Dangerous Games

Chapter 15 part 2

"Are you hungry?" Can't really go wrong with that one.

"Starving."

I looked around. "Well, we seem to be in some sort of kitchen. Why don't I look around? See if I can find something to eat."

We were indeed in a kitchen. The light here was just enough to see an ironing board, a sink full of washing up yet to be done, a large rectangular metal box in the corner which I took to be a boiler – you know, the sort of everyday stuff you'd find in a kitchen. And a fridge! Thank God! A fridge means food. I got up and opened it.

Normally you'd expect the light to go on when the fridge was opened, but here – nothing. Of course! The inside of the fridge was even harder to make out than the rest of the room, but I thought I could see something that looked like bread, and a lighter rectangular block that might have been cheese.

"I think there's bread and cheese in here. I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it doesn't smell off." In fact, it didn't smell of anything. Nothing did in this world. Smell, it would appear, was also one of those senses that just didn't apply anymore.

I felt around and brought the objects out, relieved to find that they were indeed what I had thought they were.

"It's dry bread, I'm afraid. There doesn't seem to be any butter. Will it do?"

Anita jumped up from her corner, the first time I'd seen her make a proper movement. Before I'd put the food on the table – there was a table in the middle of the room – she'd grabbed the unsliced loaf from my hand and had bitten into it. My God, this girl was hungry!

I looked at her trying to eat the thing. "You look as if you haven't eaten for weeks. How long have you been here exactly?"

"I don't understand," she said, her voice on the point of cracking with despair. "When I bite into the bread, it just isn't there. I can't eat it or taste it." She started crying again, at the cruelty of being given food and then effectively having it snatched away again.

"Here, let me try." I took the loaf from her gently and tried biting into the other end, the end she hadn't already chewed. It was true. Try as I might, the food didn't taste of anything. It wasn't as though it tasted bad, or made me feel sick, or even had the consistency of cardboard or polystyrene. The moment I tried biting into it, my mouth simply closed on empty air. It was as though I was trying to bite into mist – I could see it, but my teeth and lips simply couldn't feel it. I held the loaf closely to my eyes, trying to see if either of us had inflicted any damage on it. We had – there was a huge chunk bitten off from both ends, but where those chunks had gone was anyone's guess. Certainly not down our throats.

"Look, try a bit of cheese," I said. "Perhaps that might taste a little better." I broke the lump of cheese clumsily in half, and gave the larger chunk to Anita. She stopped crying and again eagerly bit into it, with the same result.

I bit into my half, and as I feared, my teeth closed on nothing at all. Whatever this stuff was, it was something beyond anything anyone has ever come across in our world. We could see it – just – pick it up, break it apart, and cause it to disappear by biting it, but the one thing we couldn't do was taste it – or even eat it.

Anita was crying again. "We're going to starve to death here."

I put my arm around her, in flagrant breach of all official procedure about comforting members of the public. "Now what sort of talk is that, young lady? We are not going to starve here, or anywhere else for that matter. On the contrary, we are going to get out of here and back to our own world. You know – somewhere where bread tastes like bread and cheese tastes like cheese." I patted her on the back, in the hope that my presence would be enough to soothe her. Certainly I found her being there a great comfort to me, although I could never have said it. The police are supposed to be the strong authority figures, providing reassurance to members of the public. Nobody takes into account the fact that we might not be the men of steel that we are portrayed as, that we might have fears and needs too. No, I was here to save the day, and that was damn well what I was going to do.