Chapter 7: Prey Hey

Russell remembered back in his childhood when he had been tied up by his own landscape, as the floor under his feet and the ceiling above his head and the walls around him wound up his arms and throttled his neck and wrapped up his legs, crotch, torso, until he was enveloped in a thick black cocoon, and filled up with it as well – no, that was a lie. Nothing like that had ever happened, this was an entirely new experience and it was horrendous.

“Well thats that then.” Lester sighed, heaving his shoulders. “He's been taken and by the morning he'll be nothing but another barrel of petroleum to feed this hell-hole.” Sebastien looked shocked. “Don't say that!” He hissed. “You promised that girl you'd get her father for him!”

Lester shot him a look. “I said no such thing, you take that back!”

“You as good as did!” Sebastien's lip twitched as he saw once again a side of Lester which he really didn't like.

“Agh, fine.” Lester conceded. “I pretty much did.” Sebastien smiled. “But I didn't want to. I still don't. I hate this plac- LOOK OUT!” and without warning he leapt across the passage and slammed his foot on a smoker which had poked through the folds of the wire. “They're tenacious bastards, aren't they?” His eyes glimmered. “You can bet your life that that guy didn't stamp on them – he probably tried to cuddle them.”

Belle looked up from the floor, where she had been staring in a melancholy sort of way. “Does this mean that we're definitely going to find the centre of the wires? The master plug?” Her eyes said that she would rather let the guy starve here than go any further.”

“And you know what else I realised?” Lester called from a way away, where he had been stomping. “We don't even know this guys name! We're supposed to be rescuing him! Jesus!” and with that he resumed his stomping. Sebastien sidled up to Belle and whispered to her, “But you were the one who wanted to find him!”

She looked guiltily around at the fronds of wire curling around them, wall-wires curling up into floor-wires and extending from ceiling-wires. Sparks in the distance. “I didn't know we would be going in here.”

Sebastien rolled his eyes, and hugged her tight. “We've been in worse places than this! This place is childs play!” He eyed her encouragingly, and she smiled weakly back at him. “I know, Seb,” she began, “But-”

“No buts!” Sebastien interrupted her. “Every second we waste here is a second more this guy gets digested. Hey, Lester!” he called. “The quicker we find this guy, the faster we can get out of here! Lets go already!” and so on they walked, Dresden at the back wondering quietly why nobody was still not talking to him – maybe it was cos of his bad talkin's that nobody figured he was scared too.

Russell awoke as the wire slid out of his throat. He felt sated and fed for a moment, his eyes glazed and his muscles either limp or relaxed depending on your point of view. His head lolled forwards a moment and the snap-back realisation of where he was immediately, and dreadfully awoke him to the reality of his situation. He was wrapped tightly in wires, which bound him from the tips of his feet to his collar-bones and neck. They pressed in on his chest, and he could feel his ribs getting out the way inside of him. His heart, trying to pump blood to his brain, was being thwarted by the tight binds which meant that he was rapidly losing feeling in many of his extremities, and his heart beat madly, like a breakbeat inside of him. He was being squeezed tight – he was the tube of toothpaste he thumped every morning, he was the flaccid penis he tried so desperately to engage night after broken night, he was the envy of himself.

The wires lurched him upwards, and he was twisted as he did so, so as he rotated round he came to see the face of his captor. It looked like the head of a fat baby. Hundreds of wires spread from its unshielded neck, writhing and flailing as the spread along the floor. More sprouted from its ears, its nostrils, its gaping mouth. They fell out of the mouth like vomit, or undigested worm food. A sole wire struggled from in between folds of metal which made the gross face; and it was a gross face, as if it was a human face it would be pustulous and greasy. Fuel dribbled from behind its eyes, swilling with diesel, and cried down the side of its enormous cheeks. It leaked from the ears and mouth, like a black waterfall, with cascades of poisonous rainbows spread across it like a factory was spewing right behind it. The face was unmoving, and looked like a dead thing, with great leaks of leaded and unleaded sprawling across its pallid structure. The only living thing here were the wires, great clinging, blinded maggots sparking and writhing all through it. Russell couldn't have found it in him to scream, throat ripped by the wire, but his vocal chord flapped and he panicked.

“Lester” Belle inquired as they walked steadily, nonchalantly busting a smoker into a spirouetting tumble of cogs and tubes and wire. “Have you ever seen it?”

“Never,” Lester replied, looking to the left and right warily. “I've never been this deep in. People normally don't come out when they come this deeply in.” He strained his eyes, looking for something. After several long moments wherein Lester searched hard and everyone else felt awkward waiting for both him to finish and their eventual horrendous fate, his eyes lit up. “I think I've found it,” he said, without any enthusiasm whatsoever. The tension around them visibly twisted, like someone pulled a string tight around them. Sebastien felt his stomach turn over inside him.

It came into clearer focus.

All four of them turned their heads to the side quizzically. Then all of a sudden it wouldn't have mattered if they'd stamped a million smokers, because now they'd been spotted. The wires beneath their feet split apart, and the fat face sprawling with wires seemed to grin as they tumbled down into a hole below. Lester and Sebastien landed hard on their backsides, but Dresden was up and spread-legged before he hit the ground. What he lacked in conversation he made up for now; as a wire leapt over the parapet and down towards the sprawled group, Dresden leapt to the side and grabbed it as it split past him towards Belle. It strained uselessly and he grinned at the others before using it to pull himself up out of the pit, He turned, to help Sebastien out but was immediately attacked by a gaggle of wires – their ends splayed with smaller branches of wire which wrapped themselves round his wrists like barbed fingers. He looked surprised, and more than a little fucked off, but brought wire tumbling towards him, reeling from the babies mouth, by thrusting his thick wrists forward; using the wires disorientation to his advantage, he ripped them off methodically. But no sooner had he ripped the wires from his wrists then more snaked up and settled around his throat. He choked, neck red-raw and sucking air from the atmosphere like a vacuum down his throat. More went for his arms, but he ripped them off with ease. From in the pit, Sebastien saw Dresden overpowered and with a roar ran for his friend, scrambling up the wall like a smoker.

Belle dusted herself off and walked to Lester. She offered a hand to help him up, but as he was getting up wires grabbed him as well – they wrapped round his legs like braces, took over his chest like a shirt and then an anvil and enveloped him into the forest. She screamed as a wire wrapped up his rapidly disappearing arm and up hers, and she couldn't drop his hand even if she wanted to. Wires slunk up her and stole her. Sebastien saw none of this. He leapt from the pit and reached Dresden, struggling with the wires. He went to grab some, but Dresden stopped him - “No! They'll grab onto you as well!” Sebastien realised this, and confusedly hung back. This rescue was going badly already. Rescue! He searched around for Russell and saw a cocoon of wire strung up above the face of that revolting baby, almost like their captor was looking at his prey. As he stared, horrified, at what was apparently left of Russell, something swung over his head and with a frantic panic attack beat on his chest, Sebastien realised it was Dresden, layered in the same unceremonious coffin. Fuel dripped from the massive face – it looked like it was leaking with happiness, if metal could ever look happy. From behind him two more black lumps soared. He was the only one left, with four twisted wires holding his friends and charge. They twitched occasionally.

And they felt nothing, and in a way it was wonderful.

Russell had longed to feel nothing, something less or more than the dull ache he lived with day after day. He had always assumed a 'broken heart' was a turn of phrase until it happened to him.

Sebastiens entire livelihood was up there. His life. Without those people (and that guy whose name, Lester was right, he still didn't know) he had nothing to live for. He worked and lived with them – to be without them would be like trying to walk with bone china for legs. So when he saw the four of them slowly begin to retract into the mouth of the grotesque baby, he knew instinctively that he was going with them, to rescue them. How, he didn't know. He began to run towards the mouth, which suddenly seemed very far away. He didn't dare scream, though he dearly wished to. He could see wires slithering across the ceiling as his friends moved closer and closer to the wide, leaking, grinning mouth. Things started to notice him as he picked up speed. A smoker avoided his foot and started after him, speakers on full crackling volume, throwing its piercing roar. Its friends appeared underfoot, as though they had been waiting and breeding for this exact moment. They crunched under his feet like leaves.

He went faster.

His friends reeled into the mouth, bumping over the fuel-filled teeth-parapets, slopping petrol all over themselves.

And now wires opened the floor around him, flexed their mechanical muscles, dived after him. Thick tentacles spread in front of him like a wall, splitting the floor in front of him and towering through to the vaulted ceiling, but he slipped through and kept going. They followed him, sparking, clumsy, relentless. As the lumps of wire slipped beyond sight into what Sebastien assumed was the creatures throat he started to climb, slipping for the fuel. His progress was slowed immensely, and they came for him like never before. One wrapped itself round his leg, and he kicked it off before carrying on. He felt the shame and feel of it on his leg even though it had gone. With one final flourish, he looked round at the wires, grinned and slipped down the throat.

For a brief moment, nothing mattered but the fact that he landed on a METAL floor. No matter that it hurt him as he landed rough on it, the fact that it didn't writhe beneath him was reason enough for him to appreciate it. He got up and looked around at his surroundings, immediately noticing his friends. They were being unwrapped. The tentacles lifted themselves off the bodies

like being let out of crushing bearhug

and they slumped, for one wire remained. It hung out of their throats and looked like a meathook. His friends were meat. This room was devoid of wires, because here they would be blind – there were no smokers to be seen, so the wires would have no idea where to look. Sebastien knew he would be safe here, save the anguish of knowing his friends were about to die. They hung to the side but running through the middle of the room was the river of fuel, which Sebastien knew was made of the people that had tried to get out of here before, that had ventured too close, that had befriended the smokers. It swam slowly, as it was a viscous liquid, like it was hanging back for its friends. Sebastien was unsure if it knew that there were more coming. He had no idea how people were turned into fuel – obviously, it was difficult for the victims to discuss the event.

He watched with a horrified fascination as a lone tentacle, slow and methodical, ran its wiry fingers across each person in turn, tearing their clothes off. They continued to hang, entirely oblivious to their situation, to its gravity. The wire took its time because here, there was no rush. The throat-wire ensured that they remained sedated and uncaring, so the clothes-wire didn't need eyes or speed. I mean, what did it care if it ripped off a breast instead of a blouse, a calf instead of a shoe? Without eyes, Sebastien realised, he could walk a little less carefully. He approached the declothing carefully and looked to find a way up to them, but couldn't see one. Though this was obviously no excuse to stop looking, he did stop a moment to look up at the naked, for lack of a better word, corpses.

For the first time since I met you I feel free

And then as soon as it started it stopped. The clothes-wire lay limp as the four bodies were lifted into what looked like a metal box. It was deep, and it lay directly on top of the river of fuel. From above the box, rusted and faded-painted-yellow, a lid descended, powered by a corkscrew lever pushing the lid further and further down.

Sebastien knew what was going to happen before it did, which gave him the insight and power to stop it. He grabbed the clothes-wire, which flexed into life quickly as it felt itself being felt, and plunged it into the box – the lid clamped down on it, but moved no further down. His friends were safe for now. What Sebastien didn't notice, as the four throat-wires left their hosts to stop the intruder, was that the clothes-wire started sparking wildly as it was crushed. Sparks drifted between the fight between Sebastien and the four wires, buffeted from place to place and came to rest on a puddle of fuel.