Link Arms with Toads!

by Hughes, Rhys

  Convulsed with horror, you crawled back to the relative safety of the wall. After a time you fell into an exhausted sleep. Then we heard them enter through the secret door and leave the drugged food and water that is one of their most tasteless tricks. You consumed it and under the effect of the unknown substances you did not feel them return and manipulate your body. They strapped you to a frame and lowered the pendulum ever so slowly over you. Not once did you scream; not once did we cry out any words of encouragement. We heard the slide of the blade through stale air, more delicate and relaxing than it ought to be. But you were not relaxed. At this time we knew nothing about your character. Would you escape the blade or would you be cleaved in twain? We hoped for the former but we had seriously depleted the number of rats in the preceding weeks. And they were the only way out of the bindings that held the victim to the wooden frame. Sharp little teeth.

  But you were as resourceful as us and there were enough rats. You smeared the remnants of your food over the bandages, as had we, and the rodents gnawed you free just in time. Now came the final stage of your imprisonment and a considerable amplification of our hopes, for no man had ever eluded what was to happen next. The pendulum was drawn up by unseen hands in conjectured disgust. The coal bunkers were plundered and the braziers loaded with fuel. A flame was puffed into a blaze with bellows. The heat was transmitted along the bolts to the metal panels on the inside of the dungeon. Gradually these grew brighter and your place of incarceration became visible to you. Then you noticed the small gap running along the base of each wall and you guessed that this was to enable them to move together without jamming on the stone floor. For despite the slime, the clockwork mechanism was not powerful enough to overcome that amount of friction.

  Here we must mention the fact that the Inquisitors regularly dusted the sculpted figures on the metal plates with sulphur. Thus they glowed in a more hellish fashion than they might otherwise have done, serving as a prediction of that realm where the souls of the prisoners were shortly to find themselves for eternity. One consequence of this that the Inquisition had not anticipated was the fumes that rose up from the walls and passed through the peepholes and swirled among the torturers above. Sulphur fumes are toxic and doubtlessly contributed in a small way to the dulling and disordering of their wits, so that they were just a little less capable of guessing the existence of survivors in the pit itself. And yet in no way did this mean we might reduce our precautions and call out to you not to be frightened.

  As the walls moved closer, you lurched around in a dreadful panic. The heat seared your flesh and eyes. You endured this pain for as long as you imagined yourself capable. Then you decided to sacrifice yourself to the cool waters of the pit. You tottered on the rim and looked down. Our hearts rejoiced! You were coming to us! The last section of our tower was ready to jump into our hands. But something else happened. Our plans were spoiled. A freak accident and a misunderstanding was the ruin of us. The stone you dislodged earlier and let fall had shattered the mirror. The real base of the pit was visible to you. This should have filled you with joy. You should have greeted our presence with silent jubilation and leapt in willingly. But we made a mistake. You recoiled in terror.

  We were frustrated by this circumstance but we shrugged it off. You would have to come to us one way or another, for when the dungeon was completely closed there was no place to stand. We knew this. You did everything within your limited power to postpone this moment as long as possible. A few minutes ago, you had been willing to throw yourself into the pit of your own free will; but now only the unstoppable pressure of scalding metal would ever accomplish what we desired. You shrieked but the walls did not pause. Our hearts swelled with ecstasy. One more step and you would be ours! The missing piece of the tower would belong to us. With the rope in your hands you would climb up to the hidden tunnel and help us to also reach that level. Together we would test our further luck in the labyrinth, where we might perish by taking a wrong turn, quickly or slowly, depending on what doom we encountered, or else pass through safely to freedom and happiness and life, the most protracted doom of all. But this irony troubled us not.

  Now there was no space on which your feet might balance. The closing walls had passed over every inch of solid floor. There was only the pit left. You were in the very process of beginning to fall. Gravity had claimed you. It remained only for your body to gather velocity in a downward direction. Although you had not yet started to move, the balance of forces working on you had changed. One blink of an eye and you would be committed to us. Surely it was too late for our hopes to be denied? How could such an inconceivable thing happen? But it did. There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught your own as you fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was the arm of General Lasalle, or to give his full name, Antoine Chevalier Louis Colbert. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

  All very well for you, but for us a disaster! They carried you out and took care of you. But they did not hear our cries. They sealed the entrance to the dungeon with explosives. We hoped you might alert your new friends to our plight but clearly you did not. Nobody came to rescue us. We are still here. Possibly you were too traumatised to ever speak again. Or else you do not believe we are men. Yes, this second option is more likely. When you voluntarily approached the pit to hurl yourself in and looked down, what did you see? What was it that drove you away, screeching? We were impatient for you to join us. We had already taken down the net and converted it into a rope. To save you from breaking your neck, to ensure you a landing no less soft than if it was still in place, we clustered together, all six of us, and held up our arms to catch you. That is what you saw when you gazed over the rim. With the mirror broken, you observed the pit as it really was; but this shattering of one illusion merely created another.

  Instead of an abominably deep hole with water at its bottom, you beheld a shallow chasm full of the grasping hands of tormented souls or demons. Impossible for you to judge which. It must have seemed we were rising up to claim you, or else that the sinners were stacked thousands deep all the way down to Hell. Our excited faces were like masks of menace, our welcoming smiles and winks like cruel or hungry leers. We were not men to you but ghastly apparitions. Now we are simply unmentionable memories. The dungeon has been silent ever since. We no longer scream or weep. In the sanctuary under the arch, at the desk, I lit the stubs of the remaining candles and with the last of the ink wrote this account on the handful of blank pages left in the architect’s book. It will never be read. The final flame is about to flicker out and so I now bring this story to its perpetually dark, famished, lunatic, but logical conclusion.

  (2003)

  333 and a Third

  “There are no spare rooms left.”

  It was a familiar reply and Boz turned on his heels but the landlord reached out and clasped his shoulder with an enormous hand.

  “You can have the cupboard under the stairs.”

  Boz hesitated a moment and then followed the landlord over the threshold of the door into the lobby of the building. It was the best offer of the past month, a month of walking the streets and ringing doorbells. Space was at a premium in this city right now and available rooms were scarcer than unicorns. The landlord turned on the lights in the stairwell and pointed upwards.

  “It’s near the top. I shouldn’t really rent it out, but I feel sorry for young men in your position. There are three hundred and thirty three apartments in this block, so I guess we can just call yours number 333 and a third.”

  “I’m not expecting visitors or mail,” said Boz.

  The landlord shrugged and they ascended the flights of steps together, puffing hard by the time they reached their destination. Boz peered at the door of the cupboard. It was low and small and he would be required to crouch to pass through it, but he was grateful
for any form of accommodation, however cramped. Everything in his life had worked out fine apart from not having a home. He had money in his wallet and a full belly but no place to stay. This one problem soured all the good things.

  “I’ll draw up a contract and you can sign it tomorrow. Here’s the key.”

  Boz accepted the tiny metal object and inserted it into the lock. The landlord had already wheezed off down the stairs and was gone before he opened the door. The cupboard contained a few blankets and a pillow. At the rear were an old vacuum cleaner, a dozen plastic bags and two large cardboard boxes. With a heavy sigh he squeezed into this space and fell asleep. The deep exhaustion of more than four weeks living rough, cold and damp and an easy target for violent drunkards, had caught up with him.

  He woke slowly. It was pitch dark and his muscles were aching. He thought about the city and the new building regulations which made it impossible to construct new housing. The authorities were determined to stop the metropolis sprawling outwards any further, nor did they want the skyline encroached upon more than it already was, so building higher was no solution. Boz understood this desire to preserve the city the way it was. It was a beautiful city, as cities go, with courtyards and patios and balconies and roof gardens.

  Not having enough space in the cupboard to stretch out at full length, he had curled up in a foetal position, legs hugged to his chest. Now he had terrible cramps. He decided to move the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes out into the corridor for the remainder of the night. He could always replace them in the morning before his landlord returned. As he moved these objects, he was astonished to discover that they concealed an opening to a tunnel. A faint glow came from its depths and he felt a light breeze on his face.

  “How far back does it go?” he wondered.

  There was only one way to find out. Crawling on his hands and knees he proceeded down the tunnel. The glow broke apart into a number of individual specks of light like stars and the tunnel itself grew wider and taller. Soon he was able to stand and walk. Wherever he was headed, it was not into the building. This was not a service duct that wove between clusters of water and gas pipes, bundles of insulating fibre and electrical fuse boxes. He savoured the distant scents of honeysuckle, cooking and wine.

  The sides of the tunnel were no longer bricks but mossy stones and worn railings. The ceiling had vanished. Somehow he was in a street, the street of a city not his own, a city equally as beautiful, with a castle on a crag and tall houses clustered below it. The stars were lamps on poles. He passed under an archway and impulsively resolved to remain here, not to go back, not that he could ever retrace his steps because he had already forgotten the way he had come. This city was no worse than the one he had left and his wallet was bulging. First he would find a proper place to live.

  *

  “There are no spare rooms left.”

  Although he expected this reply, Boz did not turn away immediately. He asked the same question he had asked all the other landlords.

  “Don’t you have a cupboard under the stairs?”

  The landlord licked his lips and hesitated before nodding and leading the way up the flights of steps to the designated space. Boz heaved a sigh of relief. He had found his escape route after another month of rough living. This city was as pleasurable as the one before it, but its charms and opportunities could not be fully appreciated by one who had no place to rest his head at night. Once again homelessness was the fly in the ointment, or something larger than a fly, a crow or vulture.

  “I shouldn’t really rent this out, it’s against regulations, but I know how hard it is for young people these days. I sympathise, really I do.”

  Boz accepted the key and opened the door. Now his search was over, he was able to relax and enjoy his memories of his brief stay in this unknown metropolis. The first thing to delight him was the discovery that the inhabitants spoke the same language as he did, though with an alluring accent. In return he appeared exotic to them. This city was identical in size to the one he had known but the layout was changed, as if the buildings and streets had been shuffled and replaced on the landscape in a different order.

  Boz had a special fondness for the districts nearest the river, the stone bridges and restaurants festooned with coloured bulbs, the steep cobbled lanes and little squares full of musicians and dancers. And that girl on the scooter. But always the fact he lived nowhere spoiled everything. He had even tried to get a job where he might be allowed to sleep safely on the premises, in a kitchen or warehouse, but that was not acceptable behaviour here. Without a place to return to, he was nowhere. His life was on hold, romances had to be abandoned, all his future was suspended until he found a room.

  No rooms were to be had. Now he had been given a cupboard instead, but he could hardly be expected to bring a girl back to a cupboard. It was not a home at all, but it represented another chance elsewhere. His wallet was still mostly full, he had spent only a fraction of his savings, and he still had hope. As soon as the landlord was out of sight, he moved the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes into the corridor.

  The opening was there, complete with the faint glow, the glow of the merged streetlights of a third city. He crawled into the tunnel, stood when the ceiling was high enough and began running. Soon he was running down a street, biting scented air. A song emerged from an open window above him, a girl brushing her hair in the moonlight. He slowed his pace, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, whistling her melody.

  A man clutching a newspaper came the other way. Boz stopped him and asked, “Where might I find a place to live in this city?”

  “You’ll be lucky,” replied the man. “There’s nothing much here.”

  To confirm this assertion he showed the newspaper to Boz, opening it to the section where landlords advertised properties. The page was blank. Boz sighed and the man tried to cheer him up by saying, “You have an interesting accent. The girls will love that.”

  “Not if I have no place to go.”

  The man shrugged and moved on and Boz went the other way, appreciating the sights and magic of the city, even while another part of him was downcast. Could he meet a girl and move in with her? That option seemed dishonourable and was probably impractical. Better for him simply to start searching now, ringing the doorbells of apartment blocks. If he did not find a room he might still find a cupboard under the stairs, an escape route to the next city. And this process could continue until he ran out of money and cast his empty wallet into the gutter.

  The night passed uneasily. The days that followed it passed in the same manner. He grew to know and love this new city but he was never established here. There was wine and food, music also, and a girl. But nothing stable. During daylight hours he enjoyed living, being in the city, but in the evenings he searched for a room. He was always on the move, tense, without a base, aimless, unable to relax.

  “No spare rooms? What about a cupboard under the stairs?”

  At last he found one and he said goodbye to this city, another month of his life, as he tramped up the steps. The vacuum cleaner was there and the other items too and he moved them out of the way and plunged into the tunnel. The tunnel became a street, the street of a city with yet another reshuffling of buildings and squares. Already he knew it was as full as the previous two. He could hear the city breathe, a breathing composed of the flexing of the floorboards in every room, all occupied. He knew that another month of searching lay in wait, the growing of more stubble in shadows while he waited for morning and the warming rays of the rising sun.

  He called to a girl on a street corner, “Excuse me, Miss, but do you know…”

  Of course she did not. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a vision of his destiny. He saw himself passing through city after city without settling in any of them, searching for and finding cupboard after cupboard under a sequence of nearly identical stairways. A future of crawling into tunnels, hurrying down them until they became streets, and then a snatched form of life, taking pleasur
e between slabs of anxiety, closed doors and rejection. He checked his wallet.

  “I have enough money to last another forty or fifty cities. I won’t stop yet, I’ll keep going as long as I can. If I don’t find a place to live, I’ll just keep looking for the tunnel to the next city. When I have only enough money left to pay for my funeral, I’ll climb the highest tower of the city I’m in, wherever that tower might be located, and I’ll throw myself off. That way I’ll have rest and respectability in death if not in life!”

  *

  He struggled to open his eyes. Where was he? A gloomy chamber with a pungent odour, some sort of cleaning fluid. Had he found a room at last, a real room, a home? He was naked and stretched out on something hard, not a bed. As his eyes opened fully, the memories settled back slowly in his juddered brain. Many cities, many streets and restaurants and girls. He had been searching for somewhere to live for years. He had explored dozens of cities that were variations of just one city, so many that he had lost count.

  There were other people in the chamber with him. An ache throbbed through his bones, fading and then suddenly flaring up, the pain concentrated at a point on his chest. He remembered what he had done, the final moment of despair, the sensation of falling. And yet clearly he had survived. Was he in a hospital? All those wonderful things, his experiences, degraded by the fact he had no roots, and now this? Was he going to be stuck in a hospital for weeks or months? He blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust properly.