11.2

Craven was standing on the customer’s side of the faded faux marble counter.

When Solomon saw him, his heart sank.

‘Hello, Mayor Craven. How can I help you?’ he asked, perfectly wearing the mask of the ass-kissing worker.

‘You’re a bloody good actor, I’ll give you that,’ Craven shouted, flecks of spittle flying from his lips.

His eyes wrinkled up at the corners as he scowled.

Strange how they never reacted to his smiles like that, Solomon thought for a second.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Kindly tell Mr King what I’m bloody well talking about, Adam.’

The mayor’s face was one that Solomon would never get tired of slapping, but the expression he was pulling now was like a magnet to his fist. It took all of the self-control he possessed not to plant him one.

‘There were twenty-two baked potatoes on that plate before you went,’ Adam began smugly. ‘And when you came back there were only twenty-one.’

You jobsworthy bastard, Solomon thought, his blood on the verge of boiling.

‘So where did it go?’ Craven said, that cruel grin on his face again. He jabbed the tip of his cane into Solomon’s belly with each word: ‘Where… could… it… possibly… have… gone?’

Solomon begged himself not to react, but his temper spilled over.

‘I ate the fucking thing, alright? You’ve been starving me for damn near a fortnight for your own warped sense of amusement. So I ate one potato. You got me. Anyone would do the fucking same in this situation. And besides, they’re only going to be thrown away at the end of the shift.’

He stopped himself before he went on to call the mayor out on his own eating habits. And he was glad he did, for things might have been even worse had he not.

‘It’s the City of Dogs for you then,’ Adam said, slimier than month-old chicken fillets.

Solomon darted across the room and remodelled the right side of his face with his fist.

He was gurgling blood through a jaw broken in three places.

‘He’s right, you are going to the City of Dogs,’ the mayor grinned.

‘It’s gonna take more of you than this to stop me,’ Solomon said, lunging for the mayor.

‘Stop,’ Lou said, throwing an arm across Solomon’s vast chest. ‘You’re signing your own death warrant.’

But Lou wasn’t strong enough to hold Solomon back.

Solomon advanced on the mayor, who cowered like a hamster in the corner of its cage. He was so pathetic that Solomon almost didn’t hit him.

Almost.

He only hit him the once, his self-control kicking in a fraction of a second too late.

His fist sunk into the dozens of inches of gut the mayor had, sending him, wheezing and spluttering, to the floor.

Then Solomon turned and began shoving as much food down his neck as he could while the cullsmen came in and did their best to restrain him.

*

Solomon had gotten through five tuna sandwiches, three baked potatoes, half a family-sized corned beef pie and seven cullsmen by the time they managed to subdue him.

He would later look back and smile at these statistics, although he wished he’d gone for the pie first. That had been delicious.

By the time the remaining cullsmen – two to each limb and one at each end of his torso – had managed to wrestle him to the ground, the mayor came in.

He was limping slightly, his cane being employed for use rather than costume this time, his right hand still clamped to his gut. His face wore a pained grimace.

‘Doesn’t matter what you do to me, it was worth it to see that pained look on your fat fucking face,’ Solomon bellowed.

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‘I gave you a job. I looked after you,’ the mayor said, seeming genuinely hurt. ‘And this is how you bloody repay me.’

‘You’re full of shit,’ Solomon began, but cut off when one of the cullsmen pressed a bony forearm into his throat.

He continued his rant, but it was muted now.

‘You could have had it all,’ Craven lamented. ‘Three banquets a day. Job security. A nice suite in one of the tower blocks. But you threw it away. You’ll now be spending the remainder of your miserable bloody life in the City of Dogs.’

‘Well whatever the fuck that is I’m sure it’s better than looking at your piggy little face.’

The mayor came in close.

The smell of week-old body odour assaulted Solomon’s airwaves.

Craven pulled his hand back to his left cheek then slammed it down in a backhand strike.

It drew a few beads of blood from Solomon’s lip, but he seemed otherwise unfazed.

‘That all you got, fat man?’ he beamed.

The mayor let out a high-pitched cry and went to hit him again.

Solomon didn’t flinch.

‘You hit me again and I’ll feed you your own fucking bollocks,’ Solomon said, staring the mayor out.

The mayor grinned and slapped him again.

Solomon’s grin dwarfed his.

‘I just hope that was worth it,’ the mayor said. ‘Because the rest of your short life is going to be miserable.’

After the mayor and Solomon had argued a little more, one of the cullsmen had produced a small tablet which he thrust towards Solomon’s mouth.

He’d fought like fuck to avoid swallowing it; the first cullsman to come near his mouth had fell back, his stump of a finger spouting gore. But in the end three of them had clamped his jaws together.

A fourth had nipped his nose until he had to open his mouth.

Then the tablet had gone in.

Solomon bellowed curses, thrashing and snarling like a man possessed, but in the end the powerful sedative kicked in and rendered him docile.

‘Get that sack of shit out of my bloody sight,’ the mayor said, his frame shaking with the force of his adrenaline.

Between the team of cullsmen, they managed to get him out of there.

*

Solomon woke in darkness.

The smell of damp flooded into his nostrils. It smelt musty, as though he was underground somewhere.

Behind those smells lurked the twin scents of blood and decay.

Whatever was going on down here was certainly not something he wanted to be part of.

He glanced around, seeing only dim lights set into the walls.

He touched the wall and found it was stone, dripping with water.

Dark green moss grew on its surface.

It had a strange fluffy feel that reminded him of his childhood, messing about in the woods around the farm on which he’d grown up.

‘Anybody there?’ he called out into the darkness.

His own voice echoing back to him was the only reply.

He glanced around, his vision swimming a little from whatever the cullsman had popped into his mouth.

The taste of blood was still thick in his mouth and after a second he smiled at the memory of biting the cullsman’s finger off.

‘What’s the fat bastard doing down here?’ he muttered.

He looked behind him, where the only source of natural light was streaming in.

There was a climb up, maybe fifty feet before he reached the next level above.

‘No fucking chance I’m getting out that way,’ he said, failing to even gain purchase on the slippery, moss-covered walls.

He turned.

Didn’t really want to go this way, in spite of himself.

Now that his senses had returned, he realised that he had a weird feeling in the skin on his arms, legs and chest. Like his skin had been pulled tight. Stabbing pains hit him from his thighs and the flesh on his back.

He felt dried blood, crusty and itchy, covering his skin.

His brow furrowed.

‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked.

The light from above wasn’t enough to reveal much, but he saw a bit more light was coming from around the corner at the end of the corridor.

He shuffled along, hands feeling the walls for direction.

The moss-slicked rock almost betrayed him and made him fall a few times.

Not even at the first corner and I’ve already come close to breaking my neck, he thought with a scowl. Doesn’t bode well.

Now that the sedative was starting to wear off, he felt a sharp pain in the back of his skull.

It felt as though something was on there, flopping around a little.

Like something had been stuck to his skin.

Now the feeling was returning elsewhere, he noticed the same sensation on other parts of his body.

It felt like his skin had been pierced in several places.

He was deeply disturbed and confused by the situation and resolved to find out more, once he’d reached the corner where the light was better.

A human leg bone glinted in the corner and he almost tripped over this in his haste to find out what the fuck was up with his skin, but he avoided it at the last second.

The wall at the end of the short corridor had a crudely painted sign on it; ‘City of Dogs,’ and an arrow pointing to the left.

As he turned to the left, the light got better and he looked down in horror to see that his right arm had been skinned to reveal the meat beneath.

*

Solomon cried out as he realised his dire predicament, but a second, closer look revealed something arguably more disturbing; the raw flesh was not his – it was pieces of filleted meat that were somehow attached to him.

He looked closer and saw that thick staples were put through the meat in places, sealing it to his skin.

A tentative pull revealed that the staples were barbed and would probably have torn half his arm off before the meat came free.

His right arm was full from deltoid to wrist. The meat was wrapped round tightly, stapled in some places, superglued in others.

Again a pull of the glued parts revealed that this stuff was not coming off him easily.

There were even some thick fillets around the back of his head, the staples seemingly in far enough to scrape the base of his skull.

He cried out in dismay.

Apart from the area covered by his cobalt blue snowflake boxer shorts, he was wrapped tightly in a cocoon of fresh, bloody meat.

*

‘What the fuck have you done to me?’ Solomon bellowed to the cave walls.

Again his echo was the only answer.

He took a tight hold of one of the steaks on his belly and began to pull.

The pain was unbelievable, his skin coming with the meat. He’d rip half of his skin off removing it.

He shook his head, forlorn.

Whoever had done this, they sure knew what they were doing.

Reluctantly, he walked down the corridor.

He heard the barking of dogs off in the distance.

And he finally began to understand what was going on here.