Catatonia

Jack stood in front of the mirror. Try as much as he wished, he could not move his feet from the spot where they were firmly rooted. A lump formed on his throat. Suddenly, he could not talk. He was angry. It showed on his face and his palms got all sweaty. His reflection stared back at him sending a deluge of mental images into a rampage on his brain. Numerous pictures ran amok in his mind, one in particular wrestling the others to his full consciousness.

In this particular picture, he is lying on a bed. He cannot budge, just like he felt in front of the mirror. This was different though, his hands are chained. So are his legs.  A bright light appears. First it falls on a wall. Yes, there is a wall behind him. It suddenly hits him how dark the room is. He is not scared though. He wonders why. The light moves towards his eyes. He fears it must be someone directing it. It lands on his eyes. Gosh it’s bright! He twists an turns trying to evade its unpleasing effect, but he cant!

A scream, seems from an adjacent room. It’s a girl’s scream. Now he is sweating. He can hear his heart beat too. His breathing gains pace all together. And then, and then the screaming stops. A door is slammed and one is jerked open right in front of him. The room is filled with light. His fears are confirmed, it was someone directing the light. He looks odd. It’s a man. He is not so old, but his eyes are white. The eyes are barely open. Maybe just enough to form two slits on both sides above his nose.

“He must be in a trance,” he thinks.   

The man seems familiar. He swears he had seen him somewhere before but no, it couldn’t be him. A man walks into the room, his figure silhouetted against the bright light streaming in from the open door. Yes, it’s him! It’s Mark Harwood. From the porn videos he viewed on his laptop. What happened to him! He looks sick and in pain. The figure moves close to him and the air around increasingly grows musty. He throws up but his inclination does not allow the mess he makes to flow out. He can feel his own puke creeping into his stomach. He starts to cry. The figure starts to laugh. First a chuckle then a maniacal laugh follows.

Jack is now scared stiff. The figure turns towards the light a little and Jack notices the guy is stark naked. Suddenly the door slams shut and the room fills with bright crimson light. Jack notices he is chained to a bed with lifeless naked bodies, females with painful dead stares.  This time his glottis does not let him down, he lets out the mother of all screams.

“Oh God!” he sighs as for a first time he catches a glimpse of the man’s face. He isn’t even human! It’s a serpent’s head attached to a human’s torso with the arms and legs of a bear.

“Okay Jack, isn’t this a little farfetched with that wild imagination of yours. Snap out of it. You are scaring me,” he could hear that small voice like the one in your head as you read this scream out, and just as you are thinking, he could not break out of this chilling stupor.  

A girl appears from thin air. She looks thirteen not even a day older. She looks ecstatic. Like someone had just bought her a full year’s supply of ginger nut biscuits or maybe someone had promised her a Wayne Rooney signed copy of FIFA 2013 with a brand new Play station 3 and playing pads that vibrated every time you hit the crossbar. Okay, it wasn’t any of those but you get it, she was blissful.

So the girl looks around and four men, naked, start walking towards her. They don’t seem good intentioned at all. Jack feels the urge to go help the girl, but he is still chained onto the bed. The girl starts crying, little sobs then loud ear piercing screams follow. The men haven’t touched her yet. He still can save the girl, if only he could break loose from those chains. The girl looks at Jack, her eyes screaming for help. She stretches her arms towards him. Then a sound escapes her mouth.

“Daddy!”

It’s his daughter! Wait, he has a daughter! No time for speculation he thinks, he has to save her daughter. Then a thought flashes across his mind. Why had he not thought of this before?

“JESUUUUUS!!!!” he screams.

The chains snap, they leave etchings all over his body. The etchings burn slightly but he ignores them. He makes an ambitious dash towards the men, but like a ghost he swooshes right through them.  The girl’s screams intensify. One mans hand is resting on her silky hair.

‘NO NO NO NO!!!” Jack goes.

Then he fancies his chances with a second scream of the name he had heard numerous preachers talk of before. Yes, I’ll shout Jesus name!

“JESUS PLEASE HELP HER!”

This time a light zaps the four men right through their chests making them drop to the floor. Jack now notices the etchings are decipherable. They read something like ‘P O R N A D D IC T … H OOK E D…DE AD!’

Suddenly Jack felt cold. His eyes popped open staring onto a white ceiling with brownish patches formed from rainwater trying to form some sort of chromatography paper from the ceiling board. His mother’s wet handkerchief was wiping pearls of sweat from his face. He was trembling vigorously, a splitting head ache a testimony of his dreadful reverie.

That was it, the clarion call. He needed help.