Confined Spaces

by F. R. Jameson

  The panic gripped him suddenly. There was something in the bed with him.

  The Monster was close by, under the duvet, moving towards him. What should he do? If he jumped The Monster would vanish, there’d be a moment between him moving and the light coming on and that would give The Monster – whatever the hell The Monster was – a chance to hide.

  He could kick out, try and thrust The Monster from the bed, warn what would happen if it came near. But he didn’t know where The Monster was, didn’t know what to aim for. And what if he did get The Monster? What if he connected? How did he know his foot would come back? The Monster, whatever it really was, might welcome a foot in its mouth as a snack. But then maybe The Monster wouldn’t bite, or maybe it would, but the bite would tell him what it was. Perhaps it was a rat, some vermin which had crawled into their flat and was now in bed with him. But it couldn’t be that, he’d have heard – and the thing about this animal/creature/beast/monstrous thing, was that you couldn’t hear it. You could almost tell where The Monster was by the fact you couldn’t hear it. The molecules of air got quieter around it.

  He lay still, his eyes lightly shut, his breath peaceful – but his heart speeding, his brain shooting forth. What the hell was it? Imagination took over and he imagined it huge beside him, bigger than the bed. The Monster was both hairy and smooth, armoured and fleshy. He pictured it with claws and teeth, talons and pincers. There was the sudden image of one of its heavy pincered claws snapping at him. Not just snapping at him, snapping him in half – bisecting him with its talon. He saw himself looking down at his legs, his groin, his hips – blood spewing unstoppable. The Monster raising a sucker – grey and red – clamping it over his face, suffocating him, drowning him above water.

  The Monster was huge, all around him, touching every part of the bed he wasn’t touching. All he’d have to do was move a centimetre and he’d feel its scaly, smooth flesh. It had mounted itself above him. If he opened his eyes he’d see The Monster, he’d see nothing but it. Or maybe he wouldn’t see The Monster at all. Maybe it would taunt him, would hide again, knowing he knew it was there but amusing itself with these games.

  He jerked onto his back – did he do that himself or had The Monster moved him? He lay there, his body contorted, his hands in front of him. So far he didn’t think it had touched him, even though it was all around him, it hadn’t touched him yet. Maybe he was imagining it. If he opened his eyes he’d see The Monster wasn’t there, that it had never been there. He could get up, get dressed, go for a walk outside, forget this nightmare. It was a good idea, a happy idea, and he would have done that. But just as he willed himself to move something brushed against the length of his calf. The sensation was cold and hard, and he screamed.

  He screamed, but there was no sound.

  The Monster had taken all sound from him.

  His screams were around his head, but he couldn’t hear them.

  There was abruptly a hammering, but there was no scream. All he could hear was that bang-bang-bang pounding into him.

  With a sudden thud he landed heavy on the floor, rolling ungainly off his bed, away from The Monster. He couldn’t remember moving, had been paralysed, listening to the banging, listening to the silence of his screams. Now he was on the floor, free – but he could still hear the banging. Someone was knocking on his front door. Staggering up, he reached for the light switch. When the room illuminated, he knew what he’d see – nothing. Nothing but a bed that looked like it was inhabited by a madman, the sheets kicked awry.

  The banging continued, some grumbling and yelling as an accompaniment. He opened the bedroom door and reached for the hall light. Looking carefully around, he even glanced over his shoulder, as if he could check The Monster wasn’t following him. He moved forward, still shaking, his sweaty feet cold on the laminated floorboards. His eye looked through the peephole; bloodshot, it encountered Mr and Mrs Morris – neighbours from downstairs. Turning the lock, he opened the door and realised he was just wearing his boxer shorts.

  They stared at him with both fury and fear. Mr Morris looked surprised by his near nakedness, by his wet grey skin.

  Mrs Morris was harder and much more suspicious, had been since the disappearance. “We heard something,” she said.

  “Uh?” he clutched the door frame.

  “We heard screaming,” her husband clarified.

  “Did you?” He hadn’t been able to hear a thing. Were they his screams? They must have been his screams. There was only him and The Monster in the flat, and The Monster wasn’t screaming. “Yeah, I’ve had nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?” asked Mrs Morris.

  “Nightmares.” How could he tell her what was happening? How could he tell her he hadn’t slept? It was clear she wasn’t going to believe a word he said.

  “You didn’t wake yourself?” asked Mr Morris.

  “No. You woke me.”

  They stared at him and he swayed; he could barely stand. He caught a reflection in the hall mirror: his eyes were wide and crimson: he must have looked like a man who’d never slept.

  “Do you mind if Arthur comes in and checks?” asked Mrs Morris, her eyes narrowed.

  “Checks?”

  “Yeah,” said Mr Morris. “Make sure everything is all right.”

  He hesitated. What would The Monster do if it saw Mr Morris? Could he let another man be tormented? But then somehow he knew The Monster wasn’t interested in Mr Morris, It was only interested in him.

  Still he hesitated, and that hesitation increased the suspicion on Mrs Morris’s face.

  “Sure.” He tried to smile. “Come in.”

  He stepped back, leant against the wall, let Mr Morris pass.

  Mr Morris entered anxiously, clearly worried about what he might see. After all, you rarely step into the home of a supposed wife killer – how does such a creature live? Mr Morris switched on the light in each room and peered in as if expecting every kind of grisly horror. The bedroom was the last and Mr Morris pulled his nose out with a mix of sympathy and alarm.

  “‘I lie here’?” asked Mr Morris.

  “Is everything okay, Arthur?” demanded Mrs Morris.

  He answered before her husband. “Yeah, everything is fine. I’m just having bad dreams at the moment. I’m sorry for disturbing you. I think I’ll take another pill and hopefully rest easier after that. I’ll try not to wake you again, I promise.”

  Only Mr Morris said goodbye. Mrs Morris’ face conveyed an obvious disappointment that she hadn’t proved her worst suspicions.

  He closed the front door and then the bedroom door and sat so incredibly weary on the end of his bed.

  The Monster was behind him. It was on the bed with him, looming over him.

  He didn’t look, couldn’t turn his head.

  Amanda had sensed it early, had known there was something wrong with the flat – but why couldn’t she have sensed it even earlier? Why couldn’t she have realised at the first viewing? She could have stopped them from putting in the offer, from moving here at all. She could have saved herself, saved the two of them – why didn’t she?

  His ears could actually hear The Monster now, long drawn-out breaths. The room was sulphurous, stinking with its breath. What had he been thinking before? He’d been thinking of going for a walk, getting away from it – but what was the point? There was always going to be darkness, always going to be shadow. The Monster wanted him and there was no escape.

  It was close now – millimetres from his skin – ready to envelop him, crush him, pierce his flesh, break his bones.

  Whatever creature it was, it already had Amanda, had taken her. He wondered what it had done to her, wondered how much she’d suffered. He felt the wetness of tears on his cheeks at imagining her suffering.

  The Monster was looming above him. What was it waiting for?

  He kept his eyes shut and saw a horrible redness. The red of the inside of his eyelids, the red of his body torn and ripped and broken and mutilated and eaten a
nd spat-out and digested and dissected and defiled. He saw his blood spilling away.

  What was it waiting for? Why didn’t it take him? The Monster wasn’t going to give up now, even if Mr and Mrs Morris came back to the door, it wasn’t going to stop. Why not finish him off? Why not get him over with? His eyes were shut and he waited, and then he realised, that was the reason – The Monster wanted him to open his eyes. The Monster wanted him to look at it.

  He kept his eyes squeezed shut.

  The Monster was all around him. If he flinched, he’d touch it.

  His eyelids stayed down, but why?

  It wasn’t going to go away, wasn’t going to leave him. The Monster knew he would have to open his eyes eventually, knew he couldn’t hold out forever. It was prepared to wait.

  What was the point? Why wait?

  Amanda wasn’t as strong as him so The Monster had taken her first. But without her, he wasn’t that strong either. He took a deep breath and forced his eyelids up.

  ****

  In the morning the police broke down the front door, following complaints from the residence’s neighbours (not just Mr and Mrs Morris) with regards to screams emanating from the flat.

  Nothing was found.

  No body was found.

  The ambitious Welsh detective in charge, newly transferred to London, thought that the scrawled words “I Lie Here” might be some kind of clue. But, as yet, he has not seen The Monster.

  The case remains open.

  Solipsism at the End of the World

  Well, that’s just bloody typical, isn’t it?

  I had the twenty-first all marked on my calendar. Circled six times in red biro: the day I was finally going to go outside,

  It’s my birthday on the twentieth, so I didn’t want the stress over-shadowing it.

  But after four months and seventeen days locked inside, I knew I had to try and confront my fears. Face my dread of the germs and the animals and the people of the outside world. Stop living cooped up in my bedsit, surviving on home deliveries, Freeview and Netflix.

  So I marked the twenty-first on my Elvis Presley calendar, then drew a fresh circle around it whenever I had a flicker of doubt.

  But now I’ve pulled back the navy curtains to see what promise this new day – the day when I’m finally going to step outside – holds for me, and I see that aliens have invaded.

  Bloody typical!

  My mouth agape, but my hand clutching tight onto my freshly made cup of tea (I am British, after all), I do the one thing I really didn’t want to do today. I sit down and stare at the outside from the wooden chair I keep in my front window. The spot I use to watch the world around me and assure myself that – generally – I’m not missing much.

  There’s a huge cylinder in the sky. From where I’m sitting it looks jet black, but maybe that’s because the sun is behind it and it’s more of a dark grey. The whole thing must be half a mile long from top to tail, and it’s smooth and unencumbered by such things as rockets or wings or even propellers. To me it doesn’t appear aerodynamic in any way, but there it hangs blocking out most of my view of the sky.

  On the street there are three creatures. Obviously aliens, as I’ve never seen the like in any nature documentary on any channel. They stand about the height of an average man, but they look to me like furry octopi. At first I think they’re slivering down the street, but actually I believe that they’re floating an inch or two above the pavement cracks.

  However they manage it, they move carefully and almost stately down my street with their tentacles – more than a dozen of them, I’d guess – hanging low at their sides. They’re only just staying above the litter and dog poo that smears the pavement. Each one of them is covered in thick black and brown matted hair. It gives the impression that they’d be horrifying to touch, as if your palm would come back coated in slimy, dirty alien fur.

  Each creature has an array of red shining eyes, like two columns at the centre of what must be their faces. I can only assume they’re faces anyway, there’s no nose or mouth I can recognise. The eyes however glow so deeply the light radiates out and stains the air around them, even on this, what seems to be a quite pleasant, bright, sunny morning.

  When they spot their prey they whip out one of their tentacles. It moves fast – incredibly fast, actually cracking against the air – and a touch from one of those things quite clearly means death.

  Fat Doreen – the teenage girl with green hair who lives in the ground floor flat directly across the street from me – has suffered that fate already.

  She tried to run from them, or to waddle anyway. The creature closest to my window lashed out and caught her on the side of her head.

  From what I could see, the consequences were quite disgusting.

  She fell to the road as if having a fit, both convulsing and vomiting. An anaemic white liquid spewing from her mouth and nose.

  I sat back a little in my chair and watched horrified at what seemed to be a burning rash spreading at ridiculous speed across her face. It turned her skin the colour of gammon, but also dissolved it at the same time. Only a few seconds passed before the white of her skull started to poke through her puce, thinning skin. Then her clothes seemed to sink around her, to deflate onto the ground. Her whole body mass disappearing, collapsing in on itself, being taken apart by some enzyme I couldn’t even contemplate.

  R.I.P Fat Doreen.

  (Actually, I don’t know any of my neighbour’s names. I never go out and so never speak to them. I just give them names in my head and they stick.)

  If I’d been out on the street, I’d maybe have taken a lesson from that. I’d have learned not to run.

  Mr Blinky – a bald human mole in ridiculously thick glasses – clearly isn’t as quick on the uptake.

  Although, when he does make a run for it, he attempts an entertaining zig-zag. There is some sense of self-preservation.

  It doesn’t work.

  I count seven seconds before he too is dead and dissolving.

  The creatures let out a greenish gas when they use their tentacles. Almost as if instead of roaring their dominance, they’re furiously farting it.

  They move in a trident formation down my street. I don’t know what causes them to attack, but I’m guessing for now that it’s movement. Like a snake, or a T-rex, they won’t strike until they see their prey move.

  I feel safe sitting still on my chair in my window.

  I always feel safe in my window.

  Mrs Fitness Freak goes next.

  That woman could exercise for Britain. I’ve never seen her wear anything other than gym wear. She even has a tall Teutonic personal trainer who she is so obviously in lust with.

  Maybe she should have spent more time on the treadmill though, as she doesn’t even break Mr Blinky’s record.

  No, I’m being unfair there.

  Those things may look like they’re just under six feet tall as they hover down the street, but their tentacles stretch out at least twenty feet. They must be coiled within, wound around themselves, tensed in some way ready to lash out.

  Nice try, Mrs Fitness Freak, but you’d have to be Usain Bolt to outrun one of those creatures.

  In the distance I can see smoke and what seems like the awful red glow of intense, all-consuming fire over London.

  I think I can see another, matching cylinder in the sky. Or it might be a shadow of this one. My vantage point isn’t great, and I don’t really want to go out and check.

  Obviously, there is no way I’m going to take my first step outside in four months and seventeen days into this.

  That’s actually more than a bit disappointing.

  Nearly every day of my life is eventually spent slumped on my sofa in front of the TV. As much as I wanted this day – the day after my birthday – to break the routine, it’s obviously going to be just the same.

  Although, my choice of viewing will at least be different. Rather than trawling the box-sets, I’ll be spending it surfing the
news channels getting updates about what’s going on.

  As far as I can tell, everybody else on my street is dead. I may as well find out how the rest of the world is getting on.

  The first of F.R. Jameson’s ‘Screen Siren Noir’ series

  ‘Diana Christmas’

  Available Now!

  In 1959, Diana Christmas – the beautiful, vivacious redhead – was a major star in Britain. It was her moment. She was on the cusp of making it big in Hollywood. Then, she simply walked away from the limelight. Vanished from an industry that adored her.

  Twenty years later, Michael, a young film journalist, arrives at her suburban home and discovers the still vibrant and alluring Diana. Between her sheets, he hears for the first time the reason for her disappearance – a tale of coercion, shame and blackmail.

  To his shock, he learns that those who destroyed her career and ruined her life still have their claws in her.

  Totally smitten, he promises to help her. But Michael soon finds that the past doesn’t let go easily…

  Diana Christmas – A new thriller of desire and betrayal from F.R. Jameson.

  Available here!

  Read an exclusive extract on the next page…

  One

  The final tally was that I had a cracked skull, a severely broken nose that was never going to sit straight again, a smashed-in cheekbone and several missing teeth. My left collarbone was snapped, as were five of my ribs, while the multiple fractures in my pelvis were as bad as if I’d been in a motorcycle accident. The most painful of all, though, was my ruptured spleen.

  When they spoke to me in their sympathetic tones, barely above a whisper, the doctors informed me I was lucky to be alive.

  But in spite of everything that happened, I don’t regret leaping at the chance to interview Diana Christmas.

  Two

  6 December 1979

  “How old are you?”