Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

“Do as he says,” comes another hushed voice, this one definitely a woman, “or you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“And us with him,” spits the first person.

Killed? What the fuck? So many questions: where am I? Who are these people talking to me? Why can I feel heat on my face? Smell something burning? No… cooking. Like roasting meat on a barbeque.

Struggling again, I scrape my face against the floor, trying to pull down the blindfold. The screams reach fever pitch, mixed with pleas for help. The cloying smell is in my nose, down my throat; I gag.

I nose at the ground like a horse eating hay, and the blindfold slips a fraction. I can see a little through my right eye; there isn’t a lot of light, but I see metal bars in front of me, all around me. A glimpse of the cages on either side: a man, no more than forty, cowering in the corner of his. A woman—the one who’d told me I’d get myself killed—is transfixed by something right in front of her, tears tracking down her cheeks.

I follow her gaze and wish I hadn’t.

I see the shape, the thing in yet another of these round cages. It’s smoking, charred almost black, but here and there are patches of pink. A tuft or two of singed hair at the top of what must have been its head. Its eyeballs have melted, the liquid running down its cheeks, viscous and thick; flesh pulled taut over teeth that gleam so brightly they could have been used in a toothpaste commercial. This hunk of burnt flesh I’m looking at is— was —a person. That makes the stench even more pungent; just that bit more sickening.

I notice the screaming has stopped. It must have been coming from inside that cage as the flames did their worst before petering out.

It feels like I’m watching the body for hours, but it can’t be more than a minute.

Then, without any warning, the burnt figure lurches forward. No screams this time—its vocal chords are jelly—but its body rattles against the bars of the cage, which swings, suspended above the ground (as we all are).

Flesh, and what’s left of the person’s clothes, have stuck to the bottom of the cage, coming away from its body like molten plastic and revealing more raw pinkness. It makes only one last-ditch attempt for freedom before collapsing, never to move again.

This time I really do throw up, seeing stars again as the blindfold slips back over my eye. Too late, I’ve seen it now… I can’t ever forget.

When I pass out I barely notice the transition—darkness replaced by darkness, black with black.

But I still see that body, hanging. A scorched mess that had once been human.

The ghosts of its screams following me back now into the void.

This happened to me when I was ten; still holding on to childhood for grim death, in no particular hurry to be an adult.

I grew up on a council estate away from the city—farms and fields within walking distance. The houses were all uniform grey, there was a small park that the older kids wrecked periodically, and the council failed to keep any of the streets tidy. Old women gossiped over fences while young girls left school and became baby-making machines so they could live off benefits for the next twenty or thirty years.

Mum and Dad were still together back then. She worked part-time in a bookies and he worked on the busses. At family gatherings I’d sometimes hear my Uncle Jim telling people Mum could have done so much better than Dad. “With her looks, she could have had her pick.”

He was right about my Mum, though. She was beautiful in a kind of film star way, all blonde hair and curls like Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow, and even at that age she’d lost none of the glamour. Sure, Dad was boring, but I like to think she ended up with him because he was a kind man with a kind face. In the end she did ‘do better’ as my Uncle would have called it, running off with owner of the bookies. She ended up with money, but was as miserable as sin. And, we suspected, the guy beat her. While my Dad wallowed in a tiny flat, getting drunk until his liver just gave up the ghost. But that’s another story, and long after this one.

I first saw The Monster one Bank Holiday. Dad was working overtime, but Mum had the day off. I was an only child, so had to amuse myself a lot of the time. That day I was getting under my mother’s feet while she was trying to watch some musical on TV.

“Christopher Edward Warwick, do you have to make such a row!” she finally bawled. I couldn’t really blame her: I’d turned the whole house into a spaceship and was busy piloting it into the deeper reaches of the Galaxy, battling one-eyed aliens with veiny skins.

She sent me out to play with the other kids, but that wasn’t really my thing. I ended up wandering off to explore what the locals called ‘The Cut’—I never understood why, because it didn’t look like anyone had cut the grass down there in centuries. Maybe it was because a pitiful excuse for a canal ran the length of it like a wound. Here I could pretend that I was in the jungle where giant snakes and lions lived, and down by the water there were man-eating crocodiles (in actual fact you were more likely to find used condoms and fag ends).

I didn’t go down there very often, not many kids did, but on that day I wandered further than I meant to—up a winding path to a small iron bridge crossing the canal. There I played Pooh sticks, something I hadn’t done since I was six or seven, dropping twigs in the water on one side of the bridge to see which would come out first on the other side. Not much of a game, but the snakes and lions appeared to be hiding that day.

There were only a handful twigs lying around, so when these were gone I went into the undergrowth to find more. I hadn’t gone that far in when I found the den. It was covered up with foliage; quite well hidden beneath the trees, a hollowed out bit of green with earth for the floor and the remains of a fire. It was empty. I figured it must have been the older kids that had made it, looking for a private place to hang out.

At that age caution always fell a close second to curiosity, so I dropped the twigs and went inside. There was a strange smell, a toilet smell. I was about to leave when I spotted something towards the back, pages scattered.

And a glimpse of something that, until today, had been forbidden.

I crept further in, certain that the older kids had been here because they’d left behind an Aladdin’s Cave of porn. The magazines were screwed up, the pages creased—yet the pictures of half naked women posing for the camera were a revelation. At that age girls in my class were just pests, there to torment, but this was different. These weren’t girls, they were women , and they were showing me parts of their bodies willingly, opening up as easily as I was opening the pages.

I began to feel stirrings, a pleasant sensation as I ogled the photos. Then something fell out of one of the magazines. A piece of paper with handwritten scribblings all over it. I bent and picked it up, but could barely make out the spider scrawl. All except one phrase, written time and time again: ‘They watch, and they wait.’

I frowned, then checked more of the magazines. I hadn’t gotten very far when I heard the snapping of twigs I’d left in the entranceway. I spun and saw my monster. It was big, hairy, and its skin was almost black. It wore an old trenchcoat that strained tight at the shoulders. When it opened its mouth to speak I saw rotting teeth inside. Drool spilled onto its beard as it gargled, “Did they send you?”

I shook with terror. My erection shrank away and I dropped the magazine, a couple more of the handwritten sheets slipping out onto the floor. His wide, staring eyes followed them down. He covered the distance between us easily, grabbing hold of my arm—so hard I thought it might break. He towered above me. “They did, didn’t they, boy.” It wasn’t a question. His fetid breath almost caused me to pass out.