The Super Death Club

1

The only man in the room’s eyes flashed awake violent and dazed as freezing water bubbled and spurted from his choking lungs out of his mouth. Starved for oxygen and fighting for his life his eyes and nose and mouth were flooded and filled with the liquid that he was ensconced in, his face and every single orifice burned and stung forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut and rise bravely into the unknown. He drew himself painstakingly out of the swoon’s prison with vigour and, like the victim of a head-on collision, crashed forehead first into the steel tap protruding from the front of the black bathtub. The steel tap, still as cold as the water itself, struck him in between his eyes, above his nose, sending him flailing backwards and underneath the murky pool of bathwater, in which he had found himself trapped. Once again, struggling with the intense cold and rush of water into his teary, red eyes, he efforted himself in a confusion to rise again. Peering upwards he saw two eerily familiar men looking with surprised horror down onto him. Both were bleeding from a relatively superficial, identical gash in between their eyes. The imprisoned man screamed and thrashed, only to see to his disbelief that these two men mimed him with supernatural accuracy.

“They’re me!” He shouted to the empty blurred room with a choked voice he did not recognise. “It’s a goddamnin’ fucking mirror!” He declared laughing, still attempting to gain his natural eyesight, as if it had not scared him like his sister Julianne used to do when they were young and she made a point of switching the light off when he was in the bathroom, leaving him bathed in the darkness that he felt creeping with impending doom in this torturous chamber. “FUCK!” At this the two other bloody twins cursed and copied their brother, their maker, simultaneously.

Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dum hum-drum...this ain’t no fun. He thought smiling to himself in complete agony. To confirm that he wasn’t going a-crazy or delusional he glanced up to see if the replicas did the same, they did, and he thought once again of the little jingle that he had instantly constructed. The blood cruising down from the cut on Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum’s forehead ran down the bridge of his own nose, into his nostrils, blotting out the dank smells that the ancient bathroom emitted, but were replaced by the painful swelling and fresh aroma of internal bleeding, the colour of rust came to mind, the taste of metal.

“What the fuck, move your fucking hands Arty, old buddy, old pal!’ He persuaded himself in desperation and vain, only to discover that his hands were bound, after all his struggling he had only noticed now. His body formed the shape of an arrow he saw as he assessed his current position by craning his neck up to view his hands clamped down at the wrists by metal wire, which had been wound in countless revolutions so as to ensure his captors that he would not be able to escape. The metal wire was rusty with age and had grazed and torn his tender wrists. His wrists that had not felt the glorious suicidal wrath of razor blades. He had always been a content teenager but after realising his situation there sprung a longing hope that he had at least once attempted elevated depression. Twisting and struggling did nothing but tire him and rape his wrists even more-so to the point where blood has started to trickle freely from his wounded veins. Defeated, he dipped down into the pitch dark water in the black bathtub and shook his head vigorously underwater feeling his hair relieve itself from its matted position over his bloodied and bruised face, in a foetal attempt to wash as much of the maroon blood as he could out of his face and mouth.