The Remedy

The iron gate clanged shut and he walked across the prison office. He slammed down the rubber truncheon upon the stainless-steel desk, splattering flecks of blood. He opened and closed his right fist painfully, then went to the fridge and took out a bottle of Coke.

There was a lot of Coke now that the Americans backed them, but he didn’t care about politics. He’d joined a militia straight from a street gang, then when the coup reached the countryside, he was swept up along with it. An endless war set in and he weaselled his way up the ranks to military intelligence. 

He cared about pain. When he was younger and starving in the slums it was his own pain he cared about. Though as time passed and life grew ever crueller, he discovered he could project that pain on to others; or was it that their pain drowned his out? He could not be sure, because ever since discovering this remedy, as a thug and then as a torturer, he didn’t experiment any further. He just repeated and repeated, gorging upon the abysmal unhappiness of others.

Then one day there was a shift in power and he was caught up in the inevitable purges. Powerless and hopeless, rotting alone in a cell, recalling a thousand anguished faces, the remedy was lost.

Slug Face

Halfway up the hill to Middleton, near to where I had once disposed of a rotten fox skull, I beheld a stationary Fiat Panda with its hazard lights on. Steam billowed from beneath the bonnet and from the partially unwound windows.

Surrounding the vehicle were half a dozen bickering geese, pecking and leaping at each other in a fury of feathers. The steam, the savage honking, the smell of wild garlic perfuming the air; I was overwhelmed by the sensory onslaught.

As I drew nearer, I saw a figure sat in the driver’s seat; it was motionless, though its dark skin was throbbing. Squinting hard I perceived that the entire surface of the body was covered with living black slugs. The figure was beeping the horn mechanically, the lapse lengthening between each blast.

Suddenly springing to life, I shooed away the geese and opened the car door. With great handfuls of slime, I tore the slugs from the face. The revealed features were black and crumbling. The mouldering teeth parted and the hole exhaled a jet of steam. With fingers scalded I staggered back. The figure rose from its seat, withdrawing from its pocket a makeshift steam gun; the nozzle spluttering and hissing.

As I sprawled amongst the geese the slugs dripped from the looming form and began to sizzle on the ground. It stepped towards me with an eruption of steam.