90 Deg. 5 H. II – XII

When he snapped his eyes open the pale strip lights seemed obnoxious. He swivelled his eyes around in his sockets. Same blank walls, same faceless gloss floor. He was on his back. He took a deep breath. His chest hurt. Something caught in his throat. He sputtered, retched. Viscous fluid bursts from his throat onto his tongue. He blinked tears from his eyes. The fluid rolled along and around his roiling tongue. The taste registered. He rolled onto his side with a groan, spat blood onto the floor, watched the splatter catch the dim light and devour it. He ignored the sticky viscous string of red saliva that hung from the corner of his mouth and clung to his cheek. He dropped his head, let his temple rest against the floor, grateful for the coolness on his pounding head. Directly ahead was another faceless T-junction. He turned his attention to the splatter on the floor again. It didn’t do anything so, with a resentful grunt, he hauled himself upright.

On his feet, he paused and stood gathering his grinding head. A brief crackle of noise slashed over his eyes and then faded. The unwell light of the hallways reasserted itself. He shambled around the righthand corner, bracing an arm against the wall and wiping the spittle from his face with the other hand. He staggered drunkenly forward and tried to focus. The hallway ahead was a long, characterless pipe of unbroken wall panels. Far ahead there was a jaundiced splotch. It was the first semi-identifiable thing he’d seem in too long so he dragged himself towards it.

He made his stumbling progression along the hall, trying not to fall over or pass out again. But it was progress. He became aware that the strip lights overhead were buzzing. At the same time the splotch at the end of the hallway clarified itself into a poster board. A pale shade of sickly yellow on which was a large black eye. Taken aback, he stopped and stared at it. It stared back. He frowned, blinked. Then slowly, on unsound legs, he went to it.

The hallway seemed to narrow as he tottered forwards. His arms never touched the walls, but the growing pressure put a lead weight in his stomach and made his head pound. The grinding sensation amplified, his skull a tectonic mass of shattered fragments scraping against one another, pushing and pulling, sliding over and under, rasping across the soft grey pulp of his brain. His jaw started to ache and he realised he’d been clamping his teeth like a vice. The buzzing seemed louder, the lights harsher and his breathing grew more shallow and more rapid.

And the eye stared. It was just a foot away now and it stared. It was just a foot away. It stared. And he could not look away. The black stylised icon blazed against the sickly pale yellow engulfed him. He could no longer see the silver outline of the board the panel was set into. Nausea churned in his stomach but his throat constricted, his windpipe closed on itself, some low-volume distant part of his mind screamed that he would choke to death on his own vomit. His vision swam but the eye remained clear. It did not blink. He willed it to with a ferocity that put beads of sweat on his blood-smeared brow. It did not blink. It stared at him. And he could not look away. Anything to stop the staring. His skin fizzled, he thought it would split, he thought his skull would erupt. Some grinding force was devouring him. He wanted to scream but his sealed throat ignored him. The low-volume distant bit of his bit-crushed consciousness screamed again, screamed that he should run, escape, be anywhere but in that hallway, in front of the eye. But his legs would not hear. The thigh muscles stiff and contracted, knees locked to splintering, calf muscles frayed. And the eye stared at him. And he could not look away.

“Caleb?”