It was the smell of rotting flesh that permeated the sleep first. Hitting my face in bursts. Then something slightly damp touching my hair and the strange puffs of air that came from whatever it was. When what felt like heavy bacon Velcro made contact with my chin and dragged all the way to my eyebrows, I finally made the connection to the tiger.
It wasn’t a conscious decision not to open my eyes, there was something deep inside, primal was what they called it in documentaries. I concentrated on my breathing. Trying to make each breath shallow. Motionless. Noiseless. Everythingless.
The sniffing stopped and a roar rose up all around me. I no longer had any sense of where the tiger was, it was as if I’d been dropped in the deep end of a swimming pool filled with big cat rage.
Usually this was the point the bastard narcolepsy kicked in. But not this time. Oh no. It wouldn’t do for me to be mauled by a tiger in my sleep. My subconscious clearly hated me enough to want me to witness the event first hand.
And then there was a banging noise. Not a feline banging but a people banging. On a door and I tried opening my right eye the tiniest of tiny amounts.
I couldn’t see anything so I chanced the same with my left.
Again, nothing.
Had I dreamed it?
No, we’d been through that earlier, and I wasn’t going to bite my cheek again.
I opened both eyes but still kept the breathing and movement under strict supervision.
I rolled my eyes around, taking in as much of the scene as my self-imposed paralysis allowed, the banging continuing unabated in the background. And then the sound of a door bursting open and Jacob ran out and grabbed me by the feet and dragged me.
“Oi!” I said, causing Jacob to make a noise like an orang-utan doing an impersonation of an Irish wolfhound. He dropped my feet then, in an instant, composed himself.
“Come on,” he hissed, running back to the store room. “Before it comes back.”
I bolted after him and I was glad I did. As it happens tigers can loom out of the darkness of a service corridor pretty quickly and much more quietly than you would expect. I can personally testify that their camouflage is just as effective against bare concrete as it is in the jungle. Jacob began to slam the door even before I’d come through it. Then, once I was clear, he hurled his weight against it, scrabbling with the key as he did so.
Not quickly enough, as something out there slammed hard into the door and the key bounced out of his hand and onto the floor. Erin darted forward and shouldered the door as Jacob stretched to pick up the keys.
There was another horrendous thud against the door of the storeroom we were hiding in. Erin screamed as the force of it threw her down to the ground. I scrambled to take her place, barricading us in and that, dear reader, is the point at which you joined this narrativey-challenged tale of mine in the first place.
So, where exactly did I get to? I lose my place sometimes. The tiger was out in the corridor, that much I know you know. Lori was injured, needed a piss, in between barricading the door I was trying to take charge of the situation whilst quashing a minor mutiny from Erin. Insults flew, mobile phones failed and the culmination of all of this excitement was a superb plan and…
I woke up with my head in a stainless steel bucket that smelled of wet dog. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Erin hadn’t put my head in there in retaliation for me being rude to her. She smirked but, then again, I probably would have too in her position. Anyway, enough of that, you’ll be wanting to find out what happened after Jacob kicked a hole in the back wall of the store room I expect?
It’s amazing the force a man can muster when he’s cornered by a marauding tiger. Jacob channelled his fear admirably, kicking, punching and battering a human-sized hole in the plasterboard. I don’t think any of us much cared what was on the other side apart from the apparent absence of tigers.
It was dark out there but once Jacob had broken through he announced, rather unsurprisingly, that it was a corridor, and scrambled out to inspect it.
“It’s fine,” Jacob said from the darkness. “Come on, I know where we are.”
Erin carefully helped Lori crawl through the hole then flashed me an angry look, before crawling through herself. I could hear the three of them talking as I came through the hole and out of the store room.
“There’s a lift just down here,” said Jacob, his outline barely visible. “Follow me.”
I reached out to touch the wall to try to keep some sense of direction in the dark. My fingers slid easily along the cold gloss of the paint. The four of us moved slowly and quietly down the corridor and soon the low glowing numbers above the lift became discernable. We quickened our pace and, reaching the lift, Jacob stabbed repeatedly at the call button.
There was a terrifyingly familiar noise from somewhere in the distance, the low, guttural growl. I froze, a chill hitting me from behind, forcing the hairs on the back of my neck to jump up. I caught a glimpse of the others and we’d all struck the same pose; backs to the lift, silently squinting into the darkness.
The growl grew out of the darkness, louder and more menacing. I imagined I could hear the padding of paws but I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that it was just my mind fucking with me.
The lift doors slid open and we all stepped backwards, bumping shoulders as we did. I reached out and started hammering at one of the number buttons, just to get it to move, but the damn thing was refusing. As if that wasn’t bad enough the growling had morphed into what I imagined was a yowling, grating attack call.
I kept pushing the button, pushing it and pushing it and pushing, willing the doors to close.
Glancing once more at the others, their faces changed from fear to panic, and when I looked back outside I could see why. The halo of light that the lift projected into the corridor had begun to pick out a distinctly tiger-shaped threat.
“Clint,” Erin hissed. “Do something.”
“I am doing something,” I whispered back and pressed the number four again. And then I looked up and saw that the number illuminated above the door was also a number four. I’d been pressing the button of the floor we were on. Still, no need for any of the others to know that, was there?
The tiger had begun to pick up pace, moving towards the lift. I hammered the ‘three’ button and the doors began, achingly slowly, to close. As if sensing the imminent departure of its dinner, the tiger pounced and we all hurled ourselves against the back wall of the lift.
There was an almighty metal bang as the tiger made contact with the lift door but it was too late, the lift’s outer doors managed to come together a fraction of a second before impact.
The lift jolted lightly and moved downwards.
Catching this damn tiger was going to be a tad trickier than I’d first thought.
~*~
