1-800-dead ·
13 October 04

Where were we? I couldn’t tell. It was a large city, covered in blocks of concrete and metal structures, and we were driving on a suspension bridge at the time. He was on the phone, and I don’t even remember what he looked like. Who was he talking to? Someone I feared, or someone I was at least weary of.

I saw the abyss of the sea below us, shattering against the metallic structure that stood in its way. The water continued to bash against the metal, asking for its home back, asking it to leave. The man-made monstrosity, which allowed engines to traverse its body, to pump out poison and destroy the world. People were so used to the poison, they no longer coughed and spluttered, instead they lived, or they died, there was nothing in between.

When they died, they would fall to the floor, go in to some sort of convulsion. Their body would snake across the floor like some vibrating junky who’s fitting from an overdose. Their arms would flail towards the sky, and screamed,

“Lord help us! Lord help us! Take us to a better place! Hallelujah!”

A crowd gathers around them, they get on their knees, with rocks in hand, they repeat the man’s words as they pelt him with rocks. They scream and shout,

“Lord help us! Lord help us! Take this sinner to a better place! Hallelujah!”

Stuck in traffic, I watch with interest. I stare at this man, who is already in convulsions, being beaten with rocks by people who seem to have done this before. Some of the rocks bounce off his body, and those that don’t quite hit the man look to find larger rocks to throw. For these rocks, they need to stand instead of kneel. The damage caused by this seems obvious, at least in the physical sense.

The man’s body is battered, and his skin turns from white to blackish, bluey-purple. His skin is swollen; the blood vessels have begun to rupture within him; the blood pours out of his mouth like geyser spurts, flushing the air like a fountain. It mixes with the foam that had formed, and becomes a milky mixture. He twists right, and sprays the crowd. The crowd cheers, and wash themselves in the blood. Their faces, their clothes are dripping with blood, as they continue to cheer,

“LORD HELP US! LORD HELP US! TAKE THIS SINNER TO A BETTER PLACE! HALLELUJAH!”

It doesn’t make sense to me, what they’re doing, or who they’re doing it for. I stick my head back inside the car and note that my friend is still on the phone, laughing & talking to whoever was on the otherside.

“Here talk to the guy”
“No, I don’t want to”
“Go on, just talk to him”
“You don’t even know who the fuck it is”
“He sounds cool”
“Well, you an do what you want, just don’t tell him about me, what I look like, what my name is or where we’re going.”

He forces the phone up to my ear. It’s one of these modern day clam shell phones. I hate them, I hate all mobile phones. I find them inhumane, I find them artificial excuses to avoid physical contact. I remain silent, and I hear a voice speak.

“Hi, can you hear me?”
“Are you afraid of me?”
“Can’t you even say hello?”
“Do you think I’ll find out where you are and kill you?
“If I wanted to find you, you’d be dead already, so you should talk to me.”
“I was kidding about the killing. Your friend seems happy to tell me everything.”

After his one man conversation through the ear piece, I push the phone back at my friend. He laughs and continues his conversation with the person on the phone. I don’t like being trapped in a corner, I need my freedom. I feel agitated, almost infuriated.

I heard the growling, which is much louder. There is a weight on my shoulder. And the growling has now turned to snarling, I can feel the warmth of the breathing against my neck.

We park outside a large building, like a council estate. The architecture seems strange. There is no consistency in the design of the surrounding buildings. In some parts there are fields of grass, and in others, I note fields of concrete; actual concrete fields shaped like grass. There are bodies all over the field. Children that have gone to collect their ball, and find they can’t lift their feet off the field, as they’ve already been pierced by the concrete. You can hear the screaming, you can see the floods of tears in their eyes; the wailing is deafening. The movement pushes the child over, his body completely stabbed to death by angled concrete. Bodies are littered everywhere; the gray of the concrete now soak in washed out blood, absorbed into the material. An artistic piece designed by a nihilist. The irony of the sign which reads “Do not play on the grass” is not lost.

He’s off the phone now, as we walk up the stairs. The stench of urine and soaked newspapers litter the place. Beer bottles, cigarette butts, shopping bags dripping with urine which pours down the side of the steps, used tampons stained with eggs, used condoms still containing semen, baby clothes, adult clothes, feces, a severed arm here, a dead fetus there; they all litter the each floor we come across. The smell of death and disease is unbearable, but my friend takes deep breaths as if on a mountain peak, keen to clear his lungs of pollutants, and fill them up with clean fresh air. It’s fascinating.

We get to a door, the number 1 and 7 have fallen off, with only the middle number 9 inverted hangs as a 6. He knocks on the door, and it opens of its own accord. He goes in first, and I follow and notice three large people gathered in a room. They are standing with their hands in a saluting pose. I hear the American anthem playing. We walking into the room, as my friend makes himself comfortable on the vacant space. I sit within the space next to him and observe the saluters.

They all look the same. Triplets perhaps. There is some distinction though. An eye that is slightly more bulged; a nose that is a touch more crooked; an ear that is shorter than another. Aside from this, they look the same. As they dribble saliva out of their mouths, it slithers down their soiled vests which are stained with brown residue, slipping past the rolls of fat that seem discoloured, and the cracks between their diseased and peeling skin, infections amassed like a convention across their body. They blubber tearfully to the anthem and salute the television screen.

I now notice the television is on, however, it’s is covered with a poster of the White House. The one with the shorter ear salutes, cries and vomits all over his front. He continues to belch and throw up over himself, yet he hold his salute. The one with crooked nose reveals his yellowed, and cracked nails, and scratches the scalp of the one vomiting as perhaps a caring gesture. He removes his hand from the grease ridden regions of the hair, and places the blood soaked fingers, with nails filled with…scalp? brain? I can’t tell what it is. The fingers enter his mouth as he begins to chew.

The friend is back on the phone, talking to that same person. They’re laughing. The anthem hasn’t stopped and seems to be looping forever. The three get down on their hands and knees and start to crawl out of the room. They reveal strips of their own skin grafted on to their seats. As they walk away I look in astonishment at the amount of flesh that is crawling with insects. My spine trembles with uncertainty, my legs wish for a way out, my mouth tries to say “help”.
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I wait a while, and then walk out of the room. I notice the stairs, and look back at my friend. “Toilet” he says, and points upwards. I take the stairs and start walking upwards. The space is tight, I feel as if I’m slipping on something, the smell of death permeates my lungs, and I want throw up myself. I begin to convulse, but hold my breath. The further I go up the stairs, the more crammed I feel, the darker it gets until there is no light at all.

There is no sound. I hear nothing; neither above nor below. I don’t realise how far I’ve walked upstairs. I don’t know where I am. My eyes are open, but I see nothing, and I don’t reach out, in case I discover something that will frighten me. The darkness is so strong, I cannot tell where the stairs came from, or where they lead to, I have no real choice other than to follow the stairs upwards. So, I continue to go upwards, blindly, using my left foot to carefully examine the next step and with my right foot to follow, my left shoulder seems to be pressed against a deeply patterned wall. At times it feels like live, pulsating flesh. I try to remove this thought from my mind. Why did I follow the stairs anyway?

My bladder is bursting, so I need to go. I speed up a little, and the wall begins to smooth out. I hear something; a growling of some sort. I try not to wonder what it is. There is a broken ray of light that points to four doors across a corridor. On the left hand side there is a door open, the two other doors ahead of me are locked, with the final door revealing no door handle, but an etching which says, “Release”. I can be certain any of this is true, as the break of light is so feint, it could all be a case of seeing what I want to see.

I continue to trace my shoulder against the wall until I reach to open room. I feel the door frame and move inside, cautiously, but quickly. I heard the growling, which is much louder. There is a weight on my shoulder. And the growling has now turned to snarling, I can feel the warmth of the breathing against my neck. I breathe by twisting my mouth to the side, the smell wreaks, but I try not to make anything of it. I am standing still, my should feels heavy, and I stare ahead, into the darkness. The snarling becomes louder, so what am I to do? If I panic and run, will I die? If I stay and do nothing, will I die? Is there a way out of this?

Spontaneously I begin to sound “Awwwwwwwww” in sympathetic tones. The snarling is still loud, and as I look ahead at nothing, I continue the sympathy. I want to place my hand, on whatever it is that is sitting on my shoulder, but I fear that my hand may be bitten off, or that I may startle it, and it would then kill me. The bladder is kicking ferociously, I feel nauseous, but I continue the noise.

The snarling changes to a whining. A light comes on, and I still remain standing, frozen in place. The weight is lifted off my shoulder a little, and I see a German Shepherd, it’s back stripped of hair and skin, it’s ear shorter than the other, walk across the corridor to the door which clearly says “Release”. The door opens, a figure calls the dog inside. I cannot see the face, it is more a of a silhouette than anything else. The room it stands is a luminous turquoise, like a as if a neon light has been used to light up the room. It seems not so much a room, but air occupied by objects, dislocated, disjointed and out of place; like a widescreen television floating on a raft near the Red Sea.

More weight is lifted, and with the same back, a crooked nose, a Doberman walks across the corridor and through the door. Finally the entire weight is lifted, and I continue to make the sound. I choose not to take any risks at this point and weight until it’s all over. A St Bernard with a bulging eye, walks across the corridor, it turns around, and I fear that it may run and attack. “Awwwwwwwwwwwww” I continue, as it turns back to who is perhaps its master. The silhouette morphs into a raven, and flies across to a perch near what looks to be a window. From what I can see, there is nothing but darkness beyond the pane. The dogs sit and stare at the flickering of what may be a television screen. The door closes.

You can hear the screaming, you can see the floods of tears in their eyes; the wailing is deafening. The movement pushes the child over, his body completely stabbed to death by angled concrete. Bodies are littered everywhere; the gray of the concrete now soak in washed out blood, absorbed into the material.

I rush to close the bathroom door. There are four locks on it. I use the first one, at the top, and the sound of the closing is deafening. I pull the latch on the second, and hear the lick to confirm it is done. The third lock is trickier. It’s stiff, stuck, and there is a build of grease stopping it from pushing. With increased effort it closes, while catapulting me forward to wards the sink. The final lock is the smallest, it seems to serve little purpose, but I use it anyway.

My knees cave in, and I kneel on the floor. It’s a patterned tile, as is the entire bathroom. There’s a sink, with Roman-esque design. The bath I can see in the distance. The toilet sits adjacent to it. The room is long, it would take up to a minute to move from the door to the bath itself. There is nothing else in between. I see no light switch, or any mechanism to turn a light on, or off. The taps on the bath tub begin to run. I stand up, but cannot see inside the bathtub. I place a hand on one of the locks, at the same time, I can feel sharp pain within my bladder, as if about to burst open like Scott’s Alien film. I clutch my stomach with other hand, and decide I need to relieve myself.

The bathroom is in complete contrast to everything else I have seen so far. Minimalist design, the excessive use of tiles, the large room. It’s as if it was once a corridor, enough room for three more exists, perhaps or a stairwell to take you downstairs. I feel unsettled at the thought.

As I edge closer to the toilet, I see the bath tub filling. In the water there is a torso of a girl, rotted, disheveled, but alive. She has no eyes, instead the socks are filled with water, creating a strange reflective effect. She still has her hands, and uses the side of the bathtub as leverage to spin herself in a circle. She stops. I stop. She continues again, and I continue walking towards the toilet.

I unzip my flies and the relief is instantaneous. The pain still resides, but it slowly subsides as I urinate faster and louder. I don’t realise as I look up at the ceiling with relief, but the girl is at the edge of the tub with heard facing towards me, and speaks.

“Hello”
“Hello”
“What are you doing?”
“Something private”
“Can you play with me?”
“I have to go”
“Do I scare you? Am I ugly?”
“You’re dead, I may catch something”
“You hate me?”
“I pity you”
“I’m a tortured soul. I have no where to go, or I’m lost. I forget which. I was killed here, drowned, torso severed.”
“I’m happy for you.”

I finish what I’m doing, and flush the toilet. I head towards the sink, I wash my hands and dry them on my own clothing. I hear screaming in the background, the noise is hurting my ears, I can almost sense and imagine my ear drums beating frequently like a drummer in the ecstasy of his solo, his moment of glory amongst the crowd; he must show his worth. I feel dizzy, and turn around. I see a body, it’s splashing in the water, with a man holding her down. He’s crying, or is he laughing? I can’t tell. Next to him lays a large hack saw. The girl stops kicking, and the man picks up the saw. He begins to cut into the torso, with the first cut immediately turning the water red. It flows like ink leaking from a bottle, patterns form and then merge, and soon the entire bath is filled with crimson.

My head hurts, and I place my hand to my temple. The screaming has stopped, the nausea stops, and as I open my eyes, there is nothing. No body, no torso, no water in the bath. The locks on the door have been replaced by one single lock. I undo the lock, and open the door. The corridor has light, and as I look down, the stairs are visible. The writing on the other door has disappeared. I slowly make my way down the stairs, as I noticed small windows letting in light across the stair case.

The stairs seem shorter than before. I go in to the room where I vacated so long ago, and see a man with blue, long hair. He has a nose ring, and a cut lip. The blood covers his face, just as children flick paint at paper with a brush. The effect is similar. Next to him sits my friend, his insides opened, the mobile phone stitched to his stomach, which continues to pulsate. His eyes slowly roll downwards, towards me, and he blinks twice. The man stares at me,

“We spoke on the phone” he says as he gestures and points to the phone in my friend’s stomach.

I shrug my shoulders, and gesture to my friend to call me by making a fist, extending my thumb and little finger and placing it to my face. He rolls his eyes in agreement and I leave.