Item: Captain Jack Tracker in the Imperial Palace of Balfagor VII

The cell was small and empty except for the shadows which shifted and huddled in the corners. What light there was bled in sickly luminous hues of green, yellow, purple and gruesome red from the cold tiles, which upon too close an examination, revealed to my straining eyes the ghostly remains of unwholesome stains.

“Please wait here,” said the liaisons, in unison. Turning to look at them, I caught the tails of sly smiles slithering from their twin faces – once again blank and impassive as our eyes met.

“How long?” I asked.

In a monotone duet they replied, “Long enough.”

I wasn’t buying their calculated coyness, nor the eerie twin act, and I let them know as much by crossing my arms and applying my trademark smirk (for all the good it did in that shadowed purgatory). “Tell His Holiness that I’ll see him now. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna’ spend any time in this pit.”

Behind me, from the thickest of shadows in that fetid cell a slow, almost inaudible hissing issued; and the louder sound of something large and. . . wet unfolding from the darkness. A moist plop reached my ears and what might be described as my hackles rose straight up. I didn’t look but concluded, “And I won’t be damned.”

The liaisons, falling easily before my superior will did not hesitate. “Very well,” they intoned, “follow us.”

Stepping forward, I reached behind me, and keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead as the sound of a large, not unviscous mass shuffled loathsomely across the tiles, closed the door.

- Transcribed by Richard Cody, 2006 -