by West, Sam
“Fuckers,” Jim muttered, taking a swig out of the bottle of vodka within the obligatory, brown paper-bag.
Some of the clear liquid dribbled down his gingery-blonde beard, joining the remnants of a half-eaten Cornish pasty he had rescued from a wheelie-bin a few hours ago. The bottle was three-quarters empty and his goal was to polish it off entirely before ten pm. Anything to stop the constant bloody nightmares. The nightmares where his dead brother and dead best friend and dead girl with whom he’d had the amazing connection called out to him, begging him to come and save their immortal souls from the eternal tortures of hell.
“Bollocks,” he said, when he spilled some of the precious liquid down his saggy, baggy pullover he had stolen off some comatose tramp a few weeks back.
He sensed a presence over him, and looked up to find himself staring into the face of a beautiful young woman. She had long blonde hair, like Georgina. She was dressed a bit like Georgina had been on that fateful night too, in jeans and a plain coat. He thought of her constantly. Not Elise. Not his once-fiancée, no, he didn’t give two fucks about her. Georgina was meant to be the love of his love, and she had been snatched from him. Now there was a girl standing over him that reminded him of her, making him think of what might have been and what he had lost.
And it really pissed him off.
“If I give you one-hundred pounds, do you promise to buy yourself something proper to eat? And maybe a bed for the night?”
“Do I fuck, lady.”
He didn’t regret his words, but one-hundred quid would keep him in booze for an entire week, at least. She turned to leave.
“Wait,” he called to her departing back. “I’ll get myself something to eat, I promise.”
Like fuck...
“Okay. Here.”
She fished in her neat shoulder bag and handed him a wad of notes.
“Thanks,” he grunted, snatching them from her, not believing his luck.
“What happened to you?” she asked in the most innocent manner.
“Why do you care?”
It was then he noticed the funny look in her eyes that was kind of glazed and staring. “Is it a woman? It’s never too late to get back what you lost.”
“Believe me, it fucking is.”
“No. Go back to her. You can save each other.”
She shook her head, and stared down at him like she was completely lost and didn’t know where the hell she was or what she was doing. He could see the way she anxiously rung her hands together as she backed away from him. She turned away and was instantly swallowed up by the busy London street.
Her words didn’t make him think of his fiancée; not once had he so much as spared her a thought. After that night, he had gone back to London to live on the streets. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, it was just that going home was not an option. His wallet and phone was long lost, he was a stranger even to himself. It felt right and natural to roam the streets, as mentally broken as he was. As far as he knew, he could well be in the frame for murder. How could he even begin to explain the disappearance of his entire stag-night? Or the two girls? From reading the newspapers he usually slept under, the police had connected all their disappearances, including himself.
Not that he gave a shit or was even capable of rationalising it on any deep level. His mind wasn’t what it had been; it had caved in on itself under the weight of terror and too much booze.
No, the stranger’s words put him in mind of Georgina. Just like in his dreams where she called to him, begging him to come and save her immortal soul, so now her sweet, beautiful face pleaded with him to go back to Dreamworld.
He lifted the bottle to his lips, intending to drown her with vodka. With the hundred pounds stuffed down the front of his filthy underpants, he drifted into a drunken stupor with the woman’s words echoing in her head.
Go back to her. You can save each other…
The following morning Jim was on the train to Broadgate. The bright, winter sun sliced into his eyes and the hangover was kept at bay by the vodka in the Evian water bottle. Last night’s nightmare in the doorway of Betfred’s was enough to send him back to Dreamworld. His brother needed him. Georgina and Nigel needed him. Somehow, their trapped souls would sense his presence and they would use him as some kind of vessel to get to heaven.
On some level, he knew it made no sense. But neither did meeting the devil. With the money from the woman, Jim had had the presence of mind enough to wash in a public toilet and buy a pair of jeans and a pullover from a charity shop. He’d even bought a comb. He still stunk, but only up close. Apart from the fact he rocked back and forth in the train seat, he could have been passed for an ordinary, scruffy student.
Once in Broadgate, there wasn’t much going on in Jim’s addled head as he walked the short distance along the promenade to the now fully up and running theme-park.
He stared up at the huge, looming gates, painted a jolly, bright pink. How different it looked in daylight.
So they finished building the place then, he thought in a totally detached kind of way.
Just past the open gates was a roofless, concreted area where an old guy in a tiny ticket office guarded the pleasures that lay beyond the looming, castle gates. These were, in turn, guarded by a set of turnstiles.
Only when he crossed the barrier of Dreamworld did a sense of foreboding so strong grip him by the throat that he couldn’t breathe.
Turn around. Walk away. Don’t look back…
“One, please,” he said instead to the guy in the ticket booth.
The old guy lifted his head and smiled. He didn’t have many teeth and his face had more lines than crepe paper.
Jim shuddered. He knew he should leave, but he couldn’t. An image of his brother’s face popped into his head, contorted in agony.
Help me, Jim…
Jim slid a tenner under the glass patrician and for a second his fingers touched the old man’s. He staggered backwards at the intensity of the images that flooded his head. People turned into human fireballs, running and staggering and screaming and dying. Faces of pure evil, laughing. And blood. So much blood. Just as quick, the images stopped dead, leaving him dry-mouthed and his heart hammering.
“Enjoy your day in Dreamworld,” the old man said with a smile.
Jim didn’t care for the twinkle in the old goat’s eyes.
“Fuck you.”
The old man didn’t respond, he just continued to sit there smiling in that strange, fixed way.
His fingers trembled as he inserted the ticket into the turnstile and then entered through a little door in the middle of the mock-castle gates. He was in.
Jim didn’t know what to think or what to feel. The sunlight was so bright today, so low, lending everything a dreamlike, surreal quality. Jim was used to that; his entire life was a strange, waking nightmare. He took a swig from his water bottle to steady his nerves.
What do I do now?
He took in his surroundings in a daze. Even though it was November, it was still quite busy with families and their squawking kids. As if in a dream he wandered aimlessly. Despite the fresh lick of paint and shiny rides, there was still something fundamentally seedy about it. Clowns with cracked face paint handed out brightly coloured balloons to children. Every ride seemed a little off, a little spooky. The dodgems had vampire faces painted on their bonnets, complete with dripping fangs. Freddy Krueger topped his hat in lurid technicolor in the middle of a huge, spinning gravity wheel. The bright helter-skelter had razorblades painted on the sides of the slide.
He passed the funhouse whose façade was painted with scantily clad women with pouting red lips and impossible figures and came to a halt when he reached the gateway to the rollercoaster. It was a big ride, one of the biggest rollercoasters in Europe. The mammoth structure was painted blood red and the free-standing letters comprised of red lightbulbs above the gates proclaimed it to be called ‘The Inferno.’
His head swam with vertigo when he squi
nted up at the highest loop and despite the crispness of the winter day, tiny beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and stung his eyes. The ride itself whooshed over his head in a rush of noisy machinery, accompanied by high-pitched screaming that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He was feeling so confused.
Why did I come here?
“Because it is your destiny. They were never your dreams, they were mine. I am The Prince of Lies.”
Jim gasped and spun round. A clown stood before him. He had very real looking, tufts of orange hair sticking out either side of his bald, white scalp. In his red-gloved hand he held a bunch of red balloons. When he smiled, the red lipstick caked his teeth.
Except in his heart of hearts, Jim just knew it wasn’t lipstick.
It’s blood.
“Hello Jim. I’m so glad you came back. Have a balloon.”
It was him, who else could it be? He staggered backwards, almost knocking over a passing woman.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, mister,” she exclaimed, but it barely registered.
“Keep away from me.”
“Too late for that, Jim. Time for you to fulfil your destiny.”
That was when he understood everything in a moment of perfect clarity. The constant nightmares about those he had lost. That woman last night with the hundred pounds. All lies. All trickery.
The ground shook beneath his feet. For the briefest of moments he just thought it was the rollercoaster vibrating at its foundations, but then the concrete beneath his feet cracked, a zigzag running between his feet.
No, not again…
“The final sacrifice. Welcome to the new world order, Jim Pearson. Welcome to hell.”
Jim didn’t stand a chance. When the spiked pole thrust out of the earth’s crust and stabbed between his legs, he was powerless to stop it. Instantly it penetrated his rectum, sliding up through his innards, bursting everything open inside him like a ripe fruit. It happened so fast that the bloody spiked-tip had erupted through his nose before he could even flinch.
When the pain came, it came full throttle. His limbs jerked and convulsed as he hung there, feet peddling thin air. The heat of fire was all around him and some distant part of his mind comprehended the chaos; the running, the screaming, the heat, the odour of burnt flesh, the terror that hung in the air like a living, breathing thing.
With his head tilted backwards he noticed that the sky was black, and as he writhed and squirmed, he knew that this was all there was now.
He had all of eternity to come to terms with it.
The End.
Thanks for sticking with me to the end, it sure means a lot. In case any of you lovely people are interested, herewith is a list of my work thus far. All can be found on my author page over on Amazon:
Djinn: An Extreme Horror Novel
Splatterpunks: An Extreme Horror Novel
His For The Keeping: A psychological Thriller Novel (co-authored with journalist Myra Fox)
Home Intruder: An Extreme Horror Novella
Suffer Hard: An Exteme Horror Novella
Mary Blake: A Nasty Novelette
Meet The Meat: An Extreme Horror Short
If you like what you’ve read, don’t forget to check up on me now and then, I aim to put something out every month or so for your reading pleasure. Any questions or comments are most warmly welcomed, so please don’t hesitate to contact me, I love to hear from you.
Thanks again and best wishes,
Sam West.