Hellbound

He lifted the smooth box to his ear and shook it roughly. From what he could tell, it had no moving parts. He growled in frustration.

It had taken Draco years to find this box. Sure, it had taken only moments to steal it, but that was not the point. It was his now and he had every intention to solve it.

What wonders would the box show him? Pleaures beyond his most wildest imagining? That is what he had come to believe. That is what Kircher had told him.

For years Draco wandered the world. Pleasures of the flesh had overtaken his every waking moment since his adolescent days. Unfortunatly, like everything else, his expectations began to surpass the actual events. Soon, every coupling, every whore, was a waste of his time. Basic lust, messy release and then nothing again. That was when he had heard about Lemarchand's Configuration.

There were rumours at first. Isn't that the way it always starts? Rumours of a puzzle, that when solved, would let you experience the very definition of pleasure. The world would open up to you and swallow you up, and you would forget your very being in a heavenly world. Or so they said in Hong Kong.

It was not until Draco had burnt out his life and money yet again that he remembered the story of the puzzle box. He was in France at the time, in the world of Muggles and alone in his wonderings. Of course he figured the puzzle to be made by a wizard and that Draco's knowledge would open up the box for him in a matter of moments.

So he searched. He searched wizard bars and streets. Back alleys and gutters. He asked after Lemarchand the puzzle condurer. But no one knew. Nor would they help. To them, he looked like a vagrant, a rat not fit entry into their clean world. If only they knew he was. Once was...

His problem was that he only looked in his world. The world of spells and potions. He never thought to think of the muggle world. His blood was still pure in his heart and theirs still tainted by an unseen sickness that could never be washed off. It was only by chance that he stumbled into that bar.

It was raining heavily, the drops feeling like stones on Draco's skin. He just had to get shelter, wait it out and he didn't really care where. He did not really care about everything at this point.

The bar was shameful. Noisy and messy, the dull roar that met Draco's ear as he walked in almost covered the noise of the rain outside. He grimaced slighty and took a seat by the bar. The barmen gave him a dirty look as he sat down but said nothing. Draco ordered the cheapest thing he could get, a beer, simply so he would not get kicked out. He sat there and he held his beer and he waited for the storm to pass.

"You look lost?" a voice said next to him. Draco didn't bother looking up, he just nodded his head and kept staring across the bar.

"You look like you are in need of something?"

Again Draco did not reply, this time pointing to his full beer.

"No no, my friend. I am not offering to buy you a drink, nor am I trying to hit on you. I am a peddler, you could say, who offers some rare finds to the precious few who are worthy."

At this Draco looked up at the man. He spoke with a thick French accent and looked worse then Draco did. He was skinny and twitchy, nervous in his manner but fearless in his speech. What was he offering?

"Who are you?" Draco asked forcefully, turning in his feet to face the man. He just laughed and scratched his speckled face.

"My name, today, is Kircher."

Kircher to Draco, however many other names to whoever else had stumbled across him. That Draco understood. He was not meant to know this man. He was just meant to know about the box.

Kircher told him everything he knew about the box, the puzzle that so few had conquered. He did not tell Draco how he knew he wanted it and, to tell the truth, Draco did not care. It was fate or luck or a precise mixture of both that lead him into that bar and next to Kircher.

Draco looked around the room he had worked ceaselessly to prepare. Soon they would be here - the ones Kircher had called the Cenobites, theologians of the Order of the Gash. They, summoned from their experiments in the higher reaches of pleasure, to bring their ageless heads into a world a rain and failure.

Draco had seen similiar puzzles, of course, and had beat them all. But this was beyond anything he had ever seen before. The Frenchman had bought a perverse logic that was entirely his own. It there was a system to the puzzle, Draco had failed to find it. It was only after hours, possibly days, of trial and error did his labours bear fruit; an almost imperceptible click, and then a segment of the box slid out.

Draco discovered two things.

The first was that the interior was brilliantly polished and his reflection was caught in the dark lacquer. The second was that Lemarchand, who had been a maker of singing birds, had constructed a musical mechanism, that was tripped upon opening the box. The song was a combination of the commonplace and spectactular, a juxtaposition Draco was soon to think about.

Encouraged by his success, he worked all the harder to pull and peg subsequent sections. Everytime a new piece was aligned, the song grew, more elements brought to the sombre melody until one could not remember the initial tune.

Pulled from his fevers by a grim sound, Draco realised that bells had begun to toll. When they had started he could not have said but Draco knew no church would ring its bell at such an hour. As each minute passed and each part was solved, the toll grew louder until it drowned out the growing music. Draco looked at the box and realised it was almost complete and with that revelation he became afraid. But it was to late to quell that fear. They were coming. There was no time left for regret.

As Draco fitted the last piece in, as Lemarchand's trick became solved, he could sense the room changing. The doorway was opening now to pleasures no more than a handful of humans knew existed, let alone tasted - pleasures which would redefine the limits of sensation, which would release him from the dull round of desire, seduction and disappointment which had dogged him from late adolescence.

The candles that lit the room dimmed and brightened; brightened and dimmed again. It had taken on the rhythm of the bell, which had rose to an unfathomable level. The world that he had occupied for the last twenty-nine years never existed, only the rise and fall of the light and the constant toll of the bell. By the changing illumination, he could see the walls slowly fade away, a bit each time. Beyond he could see the world from which the bells rung and he knew his saviours were on their way.

Then the wall was solid again and the bell fell silent. The candles flickered out. Draco stood in the darkness, nervous of the confrontation that was about to be played out.

And then, light.

It came from them, from the quartet of Cenobites who now occupied the room. Their light was charmless and their faces distressing to set eyes on.

All were grusomely disfigured, their anatomy a picture of torture. Their skin was sliced and punctered, pale to the point of blueness. There was a smell which they tried to hide with vanilla but nothing could disguise the stench. Draco did not see joy, or even humanity. He had not expected this.

What had he expected? Oh, the wonders his mind could dream.

He thought they would come with woman, oiled and waiting for him in a perpetual state of arousal, every crevice his for the taking, countless virgin whore ready to take him to place of undreamt of ectasies. He expected sighs and languid bodies spread around him like a living carpet. The world would be forgotten in their arms.

But, no. No woman, no sighs. Just these sexless things, with their corrugated flesh.

"What do you want?" one asked him, his words currupted by the disfigurement of his mouth.

Draco paused. Of course he knew what he wanted but how to say it?

"Pleasure," he replied. "Kircher told me you knew about pleasure."

"Oh we do," said another. "Everything you have ever wanted."

"Yes?"

"Of course. Of course. What have you dreamed?"

Again Draco paused. How do you articulate what his libido had created? He did not have a chance to answer.

"This world, it disappoints you."

"Pretty much."

"You're not the first to tire of it. There have been others."

"Not many," the third added.

"True. A handful at best. But few have dared to use the box. Men like yourself, hungry for new possiblities."

"I'd expected -" Draco began.

"We know what you expected. We understand to its breadth and depth the nature of your frenzy. It is uttery familiar to us."

Draco grunted. "So, you know what I've dreamt about. You can give me pleasure."

The Cenobite smiled, its lip curling back horribly. "Not as you understand it," came the reply.

Another spoke, "Your most treasured depravity is child's play beside the experiences we offer."

"Will you partake in them?" the first asked.

Draco thought of the world he would be leaving, the dissatisfying world. There was nothing left to go back to. Not now. This was his ambition.

"Show me," Draco answered.

"There's no going back. You do understand that?"

Draco was getting impatient. "SHOW ME."

They needed no further invitation. No sooner had he said the words did they disappear. For a moment Draco was confused but he was not kept waiting for very long. The light had disappeared with them and through the blackness Draco could hear the tinkling of metal against metal. Sweat beaded on his brow and his hands shook with anticipation.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. Or was it minutes? Time seemed to stop. It was when he expected nothing that the first hook pierced his skin. His scream ehcoed back into his body, the hook attached to chain, pulling at his pale skin. Blood rose up but did not drop. That part was saved for later. A second hook attached, then a third, until Draco had lost count. All he knew was that the pain was unspeakable.

He had made a mistake. A terrible mistake. Kircher had lied to him. There was no pleasure in the air; or at least not as humankind understood it.

A face appeared before him. It was the Cenobite who had not spoken. Draco tried to talk, to beg or scream but thre was nothing but the pain and his regret left inside him. Draco could see it, no *she*, drapped over a pile of dismembered head, past victims of course. Her clothes were gone, her legs were opening, she was inviting him. Draco had never felt so disgusted in his life.

She rose from her throne, and walked over to him.

"Are you ready," she asked.

Draco felt tears fall from his red eyes and drip slightly to the floor. That seemed answer enough for her.

"Good, then we shall begin."