? If we don’t get out of here alive, I just want to tell you that I love you.”
Snot bubbled in Jim’s nose and he wiped it on his sleeve. “Huh?”
“I fucking love you man. I’m gay. I’ve never done it with a guy or anything, but I’ve always known. Why the fuck else would I take that lightning bolt for you? I love you. I’ve loved you since the first day I saw you.”
An irrational wave of anger born of the horrors he had seen that night washed over him. Who gave a shit about Nigel and his sexual preferences. How fucking dare he go on about this shit now?
“Just get the fuck off me, you fucking pervert.”
He shrugged off his friend and scrambled to his feet. Nigel’s impromptu confession had given him a second wind; a renewed desire to find a way out of this hell. Life might well be a crazy ride, but fuck him if he didn’t want to live it. Adrenalin pumped through his veins and he scrambled shakily to his feet, stumbling slightly as he lurched into the night.
“Well? Are you coming or not?” he called over his shoulder to Nigel.
Then Nigel was behind him, and they were running. Fuck caution. Fuck trying to apply reason to a situation that defied all logic. With Jim in front, they blindly ran. Past a mix of half completed rides and cumbersome machinery, past an old-fashioned carousel…
And smack bang into his brother who was running in the opposite direction.
Jim ground to a halt.
“Andy? You aren’t supposed to be here. Where’s Gavin? And the girl?” he panted, Tracy’s name having temporarily escaped his mind.
“They’re dead.”
Jim gripped his brother by the upper arms. He looked in a bad way and felt tense and trembling to the touch. Jim recognised the look in his brother’s wide, staring eyes for what it was; he too had seen horrors a person had no business seeing in their lifetime.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her, man.”
Only then did he noticed how gore-splattered Andy was. He and Nigel were covered in their fair share of blood, but Andy’s right arm was black and glistening in the moonlight. Lumps of God only knew what clung to the hairs on his forearm.
Like he’s been up to the elbow in innards…
He shuddered. After what he had done to Georgina, he didn’t doubt that Andy had done something truly unspeakable. A bad smell of shit assaulted Jim’s nose and he reeled slightly, stepping back from his brother.
Andy’s glazed eyes darted to Nigel. “Where’s the girl?”
Jim just shook his head, a lump forming in his throat.
No. Don’t think about that. Just survive…
“Oh, man,” Andy said, his shoulders visibly slumping.
“No time for this now.” Jim said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
A throaty laugh coming from somewhere behind them made Jim freeze. His pulse quickened and sweat prickled all over his body.
“Did you guys here that?”
But neither of them answered him, they were running scared, scattering like wildlife on hearing gunfire.
“Andy!” he called out to his brother’s departing back. “We need to stick together…”
But his warning fell on deaf ears.
Nigel was the first to die. One second he was running, the next a crack in the ground opened up beneath him and he fell down into the hellfire. The concrete instantly sealed over his head and Nigel was simply no more, wiped off the face off the earth.
Andy stopped running. The way he was knocked backwards and landed on his arse it looked as if he had run into a brick-wall. But there was no brick-wall there. There wasn’t anything there.
“Andy,” Jim cried helplessly, lunging towards him.
Andy got to his feet and the sight of it made Jim’s skin crawl. It wasn’t right; Andy’s head lolled to one side and his movements were stiff and unnatural, like invisible hands were dragging him to his feet.
Jim blinked, and he saw semi-transparent hands were pulling his brother upright. It took more than a moment for Jim’s frazzled brain to grasp what his eyes were seeing. The hands that pulled him up were big. Not big in the conventional sense, but big as in almost as big as Andy’s entire body. Hands the size of two men were wrapped around him, reminding Jim of a toddler clutching a favourite toy. It made no sense, yet there it was. Jim’s disbelieving eyes travelled upwards, latching onto the face in the black night that hovered over the hands that gripped his brother.
The head was huge, in proportion to the hands. At first he thought he was seeing a red-tinted cloud as the face was diaphanous and subtly shifting in shape, the edges blurry. The indistinct face was comprised of a substance that defied comprehension and description, like wisps of fog mixed with fire and smoke. The eyes were black holes in the infernal visage, blacker than the blackest night sky.
Then Andy was being lifted upwards and Jim realised that the thing he was seeing was more than just a face and a pair of hands, it was a body on a massive scale that had been crouched down on the ground to pick up Andy. Andy swooshed up into the night sky, higher and higher until he was level with the top of the ferris wheel in the near distance.
The thing’s entire body was made up of the same, softly undulating substance that was both transparent yet solid.
Am I the only person seeing this? How can that be?
“Because only those to be sacrificed possess the gift of gazing upon my image. Cradled in my hands, Andy is invisible to all but you.”
The voice existed only in his mind, and it was deafening. He clutched his hands to his ears and sank to his knees.
“Kneel before your master. Soon earth will be mine completely.”
Holding his ears did nothing to alleviate the bellowing voice in his brain and he howled through gritted teeth.
“Get. Out. My. Head,” he gasped.
It felt like a shaft of glass had splintered his brain clean in two. When he lifted his trembling head, he saw that the thing was smiling. At least, Jim thought it was a smile. The black smudge beneath the black eyes had widened in an upward curvature. And that black-hole was continuing to widen. The monster lifted Andy headfirst towards the black hole. An image of the painting, ‘Satan devouring his children’ by Goya flashed in his mind. The devil himself was here, and he was eating his brother.
Sure enough, Andy’s head disappeared into the black abyss. When he emerged from the devil’s mouth, even from this distance Jim could see that only a bloodied, jagged neck stump remained. Jim closed his eyes and clasped his hands together.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
He didn’t know where the words came from. Up until that second, he had never believed in God.
Funny how quick a bloke can change his mind on such matters.
“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”
Jim wasn’t quite sure what happened next, or why. The oddest sense of calm washed over him as he pleaded with God. Something compelled him to look over his shoulder, and when he did, he saw he was just a few metres away from the steel-hoarding fence.
&nb
sp; How could we have not seen that? It doesn’t make sense.
Nothing is ever going to make sense ever again…
And all the while he continued to recite the Lord’s Prayer, even when the monster screamed in his head so hard and loud that Jim thought he might pass out.
“Forgive us our trespasses,” he screamed, half running, half stumbling towards the fence, not daring to look over his shoulder at the devil and his brother.
“As we forgive those who trespass against us…”
Now he was scaling the fence, using a conveniently placed pile of concrete-mix bags as a foothold.
“Deliver us from evil,” he wheezed as he dropped to the other side. As soon as his converse trainers touched down on the pavement on the other side, the howling in his mind was already fading.
And then he was jogging along the promenade. He laughed as he lurched onwards, zigzagging so violently he repeatedly stumbled into the road to be blared at by car-horns.
All he knew was he had to get to London, the city he called home. It was the only coherent thought in his head as, like a homing-pigeon, he zeroed in on the train-station.
Images of blood, death, and lakes of fire filled his brain. Jim giggled and cried and knew that life, as he knew it, was over.
8.
Two Weeks later.
Impervious to the odour of stale sweat, piss and shit that hung permanently around him, Jim called out to passersby from his position huddled in a Betfred’s doorway.
“The end is nigh. You’re all going to die, sad fucks, you hear me? You’re all going to die. Satan is coming and you’re gonna burn for eternity.”
It was Saturday night and most people ignored him. Just another pissed homeless man shouting the odds.