Flux

bucking and heaving, thighs slapping together. “Fuck me, oh, fuck me,” she was almost screaming. Iain had his eyes closed, about to empty himself when she shouted, “And does this feel real, cunt!” Her voice had changed, her smooth velvet tones now harsh.
    His eyes snapped open; what had been to him, a beautiful woman was now transformed into the most hideous of hags, weeping pustules covering her face and body, thin lips drawing back to reveal rotten pegs within. He tried to shake her off but she rode him hard, bouncing up and down. “Fuck me cunt!”
    He was past the point of no return and emptied his load. The moment he did, and with an impossible show of agility, she leaped from his lap and into the top corner of the room, clinging to the walls near the ceiling, her head moving rapidly from side to side. Her movements were reminiscent of those of a lizard; an impression reinforced as a forked tongue darted out from between her lips to lick a quivering eye ball.
    Iain let out a piercing scream, the type which makes any person hearing it have their blood turn to ice. The creature laughed a hideous laugh and watched with glee before running around the top of the wall and melting through the holes of the small hatch in the door. Presumably she, it, materialised again on the other side and Iain could hear cackling laughter and the sharp click, click, click of claws on stone disappearing down the passageway for long after she had gone.

    If there was ever any question of Iain regaining control of his mind and becoming grounded in the real world then the balance had been tipped, and certainly not in his favour. The clean and sterile hospital walls dissolved away to be replaced by stone and mould. The events of the day had beaten him and no amount of psychiatrists, doctors or their drugs could help him now. If he was to find a way out, an escape from his situation, he had to do it on his own and from the inside so to speak.

Chapter Forty
    The point of no return

    “Did you like my little present?” Bert let himself into the room, he looked cheerful and over his shoulder he carried a brown leather satchel.
    “Uh? Was that your doing? You sick cunt!”
    “That good eh? I thought you’d appreciate the sentiment. We’ve had such fun together I thought I’d make you a little offering.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Well, as we’ve been such good friends, and I like you, I really do, I’m going to give you one last chance to reconsider my offer.”
    “What offer?”
    “What offer do you think? To join us of course; to leave behind all this pain and anguish and be truly free.”
    “You’re lying?”
    “Er – nope, I don’t think so.”
    “Just fuck off and leave me alone.”
    “So, is that still a no I take it?”
    Iain pondered, his will broken. After seeing a person, who wasn’t even real, commit such acts of cruelty and violence he couldn’t take the risk of believing his word; preferring torment to committing himself to evil. “Definitely still a no. Now will you just make everything as it was and leave me alone!”
    “No can do I’m afraid.” Bert reached around and swung the satchel from his shoulder. Unclipping the top, he reached in and pulled out a set of pliers, a piece of wood with nails sticking out in all directions at one end, and a cordless drill.
    Iain must have blinked for he found himself instantly transported into the rusted iron manacles hanging from the wall. Arms outstretched above his head, he stared wide-eyed with pupils dilated at the tools Bert had produced, under no illusion as to their use.
    Bert shook his head. “Have it your way,” he said, squeezing the trigger on the drill and making it whirr around a couple of times. A smile crossed his lips, a tiny rivulet of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Brilliant, plenty of charge. Time for you to get intimately acquainted with my friends here.” He walked towards where Iain was chained against the wall, “Now, I’ll take it nice and slow. I’d like to say that it won’t hurt a bit: but it will.”
    Coming close, the old man knelt on the floor, levelling the drill bit at Iain’s right knee. He was singing quietly beneath his breath, John Lennon’s Imagine .

    They say I’m a dreamer,
    But I’m not the only one,
    I thought you would join us,
    And the world could be as one…

    Iain didn’t know whether he’d changed the words but was sure the meaning wasn’t as the songwriter intended. Not that