JACK

He felt the blade slice deep into his forehead, followed almost immediately by a relentless sawing as the top of his head was cut right off.

With it gone, he felt a tumble of memories pouring out of him with it; the cutting of the umbilical, being bundled into the eternal darkness of the back of that lorry, waking up in a pile of his brothers in a strange storeroom filled with artificial light and plastic music.

He’d been mauled, manhandled and thrown about and eventually wrapped up in a bag and brought to this terrifying place. He’d sat there listening to the mocking laughter of someone who sounded terribly young and heard some talk of knives and cutting, but he hadn’t become truly frightened until he’d heard the clatter of the stainless steel onto the surface next to him, and then the first cut came followed almost instantly by the appalling pain.

After what had seemed like forever, the sawing had stopped and with it the grinding forward and backward movement that had made each moment’s agony seem, if possible, even worse than the one before it. He couldn’t open any eyes or even a mouth. He wasn’t sure how much difference they’d have made to him now anyway, but he didn’t seem to have either, and yet the pain was so totally hideous and he couldn’t even scream.

As the latest hurtful vibrations ceased, the pain seemed to subside to just an angry, relentless throbbing and he felt a slight soothing coolness where the top of his head used to be.

Why were they doing this to him?

What was the point of it?

He heard the clatter of the blades as another implement was collected and braced himself for yet another wave of torment to begin. He didn’t have to wait too long as another blunter, rounder implement came into contact with the soft matter now exposed where the top his head used to be. The last thing he remembered as the agony overwhelmed him again was the laughter of some children as he fell into a merciful darkness.

After a while he woke. His insides felt empty, hollow even. He felt lighter than he ever remembered feeling in his life before. His innards felt like they’d been scraped clean, and there was a slight sense of loss where his insides used to be, but instead of hurting there was a kind of numbness as if someone had taken away his entire nervous system but somehow managed to leave him behind in essence. “Perhaps” he thought, “where there’s no sense, there really is no feeling.”

And yet he did feel. He felt almost spiritual, and strangely euphoric. He kept wondering why he was still conscious, still here, and so he wasn’t really paying much attention to what was going on around him. He was just starting to come to terms with his new state of being when they stuck another knife into him.

The light poured in around the tip of the blade and suddenly he could see them, chiselling away at him with those manic grins on their strange little faces. This was new. He could actually see. He’d never been able to see before. He’d always got by using his wits and his senses, but this ocean of colour pouring into his mind was breathtaking. There was so much of it he felt like he wanted to shut it out. He wanted to blink, but found that he couldn’t because they were still poking that knife into his eye.

Eventually they stopped, and he watched them as they sat back and studied him with a look of strange satisfaction. There were three of them, he thought. A mother and two of her young, but he didn’t have too long to observe them because very soon the blade was back in the older one’s hand and she was hacking away at him again and even more light was soon pouring into his head as another eye opened up in the same agonising manner.

Another moment of relief came when they paused again. Although he wasn’t sure whether it helped, he now had stereoscopic vision. All that seemed to do was make that knife seem even more terrifying as it was waved about in front of his face.

And then they started to hack at him again!

He found that he couldn’t move his eyes though, so he couldn’t get a good look down, but they seemed to be cutting a huge opening right under his eyes, something wide and grinning and full of very sharp teeth…

He had a sinister thought, “They might come in useful.”

And then it all just finished. They all stood back to stare tauntingly at him and admire their butchery. They smiled at him and he had no choice but to smile right back at them whilst glaring with an unblinking gaze. What was that they were calling him? Jack something or other? Well, it was as good a name as any for him now, he supposed.

They seemed to have decided to leave him alone for now. The knives had all been put away and pain had started to subside, so he was on his own and able to take in his surroundings. Sight was a new experience for him, and he started to realise quite how useful it might be. Over here he could see the drawer that they’d put those awful, hateful knives into. In the corner, he spotted a doorway leading to somewhere dark and forbidding, and over there he could see what probably used to be his insides in a pan, quietly bubbling away.

Pretty soon he had a fairly good idea of where everything was.

Eventually they all came back, now dressed in strange ceremonial outfits, which managed to make them appear even more sinister than they had earlier. He watched as they slowly served up and began to eat his innards. He kept watching, broodingly as they devoured the better part of him, and he was still silently watching when the older one lit a small fire and, unbelievably, as if he really hadn’t suffered enough already that day, carried the tiny flame over to him and put it right inside his head. What were they trying to do now, roast him from the inside out as a final indignity?

Oh! How he hated them, how he wished he could pay them back for what they’d done to him.

They carried him outside what he presumed to be their home and placed him on a ledge with a view of the street and they headed off out, just leaving him there, alone. The cool and dark of the evening started to relax him and helped to clear his mind to think and to plot. After a little while he really started to appreciate the warmth glowing inside him and began to absorb its life-giving heat.

Unfortunately though, the smoke was really starting to bother his eyes.

He blinked.

Then he realised that he had blinked.

He blinked again, more deliberately this time.

Then his wide mouth with its jagged rows of sharp little teeth broke into the broadest of smiles.

He was very sure that they’d all be coming home soon.

Jack could wait for them.