Five-Oh-Six-Three (Part Six)

©2012 David Jasmin-Green

“Hey, you!” a powerful female voice echoed from a dark alcove in the cavern wall that Blain failed to notice because he was busy watching his footing as he followed Fathom through the bustling crowd. “Yes, you – the purty little white boy. Are you deaf, dippy or both? Get your scrawny ass over here, I wanna feast my hungry black eyes on your naked, Caucasian English splendour.”

“Go on, I'm sure there's no need to be nervous,” Fathom said, nudging Blain forwards with his festering snout. “Be cautious by all means, but don't be nervous whatever you do. Nervousness is a sign of weakness wherever your travels take you, but it's best not to appear weak in a place like this, even if you're the biggest Jessie ever born - which I don't in the slightest bit expect you are. Honestly.....”

“Who's lurking in that little cavelet, or should I say what?” Blain whispered.

“I have no idea,” Fathom replied, “ but she sounds rather authoritative, doesn't she? I'd do as I was told if I were you. Don't get too close, mind.”

Blain moved a few steps closer to the alcove, skirting a gathering of small, plump creatures resembling plucked chickens except for their peculiar light bulb shaped heads and milky, more than likely sightless eyes. The nearest of the chooks dropped an almighty fart as he brushed past it and the others all farted in sympathy, and the ensuing stench was much nastier than the smell of the squashed fungus. “Oh, thanks very much,” Blain groaned, slipping in the layer of filth that the bird things had deposited on the ground but thankfully managing stay on his feet. “This is all I bloody well need. What the fuck have you lot been eating? No, forget I asked, I really don't want to know.”

The foul smelling fowl clucked angrily, flapping their tiny, naked wings and shuffling out of his way on their raw, bleeding haunches. The poor things were unable to stand, Blain concluded; their legs lacked muscle tissue, they were useless appendages that dragged spastically behind them as they moved. The fowl continued emitting resounding bottom trumps as he gingerly crept around them, noting to his relief that they were shit-scared of him, because though they were fairly small and they looked harmless enough for some reason they made his skin crawl.

Quite accidentally he trod on the tail of a large, wicked looking dog-man who sat beside the chooks playing cards with three unidentifiable blobs that might or might not have been giant inside out slugs. The dog-man looked menacingly at the newbie with a single bloodshot eye – he was wearing an eye-patch over the other. He bared his huge, uneven yellow teeth, emitted a low growl and carried on with his game. “Those cock-a-doodles stink to high heaven,” the dog-man muttered, “and the smell is infinitely worse when some thoughtless cunt disturbs them. Maybe we should ingest them the next time they fall asleep. Good riddance to bad rubbish, that's what I say - I'm sure the ugly bastards won't be missed.”

“Hurry the fuck up, slowcoach,” the lady in the dark alcove grumbled. “I'm desperate to witness your almost celestial beauty and maybe catch a whiff of your sweat, little blood. I haven't seen an unrevised man close up for an inordinately long time..... Come closer, white boy. Don't be scared, I promise I won't hurt you. I'll give you a little loving if you want, but I won't hurt a single hair on your purdy little head.”

As Blain stepped closer, feeling like a fly must feel as it approached the edge of a spider's web, he noticed a set of parallel grooves running down the wall at either side of the alcove's mouth. “There must have been a door of some description here at some point,” he mused aloud. “It's unlikely to have been a wooden door as the infernal damp down here wouldn't have taken long to turn it to pulp - unless it was protected with Ronseal wood preservative, of course, because everybody knows that that stuff does exactly what it says on the tin - so it was probably a metal one. I wonder what the door kept in, or maybe kept out, and I wonder why it was removed?” He turned, half hoping that Fathom would enlighten him, but the serpent was uncharacteristically silent.

“Come on in, sweet stuff, and stop pussyfooting around,” the thing in the alcove purred. The words 'cell,' 'dungeon' and 'trap' briefly passed through Blain's mind, a warning from his subconscious perhaps, but though he wasn't stupid he wasn't the most wary of individuals either, and if it was a warning it failed to raise his suspicion above the fair to middling level that it already hovered at.

“I'll light an oil lamp so that I can see you better – I don't wanna miss a single detail of your incomparable, lilly white glory,” the anonymous woman mumbled as she struck a match and Blain stepped into her odorous den.

“Oh, shit,” he said as the alcove lit up. “Oh, holy mother.”