Random 19

"You think you know me by now, old friend, but by God I swear you have no idea what I am capable of!"

"I believe you, David; truly, I do. But I have some idea, and we are in a bad place. Will you not put some of that fury to our immediate assistance? We are no use to anyone here."

I wanted to respond positively, to help, but at that moment I could see nothing beyond the hot red circle of my helpless, engulfing rage. A hero -- any man of courage, any man at all -- would have put that aside, thinking only of her; but I have always been weak. Always and to this day.

I pray you never know how weak.

For a time, even my beloved Akhtar was unable to rouse me from that occluding passion, from the phantoms and hallucinations that -- to my eyes -- filled our filthy cell, taunting and tormenting me. His filthy claws on her pearl-white skin; her abject defencelessness; her cries for mercy all unheeded. My friend did his best to comfort me and keep me from harming myself in my fulminations, but I was beyond help. I will never know whether it was minutes or hours or days -- time was all one to me -- but in that period I was lost to humanity or civilisation; lost to reason. I was barely an animal, much less a man.

Afterward, I came to myself piece by piece, like a Limehouse Chinaman deprived of that Opium that makes life almost bearable in the strange and terrible alien landscape of the East End; almost, but not quite. For he knows the very landscape hates him -- just as surely as the one in which I found myself hated me.

Nonetheless, there, in the hot dark, was faithful Akhtar, with his soft voice and tender touch; with the will and strength to drag me bodily back to the present, to our all too present predicament. He was right, as always: we were no use to anyone in that dank earthen pit. Whatever might be happening elsewhere, our first priority must be to escape.

So easily said!

It was barely possible to see anything, the only light a faint fungal luminescence whose source was impossible to locate, but the walls of the pit must have been fifteen feet tall and -- dug from the soft earth as they were -- moist and crumbly, ready to collapse. There was no hope of climbing them -- the soil fell away at even the lightest touch -- and even if there had been, the roof of timber and vines overhead was stronger than any man could break, and pinned down by huge boulders, each heavier than a Sussex family cottage.

It was a pit made not to escape from, but to die in.

Our captor was no more a fool than his awful Gods, and the wills of both were set against us. That pit was a sink of certainty. The more we contemplated our surroundings, the more clear it became that it would take a miracle to free us from our imprisonment.

Still.

We had seen miracles before.

Even in that dreadful place -- perhaps more there than anywhere -- I cannot say it was entirely a surprise when Aran-ki-Mopassa spoke to us.
Posted by matt at August 4, 2006 12:01 AM