There was the sound.  Fifth time in ten minutes.  Dribble heaved himself out of bed, shoving his duvet to one side—sending a shower of crumbs to the cooling mattress—put his slippers on and softly moved over the floorboards to his bedroom door.  By the petite glare of the room’s television, on standby, he grasped the doorknob, turned it slowly and pulled the hunk of wood towards him.  The contrast of the open landing window and the radiator just beside it sent Dribble into shivers.
     PING.
     Again the noise struck.  Dribble walked to the spare bedroom’s open door and listened to the unmoving contents within.  Nothing.  Not a squeak or a high-pitched buzz was issuing from the room.  The carpeted hallway boards softly creaked underneath his weight as he went straight past his bland bathroom and descended the stairs to the hallway, lit by his un-curtained, glass front door.
     Was his new phone system making all the ruckus? He moved his left ear close to it and held his breath.  The internal ticking over of his heart was all he heard.  Picking up the receiver, and listening in, he heard the familiar dial tone.  Not there.  Deserting the phone, Dribble went to the door that led to his living room.  He went in and closed the door behind him.
     He strained his ears to pick up where the sound was issuing from.
     PING.
     It sounded too far away to be in this room either.
     But wait, the TV, Dribble did not remember leaving it on after slobbing out in front of the box for the best part of the evening: avoiding the Halloween pranks of the outside world.  Cycling through trashy crime drama after another, and flipping back to his console whenever he got bored of the shows.  The fragments of his feasting littered the sofa, and the empty packets of crisps lounged about on the seat cushions.  Just as the screen went out of view, the screen went black; bar the moving bodies of a couple coupling.
     He went through an open door to his dining-room-come-kitchen and again heard the noise.
     PING.
     It was nearer, but not here.  The dishes of a week groaned, as once again they realised they would not be washed.  A fly stirred its weary eyes, and then died on what had once been a bowl of spaghetti.  Dribble came to the door that opened to the basement stairs.  Taking a torch from a nearby kitchen shelf, he opened the basement door, shining a beam of light down the stairs.
     Rather than hearing the noise that had been bothering him for some twenty minutes now, Dribble retched as a real funk skewered itself up his nostrils.  ‘Just what the hell is that smell!’ Dribble cried.  His feet now less than willingly took him down this set of stairs.  At the bottom he flipped the switch for the strip lighting that provided the illumination for this part of the house.
     PING.
     The floor was moving.  A black mass of beetles swam across what had been a dirt floor.  Gone were the washing machine and tumble dryer, and the boxes that had housed his old Warhammer collection.  Instead a blanket of beetles greeted his wandering eyes.  Where Dribble stood—just in front of the bottom of the stairs—was the only section of the floor not covered by the insects.  Still the smell was here, which he tried to forget about.
     PING.
     Dribble stopped looking at what had once been a floor, instead he looked over to the right hand side of the basement.  His brain did not want him to figure out what it was that lurked in the corner of his basement.  Desperately his brain attempted to make him lose consciousness, and eventually it succeeded.  Dribble’s mind went blank, his legs went limp and he collapsed to the small patch of earth, his head falling against the bottom of the stairs and fracturing his skull.

What time it was when he woke up, Dribble did not know.
     PING.
     Pain shot through Dribble’s body, but it was not all that bad.  He realised his eyes weren’t open, but he was finding it difficult to prise them apart.  Gluey eyes opened, Dribble was better placed to assess his situation.  He thought he was still by the stairs in the basement.  He wasn’t.  The examination chair he had seen before he passed out, was what now supported his bulky frame.  Dribble found he was unable to twist his head to view the basement more clearly, but he found he could now hear the scuttling of the beetle sea.  Everything had a cloudy aura.
     A moment later he realised that his prone body was naked, strapped to the examination chair, and his head bolted to the top of it.  Dribble strained his eyes to the bottom of their sockets and surveyed, bloody row, upon bloody row of nails that had been driven into his body.  One slid out of the flesh of his left thigh.
     PING.
     The nail landed in a metal tray that cupped the bottom of the chair.  Dribble felt in disgust as his blood glooped out of the wound rather than just ran like a liquid.  The blood’s viscous structure arose in Dribble an even greater suspicion that being trapped in the chair was not his greatest problem.  There was no way he would be able to remove himself from his predicament.
     Unsure of whether it was day or night, Dribble called out for help.  Or he tried to call out for help, but could not.  A queer gargling sound came from his throat but he was unable to form words.  He realised that he could not taste, let alone feel his tongue inside his mouth.  Dribble’s tongue was rotting away, encased by his jaws.  Glassy vision, thick blood, rotting tongue.
     Moving his eyes upwards Dribble came to see a mirror that had been placed on the beams above him.  If only he could scream.