SPOILED 2 - part nine

‘In here, now.’

‘But I thought I was-‘

‘Never mind all that, just do as I say. Please. Hurry yourself.’

Dr Nightingale ushered Lucas into Lab Room 39L on the seldom-occupied M Ward, letting the automatic lights blink themselves into life.

‘What‘s this all about, Doc?’ Lucas started. ‘I was supposed to be with Reece but we got separated - The Lab was going crazy, and then they wanted to prep me for something but I didn’t really understand it - Just took my weight and my measurements and all. I thought you guys already knew all that-‘

‘Lucas, please! Just… just hush for a moment, okay?’ The doctor worked his fat, hairy fingers across his iPad which brought about the return of Enya through the sound system. Soon her washy, soothing tones were flooding the room. ‘There, hopefully that should mask our voices a little bit.’

‘What? Why? Why do we need to do that?’ Lucas looked at him with those blue eyes, still so pure, still unburdened in spite of all the lad had endured.

(At least, so far…)

‘I don’t get what’s going on,’ he kept up the prattle. ‘There was a whole bunch of us - me, Reece, and some other guys - and we were going to The Palace, or at least I thought-‘

‘I know, I know,’ Nightingale held up a meaty hand. ‘Listen, let’s get you something to eat, and you can seat yourself down over there and munch away while I explain a few things, okay? That way, if anyone comes in, it’ll look like we’re just going through a routine appointment.’

Lucas screwed up his face. It really had gotten quite fat. ‘Who’s gonna come in?’

(There’s no time for this. God help me, there’s no TIME!)

‘No-one. Not yet. Forget I said anything. We’ll… we’ll come to that in a moment. Just… You see that tray there? Open that up, you should find a big bag of chocolate inside. You go grab that like a good fellow, okay? Go grab it and sit yourself down, anywhere you like.’

He watched as Lucas dithered, not really committing to any of these steps.

‘It’s not-‘ (Ugh. Jaysus, help me). ‘This won’t be a force-feeding session or anything like that, I promise you,’ Dr Nightingale explained. ‘Just go and do as you’re told, please. We don’t have long.’

‘Okay…’

If there was one thing that could be said for Lucas, it was that he was obedient. In actuality it was one of his many facets the doctor had grown fond of.

(And now Swan’s going to take him from me. Snatching him away just to spite me. Sending him to that godforsaken place…)

Relief came as Lucas indeed went through the tray and picked out the pack of chocolate, tearing into it and plopping his now substantial - and quite beautiful - bulk down onto the nearest seat. Dr Nightingale bathed momentarily in the sight of the young man simply helping himself to sweet treats, adding to his blubbery poundage, those soft golden locks framing his chubby face just so.

(It won’t be long now. They’ll come for him and I’ll never see him again).

****

‘Psst! Psssst!’

Manni hissed in his quietest tone and waved manically to get Arthur’s attention. When it was successfully garnered he pointed with an exaggerated finger to the grate directly below him.

With ducked head, Sweet tip-toed (as much as was possible for a near-500 pound man in his fifties) along the ventilation interior to his partner and looked down.

There through the slits in the grate was the dull shine of a balding man’s head - a doctor from the look of his white lab coat. He looked plump and tall, and was talking with a young seated blonde lad, also fat but in a spongier, softer way.

Enya was loudest here, surely originating from this room.

‘Can you make out what they’re saying?’ Manni whispered to Sweet.

As it happened, Arthur could. His years as a detective for the London Metropolitan had taught him several surveillance skills, one of them being an acute ability to filter out background nose and zone in on pertinent conversation. If the fat doctor and blonde boy hadn’t been directly under him, he might’ve also been able to read their lips. Experience told him the dulcet sounds of Ireland’s preeminent new-age singer were not being played for fun; Arthur strongly suspected the Enya music existed to deliberately muffle the words being spoken down there. And that certainly raised its own questions.

He nodded to Dey, who himself had to slowly, cautiously crane his ear to the grate to pick out what was being said below.

****

Nightingale paced the room once or twice, feeling a new breathlessness from so much recently-added weight. Removing his glasses, he turned to Lucas.

‘Pretty soon, lad… Pretty soon you’re going to be moved on.’

‘To The Palace,’ Lucas chirped with chocolate across his lips. ‘Sure, I know that, Doc. I just thought I’d be there already by-‘

‘No.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘You’re not going to Swan Palace…’

(Above him in the large metal vent that ran the span of this room’s ceiling, Manni caught Arthur’s eye and mouthed the letters ‘SP’ with a look of realisation).

‘… you’re going… somewhere else. And when you get there…’ Dr Nightingale cursed under his breath to himself, resting both hairy hands on his widened hips. ‘Before you… move on, there are some things I want to tell you.’

‘Okay.’ Lucas chewed with his mouth open. On anyone else it would’ve looked obnoxious - dopey, even - but here it only compounded the lad’s adorability.

The doctor flicked his eyes to the tablet he’d laid down beside him. The guards wouldn’t be here to take Lucas yet, but time was slipping.

‘Did you know,’ he began, inspecting his shoes (barely visible beneath his great belly), ‘that we are, in fact, on an island?’

Lucas slowed his current crunch. ‘Uh, I mean, I guess? That’s kinda what all the dorm boys have always said. We all suspected.’

Dr Nightingale nodded quietly. ‘And did you also know this used to be my island?’

He saw Lucas’s face open with innocent wonder. ‘You… you own this whole island, Doc?’

Nightingale couldn’t help but grunt out a bitter laugh. ‘Used to, boy, used to. Ohhh, this place was a paradise, you should have seen it. Nothing like the hellhole it’s become now. No, during my time it was beautiful. Glorious. In the olden days you would’ve travelled here by boat, a luxury liner, and stepped into a tropical wonderland. There was even a statue of me, there to greet all the lovely fledgeling fatboys-to-be - A frivolous thing, perhaps, but it meant something! It meant you’d arrived. You were welcome. Oh, it was Heaven on earth, boy, hoh hoh. All the food a growing lad could ever want, no Dorms or Labs or tests, no-one to force you. God no! My fatboys were happy! They wanted to gain. I gave them everything, everything they could ever want. All in my tropical resort…’

(Arthur and Manni exchanged a look).

Lucas appeared captivated, chocolate forgotten. ‘So what happened?’ he asked, as if in anticipation of next week’s episode of his favourite TV show.

Dr Nightingale felt his teeth meet and keep meeting.

‘Mr Swan happened,’ he said darkly. ‘He swooped in to my island like a damned plague with that pet of his, and took over. He had my beautiful resort cleared out, everyone there - all my staff, all my gorgeous fatboys - Swan had them…’ Dr Nightingale had to take a moment; his jaw had set. ‘He had them dispatched. Done away with, lad. Killed.’ He watched Lucas gasp. ‘Leaving just me. All so he could start again, set this place up as his own personal empire, a monument to his fucking boundless ego, and have me perform tests and experiments… I’ve done unspeakable things, Lucas… unspeakable things…’

For a moment all he could do was hang his head in shame. Speaking these truths aloud made no lighter a burden across his mind.

(In the vents, Manni whispered, ‘Jesus fucking Christ…’).

Lucas gaped. ‘Holy shit, Doc.’

Another glance at the tablet. Dr Nightingale pressed on, ‘Swan’s of a higher tier than me, you see. Or maybe you don’t see. That’s not your fault. It’s all the inner politics of our damned company; makes him free to take whatever he wants… There’s more but we’re running out of time…’

(‘There’s more?!’ Arthur balked quietly).

‘Lucas, I need you to listen carefully to me, okay?’ Nightingale, having spotted a hulking entourage heading to The Lab on nearby CCTV footage via his tablet, suddenly gripped his charge by the fattened shoulders. ‘Mr Swan wants power, more and more of it. He’s obsessed… The man has no soul! He’ll stop at nothing. He has my own son - my boy! - being watched day and night, to use as leverage against me. If I don’t do everything he demands, then he’ll… Oh Christ…’

Gazing into Lucas’s eyes told him the lad didn’t know how to react, or what to say. Time was almost up. ‘Swan simply views people as things, just things, disposable for his own fleeting pleasures. But it’s the ceremony, Lucas, the ceremony. He wants ultimate power-‘

Footsteps outside the door.

‘- Lucas, whatever you do-‘

The door slid open and four huge guards filed in without greeting or permission. Two of them took one of Lucas’s arms each and hoisted him roughly to standing, the bag of chocolate tumbling from his lap, pieces rolling across white floor tiles.

‘Hey!’

‘Has he been prepped for candidacy, Doctor?’

Nightingale drew himself up to full height, his belly protruding firmly before him. ‘Now you just look here! I’m not done with the lad yet! I - What do you think you’re doing?’

The remaining guards then gripped the doctor himself, their giant hands clapping around his lardy biceps.

‘Get your hands off of me! What are you doing?’

‘Doc, what’s going on?’ Lucas cried as he was manhandled across the room, and bundled out of the door. ‘Doc! Doc! Doctor Nightingale!’

Nightingale wasn’t far behind. His ‘escorts’ were having to drag him out of the room while he kicked uselessly at the air. ‘Get your fucking paws off of me! What is the meaning of all this?!’

Outside, he was pulled in one direction, Lucas in the other. It wasn’t long before the protests and bawls faded into Enya’s ongoing serenade.

In the ventilation system above, Arthur and Manni could only share a look of deep concern and confusion. Dey was the first to speak:

‘The fuck is happening in this place…?’

****

Stretch.

Push.

Force.

Sweat.

With fingers like stubby aerosol cans, each nail just a tiny chip in a sea of inflated flesh, Reece curled the digits, slowly, slowly, hands shaking from the exertion. He had to breathe as though about to enter labour, every inch of his obscenely expanded body crawling in pain.

Around him, great pipes and machines hissed and rumbled, issuing steam, layering untold misery upon his already horrific situation. Now more balloon than human, Reece was being ‘stored’ in this boiler room, ready for whenever Mr Swan decided to play with him again. Here time lost all meaning. Reece felt only the agonising stretch of his poor skin, blimped to 5 times his original size, practically spherical, and drowning in sweat.

Every few hours a guard would appear, bearing something akin to a leaf-blower with a long tube attachment, and would screw this into the plug at Reece’s rear; the region of his globular body which housed the metal coupling he’d been fitted with - the thing he’d sorely underestimated the import of. The guard would then pull the trigger on the blower and refill Reece with prickling new air in order to ensure he didn’t ‘deflate’ as Mr Swan had put it.

But in the darkness, in the alone times, Reece directed every iota of his energy into stretching, bending his limbs, moving his joints. It was a world of pain, and took energy he never knew he had, soon sapping him of it, ending in breathless, spent stupors. But each attempt to curl popped-out fingers, to pivot overinflated joints grew in success. He had no elbows, or knees, or neck anymore, but with Herculean effort he could ‘fold’ the joints in an approximation of human movement.

(I’m not done yet…) he seethed to himself in the hissing shadows. (Mr Swan… I’m gonna make you fucking pay…)

****

‘Get off me! Get OFF me!’

Try as he might, Dr Nightingale could not wrest his arms from the meathook grip of the two goons who’d dragged him here, lumbering hams that they were, with their rifles and sneers.

But through his struggles came recognition.

He knew this room.

(Not here… Anywhere but here…!)

A great notoriety surrounded this corner of The Palace, for it contained something known as The Chamber. Usually reserved for staffers who’d severely erred and occasionally just for Mr Swan’s more violent fancies, anyone who’d spent time locked inside of it could attest to there being little worse than The Chamber when it came to torturous forced-feeding.

Never in his wildest dreams would Dr Nightingale have foreseen himself being its victim. He was a Rookery Master, for the love of Christ! Not some two-bit cock-up!

‘Ohhhhh Doctor, Doctor, Doctor,’ Mr Swan paced casually before him, hands clasped at the small of his back. ‘Oh, how it pains me to do this to you.’

‘Let GO of my arm!’ Nightingale continued to growl at his detainors. ‘This is utter madness! No way to treat a Master!’

‘I quite agree,’ Mr Swan responded on their behalf. ‘Quite agree. Never truer words spoken. A Master should absolutely not find himself here, and it’s a travesty that this has happened. Nasty business all round.’

Then he gave a sharp nod to the guards who sprang into action, hauling Dr Nightingale’s considerable heft into The Chamber and closing the thick glass door shut on him, immediately locking it and sealing him inside.

The Chamber was comprised mostly of a large, upright glass cylinder with a chair and a small compartment inside, fat tubes and canisters adorning its outer sides, the thicker of which connected to the nearby wall. One simple shape with a few complicated components, you could say.

The doctor banged on the glass.

‘Let me out! Let me out this instant!’

‘A Master should not find himself here. But “should” is the wrinkle, is it not?’ Mr Swan asked, pacing back the other way. ‘For instance, it could also be said that a Master “should” not have been feeding delicate information to one of his patients just now.’

Nightingale stopped, hesitated.

‘I - I don’t know what you mean.’

‘A candidate, no less,’ Mr Swan went on. ‘Why, I can’t think of a more heinous crime.’

‘That’s - I don’t know anything about that…’ Dr Nightingale’s voice had taken on a hollow, tubular ring, owing to his encasement within the glass.

Mr Swan came right up to The Chamber, his hard face inches from Nightingale’s softer, fuller one.

‘You don’t know. You don’t know what you told the Arlington boy, right on the precipice of his journey? You don’t know what exceptionally critical pearls you might have spilled, mere moments before he was moved on?’

The doctor said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about…,’ but his rising moobs and belly told a different story. Fear laced his words.

‘I see.’ Mr Swan looked down. ‘Well, then, perhaps we can jog your memory.’

‘No… No…’ Nightingale’s eyes widened.

Curiously, the thickest pipe stuck to The Chamber’s side then rattled and thudded, before a wrapped cheeseburger plonked down into the inside compartment next to the chair.

‘I’m sure you’re well aware of how The Chamber works, Donal,’ Mr Swan told him.

‘Don’t you call me that in front of the staff!’ Nightingale shot back, colour evaporating from his complexion.

‘I’d get started if I were you,’ Mr Swan continued. ‘The procedure is already underway.’

Terror gripped Nightingale’s features as a soft whining began emitting inside the glass.

Mr Swan watched as the man’s already raggedy breaths shortened, growing tighter and tighter, constricting, soon turning to wheezing, then rasping. Nightingale’s eyes bulged ever larger, imploring to Mr Swan and shaking his head violently. Speaking had apparently taken second place to simply attempting to breathe.

‘You know what to do,’ Mr Swan stated simply.

The rasps were truncating, the large doctor’s eyes now rising in hue to a dangerous pink. He lurched to the cheeseburger and unwrapped it with inarticulate, hairy fingers, biting down.

Ssssssssssssss.

Instantly The Chamber re-flooded with the oxygen it had been so sorely depriving Dr Nightingale of, and the man’s whole body sagged in relief. He huffed in great dollops of air through his nose while he ate the cheeseburger.

‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Mr Swan asked him in a patronising teacherly voice. ‘All you have to do is eat, and the air will keep flowing. Stop and the air stops. It’s quite simple really.’

Dr Nightingale knew damned well how The Chamber worked. He’d watched the accursed thing being built, not long after having this island snatched away by the very man before him. This cruel, heartless swine and his unquenchable lust for power. Oh yes, Nightingale had witnessed this Chamber in action enough times, alright. Many were the occasions he’d had to patch up staffers who’d been locked in it for too long. He of all people knew the damage it was capable of inflicting. To the lungs. To the waistline…

‘Haven’t you fattened me up enough?’ he growled between bites of patty and soft cheese. ‘I’m twice the man I was, thanks to your sick fancies!’

‘Ohhh, come now,’ Mr Swan teased with a lurid leer on his lips. ‘That was all in good fun-‘

‘Fun?’ Nightingale munched. ‘You’ve had your stooges force-feeding me on a weekly basis. I’m the joke of The Lab! And now this!’

‘But this time it isn’t about pleasure, I’m afraid,’ Mr Swan carried on. ‘This time…,’ he again drew up to Nightingale’s swollen face, ‘you’ve been a very bad doctor.’

Dr Nightingale finished the last of his burger, knowing what was to come. The soft whining returned, announcing that The Chamber was once more being drained of oxygen. As his stomach churned away at the cheeseburger, his lungs resumed their state of starvation; a burning in his chest as each breath shortened into a wheeze. He felt his face flush.

A second wrapped burger plopped down into the compartment.

‘Why don’t you sit and make yourself comfortable, Doctor?’ Mr Swan smiled. ‘You’re going to be here for a while.’

Nightingale hurriedly scooped up the food and tore off its wrappings, pushing it into his mouth, if only to get more air into this glass coffin. As his teeth made contact with the bun, air came flowing back into The Chamber.

He already knew. Experience of this torture method and of Swan’s warped sensibilities told Donal he was going to be repeating this exercise over and over. Eat the burger to keep the air coming. Finish the meal and suffocate. Eat the next burger. Breathe. Stop. Choke. And so on and so on until his stomach could take no more and his lungs were burned out. And then, even still…

He considered taking up residence in the seat, but the thought of giving Swan any kind of satisfaction whatsoever was abhorrent. He shouldn’t even be in here! It was preposterous!

‘Good,’ Mr Swan unfolded his arms and smacked his lips. ‘Seems you’ve taken to it like a natural, my good man, haha!’

Dr Nightingale glowered back, cheeks chomping.

‘So,’ Mr Swan continued, ‘now that we’ve got you settled in, I think it’s about time you started giving me some real answers. Starting with what exactly you told our fresh candidate.’

‘I don’t know anything about that!’ Dr Nightingale spat back with a mouthful of beef and brioche.

Mr Swan appeared as though he might sigh, only to think better of it. The man did look tired though, which was rare.

‘Then I should think it’s rather a good thing,’ he went on, self-satisfied, ‘that you’ll be in here all day.’

****

Shhhoooom!

Processing. Gone in a flash. Then minutes later -

Shhhooom!

Orientation. These stops you heard about but never saw.

Shhhooom!

Kitchens.

Lucas could only imagine what endless work went on in that sector. Mr Swan must have men cooking and baking day and night, for it all to be doled out to each quadrant; so many feedees to fatten…

All of these stations he watched whipping past on the tram, his dual escorts standing in silence, he and they the sole occupants of this carriage.

Behind his eyes played that last moment with Dr Nightingale, pulled away from him, thrashing and hollering. What were they doing to the Doc now?

And where was Reece?

Lucas had never felt so alone…

Shhhooom!

Engineering.

Shhhooom!

Swan Palace. Gone in a flash.

Lucas was travelling… beyond The Palace…

He’d never been so far on the tram before. Heck, he didn’t even know there was anything beyond Swan Palace. It felt to him as though the track were now sloping downwards, bearing deeper and deeper.

‘Don’t you hurt young Lucas! Don’t you hurt him!’ That was the last thing he’d caught Dr Nightingale screaming. His glasses had fallen askew, his beard all crazy. Lucas had seen oval slips of hairy belly between the buttons of the man’s shirt, that argyle sweater the Doc always wore having slid up his round gut.

(Doc…)

And then Lucas had been bundled onto this tram.

Only… Swan Palace was gone now, zipped behind with all the other stops. Blank darkness lay ahead.

Vvvvvoooooooooohhhhh.

The tram was slowing. But Lucas’s heart was just getting started. He suddenly felt like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

Slower.

Slower.

What was out there? Why was he being taken beyond The Palace?

Hssssssssssss.

Full stop.

Oh God…

The tram doors slid open.

‘Where… Where are we…?’ Lucas asked of his escorts.

The usual non-verbal responses came back; he was prodded out of the door.

It wasn’t a tram station. More like, well, a cave. The air here felt thicker, warmer, and Lucas wondered how much deeper into the mountain they’d gone, perhaps even below sea level. He was poked again and so teetered onwards, leaving the tram behind and letting the cave mouth swallow him. Here and there crude torches burned along its walls.

When he made to look behind, he was nudged firmly in the back with an annoyed grunt. The ghost of an idea slipped through his thoughts; he could try to run, to escape. But where could he go? Back onto the dormant tram? Or ahead to the unknown? He’d never much been the combative type anyhow, not fancying his chances if things came to a struggle.

The cave went on, dipped down lower. Lucas’s ears hurt a little, and his eyes had begun to sting, compounding his suspicions about the depth of this place.

‘What - What’s that…?’

Ahead was a very large, very thick-looking circular door, like something you might find at a bank. Perhaps some ten feet in circumference and lodged directly into the cave walls, it was slathered in pulleys and wheels which one of Lucas’s escorts now attended to, displaying great exertion in the process.

Lucas was sweating. The air had gotten so muggy and cloying. His heart wouldn’t slow down. His left leg was juddering of its own accord. He wiped at a bead of sweat headed for his eye.

When the guard was done, he pulled at the door with a strenuous groan, inching it outwards on its giant hinges. Then Lucas truly saw how thick the thing was.

‘Jeez Louise…’

The door must have been 7 feet thick at the very least, all pure steel. And beyond it, more cave leading downwards into oblivion.

Lucas felt a sudden shove and stumbled forwards several steps, over the threshold of the titanic doorway. He made to turn back but was shoved again.

The door was closing.

‘Wait! Wait!’

This wasn’t right. Oh, where was Reece when he needed him so bad? Where was anybody?

He pounded at the metal surface, unable to push back against its unbelievable weight, only a slither of freedom available. And soon it was no longer even a slither.

‘Wait! What is this? Where am I? Wait!’

‘Have fun,’ came a jeering response right before the door closed entirely with a loud, deep Shum!

Lucas continued to pound, hearing reverberations of the locks being done back up on the other side.

‘Guys! Hey! Hey!! Don’t leave me here! Hey!’

No response came. Not even the sounds of their footsteps leaving, nor the tram rescinding. The door was too thick to allow for such things.

‘Shit…,’ Lucas whispered to himself in what was now solid gloom, his hands barely visible before his eyes. ‘Oh God…’

He tried to breathe, to think, to stave off panic, but found the going tough.

Leading away from the door, he could just make out a path winding down, pretty steep, leading only to a black void.

‘Shit shit shit…!’

His breaths came in guttering waves.

‘What the heck is this place…?’

And so, with little choice left to him, Lucas began the descent.