The Sleeper

The sway of the train woke me. I shut my eyes, just for a second I thought and time jumped forwards, or was it sideways, as it does when you are sleeping, a kind of time travel. I blinked, blinded by the light gushing through the window at me. It had been overcast when I shut my eyes, typical English weather. We race through a station, I don’t notice the name but glimpse a missing person’s poster; the same one I had seen at my starting stop, where do they go these missing people?
I shuffle in my seat and catch the eye of the man sitting directly opposite me, a small weasel faced man with straw coloured hair and leathery skin; he quickly looks down at his Tablet, pretending as seasoned commuters do, that he has not noticed me. I look past him. A few rows down the carriage, also facing me is a tall dark haired man in a smart suit, he is absorbed by his phone into which his headphones are attached. As I look at him I notice that there is something strange about his hand, the one holding the phone. His middle finger is unusually long. Abnormally long. His middle finger seems to me to have an extra joint, or maybe two. He flexes it, wrapping it around the phone then straightening it out extending it to its full freakish length. He looks up and again I am caught out, this time it is me that quickly averts my gaze, I am embarrassed, I bet people are always staring at that finger.
That's when I notice the smell. I check my shoes. It is a pungent sweet smell like a cheap heavy perfume but with an accompanying stench of something rotting, it creeps up my nose and lodges there. I put my hand to my mouth trying to keep it out; the sweetly perfumed scent takes over again as if someone is trying to camouflage the rotting odour. I look around at the man next to me and the one opposite; to the long fingered man, they seem oblivious to it.
At that moment my head fills with a deafening noise, thunder echoing round my head. It seems to come from within me rather than from outside. I move my hands form my nose to my ears, the odour forgotten for a moment. My heart rate picks up speed, for the first time I feel that something is wrong, seriously wrong with me. I look again to see if the others have noticed the noise but none of them seem to have. That’s when I notice the hair of the man opposite me. It doesn’t quite fit his head. It is higher at the front than it should be though not receding exactly. It is long at the base of the neck. Behind each ear is a gap, the gaps are uneven, the one on the right is larger, higher and the flesh in the gap is puckered and blistered. Why didn’t I notice that before?

The noise distracts me; it is a crunching noise like bones being broken, coming at regular intervals now. I turn to look at a woman in the seat behind me. She is eating an apple, she holds it in her hand close to her mouth, the juice is dripping down her chin onto her skirt. She looks me straight in the eye and smiles a grotesque deranged smile that stretches across her face; a gash reaching almost ear to ear revealing jagged discoloured teeth, incongruous with her top end hair cut and pearl necklace. I cannot take my eyes from her. She raises the apple to her jaws and crunches down on it, the sound explodes in my head and I let out a whimper. What’s going on? What’s going on? I am begin to panic, my senses fizz, my heart pounds. The stench hits me again and I think I am going to vomit. I drag my eyes from hers and as I do the man next to me leans towards me bringing his face close to mine I am frozen with fear, his face shifts beneath the skin, his eyes roll back he begins to speak, fetid breath jamming into my face
“Don’t worry it won’t hurt”

Before I can react he brings his hand up and touches my forehead. A shudder runs down my body, he is right it doesn’t hurt.
I try to scramble to my feet, ready to run but of course, of course I cannot move. I let out a scream but make no sound, I am completely paralysed apart from my eyes. The cruelty of it. I am allowed to watch it all happen. He begins with my little finger, raising it to his mouth he takes a few delicate nips, then bites down, I feel nothing but see my nail split beneath his teeth. Blood springs out splashing onto his face, he watches for my reaction but the is none, not on the outside anyway but inside I let out a cry stop please stop.
The man in front of me stands up, his hair or wig or whatever it is has shifted, he stands over me and I watch because I cannot stop watching as the papery skin on his face peels away leaving a burnt shell of a face behind, his teeth still visible, he seems to bubble and I can see he has no arms. How did I not notice that he has no arms? My mind continues to try and rationalise my situation. I am asleep, I never woke up, it is not real. The man next to me has started on my second finger now, I can hear my bones shatter but can do nothing. Not wanting to watch the carnage being meted upon my helpless body I look away and out the window, we are pulling into Waterloo, we will be there soon, someone will save me. In the distance the London eye shivers as if being hit by a strong wind, the pods glowing gently against the now darkening sky. As I watch I notice a change in the shape of the pods, they are pulsing, now I know I am dreaming, as the man with no arms melts to his non-existent and knees and begin to eat through my shoes, ripping strips of flesh from my calves, my knee caps exposed. I watch the pods explode one by one. No, not explode; hatch, from each one bursts and creature I cannot even begin to describe, wings teeth, horns, creatures from another world, from hell. What has happened to me? Am I asleep, I don’t think so, I feel awake although I feel nothing. My body shudders uncontrollably as lumps of flesh fall to the ground, my own flesh I realise, my hair is ripped from my scalp and drops into the pool of blood on the floor, I am wracked by convulsions. If I am awake I am not in any world that I recognize, how did I get here, caught like a rabbit in a trap? I look upwards and see the carriage itself is no longer metal but raw boiling blood and pulsing veins, a living thing. The devil creatures are heading for the train the air is filled with their screams, or are they mine? I can’t tell. I am pulled violently from side to side, confusion blunting my panic now, as my captures devour me, blood runs into my eyes but still I feel nothing. We pull into the station and the lights go out.