Matt Hults - Anything Can Be Dangerous

I shook my head, unable to get any words out.

“Yes. They’ve sent a little spy.”

“P-P-Please don’t hurt me,” I spluttered.

He yanked my arm. “I’m not going back!” he shouted. “You hear me… Never .”

I nodded. He seemed pleased that he’d got through to me. Then he drew me in so close I could see the insects living in his beard. “You go back, you tell them that, boy,” he growled.

He let me go. I gaped, but suddenly my natural survival instinct kicked in and I ran out of there. I plunged through the undergrowth, catching my head on the branch of a low-hanging tree. I fell, hard. Shaking my head, then casting a glance over my shoulder, I got up and began running again.

I felt the wetness at my temple, but didn’t stop. I ran up that path, never looking back in case the ‘monster’ had decided to give chase.

I’m not going back… Never…

When I got home my mother said, “For God’s sake, Chris, whatever have you been doing?” She took me into the kitchen, washed the cut on my head, then put some antiseptic on it. When she asked me again what I’d done, whether it had happened playing, all I could do was stare, opening and closing my mouth.

“Christopher Edward Warwick,” she said a final time, “you tell me what happened, right now.”

“M-Monster… c-canal…” was all I could say.

“You and that blasted imagination of yours,” she said. “Go to your room!”

When the truth emerged a day or so later, she felt pretty bad. I heard that some of the older boys had stumbled upon my monster and gave him a good kicking before telling their parents, who then called the police. He’d gone by the time they got there, but it was all around the estate about what had happened: that some pervo nutter had been living rough down by the bridge.

Mum hugged me when she when found out. She never said anything, but she knew. Knew the monster had been real.

I know better now—he wasn’t really a monster at all. Just someone who knew the truth, and it had sent him insane.

‘They watch and wait’ he had written.

They watch and wait.

When I wake again, the blindfold is gone.

I open my eyes and look around. The bars are still there in front of me, I’m still shackled by the hands and feet, but the bonds are looser, my hands apart. I can move a little, maneuver myself up into a sitting position. I don’t ache as much now, either. I wonder how much time has passed since—

Then I remember. The person burnt alive. It’s gone now, the cage empty, the body taken away while I was unconscious.

“Welcome back,” says the man who’d told me to be quiet, hanging in his own cage like a canary. He’s wearing what look like sweatpants and a top, the kind of thing you’d find people dressed in at a country health spa.

“We thought you were out for the count,” adds the woman who’d also spoken to me before. She’s perhaps in her late twenties, with a slender frame—or what I can see of it beneath the smock she’s wearing. Her dirty-blonde hair is matted with sweat; looks like it hasn’t been washed in a couple of weeks. “How do you feel?”

“How… how do I feel? ” I snap, a mixture of confusion and anger.

The man throws me a vicious look. “Christ, can’t you keep it down? I told you before.”

“I’ll keep it down when somebody tells me what the fuck’s going on,” I yell at him, returning his glare with one of my own. I pull at the chains, testing their length.

“If you do that, they’ll just make them tighter,” the woman warns.

“Who will? And who did that…” Words fail me so I simply point across at the empty space where the charred body had once been.

“You ask far too many questions.” This comes from another speaker, his voice richer, deeper. I turn and see yet another of the cages behind. In it an olive-skinned man sits crossed-legged, dressed like the first guy: in loose clothing. A prisoner’s outfit.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Who the fuck are you?”

“That’s two more,” he says.

I make to get up, about to grip the bars of the cage.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” the olive-skinned man tells me.

“Well you’re not m—” Too late I see the wire curled around the bars, and no sooner have I touched the metal than I feel the electric shock. It ripples through my body, not strong enough to put me out again, but enough to blister my hands. “Shit!”

Is that what happened to the person in the cage in front? I wonder. Did someone just leave the current on—running along the bottom as well—long enough to set fire to the poor sod inside?

“I did warn you,” says the man, his dark brown, almost black, eyes fixed on me.

As I rub at my palms I take in the room: rectangular, the walls smooth. There’s a red tinge to the lights, giving the space the look of a photographic dark room. Nothing to give away a location. Just a single door.

“Where am I?”

“Another question,” comes the reply from my neighbor.

“What do you expect, Kavi?” says the woman. “He’s bound to be a little disorientated at first. We all were.”

“And do we know any more now than we did then?” asks the man she named. Nobody rushes to answer.

Instead the woman introduces herself to me. “I’m Jane,” she says, touching her chest, then thumbs over at the other man. “That’s Phil.”

“Philip Hall,” he announces proudly, like it means something.

I shrug. “Chris. Chris Warwick.”

“Welcome to the party,” says Phil snidely.

“So nobody knows anything about this? About why I saw someone just get fried right in front of me.”

“You saw that?” Jane sounds shocked.

I nod. “Managed to drag my blindfold down a bit. I saw enough.”

Phil gives a half laugh. “Resourceful little devil, isn’t he? That’ll get you a one way ticket to hell around here, kid.”

“This is Hell,” says Jane with complete conviction.

“How long have you been here?” I ask, though it’s Phil who butts in.

“Longer than you,” he says.

“Then you must have seen who’s holding us.” I round on him. “Who did that?”

Nobody says a thing.

“Oh, come on! This is ridiculous.” I stand, almost putting my hands on the bars again. “You can’t just kidnap a bunch of people and then—”

“Why not? Happens all the time abroad,” Phil comments. “Places where his lot come from.” He nods over at Kavi.

The dark skinned man smiles. “With one breath you betray your ignorance,” is his only remark.

“We’re all ignorant in this place,” Phil replies.

“But how did you wind up here?” It’s another question, and I expect Kavi to say something about that, but he doesn’t. This time he asks me one of his own.

“How did you ?”

It suddenly strikes me I don’t know. I had thought I’d been out on the town or something, and just got completely smashed. But I couldn’t remember a thing about the previous night, the previous day (what time of day is it anyway?), let alone how I ended up in this cage. “I… I think I was drugged.”

“Well, of course you were drugged!” barks Phil. “It’s how they get you here, and put you inside these things.” He points at the cage.

“But why? Are they after money?”

“Looking for a ransom, that what you’re thinking?” Phil grunts. “And why exactly would anyone pay money to get you back, Chrissie-boy? Loaded, are you?”

I hang my head. “No.”

“Me either. How about you, Jane? Fitness instructor’s pay suddenly gone up by a few million in the last month or so?”