Taken

He felt the syringe pierce the skin on his arm, unable to resist, his wrist tied solidly to the arms of the wooden chair he was now sat in. He felt the liquid enter his blood stream, felt the burning sensation that crept up and along his arm reaching his shoulder, within a few seconds it was in his heart. He could feel the exaggerated rhythm of its beat dramatically increase as the fluid entered the chambers. Its rhythm became distorted; it felt as though it was missing every second or third beat. He felt the beads of sweat dripping from his forehead such was his fear. The fear of the unknown.


What was this liquid that was being forced into his body? A chemical? A drug? He didn’t know. Who was this stranger that had taken him from his slumber and dragged him from his bed to the chair he was now tied to. He was strong, with the biggest hands he had ever felt. He hadn’t seen the perpetrator’s face due to the lack of light in the room and that he had been in a deep sleep. His attacker hadn’t said a word as he had forced him into the chair, holding him down with one hand had tied one wrist then the other with a nylon rope that was now cutting into his wrists as he struggled to break free.


The fluid was now in his head and brought with it a pain so indescribable; unlike a headache this started at the base of his neck and crawled its way upwards into his skull. His face tightened, the muscles contracting as they became overtaken with the liquid, his eyes felt as if they were going to explode and force their way from their sockets to fall upon his cheeks, hanging by the very sinews that were now on fire. He closed them, hoping against hope that his tightly closed lids would prevent it from happening.


The liquid was beginning to work its way around his body, and he felt it’s every move, slowly taking him over from the inside. He felt movement on his left side, felt a warm sensation of breath on his cheek, a stale, rotten odour similar to a decaying animal filled his nostrils, it made him wretch. He tried to take in air, clean air to fill his lungs, but it was slow in coming. He realised then that he had been gagged. Crazily he hadn’t thought to cry out, to try and alert someone in the adjacent rooms. To late now anyway. He tried to take in some clean air by turning his head away from the stench and breathe through his nose; he didn’t want to throw up, not with the cloth gag across his mouth. He wasn’t prepared to die choking on his own vomit, although the alternative wasn’t much better. The stench followed him, enveloping his face and filling his nasal passages, seeping into his lungs, burning, doing as much damage as twenty years of smoking Marlboro’s.


The strangers face was only inches from his own, opening his eyes, still hoping that his eyes would remain in their right place, he stared into the eyes of his subjugator. He saw in the shadows a pale glint of yellow between the slits of the flesh that were his eyes. He saw the thick wire like hair that surrounded them, heard the deep raspy breaths through his mouth and was grasped by a fear unknown. Unable to distinguish many features in the poor light he knew that whatever he was, he wasn’t human.


Desperately trying to look away from the hideous image before him, he turned his head, this way and that in a violent motion, closing his eyes, yet the inside of his eyelids held the fearsome image, the image of the creature not of this world. He felt dizzy, nauseous, the putrid smell of this things breath still filled his head and lungs, unable to wretch, unable to move, his body did the only thing it could do in its circumstances.


It shut down.


Darkness closed in around him, starting at the edge of his vision and rapidly closing in, he became light-headed, his resistance gave up and the will to fight drained from his limbs as the darkness took him.


Is this the end? He asked himself while still conscious, expecting to see his life pass before his eyes in a slow motion of blurred events. They never came. He felt grateful in a way that he had never felt before that maybe, just maybe he wasn’t going to die, and his life wasn’t to be taken from him by this creature of hell


At least, not yet.


As the light faded to a dim pin prick in his distant minds eye, so the pain ebbed away from his body and he slipped into unconsciousness.



He awoke, sat bolt upright in bed and immediately saw his reflection in the mirror perched above the small wooden dresser at the foot of the bed. His first thought of the new day was “Jesus I look rough.” His black hair was soaked with sweat and was matted to his scalp; his already dark eyes looked black. Had he aged? He certainly looked like he had, only twenty eight but going on forty he thought.


“What the fuck happened to me?” he said out loud.


He reached to the small bedside cabinet to his right and lifted the beaker of water he’d placed there the night before. Taking a sip he rinsed his mouth and swallowed hard, replaced the beaker and rubbed his eyes. They hurt, the ache of a hangover, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror again he let his mind wander.


The images came to him, slowly at first, then flooding back. The fear he felt as his mind replayed the events turned him deathly pale, the reflection that looked back was drawn and tired, it wasn’t him. He closed his eyes, reopened them and avoided the mirror. He raised his left arm toward him, his eyes were drawn to the puncture wound, barely visible but definitely there, he inspected his wrists and noted the red graze marks left by the ligatures that had held him down. The shock swept over him, the things his mind had recalled he wanted to dismiss as a dream, a nightmare. The human thought process couldn’t begin to imagine that what had happened had been real. He looked again at his wrists and rubbed at the puncture mark, his eyes wide open now, any remnants of sleep most surely gone.


“What the fuck! What the hell happened to me?” he thought aloud.

“Surely Not?” Questioning himself, he gazed at his arm in disbelief. “It was a dream, it didn’t really happen”

But the evidence was there to be seen on the surface of his arm. “So what the hell did that, that thing pump into me” He said into the mirror struggling to find the words. The mirror didn’t reply. The ghost like figure staring back began to blur, fuzzy around the edges. He rubbed his eyes again trying to focus. The morning light was poor through the thin dirty curtain that covered the only window. As he stared, the shape of his face became distorted, its form becoming that of another, the features melted away only to return more pronounced. The horror that was unfolding in the mirror was only in the mirror, it wasn’t his face changing. Was it? He couldn’t feel anything, yet he daren’t lift his hand to his face for fear that he be wrong. The image grew, larger, filing the mirror, spilling over it’s sides into the room, a face of dark deep features, of thin slits for eyes, a dirty yellow colour protruding from the eyelids, its skin dark, leathery and scarred with pot marks that rippled as it grew. He continued to stare, almost drawn to the hideous figure. Yet in its features he saw resemblance, resemblance of himself. This creature of hell that had come to him, it was him, and it had Taken him.


Sweeping aside the covers he dashed through the bathroom door and knelt before the bowl, he wretched, his stomach contracting as if squeezed by a powerful hand deep within his body, crushing his stomach from within and forcing its contents out through his nose and mouth. The thick viscous bile stinging and burning the passages from which it flowed. Cold damp sweat formed on his brow as a shiver swept through his whole naked body and he collapsed breathless onto the cold tiled floor. He could taste the bile in his mouth, the acidic liquid had left his tongue raw and his teeth felt stripped of their enamel. Trickles of bile ran from his nose and onto his top lip, its vapour finding its way back from where it had came, stinging the nasal hair again, as it had on its way out, only this time he smelt it, a familiar pungent rotten and decaying odour that worked its way to the back of his throat. Desperate for air after his violent out-pouring, he sucked the vile odour deep into his lungs and felt it coarse its way down. He wretched again. Unable to lift his head to aim for the bowl he lay slumped on the floor, bringing up his knees to somehow counteract the abdominal pain as the hand within squeezes again. He struggled for breath, no air went in and nothing came out, his stomach empty, yet the convulsions continued unabated for what seemed like an eternity.


He lay weeping on the tiled floor unable to comprehend what had happened, what was happening. The odour had subsided, or was he just slightly accustomed to it now? He couldn’t move, his limbs had frozen into the foetal position, knees drawn up against his torso and hands cupped together in front of his face. A face twisted with fear and unknowing, a face pale a clammy with tears rolling sideways across his face, forming a small pool where his head met the tiles.


He didn’t know how long he was there, didn’t really care. He was alone, alone in a motel room in an unknown town, in a country unknown, well, it was unknown to him. He’d arrived two days ago on a flight from Heathrow, London.

Why? They’d asked.
To get away from it all for a while. He’d replied.

If the separation had hit him like a freight train then the sacking, the shame and the stigma that came with it hit, him like an asteroid falling from the stars at a million miles per hour. And so he found himself boarding a plane for America. He wanted to chill out, spend some time doing nothing, planning to leave his problems an ocean away.


Right now his problems were just beginning.