Last I remember was leaving the bar. A little after close like always. As I ummed and ahhed over getting an uber or walking home, a van pulled up next to me. There was something funny on the side. “Squirts Plumbing: We’ll unclog that BM, AM or PM.” I think it said.
Next I know I’m strapped to a hard metal table in a basement, tipped forward but secure in place. It’s too dark to see much.
My captor enters. He’s… he’s just some bloke. He’s wearing a plumber’s tuxedo—dark blue stubbies with the matching blue shirt.
“I’m sorry I gotta do this,” he says as he hoists a sack onto a small table next to mine. “But if I don’t, everyone dies. You get it.”
I don’t, I think, but my mouth is gagged so I can’t tell him. He scoops out something from his large sack into what looks like a feed bag. It smells like Anzac bikkies. Then he fits the bag to my face and removes my gag. I go to speak and he smacks me in the nose, a sharp jab that stuns me.
“Save it. There’s only one way out. Ya chew this,” he says, shoving the bag into my mouth. I cough as the dry meal is pressed between my lips. “Don’t you fuckin’ swallow it either. You do and I’ll cut ya fucking guts open and feed it back to ya again.”
I can see in his eyes he means it. So I chew. Saliva and mushed grain ooze from my lips, and periodically my abductor forces it back into my mouth.
“This is Chicha,” my imprisoner says. “Ancient Incans did this to bypass the malting process. Saliva activates the amylase in the grain quicker than germination. Ya wouldn’t like germination. Keep chewing.”
I do. The grain is turning to a sweet fine paste.
“The others do it different. They get the grain into ya lungs, where it’s warm and damp and they let the little fellas sprout. People don’t survive the extraction process. That’s why I do Chicha.”
I chew until my jaw hurts, and then I chew some more. I fall asleep still chewing.
When I wake, my jailer is waving something beneath my nose. “This isn’t gonna be pleasant,” he says. My eyes sting at the smell. It smells like a just-cleaned public toilet, urine and ammonia combined into one unholy cocktail. I recoil, but I can’t move anywhere. My attacker pinches my nose and tips the drink into my mouth. I splutter—I can’t help it—and he growls at me.
“Don’t fuckin’ waste it! This is precision chemistry!” He says. But it smells like poison, tastes like poison, burns like poison—it’s only natural that I would try to stop. “I don’t have to do it this way you know! This’d be a lot easier if you were a corpse!”
The words shock me into compliance. I’ve drunk worse, I think, but it takes moments for me to realise the lie. The diarrhoea is immediate, my body instantly evacuating the cocktail and everything else along with it. My torturer pegs my nose closed and uses alligator clamps to seal my mouth, arresting the inevitable vomit in its journey up-and-out. A small space in the centre of my lips is the only place for oxygen to enter, and only then when no liquid is blocking it, so I desperately swallow my sick to stop from asphyxiating.
The nightmare goes on for hours. My oppressor mops beneath the table periodically. “Ask any brewer,” he says as he cleans. “They’ll tell ya 90% of brewing is cleaning.”
Surely this isn’t what they meant, I think, as I pass out from exhaustion.
A hard slap wakes me and another jug sits before me. It smells of the grain from before, but I can’t bear the thought of drinking something this man forces upon me again. I shift as he lifts it to my lips.
“Don’t fuckin’ squirm,” he says. “I haven’t killed ya yet, this isn’t gonna kill ya either.”
I have no choice. I drink the soupy mixture—it is the grain from before, mixed with my saliva, the sweetness stronger now, along with notes of pineapple, citrus and… cheese?
“You’ll like this bit.” my kidnapper says. “The lactobacillus in your guts eats the sugars in the wort you just swallowed. The God Spider likes sours. Kveik yeast finishes the brew.”
I fart, and it embarrasses me, a silly feeling considering what my victimiser has already cleaned.
And then I fart again. And again, and again. I burp, and I fart, and my stomach bloats. I hang from the table, gas escaping from both ends. My skin feels like it’s trying to lift from my muscles, like there’s air trapped beneath it, like I’m a balloon and something bad is happening.
My persecutor approaches with a large pipe with a wickedly pointed end. “I don’t want to do this, ya know?” he says as he scans my bloating body with his eyes. My vision blurs a little. “I just… I can’t stop, right? I mean, I’ve been doing it since I was a little fella, since my dad first got me to. I don’t know what I’d do without it.”
He plunges the sharp end of the pipe into my torso just below my right ribs. If I wasn’t strapped to this table, I’d fuckin’ kick his arse I think. It’s hard to focus, but I hear a wooshing from the end of the pipe. I look and my stomach is deflating, the pressure in me relieving. Ahh, this bloke’s alright I think, even though I know it isn’t true.
“How you feeling there mate?” my mate says. He seems kinda distant. I’m sweating heaps as he removes the clamps from my mouth. “I’m gonna let you go now.”
“That would be su-su-ssshuper,” I say, trying to sound proper. I actually feel really good. Maybe a little too drunk, but not the drunkest I’ve ever been.
“Great,” my bud says. “Just remember, if the God-Spider wakes long enough to finish her web, everyone dies.”
“Of courshe” I slur. I’m not an idiot, I think. Gotta stop the God-Spider from whatevering her thing.
I’m let off the table. My dismount is far from graceful, but I get down. My lips and nose feel raw, my arse hurts, but I actually feel pretty good. Too hot by a long shot, but happy. My pal is gone, over by the stairs, beckoning for me to join him. It’s too dark in this basement, I think, but I walk his way.
I take a step towards the stairs and miss the ground with my next. I lazily throw my hands out to brace for impact.
But impact never comes. I just keep falling. Not in slow motion, I plummet straight through the ground and down below the basement. Into a hole.
I fall for minutes, it seems, until I’m caught in something. Silk strands glimmer off some unseen light source. Ohhh, the web, I think, firmly suspended beneath the world. I can see the majestic breadth of its intricate, infinite construction. Looks pretty close to done.
Joabyjojo 