The Banquet

Jason took a long time to come out of the deep, coma like sleep, but slowly he began to stir. He had no idea that for more than seventeen hours he had been dead to the world, and as far as the world was concerned, he might as well have been. His family and friends had long since stopped caring about him.

Jason moved very slowly because the top of his head was aching like mad. He blinked twice and thought his brain was going to explode, and on top of that, there was a bitter aftertaste in his mouth from the night before. His tongue reminded him of an old dirty mothball that had been dipped in dishwater.

Jason blamed it all on the booze, but it didn’t stop him from wanting another drink very badly. He had joined Alcoholics Anonymous a long time ago and was considered by many to be a lifelong member. At first Jason thought that he was having a bad case of the D.T.’s but quickly sensed that this was something else entirely. Drunk he might be, fool he wasn’t. As he opened his eyes and began to focus, he came to realise that he was in some kind of metallic chamber. It seemed vast, and he thought he could hear voices in the distance, and what possibly could have been music, but the sound was too fuzzy to make out. The room was dark, but not what he called pitch black, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloomy light he could make out shadowy figures all around him. Somebody, or something, was out there.

"Jeez, where the hell am I?" thought Jason, trying to keep a grip on reality.

"Have I been kidnapped? Who the hell would do such a thing, and why?" he asked himself. "I never had any money. I’ve never had any friends. It just wouldn’t make sense to kidnap me" he told himself quietly, trying to think of some barman somewhere that he had overstepped the mark with.

Jason could remember leaving the tavern and staggering along the tree lined avenue to his home. A journey he had made a thousand times. And then - nothing. The harder he tried to remember, the more his head hurt. After a while he decided to stop trying.

There were voices. Strange voices in more than a dozen different languages. They sounded as if they were asking questions, probing, trying to find out what had happened. Jason decided to say nothing for the time being because he had no idea where he was. He couldn’t see the point of adding to the confusion. Nothing looked or sounded familiar and there was a strange, sweet, aromatic smell in the air. The only thing Jason was certain of was that he was afraid. So afraid, he could almost smell the fear. It was either that or the stench coming from his underpants.

"I’m gonna be sick" he moaned, as he felt the bile rise in his throat. This time he managed to hold it back. Years of alcohol abuse had taught him how to do that. Slowly, he tried to stand up straight and it was then something really bizarre happened. Something deadly serious. Beads of sweat started to trickle down his neck and his heart was pounding. Jason didn’t even notice that he had started shaking.

"I can’t move" he told himself. "What’s happened to me? Is it alcohol poisoning?"

"Where are we?" came out of the darkness. It was a woman. She sounded bewildered, nearly hysterical.

"Who’s there? Where are you from?" said Jason, trying to make sense of things. He tried to turn his head in the direction of the sound but failed. It hurt too much.

"At least I can still speak" he thought, and then screamed at the top of his voice as he realised this wasn’t a nightmare.

Almost immediately, a multitude of people followed his lead and everybody started screaming at once. They all sounded alike. Confused, mortally afraid, and completely unaware of where they were. The only thing Jason was sure of was he was more terrified than he had ever been in his entire life. And what made things even worse was he could hear the terror in some of the voices which matched his own to perfection. But it was impossible to make anybody out, or the room they were in. It was just too dark to see anything clearly. It was terrifying.