by John Llewellyn Probert

They had kept her locked up in the room for three days so far. Three days without food, without a bath, without talking to another living soul. A clear plastic bottle was pushed through a tiny slot in the bottom of the worn wooden door at regular intervals. While whoever did this never responded to her cries, the mere act had helped to relieve some of the anxiety which gnawed at her. At least someone knew she was there, and they didn’t want her to die.
    Not yet, anyway.
    She sat on the end of the bed and looked around her prison for the umpteenth time. Everything was so familiar now. Every crack in the scuffed maroon linoleum, every water stain spattered across the magnolia-painted ceiling, every tiny square of the pattern on the thin tartan blanket that covered her bed had been committed to her memory, whether she wanted them there or not.
     She gazed across to the single window which looked out over the street below. The glass was unbreakable. She knew because she had thrown everything in the room that was not bolted down at it, and no matter how hard she had pounded her fists against it her attempts to attract attention from passers-by had met with little success.
     Every now and then she would get up and pace across the room, determined to keep her limbs supple. She had no idea how often she did this because they had taken her wristwatch from her. She seemed to remember reading somewhere about how your muscles tended to seize up if you didn’t use them for a couple of days. Even if it wasn’t true, it was something to keep her mind occupied. In between looking at the floor, the ceiling, the bed, the window, and the tiny puncture in the wall above her bed where at one time a picture must have hung. She supposed she should count herself lucky. Not all kidnap victims were kept in rooms big enough to walk around in.
     She presumed she had been kidnapped. No-one had told her anything, but then that was always the way, wasn’t it? What happened next all depended on whether or not the ransom got paid. And her captors probably wanted to keep their distance so she couldn’t identify them.
     She ran a hand through her hair. The long ebony strands were starting to become unkempt and greasy. The room had no washbasin, and so her attempts at hygiene had been basic at best. At least there was a toilet, hidden behind the little door opposite the wall against which her bed lay.
     There was no curtain to draw across the dirt-encrusted window, and at night the orange glow of the faulty street lamp outside would drape a flickering square over the floor next to her bed. It was at night that her imagination always got the better of her.
     If she had been kidnapped, then she figured that whoever they were they hadn’t done their research very well. It had been all her mother and father had been able to do to scrape together the cash for her living expenses for her first term at university, so they were hardly going to be able to secure some exorbitant sum for her release. In the cloying darkness, she had repeatedly gone over the last things she could remember before waking up in this place. Each time she had screamed with the frustration of how little she could recall.
     She had only been at university two days. Two bloody days! Just about long enough to sort out a flat, register with the student union, find out her first tutorial was scheduled for the end of the week, and attend the freshers’ fair.
     She had heard about what the fair might be like from her big brother who was a third year sociology student at Leicester. Even so, when she had entered the huge concourse lounge teeming with students crowded around the myriad wooden stalls, she had felt completely overwhelmed.
     There seemed to be a society to cater for almost every interest, hobby, sport and religious persuasion.  She had skipped the religious ones to find herself confronted with the bright orange banner advertising the cocktail society, charmingly named ‘CockSoc’. Before she had had a chance to refuse, a plastic tumbler half filled with a fruity-smelling cloudy orange liquid had been thrust into her hand. It had tasted of weak orange squash mixed with something strongly alcoholic, and she had struggled mightily not to spit it out as a wild-haired lad in a stained shirt had explained that for just four pounds she would have free access to all meetings for a year. This would include the opportunity to try drinks just like the free one she was holding. She had done her best to smile as she shook her head.
     She walked past WindSurfSoc, SciFiSoc and RockSoc, where she felt quite sorry for the two headbangers sitting disconsolately behind a pile of Deep Purple and Def Leppard CDs and being ignored by everyone. There wasn’t a GothSoc, which was a shame. She might have considered joining that.
     She edged past the train-spotting society, which boasted members such as Andy Thermos-Flask as its president and Johnny Pullman as its secretary. She guessed this was one of the societies she had been advised against joining, ones which were put together solely for the purpose of getting a grant from the student union which could then be spent on several nights (or one particularly good night) of decadence and debauchery.
    She could remember stopping at the stand for the ‘Fine Art Society’. After due consideration, she decided not to sign up. Despite the fact that this was what she had come to university to study, she didn’t really want her social life clogged up with more of the same.
    From then on everything was a blank.
     She had tried. God how she had tried! But that was all she could remember. The next thing she knew she had found herself waking up in this room.
     She had gone through the rituals of checking the locked door, shouting, checking the locked door again, swearing, screaming, banging on the door, banging on the window, pausing for breath, searching the room for any others mean of escape, banging on the door again and screaming at the same time, before collapsing in despair on the narrow bed. Ten minutes later she had gone through the whole thing again. And again. And again.
     Eventually she had calmed down and tried to accept her situation. After all, they had done nothing to hurt her and the water she was given regularly was a good sign, wasn’t it? That must have meant that they didn’t want her dead.
    So what did they want her for?

• • •

The minibus rattled and shook, its wheels throwing up a cloud of dust as it made its way down the gravel road. As they came to the bend beyond which the lake loomed the middle-aged woman driving smiled to herself. It had taken many days of scouting to find a suitable location-one which met the artistic needs of the subject while being sufficiently out of the way that the meeting would not be disturbed. Appreciative noises came from behind her as the vast expanse of water came into view.
    She backed the bus as close to the edge of the water as possible, then put on the brake and switched off the engine. The side door of the little vehicle slid open and its fifteen occupants, all aged between forty two and sixty eight, tumbled out of the van. They carried with them easels, canvasses, and foldaway chairs, which they began setting up on either side of the vehicle, close to the lake’s edge so that they had a good view looking out over the vast expanse of water.
     When they were ready, two of the younger men present opened the rear doors of the minibus so that they could lift out the subject.
    She mumbled and groaned a little but didn’t struggle. This was partly because they had been starving her to slim her down. When she had first been picked out, the general opinion of the committee had been that while her hair and her face were almost perfect, she was much too fat. A couple of weeks on a water-only diet had sorted that out, and if it had left her rather weak, that had just made their other tasks easier.
     The other reason she couldn’t move was because of the aluminium frame to which she was pinned.
     The club president admired the workmanship of her members as the secretary and vice-president carried the girl from the bus. It was really quite ingenious. The frame had been constructed to be applied directly next to the girl’s skin and was held in place by fine wires which looped neatly over her limbs and neck. The high-necked ankle-length dress that three of the members had been working on oh-so-diligently for the last six months fitted very neatly over the whole apparatus of flesh and metal.
     As they carried her towards the water, the president noticed a dark patch around the right wrist. She sniffed. One of the wires must have dug in a little on that last rather bumpy bit of the ride. Thank goodness it wasn’t too obvious. She would hated to have had to abandon another meeting. Some of the club were still disgruntled about the cancellation of the Venus de Milo project last year. Admittedly, even she had been surprised at how much the subject had bled during the necessary preparations and although she had done her best, in the end she had realised that the whole thing was going to have to be called off.
     She dismissed such unpleasant thoughts from her mind and turned her attention to the intricate work that had been achieved with the girl’s hands, which had been fixed so that they couldn’t be moved. Hands were always a problem, but a little wiring and some fine stitching together of the girl’s fingers with very fine pale pink cotton thread had worked a treat.
     As the girl was lowered into the water, the president congratulated herself on another job well done. The idea for the art class had only occurred to her after she had seen an article in one of her son’s magazines regarding so-called ‘snuff’ movies.
     She was immensely pleased with herself for having been able to spot a gap in the market and cater for it so appropriately. The success of her venture was testified to by the fact that her little club was currently oversubscribed, with a waiting list of affluent individuals ready to take up available spaces when they became vacant.
     The girl was anchored to the shore with lengths of monofilament fishing line. As her face sank just below the surface, those assembled by the water’s edge waited with baited breath for the last few bubbles of air to escape from her lips.
     Then they started to paint.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN L PROBERT grew up reading every type of weird fiction imaginable. For many years he has been an admirer of the macabre stories of Maurice Level and Sir Charles Birkin, and 'Ophelia' is his own attempt to pen the kind of conté cruel at which they excelled.