Gaslight
Gaslight
Alice blinked. A flickering pale-yellow light had woken her unexpectedly early. She blinked again but it did not seem as if she could focus on anything. She re-closed her eyes and yawned. She tried to stretch. ‘What time was it?’ she wondered. Too early to get up, surely. She decided to roll over, pull up the duvet, try to go back to sleep and wait for the alarm to ring out before attempting to open her eyes again.
It was then that Alice discovered that the duvet was gone. It had definitely been there when she went to bed. She distinctly recalled snuggling into its soft fleecy folds and breathing in the fresh cotton fragrance of the fabric conditioner. Hmm! How strange. Had she kicked it onto the floor during her sleep?
Alice tried to sit up. She could sort of move her body but she found that she was stuck. Somehow, her bed had got hold of her and if she tried to sit up, it pulled her back down. She tried to lift her right arm. Her arm moved alright but, as she lifted it, something was dragging it back to where it was before. It was as if she were attached to something stretchy. It would move with her so far. Then, reaching the limit of its elasticity, it would suddenly snap back, pulling her with it and forcing her to resume the same posture.
She felt a shudder which did not come from inside. Her environment was, literally, trembling. It was a strange kind of wobbling sensation: a vibration: a tremor. And, in the distance, a sort of subdued ticking.
Ah! The alarm clock was still there, reliably marking time. All was well.
So - where was the duvet, and why couldn’t Alice move?
She reluctantly opened her eyes again. The yellow light was still flickering, like the naked flame of a candle - or, perhaps an old-fashioned gas light. It was that deceptive sort of light which makes you see phantoms in the shadows and creates the illusion of dark fantasies. In one corner of her peripheral vision she spied a dark, but indistinct, shape, occasionally illuminated by the dancing light. It was moving - and it was this motion which was causing her own surroundings to tremble. It was as if she and this other thing in the far distance, were, somehow, connected. As the shape moved, so did Alice’s world. It was as if they were both on a waterbed and any move by one party was instantly sensed by the other: wave touching wave, intersecting, crossing and reflecting. Alice recalled the concept of quantum entanglement and vaguely wondered if she were trapped in some kind of sub-atomic relationship with this dark shadow on the other side of the universe.
Alice tried to lift herself again and, once more, she found that she was stuck.
Tick! Tick! Tick!
She wiggled her fingers and discovered that she could feel some kind of sticky rope underneath her hand. She felt as far as she could in all directions and discovered that she wasn’t in her bed at all. She appeared to be in something more like a hammock. She could now feel that her back was sunken into a rope net. She was sure she wasn’t tied up in rope, but she was stuck to a tacky, gooey and gluey kind of rope netting. She began to feel the strands cutting into her bottom. She could feel the nodes where the warp and weft lines crossed. The cords felt incredibly thin but extremely strong.
Alice did not recall climbing into a hammock of any kind. Where was she?
Tick! … Tick! Tick!
Alice’s heart startled and she let out an involuntary yelp. Her alarm clock kept regular time. Those ticks had suddenly become alarmingly irregular.
The netting began to jerk violently. The dark shape in the distance seemed to be thrashing about. ‘Stop it!’ Alice shouted. ‘Stop it!’
The shape became still. The net seemed to tighten.
‘Is there someone there?’
‘Yes’ replied Alice.
‘Who are you?’ said an unfamiliar male voice.
‘Alice’.
‘I’m Michael’.
‘I’m stuck’ said Alice.
‘So am I’, said Michael.
‘Where are we? Do you know?’
‘No. I just woke up to find myself here. I keep trying to break free, but this thing has got hold of me and I can’t move.’
Tick! Tick! … Tick! … Tick! Tick! Tick!
‘What is that? said Alice.
‘I don’t know’ said Michael, ‘but I’ve been hearing it for a while and it’s getting louder from where I am. It’s giving me a creepy feeling up and down my spine.’
“I thought it was my clock’ said Alice ‘but it isn’t, is it?’
Michael began thrashing about again in a desperate effort to free himself. The net holding Alice jerked and writhed in response. She felt her legs rise above her head, and then her head was thrown forwards until her chin hit her stomach. As her body turned topsey-turvey and her world seesawed about, she heard Michael panting and groaning with the effort. It made her feel totally powerless for no matter how rigidly she tried to hold herself, Michael’s movement just threw her about like a rag doll on a bronking bull. Eventually, he stopped. The net felt suddenly taut.
Through heavy breathing, Michael exploded in frustration: ‘Aargh! No matter what I do, I cannot get free.’
Alice remained silent. She was grateful that her world had stopped heaving for a moment. It had been making her feel sick. She tried to remember what she had been doing before she found herself stuck in this bizarre situation.
She suddenly remembered a cold and toneless female voice. It had been talking about her - Alice. But the person being described was nothing like Alice. It was as if it were describing a fake Alice, using her name but describing characteristics which were not remotely like her. Alice, it said, had become a problem and she needed to be ‘taken care of’. The voice was chillingly cold.
‘Michael’ said Alice. ‘What’s the last thing you remember before being here?’
Michael said nothing for a while. Then he said, ‘I remember voices. Someone was talking about me. But … it wasn’t me they were really talking about.’
He was silent again and then said, in a very small and scared voice. ‘Someone said they going to eat me alive.’
‘Click! Click! Click! …. Click! Click! …. Click!’
The sound in the distance was definitely louder now and, to Alice, it sounded less like a tick and more like a distinct clicking, irregular and ominous.
‘Do you know who it was?’ asked Alice.
‘No. … Wait … Yeees.’ said Michael, slowly. ‘It was a colleague who wants my job. He’s been trying to get me fired for the last two years. He was plotting to make up a lie about me and get me into trouble with my boss.’
‘And then you found yourself here, tangled up in this sticky netting?’ said Alice.
‘That’s right. He was inventing a story that I’d stolen a company computer.’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course not.’ Michael sounded indignant. ‘I was the one who created the inventory system. I stopped people sneaking out toilet rolls and soap from the staff washrooms. It’s not right to take things that don’t belong to you – and it was annoying me that things were going missing. There’s no way I’d have taken so much as a teabag, let alone a computer.’
The gaslight flared and Alice sensed, rather than saw, a brooding presence. Someone, or something, was listening ….
‘But the last thing I remember is hearing this guy, Alan, telling this whole set of lies about how I’d taken a laptop and sold it on EBay. It was an old, obsolete and broken machine, and I took it to IT to be scrapped.’
‘Something like that happened to me, too’ said Alice. ‘The last thing I remember is this frozen voice threatening me and saying that I was ‘unfit’ to do my job - and vowing she was going to destroy me. She wasn’t even describing the real me but making up a story about an imaginary person she called me.’
The air suddenly felt colder. The gaslight flared again but, instead of the flame shedding warmth, it was as if the flare itself had caused everything to freeze. Once again, Alice felt the net tighten. She heard the cracking of frost. The clicking became more intense and very much louder. Alice’s mouth was suddenly dry and, despite the sudden cold, she found that she was sweating. Alice looked over towards Michael.
‘Michael?’
‘Michael?’
A huge shadow was looming over Michael. Alice could see its amorphous and indistinct shape outlined by the yellow gaslight. It was enormous. Its body was sort of rounded and it had huge hairy legs which jutted above the dark mass of its body. They looked like open jaws silhouetted against the flickering yellowy-orange light. As Alice stared, it turned a ferocious head towards her and she saw its multiple dark, glassy eyes. They gazed uninterestedly at her, unpityingly. These were the eyes of a predator who knew that time was on her side. Alice then saw its pincers. They clicked - so loudly this time that the clicks seemed to echo and the echoes multiplied the clicking such that it seemed that there were thousands of these monsters hiding … out there. A hydra with a legion of heads, each one spitting out lies.
Alice’s voice was filled with panic as her heart clenched and her jaw tightened so much that she felt as if her teeth were grinding against granite.
‘Michael! What is that thing?’
Michael didn’t answer. Michael could not answer. The huge spider was now moving amazingly quickly. There was a hoarse and vicious whispering ‘Thief! Thief! Thief!’ It’s clicking pincers struck like lightening. Michael began to twitch. ‘Lies. All lies’ he groaned, as his body tossed and lurched like a live eel caught in a bucket. ‘I told you: I took the laptop to IT to be removed from the inventory. I even showed you the receipt.’ Poor Michael was pleading with the terrifying beast which now towered over his tethered body. The creature wasn’t listening. It didn’t care whether Michael were guilty or innocent. All it knew was that Michael had been caught, he was trapped and he was now helpless - and at its mercy. But mercy was a concept unknown to this abomination. Compassion, a foreign language; meaningless gibberish; an unintelligible cipher.
Alice could feel Michael’s agony as it rippled along the web which she could feel resonating beneath her own fingers. She could sense his desperation: his pleading voice becoming ever weaker.
And then he was still.
The spider moved to cover Michael, smothering his final words. But Alice could still hear him; he wasn’t dead. As the toxic venom began to work, liquefying Michael’s brain and turning it to mush, Alice could hear a kind of squelching sound. She shuddered. The gaslight flickered, once again. Michael was, literally, being eaten alive as the fiend which was devouring him repeated ‘Thief! Thief!’ Poor Michael: he had no chance. His last, barely distinguishable words were the lie he had been forced to adopt: ‘I am a thief.’
Alice’s heart began to race. She could feel it thundering in her chest as it dawned on her that she had probably very little time left before the spider turned its attention towards her. She needed to escape. She began trying to tug her arms free. As she did so, that icy voice drifted into her mind: ‘unfit …. unsuitable … to be taken care of …. ‘
Panic consumed Alice’s mind. Her struggle to free herself became frantic. Like Michael, she writhed and thrashed in her attempt to break away from that ancient, tangled web which had been constructed, long before Alice had realised the danger, to hold her fast. To no avail: Michael’s terror had shown her that there was no point attempting to reason with this beast; it did not listen because it did not care. Its nature was to be malicious but it ‘saw’ neither Michael, nor Alice. It sensed fear. It was attracted to fear. It did not understand truth, honesty, integrity or reason. And kindness? That was an impenetrable enigma. Eventually, Alice stilled, exhausted and panting. The web began to tremble.
Click! Click!
And the huge hairy shadow loomed over Alice …
Alice closed her eyes and prayed. She could not escape by struggling with a creature far stronger than herself. She could not escape by trying to reason with something inherently unreasonable. She could not attempt to bargain or negotiate with an enemy intent on devouring her. But she could appeal to the one embodiment of mercy, of compassion, of truth - and the one person strong enough to defeat this grotesque monster - the Creator of all: the ultimate court of appeal.
The poisonous fangs clicked. And the sound was like the clashing of iron upon rock: harsh, ringing and unyielding. It was utterly terrifying. The beast seemed to be waiting for her to say something. The gaslight flared one last time: ‘Unfit! Unfit! Unfit!’ chanted the spider in the high-pitched and icy voice which mimicked Alice’s accuser. ‘Say it, Alice. Say it with me …’
But Alice did not speak. And the gaslight died, plunging Alice into thick darkness. She clung onto her prayer as Jonah in the belly of the whale …
… and the intimidating clicking ceased. The shrill voice was silenced. All was still …
Alice waited ….
Suddenly, she heard the words of ‘Amazing Grace’, as if it were sung by angels: ‘I once was blind but now I see’. Her fear vanished and a strength beyond her own seeped into her. She felt the web beneath her begin to sag. The tight ropes which had seemed to bind her like steel were disintegrating, melting away beneath her. And she was falling …
Alice exhaled. She had no idea where she would land. All she knew was that the distance between herself and that black mass was growing. The relief was overwhelming. Tears began to stream. She felt soft air beneath her and knew that it was beginning to slow her fall. The darkness which had loomed above her so menacingly was now a small and shrinking black dot, barely visible in the vibrant blue sky which had opened above her.
Clear fresh air rushed into her lungs as her feet touched solid ground. She landed walking, standing on her own two feet in a meadow of green grass and fresh flowers. Lilac and rose mingled with May blossom in a bouquet of summer perfection. It was the fragrance of peace itself. She could hear the happy gurgle of a brook and glimpsed a bright white light glinting and bouncing off the surface of the frolicking water. The world around her teemed with an abundance of life: birds sang, baby foxes played in the grass, and rabbits grazed contentedly. There were no predators and no prey.
The sun shone - and in its penetrating light and gentle warmth, Alice could see everything as it truly was. The world around her was colourful … and beautiful. And life, with all its energy, its passion and its possibilities, was to be lived.