The Trapeze Swinger

3.4

We had left movies behind and moved on to drawing by the time I thought to finally knock on the elevator door, listening to the hollow echoing roll up the empty shaft behind. There was no response, and I sighed and tried again, having to stand sideways so as to pound a restrained fist onto the scratched stainless steel.

"Murdoc ya dumb radge! I need to pee!"

There was no response, and I shuffled uncomfortably as I turned to look over at 2D, who merely shrugged. With no lift button panel within the room, we were both to be trapped in there at the whim of the green-skinned man until he saw fit to come retrieve me. Yet as I sat back down across the floor from 2D scribbling away with a biro, I couldn't help but think that perhaps Murdoc had forgotten about me.

"Does Murdoc usually leave you in here this long?" I asked finally, after another few tortured minutes with my groaning bladder had passed.

"Uhh, I dunno," The blue-haired man replied unhelpfully, looking up from his drawing of what looked like a scribbly picture of himself being devoured by a whale, "He's probably just gotten drunk an' passed out or somefink."

I mused over his words for a moment, fidgeting in the handcuffs while I tried not to think about my increasing need to piss. I almost wanted to defend Murdoc and say he was probably just tied up with something else and surely wasn't drinking at midday, but realised with a jolt that I barely knew the man and therefore shouldn't comment. 2D had known him for years, whereas I was probably just still feeling guilty after headbutting him in the nose earlier that day.

"Well if he doesn't come to get me soon then I'm going to have to piss in the corner over there," I muttered, earning myself a dismayed look from the blue-haired boy.

It was exactly as he opened his mouth to reply that there was a sudden flash, then the lights were out and my vision of him was plunged in to darkness. Panic flickered wildly in the gloom, manacled wrists wrenching violently as I blinked into the sudden nothingness. 2D yelped and then cursed colourfully, and I leant towards the sound of his voice like a guiding light. However when he spoke again, his tone was one of utter hopeless dread.

"Oh... oh fuck... I didn't fink whales could have teef like that."

Huh?

I blinked again, realising I could dimly make out his silhouette, his long arm raised to point at something behind me. I let my eyes trail along the wiry length of it and up to his trembling finger, before turning to follow the direction of the gesture.

The porthole window set into the wall above his bed was the only source of faint light, filtering through the surface of the water far above us. My eyes adjusted slowly, realising with a chill that the milky white whale was much more easily visible now that the fluorescent lights from inside didn't set the water outside into stark black contrast. It was doing slow laps around the island, about twenty meters out from 2D's tiny window to the world outside, and I had to wait until the length of it's enormous body had disappeared for a minute before it's head reappeared and I became all too aware of what the blue-haired man was so afraid of.
                       A row of lengthy sharp teeth were set in it's gaping mouth, the span of which was enough to leave my eyes wide with an irrational and prickling fear.

"It must be some s-sort of sperm whale o-or something," I stuttered, shivering in the growing cold as it disappeared from view once more, "I mean, not all of them have those big bristle brush teeth."

"It's over then! It's all over! We're gonna die down here in the dark wiv the heating turned off an' a monster shark-whale gnawin' on my legs," 2D was declaring, tripping over his own feet as he scrambled to get up. I heard a thud, and smirked as I turned to see the faint outline of him flopped on top of a pile of his own dirty laundry.