Without Windows

Ted Armitrage teetered at the edge of insanity. At least, that’s what his current mental state continually tried to convince him. Sat with hands and feet bound to an old iron bed, his only view was of the bricked-up cellar detaining him within the catacombs of London’s oldest abandoned tube station.

The old iron bed lacked a mattress, revealing a soiled chamber pot sat on the floor beneath it – still emitting a faint aroma of prisoners past. Whatever the smell, it wasn’t pleasant.

“I NEED A PISS,” Ted frustratingly demanded. “How can I piss when I’m tied to the bed?”

“Hisss Majesssty wants to piss,” taunted a voice in his left ear.

The room’s absence of any decoration or insulation, allowed the whispering echo of dismissive discussions to enter its space, invited in with each flickering of the single globe lightbulb hanging from the ceiling cord above Ted’s head. Shuddering from a recent series of power surges that continued to torment Ted, his ever-increasing departure from reality was once more, assisted by unseen oppressors.

“Piss in your pants,” replied the angry growl in his right ear. “Why do think the piss pot is underneath you?”

The flickering of the lightbulb signalled the onset of the next torture session targeting Ted’s mental state. Alone in the dungeon’s surroundings, the distant clack-clack sounds of passenger train wheels crossing diversion points along the underground railway line, were a constant reminder that civilisation was on the other side of the wall. However, Ted’s repeated cries for help had failed to alert anyone of his plight, so he had resigned himself to being unsavable and beyond recovery. The voices were driving him mad, and he was powerless to silence them. The clacking noise of another train worryingly prepared him for the next onslaught from the voices. It was a pattern now. The train, the flickering of the bulb, the voices, the anguish. A complete circle of pain and suffering.

“Do you know why you are here?” The left voice asked hissingly.

“No, I haven’t done anything. You’re not real… I… don’t know. I want to go home. Please let me go home,” Ted pleaded confusingly.

“You’re to be punished,” growled the right voice before the constant power supply silenced both voices.

“HELP!... HELP ME!”

Ted attempted to shout the loudest he could, but he choked mid-yell from a dry throat, instead, coughing violently to clear his obstructed passage.

The sound of another commuter train crossing the junction tracks caused an additional flickering of lights. Ted’s muscles tensed with fear, before unwittingly emitting a painful scream – an unmistakable reaction to an act of physical abuse. It was obvious to Ted that his cheek had been slashed with something razor sharp. He could feel a light flow of blood oozing down one side of his face and onto his neck.

“Ssssatisssfaction,” tormented the left voice.

“Punishment has begun,” roared the right voice.

“You have been chosssen becaussse of what you did.”

“What… what did I do?”

“Do not toy with us, Ted Armitrage. Your deed is documented. Your fate is… ordained.”

Resuming its constant glow, the lightbulb’s illumination brought a temporary respite to Ted’s shivering disposition. This seemingly other-worldly persecution had been harassing him for the past fifteen minutes – ever since he awoke in the cold, unfamiliar surroundings. With no recollection of how he got there, why he was tied up, and what he had done, his failing logic had surmised one thing. Each flickering of the light lengthened the duration of the voices. If this was the beginning of his ordeal, then he was loath to imagine what was to come.

The now tiresome familiar sound of a train approaching the junction sent Ted spiralling into a state of panic. A flashback of images sparked a recollection in his head - like the explosion of a camera’s flashbulb, capturing a dimly lit scene. First, there appeared a young girl – possibly ten-years-old, then a stamped imprint of her mangled body at the side of a wet road embedded in his cerebral cortex.  An empty bottle of bourbon floated past his inner vision, before being tossed into the passenger footwell of a car. Then, like a polaroid photo, the snapshot of a speedometer stuck in perpetuity at its top speed, vibratingly jostled his returning memory. Finally, a mirrored image of a tree branch protruding through a car's dashboard piercing Ted’s face, triggered an instant flashback of a brake pedal deforming his foot. Ethereal recollection metamorphosed into a reactionary carnal and vociferous response, resulting in a blood-curdling scream filling the chamber. It reverberated and bounced off each of the confining walls, raced along the floor, then leaped up towards the lightbulb, seemingly energising it further into a bright glare. Ted’s shocked expression, looked down at his right ankle - pointing in an abnormal 90-degree position. With extreme agony coursing through Ted’s body, his brain went into protective mode and his body reacted by pumping a high level of adrenaline through it, softening the agonising sensation.

“Ssseee how easssy it isss to feel pain? Listen…”

With a sickly snapping sound, Ted’s shattered ankle was twisted by an unseen force to face in the opposite direction.

“PLEASE STOP! GOD, PLEASE HELP ME!”

“God does not hear you. Nobody hears you... Only the truth hears you, and he... is upon us.”

“I REMEMBER NOW… I remember what happened… There was an accident.”

“There wassss a tragedy... There wassss a child… There wassss a ssslippery sssslope of no avoidance-ssss.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was out of control.”

“Your apology has no merit!”

“He comesss. He comesss.”

The voice trailed into the echoing dark, leaving Ted to deal with his lingering pain. Something felt different this time, his tortured senses pointed out. Violently struggling with his bonds, Ted managed to free his right arm, then froze in extended fear as he realised that he was sitting in the dark. The lightbulb had not resumed its illumination. This was extremely disconcerting for it changed the pattern of events, inserting more unknown into the already-existent unknown.

A long eerie silence permeated the chamber, broken slightly by the sound of someone in very close proximity to Ted’s face, breathing heavily through their nose. Ted's senses went on high alert as beyond the brick wall, another train crossed the junction. The room instantly filled with a brilliant bright light emanating from the ceiling bulb. It was so blinding in effect that Ted – fearful of its radiance – squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Through the cover of his eyelids, the glow continued for several moments before finally returning to its normal illumination. Slowly, Ted peeked through his trembling eyelashes, squinting at the adjustment. Startled, he sat as upright and as far back as he could on his bed, stretching his remaining bonds to damaging potential. Crouching menacingly face-to-face with Ted, was a large muscular man with a stethoscope dangling around his neck. The disgusted scowl etched across the man’s expression, rang loud ominous bells in Ted’s fast-pumping heart.

“Do you know what I’m looking at?” The stranger asked. “I’m looking at a dead man,” he answered himself…

“Do you know who you killed in your drunkenness?”  

Ted shook his head vigorously.

“…You killed my daughter… Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

Ted shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of ignorance.

“I’m going to cut you up into little pieces while you’re still alive.”

“Please,” pleaded Ted. “I’m sorry…”

There was no reasoning to be made with the man – who produced a surgical knife from a small bag resting on the bedsprings beside Ted. While explaining what he was about to do, he moved the knife in imaginary lines up and down the length of Ted’s body.

“…But I won’t kill you right away. No, in fact you will be conscious throughout the whole procedure. The anaesthetic will see to that… First, I’m going to relieve you of your current pain, then when your arms and legs have been removed, I will tourniquet your severed stumps, so you don’t bleed out. I’m then going to cut off and sew your privates to your forehead, then sew your legs onto your shoulders and your arms onto your hips.”

The horror induced images forced into Ted’s mind, caused him to whimper like an abandoned puppy. Taking pleasure in his theatrical descriptions of amputation and castration, the surgeon upped the intensity.

“…I will then use the services of my own private NHS ambulance to take you home to your three-up-two-down house in Surrey, hang your living carcass upside down from your open plan, gabled roof beams and set your house on fire… But before I light the fuel, I will first light a campfire under you and watch you roast as you helplessly witness your own skin peeling off and falling to the ground… All, while still under anaesthesia… What say you?”

The vivid descriptive violence explained so graphically, loosened Ted’s final grip on sanity, causing him to babble in a strange combination of made-up words and baby speak. Complete terror overtook his reason as the threatening surgeon unveiled a long kebab skewer from his shirt sleeve. The intention was clearer than day as he positioned one end of the spike at the opening of Ted’s right ear.

“It’s best you don’t hear any more. Silence is Goblin…”

“What!?... what did you say?... Please stop… No… NO!... NOOO!”

***

Chief Inspector Davies peered through the one-way glass at the subject brought in for questioning. Clearly, he was mentally unbalanced, and his drunken blathering had produced no new testimony nor evidence that could be used against him.

Exiting from the interview room, an exasperated detective greeted his recognisable superior.

"Chief Inspector!"

“Detective Constable Goblin, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do we have?”

“Not a lot, sir. Circumstantial at best for now.”

“Explain," a highly indignant Chief Inspector demanded.

“CCTV cameras captured his erratic driving and excessive speed before ploughing through the traffic lights. It clearly shows Mr. Armitrage swerving violently, then hitting a tree just beyond the pedestrian crossing.”

“So, we have him bang to rights, then.”

“Not quite, Chief Inspector. CCTV only captures him hitting the tree. In the absence of any additional video evidence, we can only presume what happened to the girl.”

“I’ve seen the accident scene photos of her poor mangled body. The crossing was amply lit, was it not? Why do we not have a clearer picture?”

“The weather, sir. Five minutes before the incident, windblown rain interfered with the camera’s lens. Plus, there’s a railway line that runs parallel to the road. I talked to the electrical engineers that arrived to assess any damage and they informed me that rats had recently chewed on the cabling, causing an electrical short every time a train passed by. That – in turn – resulted in a temporary loss of lighting to the crosswalk. That is why…”

“Insufficient evidence…”

“Yes, Chief Inspector.”

“Right. You’d better uncuff him and book him in for further questioning. ”

“We’re a bit full tonight, sir - what with the full moon and all.”

“Yes, quite... Damn crazies… Please see if you can find a cell for him… any cell…”

“Right away, sir.”

“Oh, and kindly get that facial wound seen to. I don’t want any ambulance-chasing lawyers accusing us of any improprieties. That ankle of his, also. It looks rather nasty.”

“He was treated at the scene before being brought in here, but he kept limping and pacing around waiting to be questioned, then stumbled and awkwardly fell on it. I thought it best to cuff him to the chair to avoid further injury.”

“All the same, get the doctor in to take a look… and find him somewhere to lay down until he can be treated.”

“Yes, sir. As a temporary hold, there’s the old basement cell – next to the underground rail. He’s still so drunk that the noise won’t bother him.”

“Is it adequate?”

“Completely sir. It’s got a cot and a toilet. Apart from a dodgy bulb, it’ll do.”

“…and safe?”

“As houses, sir. Before being decommissioned from the old railway jailhouse, we had all the openings bricked up. The faulty lightbulb dangling from the ceiling is much too high to reach – in case he has any suicidal thoughts. I can take first watch over him until the doctor arrives. I mean, what could possibly happen to him in a room without windows and me outside his door?”

“Indeed… Very well, Detective Constable Goblin… Take him down…”