The next in a multi-part series by Lance Marwood

Warning: graphic content.

“A lot of this job is the foreplay,” Therese says through a mouthful of her tuna salad sandwich and a smile. The fleck of mayonnaise at the corner of her mouth only adds to her grotesquerie. Her face is a gargoyle’s, all angular and wicked and vile, with a vulgarity to match. The thing about women these days is you can’t trust them not to make it about sex.

I can always keep a straight face with a subject. The clients always demand the best, so we need to be prepared to mask up or make like, and I always wear my own face in the rooms. But outside of there, on the mildewy carpets and ancient fluorescent lighting mimicking the last century, I grimace despite all the years of training and successful interrogations.

It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Oh ho!” said Del, in his typical effeminate call. I’m almost surprised Del can perceive a facial response, him being a peeler and all. He has about as much intuition for interrogation as a hammer does for a fucking wall. But I’m not about to share that with him. Neither of these two deserve my input, certainly nothing that would help them. But I doubt they’d understand or utilize the advice I provide them, such as they are. Dolts. Backwards apes with reprehensibly stupid notions about how things ‘ought’ to be, and observations that would exhaust a chimp.

“What’s the matter, Doc?” Therese says, her mouth still smiling and the fleck of mayonnaise still pockmarking her mouth, but now at least mercifully void of any more of her odious sandwich. “Afraid of the pussy talking about sex again?”

She’s lowborn, obviously, we all were, but you’d think from the years of interactions with clients and training we’d received, she’d at least pick up some of the graces that Dynasty women show. Even by commoner standards she had horrendous manners and a vulgarity that beggared belief.

I open my mouth to say something, then close it. I don’t have a quick reply. I never do. Then I feel the familiar crimson crawl of cold anger and I remember I don’t need to explain myself. I always keep my wits with clients, but out here in the halls we’re expected to mix with others as though we’re equals, which is repugnant, no? How are you supposed to be somebody great when you’re expected to mix with the riff raff, tolerating the constant stream of boring ‘insight’?

“Not much to say, heh?” Del adds now.

I look at him, and then I feel a reply.

“I’d wipe that smirk off both your faces, if you know what’s good for you,” I say. I wince inwardly, knowing I’ve somehow overreacted and underdelivered. A z-man threatening a drowner and peeler is only ever believable if the former has the two on slabs or pads. But here, in these halls, the threat is beyond meaningless.

The halls stretch endlessly, a labyrinth of identical passageways with no beginning or end. The air is thick with the sour, metallic tang of neglect, mingling with the faint mildew stench rising from carpets that squelch faintly underfoot. The carpets themselves are a faded green-grey, worn thin in uneven patches, revealing discoloured concrete beneath—concrete speckled with dark, indistinct stains.

The lighting is unforgiving, with fluorescent tubes flickering overhead in sickly bursts of pale green and yellow. Some hum faintly, their failing ballasts producing a sound like distant cicadas. Others buzz with a drone that seems to vibrate in the skull. The light itself feels wrong—too bright yet utterly devoid of warmth, casting harsh shadows in the most unexpected places. Corners vanish into unnatural darkness, as though the light refuses to touch them.

The walls are coated in a glossy, vomit-coloured paint that was perhaps once beige but now bears the marks of time and indifference. Dark smudges and greasy fingerprints are smeared across the surfaces, interrupted by faint cracks running like veins through the plaster. Occasionally, signs of past violence emerge—a dent as though something hard was thrown against it, or faint red stains smeared thin enough to be overlooked.

The repetition is maddening. Every hallway looks the same, with doors spaced irregularly and no signs to guide the way. The doors are featureless, industrial in design, metal surfaces dull and flecked with rust around the edges. Some are open, revealing empty rooms that appear no different from the hallways save for their lack of carpets and a single steel chair bolted to the floor in the centre. Others are closed, their surfaces warped as though by heat, or marked with cryptic script, our code.

Every so often, the halls open into wider spaces—rooms large enough to suggest they served some forgotten purpose long ago. Here, the fluorescent lighting hangs lower, flickering more erratically, as if the room itself resists being illuminated. These spaces house strange, rusting machines: rows of monitors with shattered screens, panels of switches and knobs encrusted with grime, their functions long forgotten. In the corners, piles of discarded cables twist like synthetic entrails, their ends frayed.

The oppressive sameness of the halls creates a nauseating sense of disorientation. Every turn, every step feels both familiar and wrong, as though retracing steps already taken yet finding no escape. The sound of footsteps—your own or others'—echoes faintly, never quite matching their rhythm, as though something unseen walks the halls just out of sight.

It’s the perfect environment to make the subject lose hope and cast despair. It’s the worst place to be in this moment, I think.

The laughter actually starts with Del. A pregnant pause hemorrhages with a guffaw from his loud mouth, and that’s when I notice the blood on his teeth. Then it’s her turn, a thin, cackling kind of reedy gasping thing. Both of them are tittering now.

I bite into my sandwich. I imagine the reformatted, spongy texture is their flesh. My jaw works as they cackle. I smile.

Oh hey! You made it to the end!

Wow. Thank you.

Seriously, thank you so much.

Is this interesting so far? Do you want more of this? Let me know in reply, I read everything.

And hey, don’t be a stranger, I’m always interested in connecting with other writers and creatives, so let me know what you’ve got going on and maybe we could trade our work?

Anyway, that’s it for this week, I’ll be back next week with another fun slice of life from the very progressive, fun-loving Torturer.

If you like occult paranormal novellas that happen to also feature bloodline curses, maybe give my other book a try?

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