Transition by Iain Banks

Author:Iain Banks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780748112173
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2009-09-02T12:00:00+00:00

But, when I thought about it, it wasn’t a burning smell. Not very pleasant, but not the smell of burning. Perhaps one of the people in the ward had had a little night-time accident.

I could shout. I cleared my throat quietly. Yes, no problem there; everything felt like it was working normally. And yet I was reluctant to shout out. What if one of these people was the person who had attempted to assault me? Even if that wasn’t the case, what if one of them was of a similar proclivity? Probably not, of course. Anyone dangerous would be in their own room, wouldn’t they? They’d be locked away, or at least restrained as I had been, erroneously and absurdly.

Still, I was reluctant to shout out.

One of the other patients in the ward made a grunting noise, like an animal. Another one seemed to answer. That smell wafted over me again.

An appalling thought insinuated its way into my mind. What if these were not people at all? What if they were animals? That would account for the lumpen misshapenness of so many of the shapes I could see, for the smell, for all the grunting sounds they were making.

Of course, over all the time I had been here, there had been no hint that the clinic was anything other than a perfectly respectable and humanely run establishment with impeccable medical and caring procedures. I had no reason beyond whatever my highly constrained senses could supply to my already terrified mind and feverishly overactive imagination to believe that I was in anything other than a ward full of ordinary patients, asleep. Nevertheless, when a person has a completely bizarre experience, faints, and then finds themself strapped helpless to a bed in an unknown room full of strangers, at night, it should come as no surprise that they start to imagine the worst. The corpulent figure looming dimly in the bed next to mine, from whom it now occurred to me there was a good chance that the strange smell had been coming – as well as some of the grunting noises – made motions as though they might be about to turn over, bringing them face to face with me.

I heard myself make a noise, a sort of yelp of fear. The thing in the bed stopped moving for a moment, as though having heard me, or waking up. I decided I might as well make more noise. “Hello?” I said loudly. With a tone of authority, I trusted. No reaction. “Hello?” I said again, raising my voice somewhat. Still nothing. “Hello!” I said, almost shouting now. A few snores, but the shape in the bed next to mine made no further move. “Hello!” I shouted. Not a soul stirred. “HELLO!”

Then, slowly, the shape in the next bed started to turn round towards me again. Suddenly, a noise outside, on my other side, forcing me to look in that direction. There was a shape advancing on the barely lit glass of the half-glazed doors as someone or something came down the corridor.

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