Arrgh! I’ve got to get this down while I still can! I am sitting, cross-legged on my chair, when suddenly I’m staring down my own throat as if I were using one of those doctor’s fibre optic cameras. A gaping hole opens up, revealing a toothless jaw into which I am swallowed whole. This new tunnel is held open by C-shaped rings of thick cartilage, running parallel to my trachea. After only a short distance, which takes an immeasurably long period of time to travel, it branches off and I go with it.
Plummeting down in this new direction, gyrating and rotating as I go, I find myself surrounded by a thousand shades of black, more dazzling than any colours I have ever seen. Agghh! I’m still spinning and tumbling, careering out of control down the tunnel which has suddenly widened into a limitless, swirling void – what’s that? A sound! Faint yet insistent. What is it?
I am floating now. As soon as I heard that noise I stopped falling. But what is it? It is somehow familiar… A buzzing? Purring? I can’t make it out, it is too… distant. I must try to get closer.
I can actually swim through this inky blackness, but it is thick like molasses and I am sweating already. Whenever I stop moving, to listen and try to get my bearings in relation to the sounds, I find I am bobbing and floating about like an Otter, without any effort at all. As soon as I head off again towards the noise though, I am back to swimming in a sea of glue. Jesus, I’m knackered! It is like being caught in a rip tide, but I am… almost… there –
Arrrgh! A roaring, angry sound slashes through my eardrums, reverberating maniacally as the taste of oil and smoke fouls my mouth! The roaring changes to a throaty revving sound, and a few faces whirl fleetingly past my vision. Sinister faces.
Something is about to go wrong.
Laughing faces in dark glasses! Cruel faces, circling, taunting, laughing…
Stop. Stop! Oh! Christ, make them stop!
Quick! They’ve turned their backs’ on me, turned to look inwards. Oh Gods, their malice - I can feel it from here! And the noise - it’s unbearable! They’re focussing on someone, inside the ring they have formed. Such malevolence! Such wanton menace!
But why? And who? Who is the unfortunate soul in the middle being choked in the poison given off by that noise?
Cripplesby!
It’s Elliot Cripplesby. I’ve got to get to him! Got to warn him. His face! Distorting in a scream of pain! I must get to him! They’re laughing! Oh Gods, stop laughing! Look out!
He turns to look at me and a black hole bursts forth from his straining lips. Once more I am dazzled by the blackness. I know now with a terrifying certainty that I must get to him, I must reach him, before they do. Whoever they are.
All I can do is to swim blindly in the darkness, groping for the light that will lead me out of here. And fast. Cripplesby is in serious trouble.