Social Club

I tried very hard to escape it, but in the end it caught up with me so completely that it nearly smothered me to death. Imagine a full sized bed pillow, and then imagine someone really strong, like Hulk Hogan or Mark Latham or Mighty Mouse, and they squeezed this pillow between their hands as hard as they could. Condensed it into as small an amount of space as possible… all the gaps between the fibres inside the pillow would disappear and the pillow would be the size of a small fruit, only heavier and denser and tasting exactly like a squashed pillow. And then this pillow would be stuffed down your throat so that you choked on it. That’s how I felt.

I should start at the beginning.

It was a normal day like any other. I was driving to work in a moderately average mood as it was the middle of the week, listening to Hope FM. It was raining quite hard, and I am quite a nervous driver at the best of times so this didn’t bode well for me. As the wipers squeaked back and forth amidst the torrents of rain, opening the briefest recurring view of the road before me, I glimpsed a black shape as it came bolting out in front of me. Naturally I slammed on my brakes and tried to veer to one side, all at once, but the wet weather caused me to slide and I heard a muffled squeak as my car hit something. Eventually I came to a stop and I tumbled out of my car to see what I had hit.

It was a black poodle, and it was very dead. I panicked. What should I do? I couldn’t just drive on, the poor animal was partially pressed under my wheel. A few times I made to try and move it but snatched my hands back before touching it. The idea of touching it revolted me. I felt very cold and miserable and decided to just get back in my car and get out of there.

“What have you done to my dog?!?” A woman suddenly came at me, shrieking and shaking in the rain.
“It… ran out in front of me” I said meekly.
“Gypsy, Gypsy, Gypsy!” the woman sobbed, she fell to her knees on the road in front of the dead dog, not caring that her dress was being ruined.
All I could say was, “Sorry”.
She looked up at me, her eyes red and large, and her voice rose out of her like a deep, retching gasp, “You’re not sorry at all! Look what you did to her, my poor Gypsy. You killed her!”
I was gobsmacked, I began to protest. I shrugged my shoulders and denied it, said it was an accident, blamed it on the weather. I was halfway through my rambling explanation when I felt something heavy fly into the back of my head and everything went black.

When I awoke I could no longer feel the rain on me. I was cold and soaked to my skin, my clothes felt heavy and cloying. It was very dark but when I looked up I could see a glimpse of light, a little crack in the sky. I don’t know how much time passed but it didn’t take long to realize that I was somewhere without a door. I was in some kind of very small circular room made of stone. I sat there shivering for a while until the crack of light in the sky erupted into an opening and I saw the face of a very grim looking man peaking down at me.
“You done and killed our poor Gypsy you murdering bastard”, his voice echoed down to me, clear as cold winter glass.
“I… I didn’t”, my teeth chattered in my skull.
The woman’s face appeared next to the man’s, “You did, you did. I saw it. You murdered her”.
“It was an accident”.
The woman started crying again, “We loved her, you prick. She was our little gypsy”.
“You gonna pay for what you did to our dog mister” said the man.
“What are you going to do to me?” I tried to keep my voice brave. I wouldn’t let my fear overtake me.
The man just scowled and disappeared again. The woman kept looking down at me for a while longer, just shaking her head. Then all was black again as they replaced the lid on my little circular room.

Time passed strangely. I had only my thoughts to keep me company... I played counting games, thought of my favourite episodes of Blue Heelers, imagined what it would be like to fight a kangaroo. I did everything I could to keep my fear at bay but eventually, as I mentioned earlier, it won out. The fear rose up from around me and poured itself down my mouth, choking me and paralyzing me completely. I was going to die.

I think I must’ve fallen asleep. I awoke to the sound of activity above me and I looked up to see the circle of light that led out of the hole. There was no one there, just daylight. I thought I could see fluffy white clouds.

I heard a clanking sound as something shiny flew over the edge of the opening and came clattering down into the circular room. It landed just next to my foot, I reached out and held it up to see what it was. It was the side mirror from my car. I could tell because it had a funny scratch on it from one of my poor parking jobs. Why would they chuck down a mirror? I was looking at the dishevelled but still handsome face in it when I heard a distant, low sound. I looked up to see something large, black and heavy roll over the edge.

I made a senseless yelping sound and tried to press myself flat against the wall as much as I could. The tyre clobbered against the side of my head and just sort of flopped to the ground next to me. My ear rang and my head felt hot from where it hit me. The ringing had just started to die down when two more tyres came tumbling down from above.