Benji stirred in the inky gloom. His body was sore in places he hadn’t realised were a part of him. His lower back spasmed and made it difficult to draw breath. With huge resolve he sucked a mouthful of air and was instantly sorry. It was a foul brew of decaying flesh, so thick with the stench of decomposition and rotten eggs it coated his tongue. Benji bent double in the corridor littered by shattered ceramics.
The contractions of his stomach only slightly lessened the pain of tile chips worming deep into his palms. His shirt stuck irritatingly to his chest, as though he’d poured syrup over himself. Benji glanced down and fear pierced his throat. He was drenched in blood – a lake of dampness banked by dryness. He’d lain here long enough for it to set. Bringing a shaky hand to his face, he cautiously patted the crust beneath his nose, relieved the bleeding had staunched. His head ached and he was extremely parched, lips cracked from a loss of body fluids. What were the symptoms for dehydration?
A greasy ash eddied lethargically in the dim glow. When he checked his watch, it had stopped at midnight. Benji’s mind slowly came to full awareness and a throbbing hum gained prominence. It grew louder, in increasingly frequent bursts. It was very hot, acrid heat consuming him with thirst.
He wanted more than anything to move, but his legs would not obey and he remained pinned against unyielding concrete. He could feel his toes and didn’t believe the force of the impact had been enough to sever his spine, so why wouldn’t they as much as twitch? He gave the issue concerted attention, managing to thrash his upper body about, while his useless lower half refused to budge.
Needing to do something other than sit like an exposed duck in hunting season, he patted the gritty floor for the torch. Fingers met plastic and he clicked it on, playing the beam around until it rested on the reflective silver of the fridge door. Even through a dense oily haze, the surface pulsated, an impossible thudding heartbeat. It glowed ominously and hissed steam.
Benji’s skin tingled with foreboding. Whatever was coming was not friendly. He was so afraid, but no matter how he tried and struggled, he could not budge his stubborn body from its place. He sat there limply, a sacrificial tethered goat.
“Yes, Benji. That is right. Give yourself to me.” An irresistibly appealing voice caressed his mind. “I am coming only for you,” she promised seductively. “I shall grant you all you’ve dreamed. All you’ve ever wished for can be yours. You will be the world’s greatest trauma surgeon. The finest college will cost you nothing and they will journey across the world for the privilege of your consultation.”
The pounding became unbearable. Benji clamped his hands tightly to his ears as it reached a crescendo, silver gleaming bright enough to stain the darkness red. The thumping halted for the tiniest beat and then the door blew outwards with a force so powerful it gouged the wall over him, missing by a whisker. It rebounded to implant itself on the side opposite, where it jutted like some crazy art installation.
Debris machine-gunned and a choking dust filled his lungs. Slimy fillets of corpse and festering entrails splattered in a grisly shower. Benji’s body jerked free as pain seared his head, curling him into a knot. A skull rolled to a stop next to him, its caved temporal bone pasted in pink brain. An attached eyeball skewed crazily at him. He gagged and convulsed in the rubble. A crackling fizz as loud as ice-water on a baking griddle filled the night, punctuated by jagged crunches.
The floor beneath him shuddered and the building groaned as the thing in the cool room tore its way out, an inhuman screech of wrath blades in Benji’s ears. He screamed and writhed. Blood poured from his nose and his eardrums threatened to burst. Silence abruptly descended. The respite was profound when the agony finally ceased. Benji dragged himself tiredly upright.
He felt for the torch again, used it to bat the skull away, and pointed it gingerly at the newly created black hole of dust and seething ash. The barely penetrating ray jiggled with his shakes. A manic high-pitched giggle and a flurry of clapped hands issued from within. Perhaps now was an opportune moment to lose it! Everyone in that room was supposed to be dead.
He considered a screaming encore, when the gloom swirled apart and a naked woman appeared. She was so utterly stunning Benji knew he would never see her equal in beauty as long as he lived. Granted, this might be a limited period; the odds for his survival were lengthening by the second. He caught the briefest glimpse of her spectacular form, drifting placidly towards him, unsullied by the filth around her, before he clamped his eyelids shut.
Her body was unparalleled even in the airbrushed, surgically enhanced porn that littered his mates’ computers. Benji had always preferred the warmth and wonderful imperfection of his real girl to the virtual variety. What he wouldn’t give to see her one last time. He would hug her so close and never let go! But currently ensnared by the succubus, his freedom seemed a distant dream.
The woman’s ravishing image invaded his consciousness. Her skin shone golden, her luscious mouth the colour of ripe plums. The tip of her tongue slid provocatively over her curvaceous top lip. Her silken black hair fell straight to her tiny waist, sinuous strands over voluptuous breasts. In the shortest instance, Benji registered her long, shapely legs and tight stomach. She’d gifted him with a dazzling smile. But he’d also stared into her ageless, cruel eyes, black as a bottomless chasm and scarier than anything he’d ever imagined.
She leached into the secret recesses of his soul, dissolving a lifetime of memory until only emptiness was left for her to fill with monstrous intent. Benji vigorously shook his head. He wanted her pollution erased from his thoughts – he wanted her out of his mind! But the more he fixed on expelling her, the more her contamination spread, teasing and tempting him. Fragrant air engulfed Benji in a confounding cloud when she knelt before him.
“Intriguing! You refuse my offer.” She tutted disapproval, her enthralling breath clouding his thoughts. “If I had but time to teach you appropriate respect.”
Something about her superior tone aggravated Benji. She was like all the other beautiful people he’d ever known, who took their genetic blessings for granted, scornful of the burden of those less lucky. He refused to inhale the intoxicating scent and welded his eyelids, scrambling to block her by reciting anatomy.
“Cranium, glabella, zygomatic arch, maxilla, mandible, mastoid process,” he chanted silently.
She snorted surprise. “Hmm, mildly impressive. You are one of the very few who have defied me. Not even a teensy peek? I’ll even let you touch.” She ran her hands high inside his thighs. He pressed his legs together, fighting a rising erection by recalling the mess of innards decorating his workplace. This woman did things to a person, things they didn’t want but couldn’t help.
“Frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal, magnum foramen.” Benji’s sanity splintered.
He knew any bargain she made was at his expense, but his fight deflated as rapidly as a punctured tyre. She was too strong, her pull overwhelming. Suddenly snapshots of his treasured granny, his darling girlfriend, and his schoolmates bombarded him. Everyone he’d ever felt the slightest affection for flashed his awareness in a torture movie that made Saw worthy of Disney. His heart shattered to a million fragments.
“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, shall it be fast or shall it be slow?” There was barely a microsecond’s silence, but to Benji it seemed a terrible eternity. “Silly me! This is no occasion to rectify your insolence.”
Her voice turned glacial. Benji felt her fingers grip his temples. “I will be merciful and choose fast. You will be one of the fortunate few not unwaylaid in the dark. As you deem the use of your ocular senses unnecessary …”
She placed a thumb over each eye and began to push, the pressure ripping bullets down his optic nerve. But the pain was nothing to him. She had rendered him beyond hope by revealing her intentions for his family. She would hunt them down and do to them all the despicable things he’d been shown. He was paralysed by her touch and could only sit unmoving and petrified, begging to pass out. A hideous squelching forewarned Benji of the ghastly end.
