Insylum

by Z. Rider

  A.J.’s fingers curl, tentative, reaching toward it.

  I make a disgusted noise. “Let it go. Let’s go.”

  His fingertips tap it lightly. He pulls them away wet; they gleam under the lights. “It’s not real.”

  I can tell he’s working up the mettle to grab hold and pull it out. “It smells real,” I say, covering my nose.

  He nudges the thing with his thumb, trying to turn it over. “It’s not intestines. It’s got suckers on it.”

  “Even worse. Let’s go.” Maybe it’s a dead octopus. Or a dead latex octopus, whatever.

  “Shit…” He draws his hand back.

  “What?”

  “It moved. Like a muscle tightening, you know?”

  “You’re just trying to freak me out now.”

  “No, come here.” He touches it again. “It’s warm. And. Yeah, it pulses a little.” His thumb caresses almost absently as his other fingers rest on top of it.

  I haven’t moved. The only direction I want to go is out. Out of the room, out of the fucking never-ending hallways, out of the whole damned building. “You have a plane to catch,” I say.

  “Yeah.” His eyes flicker over the wall in front of him while he slides his hand down the pink, fleshy tube. It looks like a burn victim from here. I drag my gaze to the wall nearest me. Blood clings thick to the tiles, staining the grout. A patch of long hairs tangle against the gelatinous blood. At their ends is a bit of white. It can’t be anything but scalp.

  My stomach bucks. I grit my teeth and look away, but that bit of white crouches at the front of my mind—and now I see bits and chunks embedded in the blood everywhere.

  In the shadows under the tub, something pink winkles. From here it looks like the ragged tip of a pinky finger, all on its lonesome—but I’m not going to walk over there and crouch down to find out if I’m right.

  My feet are blocks of ice, but my head is swarming with heat.

  A splash comes from the tub, like a fish jumping the surface.

  A.J.’s feet displace a broken edge of tile as he pulls back, arms and pipe flailing.

  Panic uncoils in my guts. “What?”

  He stumbles into a wall. His eyes are big as he stares at the tub, his chest heaving.

  My ears tighten at the sound of a soft lick. When I look, there’s just the ruddy surface, thick and dark.

  Then it ripples.

  Clutching the pipe, A.J. pushes off the wall. His eyes are the worst thing in the world: curious.

  A rounded nub breaks the surface. At first my brain registers it as a thick, burn-scarred fingertip, but as it rises with a slithering grace no finger would have, I back into the wall behind me.

  It climbs into the air like an enchanted snake, swaying and hypnotic. Blue veins twist knotted trails through translucent flesh. It glistens and seems to respire.

  It turns, slowly, exposing its suckers, puckering and fluttering at their edges.

  A.J. sinks to a knee beside the tub, rapt, pipe clutched in hand. He grasps the edge.

  It’s two feet long and thickening.

  “Can we go now?” I whisper, knowing he won’t. I swallow hard. The urge to run pulls at me. The tentacle rises higher than A.J.’s head, picking up speed as A.J.’s chin cants upward, as he watches it.

  The nub at its tip curls.

  I swear it’s looking at A.J.

  A.J. reaches toward it, fingers outstretched, eyes soft with awe.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  It slides against his hand. His fingertips bump over twisted veins and flesh. The thing’s as thick as a thigh now where it emerges from the blood and still widening as it climbs, swaying, toward the dark ceiling.

  A.J. curves his palm around it, loose, letting the tentacle move through his hand as it rises.

  Its tip loops around itself.

  “I don’t like this,” I say.

  His thumb caresses the thing. He still has the pipe in his other hand. I think he’s more or less forgotten it, but at least he still has it. I hug myself, watching the thing bend across the ceiling.

  At the tub’s surface, it’s as fat as A.J.’s waist, and still rising.

  The nub starts downward, twisting and curving, right above A.J.’s head.

  A.J. knows—he’s looking up at it, eyes shining with awe.

  “Don’t,” I breathe as he pushes to his feet, staring at the thing. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

  The nub has come so far back down it dangles at his chest. Above A.J.’s head, it peels itself from the ceiling, and the nub bumps A.J.’s sternum like the trunk of an elephant.

  A.J. runs his hand along it, mouth agape.

  My throat is so tight I can’t push words through it. My head pounds. My feet are locked to the floor because I can’t run without him—

  I’d be alone again.

  Jesus Christ I just want to get the fuck out of here already.

  The nub bumps his waist.

  “A.J.”

  It starts to curl across him, like a hug.

  “A.J.!”

  As it reaches around his back, its weight jostles him. He makes a quick clutch at the tentacle to keep from losing his footing.

  “A.J.!”

  The thing slides over A.J.’s pajama top, soft and susurrant and still fucking growing as it rises from the turgid bath. My chest is so tight I think my breastbone’s going to snap. The tips of my fingertips vibrate.

  Quietly—very quietly—A.J. says, “I think I need help.”

  The thing comes around the outside of his arm, the one he’s holding the pipe with. It presses that arm tight against his body, trapping it.

  Breath spills out of me, fast and panicked. It’s too late. It’s too goddamned late.

  What the fuck am I supposed to do?

  A.J. says, “Nate?” as the thing loops around him a second time. My name is barely a whisper. Barely more than the wet sound of tentacle sliding over cloth.

  His fingers open under the squeeze against his arm. The pipe clangs to the floor.

  “A.J.”

  The nub peeks around again. I think it’s looking at me. I think it’s looking smug and pleased with itself. It caresses his shirt as it makes its way across his chest. And it’s watching me.

  A.J. struggles to breathe against its grip. He holds the tentacle with his free hand, as if he can somehow keep it from wrapping any more around him. His eyes and mouth are wide open, but it’s not wonder there now. He’s not entranced. He’s just trying to breathe as he rolls his eyes upward to watch another length of tentacle peel itself from the ceiling so it can curl around him.

  I break from the wall. My heel slips in blood and twists with a sick squelch. Sharp pain shoots up my ankle.

  A.J.’s lips are a livid purple, his cheeks sickly pale. I lurch toward him. Maybe I can hang my weight from the tentacle. Maybe I can get the pipe in between them and lever it away. I have no fucking idea—

  Its muscles clench.

  A.J.’s eyes pop wider.

  Suddenly he whooshes into the air. I see the dirty, blood-smeared bottoms of his feet. Blood jumps from the tub as he’s plunged back-first into it. My face is speckled with it. It soaks my shirt. There’s no air in my chest—it was stolen when A.J. was snatched off his feet. My last image of him is his feet in the air, just before they slammed below the surface with the rest of him. Turgid waves rock against the sides of the tub.

  I slip in the fresh pool of blood on the tiles. My chest hits the edge of the tub. My hands grip it as I look in. Rich, thick blood licks the tub’s sides. I feel around to my left and get nothing but blood-covered fingers.

  I glance to see where the goddamned pipe is. I lean to grab it.

  With my fist wrapped around its end, I plunge it into the blood.

  Two feet in, it hits solid bottom.

  I slam the pipe into the tub, over and over.

  Blood splashes my jaw. It licks my hands and spatters my wrists. It turns sticky in the air and tugs at my skin.
r />   And the pipe hits fucking bottom every time.

  8

  That’s Funny, Right?

  The heat is thick and sliding against A.J.’s skin. Sinuous muscles heave and ripple around his ribcage. A fraction of a breath slips out through his clenched teeth, then blood seeps between, and he tries not to let it get into his lungs.

  There’s no sound, only the warmth of blood pushing on his eardrums. His eyes are shut, his arms floating above him. A bubble of air eases from his nostrils. His chest aches. He’s seeing stars bursting, and blackness starts rolling in.

  * * *

  He gasps awake.

  The thick press of blood is gone, but he’s too desperate for air to open his eyes just yet. Inhale first—a big gasping lungful.

  The top of his skull bears down on a solid, cushioned surface. His chest and stomach heave, freed from the tentacle’s grip.

  Flat on his back, he digs his fingers against whatever surface is under him—lightly textured, vinyl maybe—and drags in another deep breath of oxygen.

  He feels like he can’t move. He exhales, his shoulders sinking down.

  He’s not drowning anymore at least. There’s that.

  He blinks his eyes open. His eyelashes stick together with the gunk he’s been dragged through. Between the dark globs comes a haze of amber light, brightest just above him where exposed bulbs hang from shadowy rafters. He squints, turns his head.

  His neck muscle slides against something.

  He lifts his hand to find out what it is, and a strap catches his wrist, stopping him.

  He can’t lift his legs or hips either.

  Raising his head makes the strap at his neck dig at the soft part of his jaw, and he sees himself laid out on a table of some kind. His blood-streaked toes point toward the ceiling. His thin clothes are brown, wet. They cleave to his skin. A shiver jiggers through him, along with the realization that he’s cold. He drops his head with a soft pat. Another tremor shakes him. His teeth chatter, and he clenches them together before turning his head to get a look around.

  Some sort of basement, everything the color of rust, concrete, and shadows.

  Thick pipes run along corrugated walls dented with rivets and streaked with oxidation. Shapes hulk just inside the shadows, unmoving.

  His teeth clack until he chomps down again. His jaw tremors. His shoulders hitch. He digs his fingers against the table.

  A sharp hiss makes him crane his chin up. Across the room, behind him, steam curls from the top of an open pipe. If he were closer to it, he’d be warmer. He jams his elbows and heels into the padding, trying to pull his body upward. The restraints hold tight.

  He needs to get out of here.

  Light flickers through an open space high in a wall across from him at the end of the table he’s strapped to. Maybe a foot tall, five feet long, and barred all the way across. It’s at floor level on another level, he thinks—maybe looking out at the floor of a corridor because he can sort of see the base of the opposite wall. Without the bars in the way, he could squeeze himself through. If he could get to it.

  He grimaces as he tries to work his arms free. Leather bites the knobby bones at his wrists. It jams against the backs of his hands.

  With a grunt, he drops his head, trying to relax. Trying to think.

  Another shudder rocks him.

  The light click of a latch comes from the shadows behind him, a soft susurrus of air as a door eases open. He cranes his head, trying to see.

  “How is our patient this evening?” A woman’s voice, a little throaty, a little teasing. She emerges from the shadows with the snap of a latex glove against her wrist.

  He pulls at the restraints.

  She smiles, one side of her mouth rising higher than the other. Her breasts strain against the buttons of her uniform. Creamy legs start at the hem of her short skirt and go on forever. The heels of her shoes click crisply against the concrete floor.

  He’s got a chub so heavy from just looking at her that it feels like a baseball bat trying to push its way out of his pants. It’s literally the only part of him that has any heat. And it feels like it’s not right, like it’s not his will putting in there. He twists his wrists.

  Despite what his dick says, he does not want to be strapped here.

  He tries to remember he’s in a funhouse—(They can do anything to you in there, that Kate girl said)—and the place is fucking with his head. He doesn’t know how they dragged him from the bottom of a bath full of blood to this table in a basement, but he follows the nurse with his eyes, hoping that maybe after this part, it’ll be smooth sailing from here, and next thing he knows he’ll be on his way out.

  She makes a circuit of the table, dragging two scarlet fingernails along it as she regards him. His groin throbs, his toes are like ice, and another shudder shakes his shoulders. The strap at his neck feels tight. It’s hard to breathe. He swallows and his throat pushes against it.

  He tries not to panic. Panicking isn’t going to do him any good.

  Her eyes linger on his crotch. The heat down there isn’t natural. It’s a furnace. It’s a trick. God, he aches, his balls throbbing with heat, his fingers numb with cold. He pushes them against the table and tips his chin back, trying to get air.

  When she says, “Good,” and strides off to a shadowy pile of shapes at the edge of the light, his breath rushes out with a quiet whimper.

  When she starts back his way, her nurse outfit so bright it seems to float in the shadows, wheels creak and murmur along behind her. As she moves into the light, she’s dragging a cart of some kind, as high as her waist with tubes coiled like snakes on its upper tray. A heavy dark box squats beneath, and it makes him think of the billy goat gruff somehow. He squirms again.

  His bladder feels like it’s going to let go, either from the cold or the dread.

  His voice is sandpaper against plaster when he says, “What are you going to do?” He tries the restraints again. They hold him there, helpless.

  “Spring cleaning. It will hurt a bit.” She toes a lever on one of the cart’s wheels to lock it and lets go of the handle she’d led it by. “That’s funny, right? They say ‘it won’t hurt a bit,’ and I say ‘it will hurt a bit.’ It will definitely hurt a bit.” She has an odd accent, like the one Delia put on the time she went as Mata Hari for Halloween.

  And she has the end of the coil of tubing in her hand.

  She crouches by the machine under the cart.

  A.J. leans over as much as the restraints allow, uneasy about this.

  Her cleavage wells, creamy and round, from the deep plunge of her collar. She fits the tube onto an outlet in the squat machine and twists it. It locks into place with a click, the way his grandmother’s vacuum hose clicks onto her ancient canister vac.

  Deep in the pit of him, a cold dread squirms.

  “What are you going to do?” he whispers again.

  She straightens, lifting the other end of the tube. There’s a dispenser on the cart, its pump head sticking out like a beak. She holds the tube under it, turning it as she pushes the pump down. Translucent blobs emerge, dropping like fat worms on the tube’s surface.

  He reaches his fingers backward, trying to reach the starched fabric of her uniform.

  He’s nowhere near reaching it.

  “Please,” he says, his muscles clenching, the pit of his belly hot with panic.

  She slides her hand over the tube, smearing the lubricant over it.

  “Please don’t.”

  She touches a palm to his cheek. He thinks she’s going to say something soothing. He doesn’t want to hear something soothing, he wants to get the fuck out.

  Oh God, he’s thinking. Oh my God.

  What she says is, “Deep breath.” Her thumb slides into the crook of his lip.

  “No,” he whispers. Through the latex glove, the edge of her thumbnail dents his lip. He twists, trying to worm away. He’s going loose inside. Clammy sweat dampens his forehead.

  She grasps
his chin and brings the tube close. Shiny and curving, it makes him think of the tentacle, and he bucks his head back, constricts his throat. Above, in the shadows beyond the bare bulbs, in the high, dark rafters, a thick meaty rope curls gracefully down, teasing him. His mouth pops open in panic.

  She hooks her thumb under his upper teeth. Her fingers hold his lowers down—then the tube is between his teeth, hard plastic, the edge of it jabbing against his tongue. He shouts, his throat bucking. Wrong move. She holds his face down and shoves the tube in. It scrapes his palate. He tries to get his tongue behind it. She leans harder on his face, the heel of her hand grinding his eye.

  The tube coats his tongue with slick lubricant. It has no taste, but it makes him gag, and then she puts her weight on his eyeball again, and he shouts. The tube jabs the back of his throat. He snaps his arms and wrenches his wrists. He digs a heel against the padded table and jams his shoulders back.

  Against the back of his throat, it makes him cough. Tears bead in his eyes.

  “Swallow,” she whispers.

  He’s still coughing—gagging. It hurts in his ribs, where the tentacle’s grip bruised him.

  “Swallow.” Her thumb strokes his throat, like he’s a dog being force-fed a pill.

  When he inhales between coughs—he can’t help it; he needs air—his throat opens and she feeds the thing down it. He yells—and then he can’t. All he can do is suck air, panicked, eyes darting, toes flexed stiff.

  It slides inside him, inch after inch, feeding over his tongue, snaking against the back of his throat, and he’s helpless to stop it.

  Afraid to move, now that he can feel is pushing through his insides, he watches her gauge how much has gone in, how far it’s gone. Her thick, too-long lashes, the beauty mark by the corner of her lip. Her gaze flashes up, and she smiles, like she’s indulging him in a hand job. He can’t help but think of Delia.

  Delia in a jerk-off dream.

  He tries to squeeze a hand free. The leather tugs his skin; it wedges tight against the wide part of his hand.

  “Almost there,” she says with her smile.

  He tries to complain against the tube in his throat. He pleads with his eyes, afraid to lift his head, afraid to feel the tube bending with his neck.