The bedroom is all set up: candles lit, house deserted, cat on her nightly tour.

Looking forward to the great midnightly spectacle, I check the pendulum clock on the wall: Friday, 11.58 pm—the perfect time. All is set up as instructed.

I'm sitting on the bed, cross-legged, holding the mysterious, beautifully crafted cube in my hand. My index traces the ornaments on it, the intricate designs, the seemingly erratic patterns that lose themselves in the most filigree fractals—a masterpiece of handicraft.

“Twenty-four hours to fulfill dreams beyond your wildest imaginations—fantasies you never knew you had, the wishes of your deepest subconscious…” I recall the senile hag in the souvenir shop that reminded me more of a seedy voodoo-fortune-teller booth at an abandoned amusement park, “…once you've solved the puzzle.” I can still hear her witchy, chill-inducing B-movie requisite snicker.

Puzzle? I can't find no damn puzzle on that thing! “It's just a decorative cube,” I repeat my mantra, doing a poor job at convincing myself it is just a cheap pseudo-tribal mumbo-jumbo replica. Yet, every time I re-iterate the simple phrase, my heart heightens its unfamiliar fluttering.

Click

“Click?” I surprisedly echo, suddenly feeling a thin slab move under my thumb.

My eyes try to follow the kaleidoscopic fragments changing along with the disc’s movement. From this moment on, the cube seems to develop a life of its own: as if guided by an unseen force, a series of rearrangements take place, morphing it into otherworldly shapes the human eye fails to project properly onto the retina, slowly transitioning into a resting position that looks like an incomplete transformation.

I watch the whole process with the fascination of a deer in headlights. Once it has stopped moving, I look at it from all sides, turn it in my hand, intrigued by this sortilege.

Amusedly throwing it up and catching it with the same hand over and over, I laugh. “Fulfill dreams beyond my wildest imaginations, huh?” I mock the demented beldam, whispering, shaking my head, chuckling.

It's only then I realize the looming shadows cast by the candles are creeping up to me, reaching out, seeking to devour my soul in their darkness. A funny trick of my mind that plays along far more eagerly than intended, I muse, a crooked smile over my lips.

I hear the wind rising outside, gently rattling the shutters against the wall. Perfect timing. My titter is getting more nervous; the bead of sweat crawling down my neck is itching. I scratch it off only to find another noise only adding to the overall eerie feeling unsettling my belly: the crescendo of the swing of the pendulum that I had incorporated into my ear's white noise years ago.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

“Damn, this occult gypsy magic is really doing a number on my mind… mind… mind… mind…” I hear my voice bouncing off the walls although I never spoke the words.

Open-mouthed, I look at the box only to realize the glow emanating from the grooves of its mosaic topology is the only light source left although the candles are still burning. Yet, their flicker seems filtered by a thick viscous curtain of pure blackness, slowing the course of light to a creep.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I hear the pendulum hammering against my eardrum in unison with my heart—even with the erratic skipped beats as well as the tachycardic ones resulting from the general unsettledness that by now dominates my intestines.

Eyes transfixed to the beacon in my hand, I don't pay attention to my peripheral vision whose warnings go unseen as the cold near-aquamarine light is fighting its way through the frame of my locked bedroom door. Hypnotized, I allow my thumb to brush over the centerpiece of the puzzle's surface.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, SWING, CLANK… goes the pendulum, its sound now hurting in my auditory canal.

With a deafening creaking, the formerly immovable parts grind against each other, millimetering their way past each other, interlocking each other.

SWING, CLANK…

My eyes foreseeing the final shape of the… object. I'm gripping it with my white-knuckled hands, try to pull it apart, prevent it from reaching its threatening final form.

SSWWIINNGG, CCLLAANNKK…

As the pendulum slows, the puzzle grinding to its end state, my mind fills with dreadful horror of what might await me once the transformation is complete.

SSSWWWIIINNNGGG, CCCLLLAAANNNKKK…

As the door flings open with a wind that blows out the candles, the glaring blue light floods my bedroom, like a flash, before a darkness ensues—a darkness that swallows even the course of time and lets the last 'K' of the pendulum's turning point reverberate perpetually.

Colors flash before my eyes—colors far off the visible spectrum. Shapes twisting and bending into dimensions far exceeding the limits of our restricted perception are painted against my… I realize it's not the orbs sitting in my face that see anymore but rather images projected directly into my brain. In fact, my eyes feel rather… detached from my skull, floating, peering in all directions at once, not able to focus on anything, yet desperate for information about what is happening to me.

Suddenly, through the thick mist of panic, horror, anguish, I perceive a deep, oily voice that pierces my mind.

“You summoned us, human,” it announces in ancient tongue I haven’t heard before.

“Who is this?” my sealed lips try, panicking at the realization I am not only unable to move them but they seem to have vanished completely.

At that moment, with unfathomable terror, I realize that my whole body is decomposing into bits one piece at a time, something tugging at my flesh, yet not hurting me. The distress I feel is rather caused by the dissociative feeling, by the mental image of being slowly torn to shreds than by physical pain.

“Worry not, for we can read your mind, young seeker of pleasure,” a thick syrupy female voice, yet almost equally deep as its male counterpart rings in my… head? The decaying feeling through what is left of my body makes it impossible to locate which organ registers the sounds struggling through the thick veil of fear for my life that threatens to empty my bowels in the most unflattering manner despite that I'm certain they're not a part of me anymore.

The dissonance of both voices speaking each in their own incomprehensible Babel dialect screeches through my thoughts. “We of the realm of pure lust have found ways to make you feel ultimate pleasure through immeasurable torture and you, in your clueless quest for nothing but selfish bliss have chosen to submit yourself to us.”

“Many have vainly ended in madness in our quest,” states the male voice dryly, “for the human flesh is fragile and the mind weak.” I can hear how the pale, thick lips belonging to this bizarre voice exaggerate each word.

Boiling honey drips over my brain as the female voice chimes in. “Only if you prove strength of mind will you not perish in the eternal joy of agony and be swallowed by the torment we will bring upon your mortal soul.”

My whole consciousness is tense with dread near rupture. My naked soul exposed to my tormentors, fear, horror, terror dominate my emotions.

The voices join in one creepily seductive chant. “Fear not for your body, young one. We will not harm you, only plant a seed in your mind that suggests harm is done to you, for it is solely your mind that interests us, not the ephemeral shell that holds it captive. Far greater torturous pleasure can be instilled in the mind than your body would ever allow you to feel.”

Only a short break is given to me to let a faint feeling of hope sprout, clinging to those words, before being nipped—no, crushed—in the bud when the voices resume, “But if your will is weak, your body will perish and you will spend eternity in this plane of existence, experiencing endless suffering forevermore, never really dying but wishing you would.”

While the little rationality I desperately try to hold on to urges me to scream my protest and my panic needs me to squirm free of… whatever is holding me captive: a nonexistent confinement deeply seated in my subconscious? My body parts seem to flash in and out of existence, fallen apart, yet still attached to my brain as if held together by a bundle of stringy nerves letting each dissected bit dance and rearrange in new strange ways. The knowledge that all of this is just mind-trickery comes with the recognition that there is no escape from this realm of torment.

I try to run but it is only the legs that succeed while the conscience remains immovable.

“All you feel is real,” the female voice reminds me. “Your brain feels it happen but your earthen vessel will not take damage.”

“We seek not to destroy your body,” agrees the male voice. “Only your soul.”

Through the mist of confused emotions pierces a spark, clenching its grip around my mind—a thrill-seeking lust, eager to experience the perverse pleasure of getting tortured beyond the boundaries of sanity. I feel the parts of my mouth salivating and my eyes roll despite their detachment from their sockets. My tongue protrudes through what I still believe to be my lips to show my tormentors what their promises are doing to me.

Their reaction comes with a whistle that resembles the swing of my clock, yet instead of the click at the pendulum’s turning point comes a thwack accompanied by searing pain from the skin of where I suspect once was my butt. My flesh, too, is protesting from the spikes that demand to rip open its thin protective layer.

The jolt of pain slowly lurks up my spinal cord and yet it arrives with a sudden sharp cut right through my consciousness. Although still unresponsive to my will, my mouth emanates a cry, not of pain but of need, need for more: more anguish, higher intensity.

The next thwack comes with the spikes grazing over my skin, seemingly tearing it open, burning it, yet mending it again, leaving it unscathed for the next hit, the nerve endings fully receptive to the next blow. The burning of my skin rupturing only to heal again over and over intensifies with each repetition. My cries turn into moans, yearning for more, for my body to fire the scorching signals into my brain, holding the promise of reaching states of bliss never experienced.

I am given a short moment to catch my breath before I feel a faint, yet strange feeling running over my back as if a sharp, hard object was cleanly separating the cells of my flesh, exposing them to the air. Warm liquid seeps out of a pore, itching, hurting, burning. The insecurity over what is being done to me heightens the feeling of lust as does the sharp sting from the salt that enters the bared tissue and is sealed within it the instant it heals. Adrenaline floods my body as the beads of sweat—or blood, wax, oil?—slowly descend my back, torrid, yet freezing.

I hardly recognize the voice that echoes in the void as my own.

Overwhelmed by the sensations, I feel how my brain releases endorphins in desperation to attenuate the pain, yet only causing an opiate-like high, clouding my mind in a haze of craving for more pain, more endorphins.

They come with the tight constriction around my neck, making me fight for breath although I cannot remember breathing since transcending to this realm. My eyes, although floating erratically, threaten to pop out of my skull and start filling with tears as my stertorous breath gargles through the tight grip around my throat.

The ice-cold, red-hot needles piercing into my flesh trigger renewed waves of stinging pain, and with them, floods of serotonin are being released into my nervous system, further fueling the towering flames of excitement while my skin blisters under the caustic feeling of millions of ants feasting on my body.

My mouth fills space with abulic sounds, relishing in the mixture of hormones and chemicals my brain is simmering in. Slave to the sheer intensity of the constant changes of sensations, I have lost all notion of time, space and existence.

Fingers—tentacles, tendrils?—invade my mouth, my nose, my ears my… anus, splitting my body apart. They wind around my arms and legs, sturdy as roots, and, although bereft of a physical body, tear me apart. They keep probing me, poking the deepest parts of me, fill me deliciously, keep stimulating nerve endings where I never knew I had them.

The tender loving caresses deep within me provide warmth and yet I feel how their pointy teeth at first just kiss my tissue, then scrape it open and finally sink into it, deepening their penetration, draining me of my very life essence, pleasing the very core of my being.

I can hardly let out more than a gurgle through the deluge of dopamine raining into the unrecognizable soup of debauchery that once was my mind.

Deep in my belly, a scorching feeling burns my entrails while my skin gets showered with ice water. Out of my control, my disembodied limbs twist, turn, toss, try to shake the confusing emotions as everything fails to give clear sensations anymore.

Aching screams alternate with mad laughter as electric shocks are being administered to my nipples as well as the most sensitive spot between my legs—all these parts of my body erect, begging for more and stronger jolts, discarnate extremities jerking with each renewed assault, trembling with pure pleasure.

My conscience unable to make out between reality, illusion and hallucination, I feel my body slowly melting and surrendering to the complete bliss brought to me. Through the continuous torture, minutes turn to days, hours to years as the images I see despite closing my eyes are getting more vivid and lively by every passing second. I keep tightroping at the very edge of consciousness, never actually losing it as all that emanates from my throat is thick foam and a low, continuous, deep, bubbling growl.

Suddenly and without a warning, I feel a release from all the agony. I feel the torture near an end, the pain subsiding although I don’t know if it is yet another trick. The sudden freedom releases an orgasm from unprecedented depths I have yet never felt. Seemingly for minutes, my whole reassembled body keeps shivering, convulsing, my sex spraying the result of my climax uncontrollably into this void of non-space.

Gasping for air, my voice gauges the spectrum from the sub- to the supersonic as my possessed mind lets free the transmitters that relieve the tension built up through the torment.

Not moving anymore from being lost in the mist clouding my mind and the sheer exhaustion, I brace myself to surrender to the eternal torture that awaits me, thanking the generous spirits for granting me this delectable pleasure. I drift away, mind dulled and numbed by the afterglow of my unprecedented climax, happily looking forward to an eternity spent in perpetual agony as a deeper state of bliss washes over me and I feel myself levitating in this limbo.

Before passing out, I think I hear the voices mutter that the twenty-four hours have passed.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I open my eyes, mind tired near-effeteness as if waking up from a psilocybinous dream.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I’m lying in a pool of fresh, warm wetness, body in a weirdly contorted position far from comfortable. The distinct amine-like, ichthyic smell of my own sexual secretions fills my nostrils—the first sensory organ I notice to be back in its original place.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I look around me, realizing where I am and, checking part by part, that my body is in one piece, unscathed. Relief, yet disappointment over the realization none of it was real fills that fist-sized muscle I feel pounding against my ribcage again—from the inside, fortunately.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

The candles are burnt down, the house still deserted, save for the kitten who is sitting in front of me, mouse in her mouth, waiting to offer me her tribute as a token of her submission.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I take a closer look at the pendulum clock. Saturday, 11.58 pm.

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…

I swallow emptily. A crooked smile flashes over my lips. Still holding it in my hand, I look at the cube that’s found its way into its original form, its embellishments now bereft of their once vibrant glow.

“So this wasn't just a dream?” I chuckle. “Awesome!”

Swing, clank, swing, clank, swing, clank…