Confinement – by Monika Hocks

The eyes blinked once, twice, and then narrowed before disappearing entirely as the hatch was slid shut.

‘Huh. Well, at least someone’s around.’

Donnie heard the muffled beep of someone using a digital keypad and then a door he hadn’t noticed opened to admit a fat, pasty-faced man. His eyes matched the ones in the slit, although now they regarded Donnie with something bordering on malicious delight.

The door swung closed behind the newcomer and Donnie instinctively stepped back. Men wearing uniforms and brandishing stun-rods invariably meant trouble. The guards face looked awfully familiar, as so many faces did, but Donnie couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

‘Shut your trap, arse-hole, or you get intimate with Mr Pointy,’ said the guard, who glared at him with open hostility.

To illustrate, he pumped the stun-rod up and down in the air a few times. Donnie’s hands automatically flew to his butt. What had he gotten himself into this time?

‘I’ve waited a long time for this, Penfolde,’ said the guard.

The trick, decided Donnie, was to tread lightly.

‘Now, now.’ He raised his hands in what he hoped was a placatory, non-threatening way. ‘There’s no need for unpleasantness. We’re both civilised human beings.’

Yet he knew, the moment he’d said it, that the guard was anything but. The combination of Donnie and the stun-rod had planted a seed in his mind that, like a pig scenting truffles, he planned to pursue.

Donnie watched with an ever-increasing sense of panic as the man advanced. Mottled red blotches appeared on the guard’s cheeks and his tongue began to dart in and out of his mouth in a manner most foul.

Donnie had seen that expression before, although he was usually wearing a skirt at the time…

A small, obviously unhinged part of Donnie’s mind thought, My god, but I must be handsome, while another, one a little more cold and calculating, took in the scene with calm detachment.

When the guard was close enough for Donnie to smell what he’d had for breakfast (bacon, eggs, and a double serve of sausage) his hands shot out, grabbed hold of the stun-rod and before the guard could react had brought it up and smashed it right into the pig-mans surprised face.