Off Flesh

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. It’s a truism if ever there was one. What they fail to tell you is that it can scare the living crap out of you, too. I travel a lot, visit a lot of places, stay at a lot of hotels. I’ve been to some crappy hotels, some really luxurious ones, too. But never been to one like The Cliff’s Edge in Torquay. It was a business meeting about selling outboard motors, pretty tedious stuff, really.

Things started going weird on the Saturday after we’d all arrived. The actual meetings weren’t to begin until Monday, which left us the whole weekend to pal around and get to know each other. You know, chill in the sauna the way half-naked men seem to like to do, play tennis in the convenient courts located beside the hotel, or just go for a stroll into the nearest little town.

After finishing breakfast, scrambled eggs on lightly buttered toast and a couple of glasses of milk, I came out of the dining room just in time to catch Mr. Wyndham entering the lobby. He was dressed in his tennis whites, so no prize for guessing where he’d been. Something of a fitness fanatic, really, which came as a bit of mystery to me seeing as he didn’t eat breakfast. Something told me that Mr. Wyndham, who had a few years on me, would not be around on this little world of ours for longer than I. Still, he seemed a nice enough chap. Like me he had arrived a few days early, so we had the chance to get to know each other a little bit more than the others. I still think of him as Mr. Wyndham, even though by Saturday morning we were already on first name terms. Mark of respect, I suppose. It’s “a thing,” as my niece would have said.

“Hey there, Sam,” I said to him.

“Alright…” he said to me, with a wide smile, and after a failed attempt to juggle his tennis racket and bag gave up on the offering to shake my hand. I laughed and asked him if he fancied a meander into town later. We both shared an interest in antiques, and I’d noticed a little shop on the drive here. Mr. Wyndham said he’d be more than happy to accompany me once he’d had a shower. No problem, I could find something to occupy me while he was getting rid of all that manly sweat.

I watched him walk away, my eyes lingering on his pert ass beneath the white shorts, and only turned away when he entered the lift. I glanced around the lobby, hoping no one had noticed where my eyes had looked. Not that I’m in the closet or anything, it’s just there was something about him that I couldn’t resist. And yes, it’s true; I’m a married man. So sue me.

So, there I was, not much of anything to do except wait. Once I was certain no one was paying me any attention my eyes returned to the lift. Going up, of course. Mr. Wyndham was on the first floor, so I guessed he wouldn’t be too long. I turned away, intending to find something to occupy me, but before I could come up with anything even remotely interesting there was the ding of a bell and the sliding noise of metal on metal as the lift doors reopened. I turned around. Maybe Mr. Wyndham had left something in the courts.

It wasn’t him. A couple emerged from the lift, so caught up in their own world they were totally unaware of this casually dressed thirty-something man watching them. I suspect they were having an affair…only people in the midst of a clandestine affair would be so wrapped up in each other.

For a moment I was puzzled. Surely there had not been enough time for the lift to reach the first floor? I dismissed this. Not like I wasn’t in a world of my own for a while there. More time could certainly have passed than I realised.

Once again I turned away from the lift.

*

Time passed, as it is want to do. At first I wasn’t sure how much, since I got caught up in conversation with another hotel guest. It was a bizarre conversation, one in which I spent most of the time nodding and making the occasional agreeable sound, since I barely had a chance to get a word in. This guest, a young lady called Elisa, rambled on about the patterns in life. To be honest I had no idea what she was getting at, since all these patterns she saw were way beyond me. I sometimes think it takes a special person to discover the secret patterns of life, other times I just think these people are barking. Elisa was, I would say politely, totally out there.

Still, if nothing else, it helped me pass the time while I waited for Mr. Wyndham. Eventually, I managed to excuse myself, which I did by cunningly introducing her to the wonders of outboard motors. A topic guaranteed to bore the living crap out of anyone, except yours truly. There is only so much deep and meaningful conversation the mind can take before midday, and mine had a full quota already.

So, off she trotted and I returned to the lobby and to the total lack of Mr. Wyndham. I checked my watch. A whole hour had passed with change. I looked around, hoping that Mr. Wyndham was elsewhere in the lobby, perhaps in conversation with someone a little more interesting than Elisa. He wasn’t, which puzzled me, ’cause I honestly couldn’t believe he’d have passed me outside without saying a word. We had, after all, spent several hours talking the night before and seemed to be kindred spirits. What was I to do? First thing that came to mind was to see if he’d fallen asleep in his room. It made a certain sense; he could have been more tired from his tennis than he looked.

I walked up to the lift and pressed the call button. And waited. Chewing my lips, trying not to appear anxious or impatient, I watched the indicator above the lift as the light told me it had moved from floor four to floor three. Should be with me in a minute. Or not. Up to fifth, and top, floor. I raised an eyebrow. It stayed at five for a fair while. Finally the light went out again, signalling the lift’s descent.

I glanced around the lobby, hoping no one noticed that I was practically hopping from foot to foot like some schoolboy about to visit a friend he’d not seen in a long time. Or, perhaps, even visiting Santa.

Looking back, I suppose I did kind of feel like that, too. It had been a long time since I’d found myself attracted to someone new; it was a feeling I’d not had in a long, long time. And never since.

The light on the indicator never did come back on. I assumed the light had simply broken; either that or the lift had got stuck between floors. Either way, I couldn’t wait any more. The stairs were now my only option.

Narrow corridors. Hate them, don’t you? Hotels have this thing about them. Never quite understood why. After all, looking at The Cliff’s Edge from outside it looks flipping huge, and yet inside there seems to be no space at all. Makes me wonder where it all goes, ’cause neither the rooms nor the corridors take up much space.

Room 173 was before me. I raised a hand to knock, and for a few worrying moments it remained in midair, barely an inch from the door. A large part of me wanted to knock, like some previously unknown desire was driving me to see Mr. Wyndham in the privacy of his room regardless of what he was doing. But there was a more cautious part of my brain attempting to hold me back. It was telling me to leave him alone, that this guy was grabbing a few winks after a tiring workout on the tennis courts. And then there was that tiny part of me screaming, telling me, back off, to leave the man alone! Just what the hell did I think I was doing anyway? I had a husband at home!

The cautious part lost, and so did that tiniest scream. My fist rapped on the door. Once, twice. Pause.

There was no answer. I assumed Mr. Wyndham was a deep sleeper, so I knocked again, this time a little harder. Still nothing. A third attempt, I decided, then I would go and…well, I didn’t know what I would do, but a third attempt was going to be last. This time I added my voice to my efforts.

“Hello, Sam, you okay in there?”

My heart skipped a beat, certain I had heard something move inside the room. “Hello?” I called again. This time there was nothing.

Head lowered, I turned and began the long walk back to the lift. It was only twenty feet away, but those twenty feet felt like the farthest distance I had ever walked. By the time I was three feet from the lift I heard the creak of metal on metal, and saw the doors slide open. I stopped, hoping to God that Mr. Wyndham was going to walk out of there.

Nothing. No Mr. Wyndham, no no-one. I tenderly approached the lift and looked inside. There wasn’t anybody waiting in there. I stepped to enter, deciding I couldn’t be arsed to walk back down the stairs, or maybe I could retire to my own room, wait a while, then try Mr. Wyndham’s room again. But as my shoe landed on the minute gap between corridor and lift I stopped.

My breath caught. For a startlingly long second I couldn’t breathe at all. It was as if the lift had started to close in around me, about to gobble me up like a Sunday roast. My hands rushed to my throat in a mad desire to open an emergency hole to let the air through, but as soon my fingers brushed the skin of my throat the air returned. I staggered back, and fell against the wall.

The lift doors closed. My eyes climbed to the indicator above. No light, no sign that it had been on the first floor at all.

People were lined up in a queue at the reception desk. Judging by the look of them they were all here for the forthcoming conference. You could always tell people who sold outboard motors. Grey people in grey suits. Much like me, really. As I stood there my life flashed before my eyes. It didn’t last long at all. A mediocre life as a child, with my father drumming into me the need to be a stable husband, my extremely exciting college business studies course, my marriage to Jake, and our subsequent stable but very dull life together. We never did anything interesting; when I wasn’t at work we’d sit at home, watch TV, eat, sleep, and then go back to work the next day. When was the last time we had a holiday? Four years ago, and that was our honeymoon.

A grey man in a grey suit living a grey life.

Mr. Wyndham was different. He hadn’t arrived at the hotel in a grey suit. He’d arrived in baggy jeans, a nice tight t-shirt and sunglasses. He didn’t carry a suitcase, either. His conference papers were in a trendy off the shoulder “man bag.” It wasn’t until I’d got talking to him the previous night that I realised he was one of us, and that he was actually older than me. He could easily have been mistaken for twenty-five.

My eyes skittered to the lift, and my mind returned to the worrying absence of Mr. Wyndham. I needed to speak to the manager. Since leaving the first floor my mind had been over things several times, and I was now absolutely certain that I had heard a sound in Mr. Wyndham’s room. The sound of falling.

I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, though. Thus I waited, watching as one by one my fellows signed in and picked up their room keys. An interesting insight into the tedium of being a receptionist at a hotel. I could see that the young woman behind the desk was forcing the smile more each time she turned to the next guest. It was good, in a way, to know that it wasn’t only my job that was tedious. I felt an affinity with the woman, and was sure we’d meet on common ground over the disappearance of Mr. Wyndham. Hopefully it would amount to nothing, a simple case of Mr. Wyndham falling asleep and then falling off his bed in surprise at the loudness of my knock. One way or another, for the woman it would be a change from the humdrum of manning the reception desk.

Hang the manager. He probably had a hundred and one things to do anyway. The receptionist needed some spark.

I approached the desk, barely registering the lift doors sliding open as I moved within four feet of them. Had I paid more attention I might have realised that there was no way they should have opened, since only seconds ago the last of the grey suits had entered the lift for his own floor.

I smiled at the receptionist, whose name was Meg according to her badge, and asked, “Could you tell me if Mr. Wyndham has gone out? We were supposed to meet in the lobby but I think I might have missed him.”

She asked me to wait one moment while she checked the keys hanging behind her. Hotel rules didn’t permit the taking of keys off the premises. As long as you remained on the grounds it was fine, but if you were going beyond you had to return the key to reception. A security measure, probably something to do with fire regulations.

“His key isn’t here, which means he’s either in his room or on the grounds somewhere.” Meg smiled at me. Her practiced smile.

“Ah.” I paused a moment, wondering if what I had to say next would come out right. “Well the thing is, I checked on his room a short while ago. You see, when I last saw him he had just returned from playing tennis.”

The sign of recognition come to her face. “Oh yes, I remember. I saw the two of you talking. You watched him enter the lift, didn’t you?” She asked the question with a very innocent voice, but I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she was trying to imply something.

I chose to ignore that. “Anyway, I checked his room and there was no answer.”

“Did you take the lift?”

“Pardon me?”

“The lift. Did you take the lift to first floor?”

Again her voice was quite innocent, but her eyes narrowed. Somewhere in the back of my mind a small bell of alarm rang. Foolishly I ignored it. I needed this woman’s help to find out what had happened to Mr. Wyndham. “No, I took the stairs. The lift was…erm, busy.”

Meg smiled knowingly. “Then maybe you missed him? He might have taken the lift down here while you took the stairs.”

“He might have, yes. But two things make me think otherwise.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. One, if he had returned to the lobby at any time you would have noticed, since you clearly pay close attention to your guests’ movements when they’re down here. And two, I heard a sound when I knocked on his door.”

“Oh.”

This little revelation seemed to shut her up for a moment. I watched her reaction, and it occurred to me that I was never going to connect with Meg. Despite the equal tedium of our jobs we had nothing in common. She looked at me as though she was the keeper of a particular secret that I had no right to whatsoever.

“Maybe we should check together?” Meg suggested.

This time it was my turn to narrow the eyes. The offer of help came a little too quickly for my liking. But how could I turn down such help? I needed to know what had happened to Mr. Wyndham.

“That would be…ideal,” I said, once I had decided on the most innocuous word I could think of.

She reached under the desk to retrieve something. I couldn’t see what it was, since by the time she returned to an upright position she had deposited it into the back pocket of her skirt. She joined me on the other side of the desk and I motioned her to lead the way. Although she was a good foot shorter than me, and a much smaller build, I still didn’t like the idea of her walking behind me. Let alone beside me. I followed her towards the lift.

“I’d rather we took the stairs, actually,” I said just as she pressed a thumb against the call button.

“It’s only a lift,” Meg said with a small laugh. “Do you have claustrophobia?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not that.”

“What is it, then?”

How could I explain to her? There was something very wrong about this lift. I had no idea what, but I instinctively knew something was up. Another of the conclusions I had drawn between the time I left the first floor and returned to the lobby. As I looked at Meg more closely I came to the realisation that she probably had a good idea anyway.

The lift doors opened. Meg waved me in. I eyed her, wondering if I should let her know that I knew something was wrong with this picture. No, not yet. No need to play my hand. Once I saw inside Mr. Wyndham’s room, sure, but not before then.

“Very well,” I conceded and walked over to the lift. We stepped inside at the same time. I looked around. It was a normal lift, nothing special about it. Just a typical metal box lit from above, with the floor and emergency buttons to the left of the doors. I smiled. Perhaps I was being a little paranoid after all. Someone probably just pressed the buttons before leaving the lift, hence why it opened when no one called it.

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.