James Goss - Almost Perfect

‘Can’t you see how stupid this is?’ gasped Jack.

‘Totally,’ admitted Brendan. ‘But it’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive, to carry on searching, to find that bloody thing. Trust me, Jack, I’m a god. It’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive. When we get our power back, we’ll make everything right again.’

Jon walked into the room, towelling himself after a shower. ‘You all right babe?’ he asked Brendan.

‘Yeah,’ said Brendan.

Jon flicked Jack playfully with the towel. ‘Are you talking to the furniture again?’

‘Stop this!’ said Jack.

Jon arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look happy Jacky,’ he said, squeezing Jack’s cheek. Jack growled at him. Jon laughed and dropped the towel over Jack’s head, leaving him fuming.

‘Come on Bren, let’s get some clothes on and go and see how things are downstairs.’ They walked away, laughing, and all Jack could see was cotton.

Gwen slid the window up, and the two of them slipped into a dark, quiet corridor.

‘It’s bloody great to be out of that rain,’ shivered Ianto. ‘I really miss jeans.’

‘Well,’ hissed Gwen, ‘why don’t you wear some?’

‘Oh, it just hasn’t felt right, really,’ said Ianto. ‘You know, I just don’t think I’ve got the figure for them. I worry they’ll make my bum look fat and squidgy.’

‘Oh, bollocks,’ hissed Gwen. ‘You’ve got a lovely pair of child-bearing hips on you.’

‘Have I?’ Ianto looked genuinely pleased. ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

‘Now, shut up, princess, and let’s get on with it.’

The two of them started down the corridor, the flashlight gently glinting around them.

It all looked very dark, and the thump-thump of the club became overwhelming.

‘Considering everything I’ve heard about gay grooming, it really reeks of BO in here,’ said Ianto.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Gwen. ‘Smells like a teenager’s bedroom.’

Ianto pulled the pheromone sniffer out of his pocket and waved it around. ‘Well, bloody hell,’ he breathed. ‘Jack’s off the scale.’

Gwen cast her torch around the corridor. ‘I’m not sure I like this,’ she said.

They both heard the voice calling for help. It was a quiet voice, almost a whisper. Both jumped.

‘Jeez!’ wailed Gwen. ‘I’m switching on the bloody light.’ She fumbled her hand along the wall. ‘Blimey, they’ve papered it with that velvet stuff they use at Indian restaurants,’ she said, her hands brushing along the warm, slightly damp surface. ‘It’s like moss.’ Her fingertips brushed up against what felt like a socket, and she reached out for the switch, but instead she felt something move and her hand went into the wall, into something warm and wet and- it licked her.

She screamed and screamed and screamed, feeling it bite down.

Ianto ran up to her, his flashlight showing her hand embedded in a mouth in the wall.

Both shrieked.

‘Do something!’ wailed Gwen, helplessly.

‘I don’t want to touch it!’ yelled Ianto.

‘You’re bloody squeamish when it suits you! It’s biting me!’ shouted Gwen.

‘But it’s a … mouth… in a wall! It’s wrong!’

‘I don’t care, it bloody hurts!’ Gwen was starting to cry. Ianto tried pulling her by the arm, but Gwen just shrieked more. Ianto let go and stood back, hands on hips, trying to work out what to do, trying to block Gwen’s shouts.

He noticed something – something oddly wrong. And then he saw the light switch, and flicked it.

Pause.

Gwen and Ianto were in a corridor of flesh – the walls were a kind of thick, coarse meat, breathing and rippling. Lumps and occasional limbs protruded at various points, fleshy trails hanging down from the ceiling, twitching slightly. Apart from the mouth that was eating Gwen’s hand, there was the back of a head further down the corridor, and an ear.

‘Can you switch the light back off?’ hissed Gwen.

‘No,’ replied Ianto. ‘This is just so horrible.’

‘It’s still eating my sodding hand!’ wailed Gwen.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Ianto. He grabbed a biro from his handbag and jabbed it into the mouth. ‘Gag reflex,’ he explained as Gwen pulled her hand out, gasping with the pain. ‘I don’t suppose you brought some Dettol?’ she asked.

Ianto was just staring at the mouth, which was mouthing ‘Help me’ over and over again.

Gwen shook him. ‘Come on.’

She dragged him down the corridor, both of them recoiling from the carpet, which appeared to be made up of matted human hair, streaking in colours and patterns and whorls and lumps through to a door.

The door, embedded as it was in meat, appeared to be a normal little Victorian-effect door, with a shiny gold handle. She pushed it open and, without thinking, flicked a switch on the right.

This room was worse. She stepped into it.

Ianto followed her, and breathed out raggedly. ‘A Living Room. Oh my god.’

It had once been a quite nicely decorated, minimalist room – all white paint and polished floorboards. But it was now covered with lumpen flesh, twisting and veined across the walls, occasionally bursting out in cancerous bulges, or half-recognisable shapes. The whole room flowed across and hung away from a big bed, the covers turned down, the pillows scattered randomly about.

Tufts of hair poked up through gaps in the floorboards.

‘I am going to be sick,’ announced Gwen, starting to look round for somewhere to hurl.

‘Gwen?’

She recognised Jack’s voice and spun. She and Ianto ran towards a shape, roughly the size of a grand piano and covered with a dust sheet.

Ianto pulled away the sheet, and they both gasped.

‘Ladies!’ beamed Jack. He was, to their horror, entwined, impossibly entwined, in a heap of about sixteen naked men, enmeshed in the floorboards and protruding into the wall. When Hieronymus Bosch sat down to paint Hell, he’d left out the bit where they played Twister.

‘Jack…!’ began Ianto. He tasted vomit, swallowed, and went silent.

Gwen’s reaction was different.

‘Captain Jack Harkness!’ she barked. ‘When will you learn that you can’t solve a problem by shagging it?’

‘Hey!’ said Jack, managing a shrug. ‘It’s a one-size-fits-all solution.’ His expression shifted under Ianto’s basilisk glare. ‘Ianto! This isn’t what it looks like. Have you met my friends Eric, Adam and Tristan, wasn’t it?’

‘Hi,’ said some voices.

‘Nice to meet you, I’m sure,’ said Ianto crisply. ‘Do I actually ask for an explanation or just take pictures for the album?’

Jack clucked, disapprovingly. ‘This genuinely isn’t an orgy. We’re simply fuelling a vastly complicated energy exchange through the violent excitation of our biomass.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Gwen. ‘That would be the obvious explanation.’

‘Seriously,’ said Jack. ‘It’s an attempt to power that alien device. But it’s not working well.’

‘Evidently,’ Ianto looked like he was chewing bees.

Jack sighed. ‘This is serious. You need to do something. We’re approaching critical mass.’

‘Riiiight.’ Gwen giggled. ‘Oh, Jack, what a mess.’

‘I tried to stop it. I failed,’ Jack told them. ‘It’s got out of hand. I don’t think they know what to do. Have you got-’ And then: ‘They’re coming!’

The room’s fleshy walls bulged, parted and extruded, swelling and tearing as the Perfection strode through.

They were both looking their best, gloriously naked. The entire meat of the room just shuddered.

Brendan nodded at them, crossed to the kitchenette and lit a cigarette from a packet on the table.

Jon walked over to Gwen and Ianto. ‘How did you get in?’ he demanded.