3 – Metamorphosis

Disembodied sounds—indistinct and unrecognisable—filled his head. A tingling mass of black fog held his senses down but his hearing pushed back and now, eyes open, the fog gave ground to light and fuzzy images. Everything ached and harpoons of pain thrust and withdrew and thrust again in his head and neck. The fog overtook the senses—but all too briefly. Peter opened his eyes again struggling to hold them open. Nothing would compute. Closing again was an easy option. He swallowed hard against the bile in his gullet.

Within moments loud sounds triggered his eyes again—the pain now secondary to apprehension. He felt the panic but pulled back—and then a wave of crystal clear awareness of the need to survive. The mustiness of the floor dust and shadows on a wall were his only connection to a new reality and a new awareness that he lay on his stomach with head turned to face the bedraggled wall with its shadows. The sounds were footfalls on the wooden floor and they got louder. The wall was a couple of metres away; it joined another wall and contained fireplace with its cobwebs and rusty, broken grate. One of the shadows belonged to the footfall exploder.

He would play possum—a possible thing now that he flexed and discovered that his feet were bound and his hands tied behind his back. Every muscle sagged. The wall shadows were ill-defined and only appeared when there was a movement between the light source and himself.

‘I’m out. Gotta d’smoke?’

‘Yeah, here,’ Voice Two replied. ‘I’m gonna get somethin’ to eat.’

Peter registered Voice Two as definitely American while Voice One had a strange deep-throated, damaged rasp and a European tell-tale. Maybe Italian.

Voice One s