As The Ocean Bites At Our Rusted Shores

Chapter 7: Feed Me To The Forest

Russell remembered back in his childhood when he had been tied up by his own landscape, as the floor under his feet and the ceiling above his head and the walls around him wound up his arms and throttled his neck and wrapped up his legs, crotch, torso, until he was enveloped in a thick black cocoon, and filled up with it as well - no, that was a lie. Nothing like that had ever happened, this was an entirely new experience and it was horrendous.

"Well thats that then." Lester sighed, heaving his shoulders. "He's been taken and by the morning he'll be nothing but another barrel of petroleum to feed this hell-hole." Sebastien looked shocked. "Don't say that!" He hissed. "You promised that girl you'd get her father for him!"

Lester shot him a look. "I said no such thing, you take that back!"

"You as good as did!" Sebastien's lip twitched as he saw once again a side of Lester which he really didn't like.

"Agh, fine." Lester conceded. "I pretty much did." Sebastien smiled. "But I didn't want to. I still don't. I hate this plac- LOOK OUT!" and without warning he leapt across the passage and slammed his foot on a smoker which had poked through the folds of the wire. "They're tenacious bastards, aren't they?" His eyes glimmered. "You can bet your life that that guy didn't stamp on them - he probably tried to cuddle them."

Belle looked up from the floor, where she had been staring in a melancholy sort of way. "Does this mean that we're definitely going to find the centre of the wires? The master plug?" Her eyes said that she would rather let the guy starve here than go any further.

"And you know what else I realised?" Lester called from a way away, where he had been stomping. "We don't even know this guys name! We're supposed to be rescuing him! Jesus!" and with that he resumed his stomping. Sebastien sidled up to Belle and whispered to her, "But you were the one who wanted to find him!"

She looked guiltily around at the fronds of wire curling around them, wall-wires curling up into floor-wires and extending from ceiling-wires. Sparks in the distance. "I didn't know we would be going in here."

Sebastien rolled his eyes, and hugged her tight. "We've been in worse places than this! This place is childs play!" He eyed her encouragingly, and she smiled weakly back at him. "I know, Seb," she began, "But-"

"No buts!" Sebastien interrupted her. "Every second we waste here is a second more this guy gets digested. Hey, Lester!" he called. "The quicker we find this guy, the faster we can get out of here! Lets go already!" and so on they walked, Dresden at the back wondering quietly why nobody was still not talking to him - maybe it was cos of his bad talkin's that nobody figured he was scared too. Just cos he was bigger din't mean he was any better at stompin' the smokers. He glanced to the left, a lil worried that he wouldn't notice anythin' small with slinky sharp legs clambering up his bunched-up coiled-tight muscles.

Russell awoke as the wire slid out of his throat. He felt sated and fed for a moment, his eyes glazed and his muscles either limp or relaxed depending on your point of view. His head lolled forwards a moment and the snap-back realisation of where he was immediately, and dreadfully awoke him to the reality of his situation. He was wrapped tightly in wires, which bound him from the tips of his feet to his collar-bones and neck. They pressed in on his chest, and he could feel his ribs getting out the way inside of him. His heart, trying to pump blood to his brain, was being thwarted by the tight binds which meant that he was rapidly losing feeling in many of his extremities, and his heart beat madly, like a breakbeat inside of him. He was being squeezed tight - he was the tube of toothpaste he thumped every morning, he was the flaccid penis he tried so desperately to engage night after broken night, he was the envy of himself.

The wires lurched him upwards, and he was twisted as he did so, so as he rotated round he came to see the face of his captor. It looked like the head of a fat baby. Hundreds of wires spread from its unshielded neck, writhing and flailing as they spread along the floor. More sprouted from its ears, its nostrils, its gaping mouth. They fell out of the mouth like vomit, or undigested worm food. A sole wire struggled from in between folds of metal which made the gross face; and it was a gross face, as if it was a human face it would be pustulous and greasy. Fuel dribbled from behind its eyes, swilling with diesel, and cried down the side of its enormous cheeks. It leaked from the ears and mouth, like a black waterfall, with cascades of poisonous rainbows spread across it like a factory was spewing right behind it. The face was unmoving, and looked like a dead thing, with great leaks of leaded and unleaded sprawling across its pallid structure. The only living thing here were the wires, great clinging, blinded maggots sparking and writhing all through it.