The Pits and the Pendulum
by Mark Apoapsis

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“Hey guys, look who's here! Remember that geek we used to stuff into a locker?” I casually picked up the name tag hanging by a string over my old classmate's chest, scrawny as ever under his dressy shirt, and held it up so I could read it more conveniently.

“Alan! That's right.” I threw my arm around his thin shoulders and turned him a little, to face my old friends I'd been reminiscing with. “This guy was the only reason I passed Physics. He did all my homework for me.”

“Not out of the goodness of my heart, of course,” Alan said ruefully.

“Oh, right. I paid you or something, didn't I. Or did you a favor in exchange?”

“The favor you did in exchange, Rod, was to not give me a pinkbelly.”

“I remember that!” said my old buddy Pedro delightedly. “I helped hold him down once. That must have been before he started cooperating.”

“Oh. Right! Yeah!” I said nostalgically, squeezing Alan's shoulder through his jacket. I urged him forward, and he reluctantly submitted to the pressure of my arm and allowed himself to be drawn deeper into the knot of old buddies around me. Most of us towered over him by several inches, and all of us were way more muscular and broad-shouldered. Although, to tell the truth, a few of my buddies were well on their way to developing beer bellies at 28.

Inspired by the fond recollections of the whole pinkbelly episode that were now flooding back, I had a fleeting fantasy of doing it to him one more time, just for old time's sake. There was nothing physically stopping me. It would be a piece of cake to carry him outside, especially with the help of my buddies, and stretch him out on his back in the parking lot. I could picture him lying there spread-eagle, whimpering in anticipation, with his jacket and shirt laid open on either side of him and his T-shirt rolled up to just past his nipples. The problem was, we weren't in high school anymore. He could press assault charges.

“What have you been up to these last ten years, Alan?” Not working out, that was for sure. I still had my big hand clamped firmly around his shoulder and could feel the bones right through his jacket. I did feel a thin layer of wiry muscle that I didn't remember from our locker-stuffing days, but I had to probe really hard with my fingers to feel even that. Of course, it was hard to tell through three layers of clothing; I'd need to peel off at least two layers to be sure.

I got the feeling that my firm grip on his shoulder was the only thing keeping Alan from making a polite excuse and bolting. With perverse amiability, I drew him even closer to the center of my cluster of friends, until he was completely surrounded, jocks looming over him on all sides.

“I just finished my PhD in physics a couple of years ago,” he said nervously. “I'm hoping for a job in academia.” He swallowed hard, looking up at the old familiar faces of men who would have once given him a beating just for saying something that nerdy. Ah, those were the days! He pressed on gamely, “But for now I've got a postdoc at the old museum right here at home. You remember it, right down the road.”

“I might vaguely remember having heard about it,” I said, chuckling. “I sure never set foot in it. I always knew you would wind up in some boring science geek job. While you were wasting all those extra years in school, I've been getting experience in an actual job. In law enforcement.”

“Shopping mall security is not law enforcement,” my old friend Ted scoffed.

“It's better,” I retorted. “That's why I dropped out of the academy.” Which was stretching the truth only a little, but my old classmates didn't need to know that. “Instead of handing out speeding tickets, I get to haul young punks into my office and scare them shitless.”

“At least one of us has found his true calling,” Alan said.

If only! My dream job would be one where I got to at least strip-search miscreants on a regular basis. I'd have done anything to get a job as a correctional officer -- that's what they call themselves; normal people call them prison guards -- but they wanted nothing to do with me either. Even that wasn't my idea of an ideal job. Were there any jobs at all these days where you got to tie prisoners up and apply mild torture? Damn, but I missed high school.

Alan continued, “Not that I don't like it at the museum. I even have access to it after hours. I've given some of my friends private tours.” He grinned shyly and added, “That worked out pretty well in Eddie's case.”

“Your old friend Eddie? The only guy in school geekier than you?” Now, that brought back memories! “What's he up to these days?”

“He's doing well, thanks. He's got a good job working for a biotech company. They've got some exciting drug candidates that work on the neural system. One of them, if it's approved, will amplify nerve signals in patients suffering from numbness. Another will help people sleep, by suppressing a neurotransmitter called--”

“No need. You're putting me to sleep already.” My quip got a satisfying laugh out of my buddies. It was so great to have my old friends to laugh with, and even better now that we had a target to laugh at. I realized I'd spent more time laughing tonight than I did in a typical month. And the night was young. “So where is old Eddie based these days? Married yet? Heh. Remember how I used to call him a faggot?”

“You didn't just call him that,” Ted said, “you put it in writing once.” My buddies all snickered, remembering.

“He lives around here too. Actually, we're--”

“Come to think of it, I always used to call you 'faggot' too. Just on general principles, you know.”

“Yeah, I kind of remember that.”

“But I've gotten enlightened since then.”

“Really? That's--”

“Yeah, now I realize that's an insult to faggots, to be compared to you losers.”

“Look, here's he is now. Eddie! Over here!” Alan's voice had a desperate edge to it, like a cry for help. As he approached, Alan said, “You remember Rod, don't you?”

“Of course. I was hoping you'd be here, Rod.” There was something strange about the way Eddie said that. Surprisingly, it sounded like he wasn't just being polite but actually meant it, and yet there wasn't a trace of warmth in his voice or in his eyes.

“I think I've changed my mind about that drink,” Alan told him.

“I thought you might,” Eddie said. “I'll get it.”

“Good,” I said lightheartedly, “because we're holding Alan hostage until you both have a drink with us.” Although I said it in a joking tone, I loved the fact that my buddies and I could enforce it if we wanted to. Alan would find it hard to shrug off the meaty arm I had around his shoulders or to push though the circle of broad-shouldered guys that had casually crowded around him as if to listen to what he'd been saying.

Eddie surprised me by asking politely, “Can I get you a drink, Rod?” I didn't expect that, not from a man I'd once tied to a tree in his undershorts so I could draw an obscene insult on his chest. I guess after a certain number of years, some guys can look back on moments like that and laugh. I sure could!

“You can get me another Bud,” I told him.

“You know what I want,” Alan told him. “I want the same thing as you.”

Eddie nodded and left Alan trapped there alone, with me and my buddies looming over him on all sides, and my arm still thrown chummily across his shoulders. Now we had a perfect opportunity to reminisce. “Hey, remember the time I made you crawl in the wet grass on your belly and lick the mud off my shoes?”

“At least we gave you a shower in the locker room afterwards,” Ted said.

“Was that before or after the pinkbelly?” Pedro asked.

“Which one?” Ted said, and we all chuckled. Except Alan, who was blushing.

“Good times,” I said. Alan's jacket was open, and I gave him a friendly swat on his belly with my free hand, almost wishing it wasn't protected by his dress shirt and undershirt.

Alan suffered in silence while we all recounted his most humiliating moments in high school. The guy was as spineless as ever. Some people never change. And now here was his best friend, subserviently bringing drinks back to us. It just didn't get better than this. Anymore. I took a few sips of my beer, then made Eddie hold Alan's drink while I sent Alan to the bar to fetch beers for some of my buddies. Eddie and I had some reminiscing to do too.

This was only my fourth beer in an hour. It should have been hardly enough to give a big guy like me a buzz, but I was already starting to feel slightly woozy by the time I'd drained it.

Eddie's shoulder had a little more meat on it than Alan's, but not much. The funny thing was, back when we'd been in school together, I'd never liked either of them -- not that I'd hated them; I'd tormented them because I could. But now, seeing them again, it was almost like being reunited with old friends I'd shared good times with. I felt kind of a nostalgic affection for them. I missed tormenting them so much! I never knew how good I had it in those days.

Impulsively, I slid my hand to the back of Eddie's head, slipping my fingers under his collar and caressing his skinny neck. I decided that if my buddies changed their minds about going to a bar afterward, I'd invite Eddie and Alan along. They'd come if I insisted, for the same reason Eddie was submitting to my rough neck massage, even though he'd stiffened when my fingers found his bare skin and still looked like he fervently wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. I slipped my fingers deeper into his collar and probed his trapezius muscle. Privately I was thinking about how easy it would be to slip my arm around his throat and choke him unconscious.

If all we did at the bar was spend a couple of extra hours talking and drinking, with the two little geeks wedged into a booth between our bodies while we continued to reminisce about the various things we'd done to them in the good old days, that would be loads of fun. But after the bar closed, well... if it had a poorly lit parking lot, hidden from the road, so much the better. Although maybe a bar wasn't the best idea for me tonight. I was already a little unsteady on my feet. I returned my arm to Eddie's shoulders, almost needing to lean on him a little to steady me.

***

I drifted lazily back to consciousness lying stretched out on a beach, completely relaxed, with my arms flung over my head. I could feel dry sand, fine and pristine, cushioning my back, as if I were on some unspoiled tropical beach untouched by litter. Not a single cigarette butt, not one beer bottle cap, not even a fragment of shell dug into my back.

When I opened my eyes, I saw only darkness. It was a warm, starless, moonless night, utterly still. It occurred to me to wonder how I could have gotten to a beach. Wasn't I just at the reunion?

But no, it wasn't a beach. There was no sound of surf, and the air playing against my chest held no hint of moisture. Yet I definitely felt sand under my back and heels. I tried to bend my knees and draw my legs up, wanting to feel that fine sand between my toes and under my soles. To my sudden alarm, I couldn't budge my feet. I felt ropes around my ankles and lower shins. I still had pants on, although someone had rolled them up to expose just enough of my shins to coil rope around; I felt it chafing my skin and pulling on my leg hairs as I struggled. My wrists and forearms were similarly immobilized.

“Don't bother to try to move,” Eddie's voice said from somewhere nearby in the dark. “It won't do you any good.”

“You're tied to a wooden pallet buried in the sand underneath you.” Alan seemed even closer to me, maybe crouching next to me and speaking into my ear.

“Alan, hit the lights,” Eddie said.

There was a loud click, and the lights flickered on. Eddie was looming over me. I couldn't see Alan anywhere. Any illusion that I was lying on a beach vanished. I suddenly realized I was stretched out helpless at the feet of a man I used to torment in high school. He and his friend had apparently stripped me to the waist while I was unconscious. This was so wrong! Losers like them having me at their mercy, instead of the other way around? I struggled uselessly, flexing my chest and arm muscles, but the ropes held.

“Where the fuck am I?” I yelled. “Where are my clothes?”

“Feels different when the shoe is on the other foot, doesn't it?” Eddie said, smirking down at me.

I jumped as Alan's voice said gloatingly, “Looks to me like the shoe isn't on either foot anymore.” It sounded like it was coming from nearby, in the direction of my feet. But there was no one there. It was as if he'd turned invisible. The sand just beyond my feet had footprints and an impression that might have been made by a kneeling man. For all I knew, Alan was kneeling there invisibly, close enough to reach out and touch my immobilized feet. I imagined I could feel his hot breath on my bare soles as he studied them closely.

We were in a large and lofty room with a domed ceiling from which some kind of long wire was stretched tightly, attached to the ceiling far above me and stretching toward ground level, but at an angle, not straight down. About halfway down, it passed above my face and out of my field of view. Turning my head to look around, I saw I was lying in a huge circular sandbox. Except for a few tracks of footprints where they'd carried me in, and the disturbed areas around me, the sand was smooth, with abstract curving patterns raked into it. The patterns reminded me of the stupid little relaxation thing my boss at the mall had on his desk.

His had a tiny rake, and he would spend half his day raking patterns into it to calm down, especially after bawling me out for being too rough on loiterers and skateboarders. There must have been a full-sized rake around here somewhere that had made these patterns, but I couldn't see it. Maybe it was in the part of the sandpit I couldn't see, beyond my head.

Eddie was standing in a perfect position to kick me in the ribs if he wanted to. But he didn't so much as toe my ribs suggestively. He just ran his gaze up and down the length of the shirtless body at his feet, like he was gloating.

“What are you looking at, faggot?”

“You've kept yourself in pretty good shape, Rod. Did you notice your buddy Ted has already started getting love handles?”

“No.”

“Well, it's hard to tell with his shirt on.”

I jerked against my bonds, wanting to leap up and grab him by the neck. “What have you done with Ted, you faggot?”

“Hogtied him and drove him to the beach,” Eddie said. “Dug a big pit in the sand and buried him, up to his neck. Naked, of course.”

“Don't believe him,” Alan's voice whispered in my ear. I looked around wildly, but I still couldn't see him. Louder, he said, “Come on, Eddie. Isn't it enough that we're going to torture him? You don't need to make shit up. Don't worry about your buddy, Rod. He's safe in his motel room. It's you we wanted. Ted just had the bad luck to catch us carrying you to my car.”

“Good thing I had that hypo ready as a backup in case you didn't accept a drink,” Eddie said. “He won't remember seeing you being kidnapped. In fact, I doubt he'll remember seeing you tonight at all, if the drug works like it did in the Phase II trial.”

The bastards! Ted and I had each traveled hundreds of miles to see each other and the rest of our old high school buddies. Now they'd casually stripped him of that.

“We tucked him in nice and cozy,” Alan said. “When he wakes up he'll just assume he got plastered. We found pajama bottoms on the dresser in his motel room when we carried him there, so...”

I was furious at the nerve of these two pathetic little guys I used to torment, manhandling my best friend, stripping him naked as he lay there unconscious and at their mercy. I wanted so badly to get my hands on them right now! But the ropes held me fast, no matter how much I flexed my muscles and struggled.

Eddie took a step toward me and squatted down. He was holding a paintbrush and a small bucket. Was he going to take revenge on me for the time I'd covered him in -- what was it I'd smeared him with, exactly? Something really gross was all I remembered. But from the way he was examining me, like a big slab of meat he was deciding how to carve up, I almost thought he was about to baste me with barbecue sauce.

It wasn't barbecue sauce, and it wasn't anything gross. I didn't know what it was. When he dipped the brush into the bucket and applied it to my chest, the stuff was clear, and if it had a scent at all, it smelled more medicinal than anything else. Even wet, the brush bristles were soft against my chest, like an artist's brush, although it was more the size of something you'd paint your house with.

“What the fuck are you putting on me?”

“You'll find out soon enough.” He traced the curves of my pecs with the brush, slicking down my chest hairs with whatever the stuff was. “In a way it would be fun to smear you with this with my bare hands, but I don't want to get any on my skin.” One corner of the soft brush caressed one of my nipples. It felt disturbingly pleasant. I struggled, but about all I could do was arch my back and flex my muscles as I strained against my bonds. Eddie was deliberately lingering over the nipple, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it -- no more than he could that one time, a few weeks before graduation, that I'd grabbed him and twisted his nipples savagely until he begged for mercy. And then that time with the ice cube under his shirt.

Or had that been Alan?

Finally I gave up struggling and lay limp and exhausted on the sand, breathing hard, and let Eddie paint my other nipple and the rest of my chest. Next he traced my ribs. Then he followed the fine trail of hairs slowly down my belly until I felt a few bristles in the corner penetrating deep into my navel. He then fanned out to the sides of my belly. Just before he finished up, I felt the edge of the brush sneak under the waistband of my pants, just a little.

Then he did my feet. When the bristles touched my sole, I tried to twitch my foot out of the way, but he stuck his knee against it and went at it again.
“Are you ticklish, Rod?”

Not a question a man ever wants to be asked by his worst enemy -- or even his best friend, for that matter -- when he's barefoot and bare-chested and his arms are tied over his head. “No,” I said. Although I was, a little. Mostly my armpits.

“You will be.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

He didn't answer, but began painting the clear fluid onto my arms, beginning next to the ropes and working his way in toward my body. I noticed that the stuff on my chest had evaporated by this time -- or soaked in -- but mainly I was thinking about those soft bristles coming closer and closer to my armpit, wide open and exposed.

When the brush finally invaded my armpit, I squirmed and stifled a laugh.

“Oh, so your armpits are already ticklish? This should be good!”

I wanted to ask what he meant by “already,” but I didn't dare unclench my jaw. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of forcing a laugh out of me.

He kept at until the tangle of fine hairs under my arm was slicked against my skin. I was proud that I had enough self-control to keep from laughing. Much.

Then he stepped over me and did it all over again with the other arm, working his way teasingly up to my armpit. At last he rose and walked away, putting the bucket and brush on the lip of the sandpit.

“What is this place?” I asked. I'd never seen anything like it. The vaulted, domed ceiling was several stories up, and below it were long narrow windows. Almost like a cathedral, but the windows weren't stained glass and there were no candles or religious symbols, although I could only guess at what the carvings hiding in the shadows above might be.

“It's a dungeon we built especially for you,” Eddie said, walking back to the center of the pit. “We've been digging and building it for ten years.”
For a second I almost believed him, but then Alan's disembodied voice said from right next to me, “It's the museum I work in.”

“Then there must be a security guard.”

“Two,” Eddie said. “One won't be making his rounds tonight, because he fell asleep on duty.”

“The other,” Alan said, “is watching a rerun of his favorite sitcom on the little TV at his station, and occasionally glancing at the security monitors, not realizing that they're also playing reruns tonight.”

“What time is it? How long have I been out?”

“Don't tell him,” Eddie said. “Better if he doesn't know when his torture is going to end.”

“You're going to have to let me go by morning, and then--”

“And then, you'll wake up in your hotel room convinced this was a nightmare.” Eddie slipped a small vile out of his pocket with a string of letters and numbers on the label and waved it at me suggestively, then dropped it back in and patted his pocket. “Oh, and a 12% chance of erectile disfunction for a few months. Meanwhile, you're all ours for the rest of the night.”

I was breathing hard. “Look, guys, those pranks I played on you when we were kids, that was just good fun.”

“And now we can have even better fun.” Eddie squatted down next to me, leaning toward me like he wanted to touch me.

“Keep your filthy hands off me, you faggot!”

“Don't worry,” he said calmly. “Alan and I are hands-off kind of guys.”

Alan started laughing in my ear like he found something real funny in that.

Eddie shot a dirty look, angles upward, in the general direction my head was pointing. “I don't mean with-- You know what I mean.” He looked back down at me. “Both of us always admired all those mad scientists in classic horror movies, and super-villains in the comic books. The best ones never torture the heros with their own hands, or even have their henchmen do it. They set up some kind of elaborate time-delayed device and watch the heros anticipate their fate. The only difference is that you're no hero.”

“You're just built like one,” whispered the voice intimately into my ear. I cringed, half expecting an invisible hand to reach out and run possessively down my torso.

“The other difference,” Eddie said, “is you're not going to make some last-minute escape.”

“If you're done taunting him, I'm going to release it now. You'd better step back.” Alan's voice still came from right next to me, but Eddie glanced in the same direction as before -- at a spot at the sandpit's edge outside my field of view. I got the idea Alan was standing outside the pit and somehow throwing his voice.

As reassuring as it was to realize there wasn't an invisible man a few inches from my bound and exposed body, that left me wondering just what Alan had with him outside the pit back there and was about to release. I imagined some kind of wild animal in a cage, ready to leap into the pit and tear my chest open. Maybe the stuff my chest was painted with really was not too different from barbecue sauce after all, something odorless to humans but irresistible to animals.

I strained my ears for any telltale sounds of a cage door creaking open, or a throaty growl. Instead, I heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of a match being struck and hissing into flame. I imagined Alan lighting a torch to fend off whatever animal he was releasing and to drive it into the pit where I lay helpless.

But that's not what happened next. Instead, I saw the angled wire from the ceiling swing down toward me. Seconds later, a huge weight swooped into my field of view. I cringed, as much as my bonds would let me. If it had been coming at me from my flank, it looked heavy enough to have cracked my ribs. At this angle, it would be a skull-smashing blow to the top of the head, or a crippling blow to the shoulder.

But it didn't hit me at all. It missed my outstretched hand my several inches and swung along my flank, a comfortable distance away, halfway between me and Eddie. “You never could throw straight, Alan,” I called out before I thought better of taunting a man who had me at his mercy and could try again as many times as he wanted to.

The heavy weight slowed as it reached the end of its arc. Looking at it, framed between my bare feet, I noticed that the bottom tapered down to a point. The point was blunt, but there was something attached to it shaped vaguely like a blade, pointing down.

I worried about it slicing through my skin if it passed along my belly and chest on its way back. Then it came to a brief stop and I saw that it was just a big-ass feather, maybe an ostrich feather. The massive weight itself was what I needed to worry about. It had slowly started swinging back. I was sure it was heading straight for my crotch. My bound legs were spread wide enough to let it through, and I was sure it was going to smash into my balls.

I whimpered, expecting unimaginable pain, and squeezed my eyes shut. But I felt the breeze on my left flank as it sailed past me again, and heard the the soft swish it made going by, changing pitch like a train whistle, and I knew it had passed me once again. I kept my mouth shut this time, knowing Alan was going to catch it and correct his aim. But then out of the corner of my eye I saw Alan circling around and climbing down into the sandpit to stand beside his friend.

The weight swung down again undisturbed, the wire that held it up slicing through the air halfway between me and my geeky captors. As the pendulum swiped past me again, it seemed to retrace its path exactly. So I was safe as long as no one touched it. I noticed that the feather never touched the sand. It stayed above it by a few inches -- by the thickness of my body, maybe. It looked like the weight wouldn't have touched any part of my body after all, but the feather definitely would have, if Alan's aim had been better. I allowed myself to relax a little.

“So, the feather... You're expecting your contraption to tickle me?” When they didn't bother to answer, I said, “Well, your aim sucks. It's coming nowhere near me.”

“It will,” Alan said.

“You're planning to nudge it?”
“No.”

“Oh, I get it. You have some fancy high-tech contraption to move it automatically.” I peered up at the ceiling and didn't see one. If there was a machine moving it, was doing it very slowly. The pendulum seemed to be retracing its path exactly the same way each time. If it had been lower, with the feather or even the pointy finger part of the weight touching the sand, it would probably have draw the same line over and over again.

“No, Rod,” Alan said. “It's going to keep moving back and forth in the same plane, and we're going to let it. Once I burned the thread and let it start swinging, it was on its own; we're not going to touch it.”

That was a relief. I'd almost started to imagine that it was getting every so slightly closer with each swing.

Alan continued, “You're the one who's going to move, Rod. Your body is going to rotate slowly into line with it, until the feather starts stroking those big feet of yours. Then your ribs will get closer and closer to it, until finally it grazes them, lightly at first, then harder. And then, Rod, your armpit will be in its direct path.”

I felt a shiver of anticipation, but said, “No way could you guys have built a machine under the sand just to rotate me. This isn't a comic book. Those things cost money, and... and take time. I'm not an idiot.”

“Oh, but you are,” Eddie said.

“Wait, was there already a machine to rotate the sandbox? Is this a regular, what do you call it, exhibit of some kind?” I could swear the feather had gotten a tiny bit closer to my foot over the past few minutes, even though I hadn't heard any motors whirring and didn't feel any motion.

“No, and yes.”

“Now you're talking in riddles.”

“Eventually you'll move right under its path, and the feather will pass along your flank, brushing your ribs. Then it will get dragged up and down your chest, over and over, until you can't stand it, especially when you realize your nipple is going to be right under it soon. Eventually it will be passing horizontally, relentlessly, across your exposed belly. And you'll wonder how long this can go on.”

“You can't keep me here forever. Only until opening time, right? You may not want me to know what time it is now, but I'll keep watching the windows to see when they get light. I'll be able to guess how long it is before the sun comes up.”

“The sun will never come up,” Alan said.

“What?”

“It never has. It never will.”

That's when I knew he was totally out of his mind. And Eddie too: he was nodding in solemn agreement. I lay there in silence a long time, thinking it through. That kind of crazy might just work to my advantage. If I was lucky, they'd sit here all night, waiting for their device to tickle me when it never would touch me -- insanely thinking they had no deadline, that morning would never come, because the sun never rises. But I knew the sun does rise, and the day shift would come in and find us like this.

Having strangers discover me helpless and stripped to the waist against my will would be almost as humiliating as the fix I was already in, but it would be over soon enough. At least these two madmen would be locked up. And this meant I was in no danger of being tickled after all. There was obviously no hidden turntable rotating my helpless body into the path of the swinging feather. I'd hear the motor. I'd hear and see the sand grinding against the sides of the pit. And the pendulum was just swinging back of forth in the same path, with nothing to move it.

And yet, it moved! Slowly, closer and closer, until it grazed my surprisingly ticklish big toe. I twitched my toes out of the way and pointed them straight up, but slowly the feather closed in, a tiny fraction of a degree with each swing, until it was stroking the artificially tenderized sole of my foot. My forced laughter made weird echoes off the high domed ceiling and the walls, bouncing back at me until it sounded like a whole dungeon full of men just like me were lying here being tickled by the pendulum. I tried to stop laughing, but I couldn't hold it in, which added to the already humiliating situation.

Then it was stroking my forearm where it wasn't protected by the rope wrapped around it: not normally a particularly ticklish part of my body, but what with the stuff Eddie had painted all over me, it was all I could do to stop laughing long enough between swings to suck air into my aching lungs. And it was inching slowly up my arm. After what seemed like hours, it was on the inside of my elbow, then my biceps, all rendered exquisitely, unnaturally ticklish. And it was passing close enough to my ribs now that I could feel the air of its passage brushing them ever so lightly.

By the time the feather found my open armpit, I'd forgotten how I'd gotten here, forgotten I'd ever walked free under the sun, and become convinced that Alan was telling the truth and it was me who was deluded, foolishly believing I'd ever seen the sun rise and set.

I was stuck here in an eternal night of torture that would last forever, trapped in their private little reality, where a man staked securely to solid ground is relentlessly moved by some unseen force, and the sun never rises.