The very last things you remember:
The bitter backwash of cinnamon crumbs and whiskey, a furnace in your gut.
The sinister chime of a child’s laughter.
A scrawled note charring black as light is snuffed.
The very first thing you hear, ground coal and static:
“Wake him.”
The second:
Clarion bells, amplified to cataclysm, a vibrational assault that stuns you alert, threatening your organs with liquefaction, bones pulp and jelly.
The bells bring immediate, unfathomable pain, furious seams of amber congealing as vision returns.
Before you, your dulled reflection, upturned. Black blood threads your wild beard, above which collapsing eye sockets trend fused and purple.
Drooling lacerations seep towards the segmented rectangular portal beneath you, an accelerated march of reversed plasma, cruel downwards pressure on your abused cranium.
Regardless, your situational awareness training kicks in.
This is familiar.
You are strapped to an inverted rig in a cramped, spheroid chamber, throbbing crimson.
Sight resolves, pulls focus, even as the violence visited on your sensory organs escalates.
Beyond the atrocity of your reflection is an aperture staffed by the wraith-silhouettes of your captors.
There is no panic, only temporary relief when the bells’ affliction halts, eerie with resolve.
Then, a hiss – a torment in rubber vestments is upon you, High Priest of Inoculation.
Syringe withdrawn, payload transferred with a volcanic sting and another hiss as the wraith retreats.
Educated guess: C11H17NaO2S.
Sodium thiopental.
Truth stuff.
The ground coal voice is back, a horned apparition..
“We know you’ve been very, very bad, Nicholas.”
Familiar.
Your larynx, chewed rubber, evokes defiance.
“Let’s not be banal, Agent. We’re well aware of your abuse of the international finance networks; flagrant clandestine flights utilising classified tech to aide and abet your rogue state clientele…”
Slow and agonising, you’re flipped right way up, painting your vandalised bulk with Sumi-e whorls of viscera, creaking tendons detaching at the bone.
It hurts.
“You were the best. Recruited to the Air America operation, proving yourself with decades of loyal service, eventually given the honour of Gottlieb’s longevity serum and the rank you… enjoyed.”
Your larynx finds purchase on tortured syntax.
“F’nnnn… jak… guhncidal… scuh…”
Barely perceptible pause from the interrogator.
Your hippocampus throbs with a name, a previous relationship, inaccessible.
They continue.
“We feel it’s pertinent to inform you that your … colleagues have been summarily dispensed with. Do eight bodies constitute a mass grave? I suppose. We’ve been aware of your extrajudicial activities for some time now. You’ve gone rogue, Nick. Deploying top secret American assets to support your anti-Capitalist agenda? Covertly lifting urban populations and certain regimes out of poverty? We’ve noticed the patterns, the dates. Your cover’s blown, Communist. No wonder you choose the Red –”
You find that syntax as curdled laughter boils up, spit-flecked and defiant.
You found a name.
“Then what in the Hell do you want from me then, dammit, Don?”
Another pause, briefer this time:
“Oh Nick, this is not an interrogation. This is an exit interview.”
Then: “Open it.”
Iron organs grind beneath the segmented oblong portal below – there’s no use for the bells.
You know they don’t matter.
You’re going into The Chimney, feet first.
The rig you’re strapped to shudders and begins its descent, the oblong narrowing as The Chimney churns hungrily beneath you.
A foot lower, then two, then it’s your feet.
There’s heat down there, coming on quick, overtaking the agony of being pulped alive.
You’re jolly thick, a real meal.
Bones pulped, flesh melting as you’re incrementally refined, essentially coal (that’s for the bad ones) you chuckle once – ho – and the very last thing you hear is:
“Lapland base? Christen Agent XV. They have a busy evening ahead.”
It’s December 24.
To all a good night.