Kirani

The office was dead quiet, the only sound for the last hour had been the soft click-clack of my keyboard. Finally, with a sigh of relief, I hit 'save' one last time. "That's everything," I muttered to the empty room. I shut down the PC, and the sudden silence felt heavy, making the large, dark office feel even more cavernous.

Grabbing my coat and bag, I hurried out, my footsteps echoing unnervingly in the empty hallway. It was the same every night I worked late, a ghost in my own workplace. The real pressure was the train schedule. If I missed the 11:42 PM, the last one, I’d be sleeping on the lumpy office couch.

To save a few precious minutes, I ducked into the narrow alleyway that cut behind the main street. It was a stupid choice, I knew. The air turned damp and smelled of old garbage and rain-soaked brick. Halfway through, just as I could see the glow of the streetlights at the other end, I heard a faint scuff of a shoe behind me. Before I could even turn my head, I felt a dull, heavy thud at the base of my skull. The world didn't just go black; it tilted sideways and dissolved into nothing.

My head cleared just enough to register the restraints. I was pinned, leaning forward against a wall, my body hidden in darkness. But I wasn't cold all over. A strange, specific draft chilled my lower back and legs. I was bare from the waist down, held in place.

Forced to stare at a small screen in front of me, I saw the live feed of a brightly lit booth. In the center of the far wall was a square hole, and protruding from it was… my own ass. But it had been painted.

With a sickening, artistic cruelty, my own skin had been transformed. My cheeks were the drooping, sad jowls of a bulldog. Cleverly applied paint created sorrowful eyes, a wet-looking nose right above my crack, and floppy ears that extended onto my upper thighs. I was a living, breathing piece of grotesque art. A bead of slick fluid, a product of either fear or some forced stimulation I couldn't remember, dripped from the center of the 'face'.

Above my obscene display on the wall, there was a cheerful photo of my face. Beside it, hanging from a hook, was a large, bone-shaped vibrator. Then, I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a token being inserted into a slot. On the screen, I watched in frozen horror as someone entered the booth. He stared directly at the 'dog face'—at me.