Aphelion (5 page)

The door began to close and I started to settle into that comfortable reasoning. Just then, at the worst possible moment, Meg decided to slip out of the lift. I dashed forward, but wasn’t quick enough to prevent the doors from meeting in the middle. I stabbed at the door-open button but there was no response.

I spun around, shocked by the abrupt movement of the lift. It was going down. I swallowed hard, doing my best to control my breathing. There was no lower ground floor or basement button, and yet I was most certainly going down.

I closed my eyes. My gym instructor had shown me some meditation techniques, and I just prayed they would be enough to calm me as the metal box and I descended to God-knows-where.

*

Eventually the lift came to rest. As I neared my unwanted destination I could have sworn I could smell burning. Not the fumes of a simple fire, rather the same smell you got when you accidentally burned the hair on your fingers when lighting a stove with matches.

With my nostrils full of that smell, my heart started thumping harder as the doors slid open. Whatever was coming next was something to be dreaded, and I surely did. I pulled back, pressing myself against the far wall of the lift as much as was possible. I wanted to get a good look at what was beyond the doors before I committed myself to stepping outside. I had already convinced myself that whether I pressed the ground floor button or not, the lift would not be returning me to
terra firma
.

What I saw was, I suppose, a cave. Maybe my senses had not been deceiving me after all, since it now seemed that the lift had descended all the way down through the cliff. I sniffed. Mixed in with the smell of burning was a hint of salt. I must have been at the bottom, in a cave near the sea.

I crossed the lift and pressed a button. Just in case. As expected the doors did not close, instead they remained resolutely open. I took a deep breath, and almost gagged with the taste of the burning. The longer I was exposed to the air of the cave, the more intense the burning became. The cave was saturated in it.

Having no other real choice I stepped out of the lift. It was a cave alright, but whether it was natural or fashioned by human hands I could not tell. Not really my field of expertise. I sold outboard motors, for God’s sake, and I was seriously out of my depth.

Nonetheless I continued on. I had to find out what had happened to Mr. Wyndham, and I just knew the answer lay further into this cave. I had taken several steps when I heard the unmistakeable sound of the lift doors closing, amplified by the echoing void of the cave that surrounded me. I spun on my heel, intending to dive into the lift before the doors could meet, but I was too far away. I hadn’t realised I’d walked so far, but I had, and I’d need to be Superman to cross the distance between me and the lift in time. Feeling as useless as a screen door on a sub, I watched as the doors sealed my fate.

It was just me and the cave now. And the burning.

*

It didn’t take me too long to find the source of the acrid smell. Whoever was behind all this (and I had my suspicions thanks to Meg’s manoeuvring me into the lift) clearly didn’t want their…what? Trophies? I wasn’t sure. Whatever they liked to call the poor people in the cave, the perpetrators didn’t like to walk too far.

Several people were chained to the walls, their arms and legs spread eagle, heads slumped. It was hard to tell if they were alive or dead from my position at the mouth of this little cavern; hard enough to keep looking at them, what with the way they had been skinned. One of them had no skin at all; all that could be seen was the muscles that usually lay undisturbed and protected by the outer layer. There was something incredibly gross and wrong about seeing a body of pure muscle like this. Seeing someone in a naked and vulnerable state was one thing, as the other bodies were, but to see someone stripped to the muscle… I fought the urge to vomit.

The other people hung to the walls were in various states of being skinned. Whole strips of skin were missing, some across the chest, others along the arms, legs and torso. One unfortunate man had been castrated, too. I winced, my hand gripping my own privates involuntarily. Although I’d never had anything done to my own personals other than circumcision when I was a kid, I could well imagine how it must have felt to have it cut off. I suppose any man would, wouldn’t they?

Nearby, on a large metal table, lay several cutting implements. Knives and saws of varying shape and size. I was surprised to see how clean they were, and then my eyes alighted on the sanitising and disinfecting solutions that also stood on the table. At least the people responsible showed some good sense.

What was I saying? Good sense? How could they possibly justify what had been done to the men on the walls. And yes, it occurred to me then that there were only men in this cavern. No women at all. For a moment I pondered on the idea that perhaps the women were in another cavern. But I soon dismissed that idea. Deep down I knew it was only men who were the victims here.

I approached the table to get a better look at what was on there. I treaded carefully, and quietly. Not sure if any of the men were still alive, I didn’t want to cause them further pain by shocking them into movement with any sudden noise.

My heart sank further when I noticed the lack of any anaesthetic on the table. Clean these bastards may have been, but they clearly had no qualms about causing the men pain.

“Who…” Cough. “Who are you?”

A simple but very obvious question. I turned from the table, and my mouth fell open. Seeing the men hang there, skin torn to shreds, was one thing, but to have one actually speaking to me was another. My eyes drifted to the shuddering rise and fall of his tattered chest. I lifted my gaze onto the man’s face, and was hit by the sheer pain etched there. Totally understandable, of course, but I never knew you could really feel someone else’s pain the way I could then.

I told him my name, not that it was of much use to him. I wondered what I could do for him.

“Are you with them?”

“No,” I replied in a whisper, the anger and disgust bubbling in my tone. “They trapped me down here.” I looked around. “Although I have no idea why,” I added, not bothering to hide the fear that had ridden up in me.

The man coughed. “Divine retribution… That’s what they’ll call it.”

“They?” I asked, although deep down I knew the answer to that.

He nodded upwards painfully. “Up there, in the…hotel.”

I approached him, and reached up for the manacles around his wrists. “Let me get you out of this.”

“No.” He coughed again; this time it came out all ragged, and was followed by a dribble of blood. I reached into my trousers pocket and retrieved my hankie. I dabbed the blood from the side of his mouth, and he smiled at me. It hit me that this was probably the first sign of human compassion he had felt in a long while. My eyes watered at the overbearing sadness of it all.

“Please…kill me.”

I pulled back, a spasm of shock shaking me. I shook my head. I couldn’t kill a person. No matter what. I just didn’t have it in me.

“Please. Before they come back and finish…this.”

“Look,” I said, a sudden urgency gripping me, “I came here to find a friend. I’m sure they’ve brought him here. Is there another cavern like this?”

“Kill me.”

I looked back at the mouth of the cavern. He was sure they were going to return, and that only made me certain, too. I had to find Mr. Wyndham before they returned. I sniffed. The smell of salt was stronger now, so I couldn’t have been too far from the sea. This meant there had to be another exit from these caves. If I could find Mr. Wyndham, then we could…

“It’s too late.”

My attention snapped back to the man, and my heart was stopped by the look of pure horror on his face. “What do you…?”

I didn’t need to finish my question. I heard the lift doors open a short distance away.

“I have to go.” I reached up a hand and wiped a further dribble of blood off the man’s chin. “I’m sorry.”

With one final look of apology I turned to leave him to his certain death. That brief moment of humanity was going to cost me, since it had given them enough time to reach the mouth of the cavern. A small group of them stood there, completely blocking the only way deeper into the caves. My only escape route.

I recognised them all. Meg the receptionist, the man who kept the tennis courts in order, the waiting staff from the dining room, the chef, and at the head of the small group the manager himself. Each of them was smiling, and the sheer delight in those smiles made my skin squirm.

“Hello, Mr. Jensen,” the manager said. “So nice of you to join us.”

*

I’ll admit I screamed. Not because of what I saw, so much as because I knew what was coming my way next. They manacled me to the wall, right next to the man I had spoken to. He’d not said a single word since they had entered; he didn’t even look my way once during the whole time that they forced me against the wall and ferociously stripped me naked. But I watched him, as Meg carefully sliced a long strip of skin off him, from the left shoulder right down to his waist. He didn’t scream, I think he had got so used to it now that he couldn’t scream any more. Although the pain he felt was clearly written all over his face. I did scream, however.

Once Meg had finished she held the skin aloft like a trophy. Then, and I have to confess I could not remove my eyes from the spectacle; she put one end in her mouth and started chewing. The old keeper of the courts came over to her laughing, and she nodded at him. My stomach turned as he took the other end of the strip of skin into his own mouth, and together they continued chewing as if the skin was a long piece of spaghetti being eaten by two lovers.

“Why?” I asked.

“Infidelity, Mr. Jensen.”

“What? I’ve never…” A flash of memory; watching the tight ass of Mr. Wyndham in his tennis shorts, Jake, my husband, at home oblivious. I swallowed, and the manager nodded. “But…I didn’t do anything.”

“No, but you would have. And now Mr. Wyndham will be saved the displeasure of taking part in your infidelity.”

I looked around; checking one last time to make sure Mr. Wyndham was not hanging on the wall. “Where is he?”

“Safe in his room. Meg tells me it was you who almost disturbed me returning him there.”

I was too stupefied to respond to that. So the manager carried on.

“He shall awake in his room, believing he fell asleep after a tiring bout of tennis. He’ll have no memory of his brief trip down here.” The manager nodded at the chef. “Gene here makes the most amazing and potent amnesia pills. Mr. Wyndham had to be brought down here to arouse your curiosity. We knew you’d want to know how he could get in a lift one second, and then not be in it the next. But, he is safe now. The lure worked.”

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. “But he’ll be expecting me to meet him.”

“Yes, until Meg explains that you left earlier without any word as to why.”

“Others will miss me. My husband…”

“Will receive a letter from you explaining that you had an affair with another man, and how you could not handle the guilt and so he shall never hear from you again.”

My mouth worked to speak, but I could not find the words. In my mind I could see Jake at home
thinking
that I had been capable of… I lowered my head. I would have, given the chance. Maybe I
did
deserve this. To treat my marriage in such a casual manner…

“You will be missed for a while, but you will soon just become another statistic. One of millions who can’t handle their lives and so sink into the underbelly of this wonderful nation of ours. Sometimes someone will pass a tramp on the street and think they recognise him as you, but they’ll ignore that as stupid. You’ll soon be forgotten.”

I looked at the man beside me, who now seemed to be unconscious. Knocked out by the pain, no doubt.

“Yes, you will be like these.” The manager indicated his staff. “We are the avenging angels, seeking divine retribution for the infidelity of man. We have these conferences to seek out those who wish to pervert the sanctity of life. Those who would sleep with others when bound by wedlock; those who climb to their present positions in life by nefarious means. We gather them in, and consume the sin off their flesh.”

Meg and the old man had finished their bizarre meal. The manager walked over to Meg and licked the remaining blood off her lips. He looked back at me and winked. “You shall make an excellent feast indeed. Your sin is one of desire, and that reeks throughout your body.” He placed an arm around Meg and guided her out of the small cavern. “We shall return for you.”

And they shall. Of that I have no doubt. Maybe I deserve it.

Reflection

It had been a shitter of a day, but Corey Jordan was glad to be home. There was no way, in his considered opinion, in which the day could get much worse. Fuck Duncan Leman anyway—if he didn’t want to get a smack in the mouth a week before Christmas, then it was his own stupid fault for constantly picking on the non-Brits at work. Racist bastard! About time someone tore a piece off the old fool. And Corey was more than happy to be that person.

Of course, as it turned out, the boss didn’t agree. And, for reasons Corey couldn’t quite work out, it was he who ended up with the first written warning. Was it his fault that racism pissed him off so? No. Was it his fault then, when that pissed off, his mouth ran away with itself and produced more profanities than Corey even realised he knew? No, it was not. Apparently accusing someone of being racist was as bad as being racist nowadays. And it wasn’t like Duncan didn’t deserve the smack. What a fucked up world they lived in!

And so, leaving work early (and not out of choice!), he decided to pop into the pub. Six bottles of Bud, two Jägerbombs, and four hours later he finally realised it was time to head home. So, here he was, stumbling through his door at seven-thirty on a Monday night, completely stone sober. Whoever said he couldn’t handle his drink was clearly talking crap.