Balance
Dragging the quivering form over to the bath, Abe twisted the tap off and dipped his hand in to test the temperature.
'What the devil are you doing?' Snapped the tall man in the top hat. His sing-song voice rang over the tiled walls with a shrill, grating quality.
Right, right. He was not actually having a bath! Wrapping his hands around either sides of the restrained man's head, he hoisted him over the ceramic edge and plunged his face into the steaming water. The man writhed and struggled, his hands straining at the rope that held them in place. In time his body spasmed as the life ebbed out of him, and he slumped to the tiled floor when Abe released his own grip. Slapping against the wet surface, the man's face was yellow and bloated.
'Bravo,' sneered the man in the top hat, twiddling a handlebar moustache as he watched Abe pull the body out and into the living room. Swinging his cane, he jerked upright and strode through behind him. His pointed coattails swung freely; black heels clicked metronomically on the tiled floor. Taking a seat on the sofa, he viewed in amusement as Abe struggled to lift a solid steel hatch door in the far corner of the room. As he did so, he played with a variety of sharp instruments arranged with precision on a white dishtowel atop the coffee table. Selecting a pair of scissors, he held them up to his eyeline.
'All these toys I left out for you, Abe, and you choose the most physically demanding option! Why, you could have plucked out his heart with these scissors here! After a little entry work, of course.'
Abe glared round as he kicked the body into the dark recesses of the hatch, and drew a large rug back over it.
'You must be more creative in your destruction, Abe! Lord knows, I try to give you helpful prompts, I try to instill subtle suggestions, but you continue bludgeoning and drowning in the most crude manner, and making the most awful mess! Look at all this water leaking under your bathroom door, you'll have to mop it all up now.'
Staggering over to an armchair, Abe collapsed into it and held his head in his hands.
'I'm sorry, Abe,' chimed the man in the top hat, 'but we must continue, and you must make more of an effort. I'm reducing your area as punishment. This is what you want, but you can't have it unless you invest the appropriate amount of time and effort.'
Smacking his hand across the armchair rest, Abe rose up and advanced on the top hat man.
'Why must you criticise me in everything I do!' He exclaimed.
Again, the top hat man ran his finely trimmed handlebar moustache through his fingertips, curling it upwards at the edges as he smirked at Abe.
'Because I take pleasure in other people's misfortune,' he explained in a bouncing, acute tone, licking his lips and slicking his moustache back into place. 'Now, to work!' He clapped his hands together and sprang up, pulling another thick, velvet rug aside to reveal a second hatch door. Prising it open, he extracted a struggling, emaciated man from its depths, hurling him across the room to Abe. From the depths of the pit below, anguished screams and dirty, pleading hands rose up.
'Quiet!' the top hat man bawled. 'Quiet, we've had quite enough of your idle chatter for one lifetime!' Kicking the hatch closed again, he skipped over to Abe, spinning his cane in excitement.
'Now...smaller, smaller!' His cane continued twirling and the room shrank until the walls were condensed into a tight passageway and the ceiling lowered to be touching the tips of their heads. Abe stood cradling the skinny, ill-looking man at one end, while the top hat man skipped impatiently at the other.
'Come along, now! Use your initiative! Whatever will you do? Perhaps you might hang him? Only, there is no rope - and nothing to hang him from!' He burst into fits of wild cackling, pointing his cane like a gun and simulating gunshot noises as Abe rubbed his forehead and thought hastily. He began to drag the frail man across the length of the corridor, only to be interrupted by a tortured cry from the transportee. Looking down, he saw the man had been impaled upon a pair of garden shears lying on the floor of the thin hallway. He was bleeding profusely, blood gurgling in a red torrent to form a thick puddle between the two men standing at either end. The shears had been sitting amongst the other implements on the coffee table only a moment before. Abe's eyes narrowed with disgust as he looked over at the top hat man, dancing with delight in the recesses of the dark corridor.
