SPOILED 2 - part eleven

‘Oh, bloody-‘

Whoomph!

Splorsh!

‘-Hell!’

Water was in Arthur’s ears, in his mouth, up his nose.

‘Hold on-‘

Swwushhh!

He was upside down. He was right side up.

‘-tight!’

His hand around Manni’s like a clamp. The pair of them twisting and bobbing. It was the Atlantic Ocean all over again.

‘Where the Hell-‘ Manni began, before swallowing a swell of canal water, his head suddenly curled under its surface, then back again, ‘-are we?!’

It had looked like a strange indoor river. Some rich-dickhead aesthetic fancy designed to boast wealth over practicality, but when Arthur had pulled Manni into the canal, seizing on an opportunistic lull in Mr Swan’s self-important waffle, he hadn’t figured on the pair of them being swept along by such a rapid current, nor on the experience going on and on!

The canal soon whisked them from that torture room, and into other parts of what Arthur could only guess was Swan Palace from his semi-submerged, constantly shifting vantage. Pillars whipped by. Huge chambers of marble and gold. Statues. Grossly round men dithering as guards pushed them aside to chase Sweet and Dey along the edges of the waterway, barking and commanding, ultimately failing to capture.

Arthur kept his head under the swell as much as possible, sometimes being pulled there involuntarily. When he surfaced next they were outside, being transported through lush, beautiful gardens. The canal connected with a giant fountain that acted a bit like a roundabout, Sweet feeling his bulk pulled around it as though by waterpark flume. Then it was outwards again, further and further away from The Palace. At one point a peacock, of all things, went zipping past. Rogue guards took potshots with their rifles from a distance. Arthur and Manni dived down deep, again feeling the useless pings of submerged bullets behind them.

‘Why am I always-‘ Dey started, resurfacing for air, ‘-being shot at?!’

The guards were bellowing behind them, some into radios. Some gave chase only to give up the ghost; the current stealing their targets away too fast.

Gardens turned to barren lawns. There was a sense that the opulent confines of Swan Palace had drawn to a close. In the distance things looked to be taking a more industrial turn.

But before that, for a few precious moments, Manni caught sight of something:

‘Sweet, look! Over there!’

A harbour, off on the horizon, housing a fleet of yachts. No doubt all belonging to Mr Swan, the egomaniac that he was.

Then it was gone, to be replaced with networks of pipes, drains, corrugated metal walkways all around. There were distant boiler-suited engineers drilling and welding. The canal tugged Arthur and Manni deep into the heart of this zone, snuffing out all daylight.

‘Can you get out?’ Sweet called back to Dey. ‘We could circle back to them boats!’

‘Chance’d be a fine thing!’ Manni retorted.

So fast were they travelling that each and every attempt to gain purchase of the edges merely resulted in slipping of hands and twisting of bodies.

‘It’s no use!’ Dey went on. His perfect hair now stuck down the side of his face. ‘I can’t get a good grip!’

‘Maybe the old current slows up a bit further along!’ Arthur cried, not thoroughly convinced of his own words.

‘Uhhh, Arthur… Sweetheart…’

‘What?’

He followed Manni’s eyes. Ahead of them was… nothing. The canal didn’t continue, and it was impossible to tell what was coming.

‘Oh shiiiiiiiiii-‘

The waterway turned into a steep slope, fanning out wider and shallower. Arthur held Manni tight as the two of them went shooting down it, the big man grazing his knee against the concrete under him in the process. At the end of the slope was a sheer drop.

He just kept right on swearing as he and Dey were blasted over the edge, now falling into infinity, caught in the deluge of water.

‘iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!!’

At some point in the fall, Arthur knew he’d lost Manni’s hand, though more pressing concerns included which way was up, and his odds of surviving this plummet. His stomach lurched from a distinct lack of gravity. What was now essentially a waterfall all around him sprayed and stung from every angle. Sweet felt his glasses fly from his nose, and caught them cackhandedly just before-

SPLOOOOSHHHH!

His body bombed against another surface of water, the force continuing to push him down and down. Yet again his auditory world became nothing but muffled noise. Approximately one million bubbles erupted all around. He felt his fat dip and bob, before he was able to kick with knackered legs and explode back above the drink, heaving in the biggest breath he’d ever taken.

But celebrating his continued mortal existence would have to wait.

‘Manni? Manni!’ Sweet turned every which way, practically overflowing with adrenaline from such a bombardment.

‘I’m alright! I’m okay!’

Dey’s voice, well concealed by the rushing of falling water, came from further away than expected.

Further away in this… What was this place, anyway?

Arthur paddled his bulk in the direction of Manni’s reply, away from the crash of the waterfall he’d just so intimately experienced the inside of.

‘Arthur? Can you hear me?’ Dey called out.

Sweet swam out further. ‘I can hear you, lad. Stay where you are.’

A few more forward strokes and the men were reunited, treading water and breathing like they’d run a marathon. Arthur swept stray hair from Manni’s chiselled face pointlessly, and kissed him.

‘You sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Dey nodded, before kissing back. ‘I think… I think I see an embankment over that way.’

At least they weren’t being swept along like bloody ragdolls anymore. If anything, save for the waterfall, this body of water they’d ended up in emanated an almost eerie placidity. Away from the falls, quiet drip drip drips bounced around. Whatever industrial goings on that were taking place far, far above, their sounds couldn’t reach down here.

It was also extremely dark.

‘This is it…,’ Manni huffed, finding the edge of this lake or reservoir or whatever. He hauled his heavily waterlogged body up onto a rocky bank, before helping Sweet do the same.

Pretty soon the two of them were sat on their soaked asses, catching breaths that felt like they might never come.

‘Fuckin’ ‘ell,’ Arthur puffed. ‘Blimey…’

‘Arthur,’ Manni twisted to him with a grimace. He held up the backpack that had so dutifully clung to his wide back throughout their journey; it was ruined, torn into pieces. ‘The phone should be alright, that’s waterproof,’ and he removed it from his pocket to check - all functional - ‘but the supplies are fucked. All the food we had left, half of it’s saturated, the other half’s somewhere in that lake now…’

Arthur could only breathe. Apprently his heart didn’t want to resume its regular timetable just yet. It’d been through the wringer.

‘And to think…,’ he managed to utter, ‘we was having such a nice day…’

Manni let out an exhausted laugh.

Time spent recuperating and, in Arthur’s case, mourning lost biscuits and boiled sweets, soon turned to talk of standing and finding a way out of this literal hole. It was with audible reluctance that Manni rallied his body to its feet, helping his heavy partner up with several grunts.

Sweet, wondering how many more times he was going to end up sopping wet on this jaunt, arched his back, pushing his magnificent belly forward, and blew out his cheeks. ‘Is it me or is it bloody warm down here?’

Dey nodded, wandering around the darkened edges of the lake, peering back at the way they’d arrived. ‘You’re not wrong,’ he agreed. ‘I think we’re deep into the mountain. Air’s thicker, hotter. Even my eyes are stinging a little bit. And also,’ his gaze went all the way up the waterfall, where it faded into shadow, ‘I don’t think we’re getting back up that way. It’s just sheer, slippery rock.’

‘First the biscuits and now this,’ Arthur lamented. ‘What did we ever do to deserve this?’

Manni lay a hand on Sweet’s saturated back, making a wet squelch. ‘Well, we clearly pissed off Mr Swan, for one thing.’

They traipsed off in search of an exit. Past the water’s perimeter, the ground underfoot sloped down, even deeper into blackness. After some searching, this appeared to be the only way forward, both men easing their way down the decline, leaving lake and falls behind them. The air only grew thicker, more cloying.

‘There was something…,’ Arthur began after a time, ‘something that Swan twat said earlier… Did you notice he called us ‘nameless detectives’?’

He’d taken to reaching out with both arms, the better to steady his wavering timber in such poorly lit surroundings.

Manni, progressing in much the same manner, paused to consider this. ‘Huh… Now that you mention it, yeah. That’s kind of odd, right? Do you think he doesn’t know we’re no longer with the police?’

‘That’s what struck me,’ Arthur told him, his voice now beginning to echo - a sign of unseen cave walls or ceiling, perhaps, as though it were closing around he and Manni. ‘And it makes you wonder - what else don’t they know? We was led to believe The Rookery were all-seeing, all-knowing.’

Dey turned to him, curious.

‘Gaps in their network,’ he suggested, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe they don’t all play nice with each other? All the different factions or… tiers or whatever? They don’t always share info?’

‘Leading to breakdowns in communication,’ Sweet concurred. ‘That might be it. Summing we could use, potentially.’

Dey sighed. ‘Maybe, if we ever get off this rock. I feel like the more we unearth about this damned Rookery, the less we seem to-‘

Something crinkled under his shoe.

Arthur, who’d heard it too, concertina’d his nose in confusion. His partner lifted a damp sneaker to unveil a packet of crisps. Empty.

‘Prawn cocktail flavour,’ Arthur noted, identifying the tell-tale pink packaging instantly, even in such intense gloom. ‘What the ‘ell’s that doing down here?’

‘There’s more,’ Manni replied, treading deeper along the downward trajectory. ‘Jesus, there’s loads.’

‘Crikey, you weren’t lying,’ Sweet proclaimed, following his muscled partner and discovering a cave floor littered with empty packets of sweets, crisps, hunks of bread, slices of saccharine-smelling meats. Arthur picked up a slice of processed cheese, still wrapped in plastic. After a quick sniff, he undid the packaging and gave an experimental bite.

‘Still good!’ He’d surprised himself, in fact.

‘How could you eat that?’ Dey looked horrified. ‘We don’t know how long it’s been down here!’

‘Told you - a big bloke like me gets hungry…’

And he couldn’t help finishing off the perfectly serviceable cheese and collecting up any extra slices he found.

‘You’re not…’ Manni’s eyes bulged. ‘You’re not taking them with you?’

But Sweet pocketed each wrapped cheese slice he stumbled across. ‘Rather die of food poisoning than starve to death any day,’ he sniffed.

Dey shook his head in incredulity. ‘Still doesn’t explain what it’s all doing down here, though.’

Arthur had to agree and admit a feeling of portentousness into his heart as they pressed on. But-

‘Hang about,’ he said. ‘I see light ahead. Down that way. You see it?’

‘Yeah,’ his partner muttered, not happily. The cave walls, though high, had indeed begun to close in, vaguely illuminated by the merest whisper of a soft orange glow further down. What’s more, this appeared to be the only way forward.

Arthur shared in this feeling of unease. It was like being slowly swallowed whole by some great stone creature, and he and Manni were entering voluntarily into its glowing gullet.

‘I think…,’ he began, before removing his glasses to inspect their cracks. ‘Either I’ve gone barmy from this damned heat, or that’s… lava. Lighting up the place. Bloody hell, are we that deep down? No wonder I’m sweatin’ like a barrow boy at Sunday market…’

His final words, however, overlapped with those of another.

Deep, deep graven utterances from further along the decline, reverberating back to Sweet and Dey like a transmission from limbo.

‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh… What’s thisssss…?’ it said, syllables all blending and twisting into one another.

A pause. Then a shared flick of the eyes between Sweet and Dey.

‘The fuck…?’ Manni murmured hoarsely.

‘I don’t know,’ Arthur gave a shake of his round head, causing jowls and chin to bobble hither and thither.

The pair of them continued down the slope at something of a cautious speed, hearts pulsing. They could see now - the passage ahead of them opened up into a far wider space where the lava flowed plentifully, glowing with an almost retina-singing force. And the heat! Good God, the heat…

’Another offferrinnnng, I see…,’ the voice went on, clearer here, sounding aged to breaking point, as though pummelled through a cracked windpipe.

Arthur and Manni trod down and down until the cavern was upon them, soaking in its sheer magnitude! Pillars of carved stone, pools of searing magma, an ancient, groaning table fit for a feast, and… Lucas! Quivering in fear at one end.

Sweet wanted nothing more than to run to the blubbery lad who looked ready to pass out from terror, his face somehow drained of all colour in spite of the cloying humidity of this cavern. But it was in following the lad’s gaze that stopped Arthur short, for he soon saw for himself what could possibly root a person to the spot in such a way.

‘Oh my God…,’ Manni whispered beside him, the pair of them curled unseen behind a pillar of crag and scrawl, all moist with condensation.

‘Ssssso young… and plump!’ the thing said.

Because it was a thing. Not a man. Not a person, but a thing. It crawled on elongated limbs and digits like some huge, stretched lizard, every part of it warped beyond reasonable proportion, far longer than a prone human being ever could be.

And where the fuck was its face?!

‘Whhhhooo are… yyyyyou…?’ it continued, making steady, dangerous progress towards Lucas.

‘What is it?!’ Dey hissed in Sweet’s ear.

The older man felt his partner’s hand clamp around his own pudgy arm, and could only shake his head without fathom. He’d never seen anything like this in his life.

‘L-Lucas…,’ the blonde lad was stuttering back, his rolls vibrating as his legs clearly threatened to buckle under him. ‘Lucas… S-Sir…’

(We have to do something), Arthur thought. (We have to do something). But the cognition refused to travel any further than that, getting snagged on that same point over and over. Doing something meant getting involved, which meant being seen by that… monstrosity. And it had to be done. He couldn’t just stand here, hidden away. But forcing his mind out of this loop it’d become ensnared in was proving an impossible task.

‘Lucasssssss…,’ the creature went on in its insipid drawl, edging its way closer to the round American boy. ‘Mmmmmy name… isssss… Elias Crowe…’

Arthur’s skin froze.

Some neurone refused to fire, or fired too hard, or...

‘That’s impossible…!’ he said out loud, completely without thinking. It just came out of his mouth.

The thing calling itself Elias Crowe twisted its head in a sudden, animalistic movement, to the edge of the cavern - its lair, perhaps - to the pillar Sweet and Dey had sought refuge behind.

‘Mmmmmm,’ it breathed, exposed nostril cavities expanding. ‘Mmmorrre visitorsssss…’

Arthur swore, tugging his great body with a titanic effort from its hiding place, facing the creature head on. He felt Manni follow suit beside him, though perhaps with an even greater paucity of drive. From the corner of his eye, he noted an utterly baffled pall of confusion rain down over Lucas’s face.

(At least the Crowe-thing’s stopped advancing on the lad), Sweet told himself in some sort of effort to bolster whatever reserves of will he had in him. (That’s something).

‘You… You can’t be Elias Crowe…,’ Arthur somehow forced out the words across the glowing cavern.

‘Sweet, don’t!’ Manni urged, gripping tighter.

But the big man could not be deterred.

(There’s already been too much of that. All this hiding and sneaking and no action, while lads like Lucas get turned into blubbery playthings. Just like it was back on The Farm…)

He stepped forward more. Lava bubbled in a pool some ten feet to his right. ‘Elias Crowe was a Victorian man from the 1800s. I don’t know what the Hell you are, but you ain’t him. Otherwise you’d have to be-‘

‘Overrrr two hhhhhundred yearsssss old…,’ the creature replied. It inspected Arthur with massive black and yellow eyes that shone with reflected burning magma.

‘That’s not possible,’ Dey chipped in, his tank-like chest heaving. His tone betrayed him, however.

And Arthur felt it too. “Not Possible” was standing right before them, here in front of their very eyes. The rational and sane had torn wide open; nothing about this gnarled being made any sense. No logic or reason were to be found down here, in the belly of this mountain…

Those orbicular yellow-black eyes followed Dey and Sweet as they sidestepped a wavering semi-circle around to Lucas’s position. The boy had been stunned to silence, it seemed.

‘Are you okay?’ Manni tried to wrest him from his frozen countenance.

And Lucas relinquished a stiff nod, accompanied by, ‘Wh-Who are you guys…?’

‘We’re here to help,’ Dey replied as softly as this insane situation would permit him to. That would have to do for now.

Arthur, erstwhile, hadn’t dared to break eye-contact with the paused Crowe-thing. He found himself spreading his bulk before Manni and the boy; an attempt to shield them from the horror ahead. Swollen black pupils drilled into him.

‘Youuuuu…,’ their owner drawled, ‘are not meant tooooo be herrrrrrrre…’

‘What is “here”?’ Manni called over Sweet’s shoulder. ‘What even is this place?’

This brought about something of a reverie from the creature. It let a blank gaze roam around the cavern, cracked lips parting ever-so-slightly.

‘’Mmmmmy mind isssss… old… He likessssss to keeeep meeee… down heeeeeere…’

Arthur took note of its nails; they’d practically turned to claws. The long table was criss-crossed in deep scratches and gouges. Identical to the ones he and Dey had spotted back at the Welcome Centre and the resort.

But this form filling his vision was no animal… Arthur didn’t know what it was.

‘Heeeee likesssss to… keeep me appeeeeeased…,’ it continued, gaze locating Lucas behind the former detectives’ combined heft.

‘Who does? Mr Swan? Is that who you’re talking about?’ Arthur asked it. ‘He brought you here, to this island, did he?’

Elias Crowe did not respond. Whatever was turning inside of its - or his - impossible mind, that was a secret only he knew. Or maybe he didn’t. Not anymore.

‘You destroyed the old resort, everything that was here already, Dr Nightingale’s little “paradise”, all of it,’ Sweet went on, knowing the answers already. Taking everything he and Manni had learned since they got to this place, and conjoining the pieces. It all made a kind of malformed sense, if you were willing to bend your perception of what was possible. ‘Mr Swan dragged you to this island like an animal, didn’t he? And you tore it apart, along with all of Dr Nightingale’s gaining lads and his staff, before Swan stuck you down in this hole while he rebuilt it all to live up to his massive fucking ego. I’m right, aren’t I?’

Blank depths of Crowe’s inhuman visage screwed and contorted. Though he possessed no eyebrows, the raw facial muscles squeezed downwards enough to tell Sweet that there was concentration there. Perhaps anguish.

‘Misssssterrr Ssssssswan…’ The words turned to deep breaths. ‘Yesssssss….’

It was pure unreality. Being here, talking to… Was Arthur really conversing with a 200-year-old man missing his face? Mutated into this abominable form?

(His face…)

That thought stuck.

‘Why?’ Manni joined in. ‘I mean, where did Mr Swan even find you?’

Elias Crowe’s brow-meat knotted deeper down. He brought a talon-laden hand to the side of his gaunt head. ‘Mmmmmy mind… isssss old…’

Incredulous age or not, Arthur considered, the heat down here would be enough to addle anyone’s brain, broiling it to mush given enough time. Perhaps that’s exactly what Swan wanted. His “pet” nice and pliable, unable to fight back. It might even have been why he’d chosen this volcanic island in the first place. It probably didn’t matter one iota that Nightingale was already here… Swan struck Arthur as a man who would take whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

‘And he keeps you appeased down here with a steady flow of fat blokes to play with,’ Sweet guessed. ‘Old Swan doesn’t want you poking around upstairs anymore, now, does he? Not when he’s gotten his use out of you.’

To the alarm of the former detectives and their lardy ward, Elias Crowe suddenly raised himself up on his hind legs, standing to full length; he was staggeringly large. Each of his nails measured several inches, glinting in the lavalight. His neck was long and sinewy.

How could a human being turn into this?

‘Hhhhheeee meansssss to wear mmmmyyyy fleshhhhhhh,’ he spoke angrily, teeth barred. ‘He wantsssss mmmmyyyy ssssssssssssssssssssssecret…’

Each of Crowe’s ribs were clearly defined beneath their stretched canvas of greyed skin, and each of them waxed outwards as his bicentennial heart thrummed within.

‘What secret?’ Dey raised his voice. Next to him, Lucas’s eyes were almost all whites.

Again, Arthur was sure he’d already surmised this. He’d sifted back through his mind to all that Ben had told him of Elias Crowe - supposed founder of The Rookery - and all the fairytale bollocks that came along with it.

‘That’s your face on top of the mountain, ain’t it?’ he asked the imposing silhouette stood on the table. ‘Did you know it was up there? Swan wants it for himself… He wants what you wanted…’

‘Ultimate power,’ Lucas spoke up quietly out of nowhere. ‘“I wish for Mr Swan to have ultimate power, equal to no other”.’

‘Huh?’ came a grunt from Manni.

‘They make all the guys here - the dorm boys, all the ones they’re fattening up, go to this place up top, it’s outside and there’s a little mask on, like, a plinth or something,’ Lucas explained to Dey, probably grateful to tear his eyes away from Crowe’s hideous form. ‘They make us go up there with torches, and… and we have to put our faces in the mask and speak those words and only those words. “I wish for Mr Swan to have ultimate power, equal to no other”.’

‘Except that wasn’t a mask, Lucas,’ Manni told him, not wanting to.

‘My faaaaaaaaaaace!’ Elias Crowe boomed, squaring his shoulders, looming his head forwards. He’d begun resuming his steps, catching globs of damp potato between his long toes.

‘Mr Swan thinks…,’ Arthur’s thoughts were forming and vocalising in real time, while he tried to put aside Crowe’s deathly approach for the moment. ‘He wants to recreate what you did - or at least what he thinks you did. The story goes that you made some kind of deal that granted you ultimate power, and he wants that for himself. Only…’

‘Only he’s too much of an egomaniac to do it his own dirty work. Or maybe he already tried and failed,’ Manni added, understanding how the pieces fitted together more now. ‘So he gets his procession of fattened-up prisoners to do it for him. To wish for all that power for him. Is that it?’

Arthur turned back to his partner a second. ‘That fits, aye, lad.’

‘But it’s ridiculous,’ Dey responded, one eye on the narrowing Crowe. ‘It’s all based on a story. On wishes, for God’s sake! Who in their right mind would believe in-‘

‘I DID MMMMAKE A DEEEEEEEAL!!’ Crowe roared, his eyes coals. Stalking had turned to stomping. Closer he came.

’SSSSSWAN THINKSSSSS HE CANNNNN… COURT THE FFFFFFAVOUR OF THE SSSSSTRANGERRRRR! BUT ONLY IIIIIII COULD EVERRRRRR DO SSSSSSUCH A THHHHHING!!’

His feet were marking brand new scratches into the wood, pieces splintering and tearing in his wake, foodstuffs crushed and oozing under his heels. He was meters away.

’THHHHE SSSSTRANGERRRR GRANTED ME ULLLLLLTIMATE POWERRRRR: ETERNALLLL LIFE, UNENDING WWWWWEALTH… HHHHHHE GIFFFFTED MEEE ALLLL I NEEDED TO FFFFFOUND MY CONSSSSSORTIUM OF CORPULENCCCCCCE, BUT OVERRRR TIIIIME IT WAS TWISSSSSSTED INTO THHHHHE ROOKERY IT HAS BECOMMMMME NNNOW… IT WASSSSS TAKEN FROMMMM ME BY MEN JUSSST LIKE SSSSSWAN… HE THHHHHINKS HE CAN MMMMASTER THEM ALLLLL…!!’

Sweet and Dey were backing up, arms aloft to protect Lucas. Crowe was almost upon them.

‘You’re saying Mr Swan isn’t at the top? He’s not the leader of The Rookery? That’s why he wants ultimate power?’ Arthur asked, hoping maybe if he could just keep Elias Crowe talking, it might go some way to subdue the man’s animal instincts. Instincts he very much suspected were predatory, even murderous. ‘If Swan’s not top of the pyramid, then who-‘

‘ENOUGH!!’ Crowe screamed, slamming his feet down into the wood with a terrible crunch.

He was so close, Arthur could see every pointed tooth jammed into his spittle-ridden mouth. Done with speaking, or anything so human as that, Elias Crowe bent back down onto his haunches, growling, clawing, readying…

‘Arthur, watch out!’ Manni yelled.

And Crowe lunged forwards, pouncing with claws outstretched.

****

(Can’t think.

Can’t think!

Can’t THINK!)

Mr Swan remained planted firmly betwixt the open Chamber and his beautiful interior canal, now SULLIED by those disgusting detectives! Loathsome wretches that they were, running afoul of his island, making a mockery of his security detail!

And then there was Nightingale, probably convalescing back at his quarters by now, massaging his heinously stretched gut. Good. He deserved to wallow in pain, the arrogant traitor.

(Spilling God-knows-what secrets to a candidate. A candidate, for crying out loud!)

Swan clearly hadn’t kept a tight enough hold over the pot-bellied clod, and now… now…

(Oh, it’s all a MESS! I can’t THINK with so much… fucking… perturbance!)

Hobbled by indecision, Mr Swan clicked a finger, and no sooner had a pristine staffer arrived than he was hollering, ‘Bring me my balloon! I need stress relief! Now!’

That would do it. A little light relief. The balloon’s cries and pleas while Swan pushed his skin to the limits. Yes. Yes… That would do nicely.

It took ten minutes for Reece to be waddle-walked from his boiler-room holdings, and two guards to stuff his blimped frame through the archway that led into The Chamber Room. When he was fully stuffed through, painfully-inflated body once more popped out to maximum size, he could only pant and sweat, puffed-up arms stuck out by his sides as usual.

‘Mmmm,’ Mr Swan took in his gigantic, swollen form. ‘Yes. Leave him here, and hand me that.’

He opened a palm to receive the leaf-blower-like device that had been used to keep Reece “topped up” with air since being stored away among the pipes and furnaces. A heavy guard handed the thing over; it was a sort of hand-held trigger-pull contraption with a long enough tube attached that could be affixed into Reece’s “plug” whenever needed. Reece had come to hate that device. He hated it with almost the same burning passion that he hated Mr Swan for doing this to him.

But these feelings he kept well hidden. Instead he let his mouth gape and the beads of sweat trickle gaily down his spherical being.

The guards bowed and made their exit, leaving Reece and Swan alone beside the inactive Chamber. Reece didn’t know what it did, but by this point you’d have to be some kind of idiot not to recognise a torture device in this place when you saw one.

‘I’d almost forgotten how big we made you,’ Mr Swan chuckled, now pacing Reece’s circumference, letting his hand trail across the hot flank. ‘Tell me, does it hurt?’

Reece made to nod, before opting for ‘Yes Sir… Lord Swan Sir,’ instead.

‘Good,’ came the simple reply.

Mr Swan had made a complete circuit of Reece and let his physique rest, hand on hip, studying his “personal balloon” with a sigh.

‘Ohhh yes,’ he went on, seemingly to himself. ‘That’s better. This will do nicely…’

Reece only breathed. In and out. Even that hurt. Everything he did hurt since being transformed - no, mutilated in this way. Life as a balloon was one only of pain and pressure.

‘This will do just fine…,’ Mr Swan continued his external monologue, not really meant for any ears save his own. Then came a clearer, ‘Think you can handle more, balloon?’

How best to play this? Reece would have bet the farm that the old coot wanted to hear him beg for mercy. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to give this man a dime anymore, not even in lip service. But to piss the guy off might be to court disaster…

He chose somewhere in between.

‘I’m… already so big, Lord Swan, Sir.’ He felt he’d hit the tone just right.

‘Mmmm, yes…,’ Mr Swan replied, now absently brandishing the pumping device, as though stroking a cat. ‘Yes, you are. Just imagine how much tighter you’re going to feel when I pump you even more… Oh, it’ll be agony. The stretch of your skin…’

Reece saw the bulge bloom in Swan’s crotch.

‘Human skin can only take so much,’ the man droned on, high on the sound of his own fucking voice. ‘And then…’ He made a soft pop of his lips, training eye-contact at Reece’s swollen face.

‘Please…,’ Reece felt compelled to say now. ‘Please don’t…’

Mr Swan paced right up against the giant ball that Reece had become, letting his erection press softly into the firmly ballooned flesh.

‘Ohhh,’ he sighed. ‘My dear b-‘

Reece lunged.

With every fibre of energy available to him, he quite literally bounced the man, using his tightly-pumped anatomy, into the open Chamber, slamming the door shut with a hand the size of a ham before Swan could even grasp what was going on, pain gushing through every movement.

Upon seeing the door seal him in, perhaps for the first time in his life Mr Swan registered genuine fear across his features.

‘What… What have you done…?!’ His voice came thinly through the glass.

The controls didn’t look too complicated. Reece deliberated shortly over the external panel before opting for the biggest, reddest button in its centre.

‘No!’ Swan’s eyes grew twice their size. ‘NO!!’

Reece heard a sort of sucking noise, and took a great deal of pleasure in watching Mr Swan panic and bang against the glass. Strangely, a wrapped cheeseburger had also plonked down a chute and into a little compartment inside of The Chamber. He didn’t really understand quite how it all worked, but he’d certainly gotten the result he wanted: Mr Swan, trapped. Afraid.

The older man appeared to be gasping for air. Perhaps the machine vacuumed up all the oxygen inside? Was it going to suffocate the preening fuckwad? Reece wouldn’t mind that. He’d stay and watch, in fact.

‘You did this to me,’ he told a red-faced Mr Swan who was now scrabbling his hands around the burger wrappings. ‘You turned me into a freak.’

He watched as Swan bit down on the burger, huffing out scratchy nasal breaths. When the first bite came, the air came flowing back into The Chamber.

So that’s how it worked.

‘As long as you eat, you can breathe, eh? Is that it?’

Swan was relishing in the return of his full lung capacity, chomping down into bun and patty, chest heaving in and out.

A quick glance through the archway told Reece the guards weren’t around to catch any of this.

Perfect.

‘You know what I’m going to do, old man?’ he asked of Swan. ‘I’m going to keep you in there. Until you can’t eat another bite. Until your body is literally so full it’ll be screaming at you. ‘Cos that’s what you’ve done to me. You pumped me with air, I pump you with food. Tit for tat.’

Above the cheeseburger, Mr Swan’s eyes sought Reece’s, and burrowed. Burned.

‘Thaaat’s it. You fucking hate it, don’t you, you conceited old prick? Being the one in the cage. I bet it’s driving you mad… Well, thing is, mate, once you’re so fucking packed full of food you can’t even remember your own name, I’m still not letting you out. And if this contraption does what I think it does, that means you’re gonna suffocate to death. But don’t worry, pal.’ Reece craned his enormous body forward as close to the glass as he could, and allowed himself to smile for the first time in a long time. ‘I’ll be here to watch the whole thing.’

He had the fucker. Nowhere to run. Caught inside his own trap, no less. What sweet, delicious irony. Reece was gonna watch The Chamber snuff Swan out, and then he’d get to fixing his own state. He was sure he could find a way, especially with the old man out of the picture. It would be easier that way.

Inside The Chamber, Mr Swan chewed and swallowed, then lowered the burger slowly.

‘You can glare at me all you like, fuckface,’ Reece told him. ‘I’m still not gonna-‘

‘PHWEEEEE!’

A shrill whistle, sudden and loud, from the old man. Reece was struck with bafflement for a moment, then heard something.

Running. But not human…

He waddle-turned, and there through the archway came bounding a massive fucking tiger! Coming right for him!

Mr Swan smiled.

‘Wait!’ Reece tried to put his arms out as the big cat leaped at him.

The last thing Reece ever saw was Vashti’s claw finding his skin, then -

BANG!