Penny Blake slumped to the couch with a sigh – five days had passed and she was still no closer to emptying the mountain of boxes that filled her flat. Moving home was hell.
  She rested her feet on the large glass coffee table her parents had given her two years ago, and took out a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and relaxed into the nicotine rush enjoying the way the drug made her head swim. She’d give up smoking one day, but not today, or in the next three years that it’d probably take her to unpack.
  After stubbing the butt into an empty cup (where had she packed her ashtrays?), Penny rose and went into the bathroom. She smiled at herself in the mirror – “Just a few more days and were done.” she promised the face that grinned back at her. She flicked a long lock of bright red hair, dyed the way her parent’s hated, from her pale face and tried to ignore the bags swelling under her tired eyes. “Should’ve bought more beer,” she chuckled coldly.
  After swilling the makeup from her face, she patted herself dry and walked the small distance down the hall into her bedroom.
  This room was currently by far the most hospitable. She’d seen to unpacking her bed linen, her nick-knacks, filling her drawers with the stuff that made a bedroom a bedroom, before any of the other rooms in the flat. It was her sanctuary, her resting place, and god knew she needed it after the last few days. Yeah, moving home was hell.
  She slipped out of her black dress, removed her underwear, and slumped to the bed.
  It was late, but Penny was wound up and couldn’t sleep. Twisting in her blankets, her mind raced with thoughts of the last few days, schedules, and important things she really had to get round to doing. She would, she told herself, in time.
  An age passed; still her mind would not let her sleep.
  She was drifting into that delicate stage of rest where slumber finally begins to take one, when she heard it.
  Walls in council flats are notoriously thin – paper has more soundproofing – and Penny began to hear the sounds of her neighbours ringing through the white papered walls by her bedside. They were making love; No, they were fucking each other like wild animals.
  It started with annoying grunts, long sighs that echoed about her quiet room. She considered turning on her stereo, just to deaden the din. Then the squealing began.
  They were obviously enjoying themselves, groaning and yelling in the kind of passion usually reserved for lovers having sex for the first time, or those reunited after a long absence. Either that, or she was a well-schooled hooker. The gasps rose in tempo, the bed next door slamming against the wall where she lay, the couple talking dirty to each other with words all but drowned out by the shunting.
  It had been several weeks, almost a month, since Penny herself had known the pleasures of a man, longer still since she’d known those of a woman, and as she closed her eyes in a lost battle against the noise, she found her hands wandering beneath the sheets.
  She was surprised at how aroused she was becoming. Usually, the sounds of others screwing - especially when she wasn’t invited along to either watch or participate - made her feel quite the opposite; cold and cynical. But tonight, her chest rose and fell as her fingers traced the contours of her breasts, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps as she found the hardness of her nipples and applied exactly the right amount of pressure to heighten her fervour. She groaned, the sound echoing those of the lovers next door.
  Penny’s mind raced with sexual images, and she found herself visualizing her past extravagant sex with a guy whose name she could not recall but whose tempo and skill her body would never forget. The way he’d felt inside her…
Soon she was delving between her thighs. Her sweaty fingers skimmed over sleek wetness and rolled gently over her opening. She eased a digit inside the soft hole and bucked with the sensations the act brought.
  Tracing her tongue over sensitised lips, gently biting the soft skin between shuddering breaths, sent waves of pleasure dancing along her spine. They flooded her sweating body to shower it in fierce throbs of bliss.
  A few feet away, separated by thin concrete, the couple found a fresh surge of energy. The woman yelled like the whore the man repeatedly told her she was, her moans and replies stating nothing to the contrary. They bucked harder, driving again and again into each other, the bed now threatening to puncture the wall.
  Penny joined their song, and flicked her fingers faster. She moved her forefinger in quick, gentle circles about her swollen nub until, after feeling the rising throbs of orgasm burn inside her, gasped and bit down on her lip - too hard. Blood. She tasted it, iron on a wet tongue, the pain a stab into her pleasure. But the sting was itself exciting and did not dent her gratification. Her body rose and fell in a rhythm conducted by desire.
  A haunting cry stabbed through the night. It was a scream that did not fit with the other, animalistic, yells that had gone before it. Then came another, just as shocking. More shrieks shot into her ears, almost driving Penny away from her own pleasure. Almost: she was lost to the delights she was experiencing and could not find the will to stop.
  However, in the darkness of her mind, deep within an area abandoned and replaced with a yearning for satisfaction, a voice whispered that something was amiss. The woman was in pain. Perhaps, lust bit back, that was the way she liked it: a little pain to make the sex that much sweeter. She herself enjoyed such games. Her fingers played on.
  The male yelled out now. His voice was low and lost to the sensations he was obviously enjoying as he grunted again and again that ‘this was what she’d wanted’.
  The woman called out again. And then she was silent.

Penny was moments behind their orgasm. As the tidal wave of chemicals rushed through her brain to slam a powerful finale to her masturbating, she slammed her palm against the wall, close to where the strongest of the noises had come. She pressed her flesh there with all her might, craving to feel the hands of both lovers play across her skin as she came, the caress of their tongues as they lapped at the secret dampness she’d created.
  The wall slammed back. Three, long, slaps from the neighbour’s wall pounded out to shudder the concrete beneath her palm.
  She snatched her hand back quickly and twisted round to stare at the wall as if expecting to see the lovers smiling back at her. Penny held her breath.
  Her pleasure now taken by embarrassment, she dragged the covers about her and curled into a ball making sure she made as little sound as possible. But why did she care, she asked herself. They’d certainly not been shy about their session of lovemaking, so what if they’d heard her? Maybe they’d care for some company next time…
  The thought of joining the lovers sent tingles of fresh desire through her body and she slowly, carefully, found herself moving her palm back to the spot on the wall. She eased her fingers down the rough paper, enjoying the way it felt against her soft skin, until finally resting it flat against the wall. It felt hot, damp even.
  Penny withdrew her hand and gazed at it in the small light of the room: it was wet. She rubbed the sticky wetness between her fingers before bringing the palm to her lips. Her tongue flicked out and tasted…blood.
  Gasping, the light besides her bed was flicked on in an act that found her knocking the lamp to the floor. She screamed when she saw what was revealed to her.
  Her body was covered in blood. Crimson stained her skin in a thick gloss that glistened in the half-light of the room. Her face, her hair, the rounds of her breasts: all were home to gore.
  Penny screamed…
… And sat up in bed.
- A nightmare; just a bad dream.

Exhausted and wet, her heart still racing, she turned on her side where she lay twitching until she finally found sleep.

The dream was all but forgotten by the time she stepped into the shower the next day. Indeed, it seemed that only the pleasurable aspects of her dream, the satisfaction she’d granted herself as the couple next door had made love, lingered on in her mind.
  Even now, as she gently soaped herself, she found her thoughts yearning for another’s touch, to have a mouth kiss her, tease her skin until she could take no more.
  The water felt so good today as it trickled over her pores, the way it tickled her, slipping down her thighs to trace across the bush between them. Fingertips found aroused nipples and she sighed.
  The doorbell sounded.
  Penny gasped and ceased in her indulgence, stepping quickly out of the bath, and finding a towel. She was expecting her mother today, coming round with a food package and an indispensable pair of helping hands. But she’d said that wasn’t to be until this evening. Perhaps she’d found some spare time and had popped round early? That sounded just like mom’s behaviour.

Penny wrapped the towel about her and plodded to the door leaving a trail of wet prints soaking into the carpet behind her.
  “Mom, I thought you said six thirty, I’m not even dressed…”
  “I can see that.” It wasn’t her mother that stood at the door. A man, six foot something, blonde hair with blue eyes, a lightly stubbled chin, with a toned body hiding under a set of messy clothes (yet not too messy as to be unattractive) smiled warmly at her.
  Penny tugged the towel tighter about herself as she felt drips of lukewarm water tickle down her spine like a fingertip.   “Can I help you?” she asked, closing the door slightly.
  “I hope so, miss. It’s Miss Blake, isn’t it?”
  Penny must’ve nodded, but she didn’t feel herself do so.
  “I’m Inspector Niles, Joseph Niles, of London Met. I have to ask you some questions, may I come in?”
 He smiled again, and Penny, despite her state of undress, found herself returning the gesture. He was terribly attractive, in a rough-and-ready kind of way. The way she liked her men to be.
  “Er, well, I’m not dressed yet. I slept heavily last night and I’ve only just got out of bed. Could you come back in say…”
  “It really is quite urgent, miss, and will only take a few minutes of your time. I’ll be out of your wet hair before long.” He chuckled, and she grinned.
  “Okay.” she said, opening the door for him and showing the man inside.
 “Just moved in?” he asked as they made their way to the living room.
  “That obvious?”
  “Well, I am a detective. Besides, I had to check you out on the housing registrars before calling. It pays to know who I’m talking to.”
  “Come in, take a seat,” she offered.
  He nodded, but remained standing, his body close to hers. “I suppose you’ll want to see some identification then. There are a lot of conmen about that’d love to have this opportunity, miss.” A card was shown – a flashy badge and documents that looked authentic as far as Penny’s untrained eyes were concerned.
  “Looks fine to me,” she said, staring the man straight in his eyes. What was she doing? Flirting with the law? That dream must’ve really played with her mind last night; she was feeling so aroused she just couldn’t help herself.
  Inspector Niles pocketed his card but didn’t take his eyes off hers. There was an awkward silence between them that lasted long enough for Penny to notice that the towel had fallen slightly open, a gaping hole revealing the top of one breast.   She quickly pulled the towel tighter about herself.
  Niles smiled and flicked a tongue over his top lip in an unconscious motion that made Penny tense herself.
  “Can I go and get -
  She was cut short. “Murder.” Niles said the word in a secretive, whispering tone that sent a shiver down her spine. “Last night, between eleven thirty and midnight – did you hear anything untoward from next door?”
  Penny started. Next door? Had she dreamed the sex she’d heard? She must’ve – the blood had to be the product of a nightmare. She wet her lips – Niles watched her tongue like a hungry hawk. “Murder? Next door? I don’t know them, I’ve only just moved in and…”
  “We know that, Miss Blake. But I asked if you’d heard anything unusual coming from next door, not how long you’ve lived here.”
  She felt like a disciplined schoolgirl, such was his tone. She replied in a fitting manner. “No, sir. I mean, I don’t think so.”
  He raised an eyebrow and took a single step closer. She could smell his aftershave, a pleasant, deep smell that drifted up her nostrils to excite her all the more.
  “You don’t sound too sure to me. Can I take a look in your bedroom? These walls are thin, maybe you did hear something and thought, perhaps, you were having a dream?” He made his way to the living room door, “This way is it?”
  “Er, yeah, but…”
  He was gone, into the hall and strolling towards the room.
  What was happening to her? Any other day and this man, copper or not, would’ve been wearing his balls for earrings the way he was acting. His manners, the way he spoke down to her and then flirted heavily; he was infuriating, and a little menacing.
  But Penny found instead her pulse quickening at the thought of this man in her room, investigating the place where she’d found pleasure last night. Last night. Those sounds she’d heard; could they have been the screams of a murder victim? She’d climaxed as a woman had been killed not a foot away from her. The thought turned her stomach.

When she caught up with him, Niles was leaning on her bed, his hand pressed flat against the wall: in exactly the same place as her palm had been in the dream. She took in a noisy breath of air and he turned to face her.
  “Paper-thin these walls. You could hear a pin drop next door. Are you certain you didn’t hear anything; the murder took place not two feet away from you. If you’d have been lying here…” he pulled himself flat onto the bed, “Then you’d have been in a prime position…” He let the words hang, and rubbed the wall softy with his palm. “Yeah, right there...” The words came as if he were delighting in a female’s touch.
  Penny bit her lip. Why wasn’t she doing anything about this man on her bed, a voice asked? Throw him out, call his bosses and report his arse. But she didn’t want to report his arse: she wanted to see it bent over as she thrashed it with a thick leather strap. She’d show him who was the master then…
  Penny snapped her thoughts back in line. Where was her head at? “I…”
  “Are you okay?” he asked, rising quickly and coming over to her. He took her by the shoulders and held her softly. “Can I get you anything? Help you in anyway? You look a little faint, maybe you should take a lie down?” Then, with an apologetic nod, “I’m sorry, maybe I came on too strong…”
  “Huh? Penny managed.
  “Talking about the murder like that. It’s just so…messy round there. Blood all over the place, looks like a fucking slaughterhouse… Sorry, miss. There I go again.”
  “It’s okay. I think I’m gonna have a drink. Can I get you a coffee, Inspector?”
  After looking at his watch, he nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’d be great – black, no sugar. ‘Sweet enough already.”

After making a pot of coffee and slipping into the black dress she’d left on the bedroom floor the previous evening, Penny sat before the Inspector as he wrote notes onto the pages of a small pad.
  “You know, I was thinking whilst I was getting dressed, that I might have heard something last night after all.” Penny offered.
  “Really,” Niles replied, raising an eyebrow, “Pray tell.”
  “I was in bed, just nodding off, when I heard…well…”
 “Yeah…” Again he sounded as if his words came from a lover knowing joy at the touch of another.
  “I heard a couple…making out.”
  “Making out?”
  “Fucking. Hard.” She sighed at her directness. Where had the words come from?
  “Right. I see. Good. What happened?”
  “I couldn’t sleep, they were so noisy. There were screams, the woman I think, but I thought…well…I thought she was coming. I didn’t realise she was…that he was…” Penny shook her head and dropped her eyes to the floor.
Truth be told, at that moment Penny couldn’t have given a damn about the woman next door. She didn’t know why, but all she could think of were the Inspector’s hands, what they would feel like over her skin, as they touched her between her legs. She tensed her thighs tightly together and marvelled at the thrill the act brought her.
  “It’s alright. Don’t worry. You weren’t to know.” Niles continued. “That crazy bastard seduced her and came back to her apartment for sex. Forensics so far has shown that they did make love, fuck each other, and that the act wasn’t forced. She wanted it. Then he cut her in the most horrendous of ways…”
  Penny wet her dry lips, more out of fighting the butterflies in her stomach than as an act of seduction, but the feeling of her tongue’s tip as it traced the smoothness excited her. She eased a little closer to the man.
  “How’s the coffee?” she asked, smiling, easing up, oh so slowly, so very absentmindedly, the hem of her skirt.
  “Beautiful…” he whispered.
  Her heart leapt. I need him. I have to have him. Now.
  “What time do you get off work, Inspector Niles?”
  “Not for hours, Miss Blake. But I’m all yours at the moment.”
  “Good,” she moaned, slipping to her knees on the floor before him, “Then let me make you come so hard -
  He grabbed her hair and yanked her to her feet! The act was so fast, coming so unexpectedly, that Penny had little time to yell. He turned her and pulled her close, his hands yanking at her dress and tearing it in half.
  “Please, god, yes…!” she gagged as his hands smothered her breasts. Then he was shoving her face down into the sofa, his hands busy with the zip of his trousers as he pulled himself free.
  “You want this? Huh?” he asked with his face pressing into her ear. He lapped at it and bit the lobe hard.
  “Yes!” she grunted, pushing her backside against him, “Don’t even think about showing me a good time, you fucking pig!”
  Penny yelped like a scolded dog as he drove his erection deep into a place she’d never let any man pleasure her before.   She closed her eyes, her hands clawing the sofa as he thrust into her with sadistic cruelty.
  With her lips curled in lust, Penny took it all.

Penny came from the bathroom to find the Inspector had gone.
  She’d been gone only a few minutes, leaving his grip, his mouth, to freshen up – hopefully to return to find the man ready and keen for another bout.
  But he’d vanished, the scent of a freshly lit cigarette staining the room the only reminder that he’d been there - that and her ache...
  She went to the coffee table and smiled at the mess of rags that had once been her dress. What an animal she’d been!   She’d never done anything like that before, but god, she wanted to again. Soon.
  Sitting with care on the sofa, she found her cigarettes and lit one. It was then that she noticed the box.
  The strange thing sat on the table before her and gently shone in the morning sun. It was an odd looking thing (was it a toy?), and she gazed at it for a while before reaching out to pick it up.
  It made a light tune as she lifted it to her lap, a melody, like that of a music box, drifted through the air, filling her ears with a sombre lament. She creased her forehead in confusion: why had Niles left this here? Maybe he’d slipped it to the table during their sex? No chance: she’d not felt his hands leave her body so much as once, locked to her skin as he’d forced her onto him. Why then, perhaps it was a gift?
  She smiled a girlish grin as she turned the box in her hands and traced her fingers over the cool, shiny bronze pattern that made the box seem so mesmerizing.
  After a while of toying with its sides, the box clicked. It seemed to grow warm in her hands, and a throb of movement found her drawing the thing closer to her face. It was moving. Tiny ridges in the metal turned and twisted under the influence of perfect mechanics hidden within. She felt the smallest of shudders…and the box presented a section from its centre. It rose, turned twice, and fell back inside the box leaving a new shape to puzzle Penny. ‘That’s it’, she thought, ‘this is some kind of puzzle box, an expensive Rubik’s cube’.
  But this was no toy.
  The air in the room turned stale and cold. It dropped in temperature as if glaciers of ice had suddenly replaced the walls of her small flat. She gasped, and saw her breath turn to mist before her wide eyes.
  A chime sounded: A great bell calling from unseen worlds - unseen as yet, but approaching fast.
  What was happening to the walls? The bricks there separated leaving long gaps between them that spilled out white light into her room. Mortar trickled down the wall in noisy flutters of sound and the box in her hands twitched once again.
  Then the walls yawned wide to reveal grimy corridors beyond.

And the creatures came forth from the labyrinth.

Niles sat in the café two blocks from the girl’s flat drinking coffee and dragging on a cigarette.
  He smiled to himself and once more to the waitress as she passed him by. She smiled back, ‘double-taking’ Niles, the surge of lust washing over her the way he knew it would. All he had to do was smile and they were his. That was the way it had been for years now. So many girls, so many fine pieces of…
  Again he laughed; it was so easy.
  All his life, Niles had been insatiable as far as his appetite for sex went. Man, woman, he didn’t care as long as the sex was good. The lovers, most of them at least, soon tired of his games and moved on to others that would provide them with the things in life that mattered: security, romance, a kind ear in harsh times. Niles had no need for such things.
  Forced to seek his pleasures elsewhere, he spent most of his earnings on hookers, paying them to perform the lewdest of acts upon his body and he upon theirs. But he’d become jaded of paying to satiate his lust. Why should he pay when it was the whores that should be begging him to touch them?
  Three years ago, when he’d still been a fledgling detective, he’d found the key to his sexual dreams – the box.
  A crime scene had turned up not only a series of bloody corpses, but also a strange puzzle box. The men at the station had tried to solve it but hours of tinkering had presented them with nothing.
  One tired nightshift, when Niles had been bored and thinking of the one thing in life that gave him satisfaction and how he should be enjoying it right then instead of flicking through reports, the box had called to him. He’d picked it up and, after spending hours transfixed by its glinting faces, had finally solved it.
  Cenobites. That’s what they called themselves.
  With hooks and claws they’d come for him, their dead skin cold and pale as they punished his flesh with metal and blade.
  An eternity had passed with Niles trapped in an endless cycle of pain, as his body was endlessly decimated and reborn.
  One cold time - Hell, quite contrary, was never warm, unless blood was to be considered - Niles had begged his chief tormentor, a man with a skull lined with nails, to hear a plea.
  Always keen to hear the pitiful begging of the damned, the figure had drawn close and listened with cold, calculating interest.

“Set me free and I’ll bring you new souls, show you sex, lust, dark passion and blood.” Niles had pleaded through the opening in his slashed throat.
  “These things we have, in abundance. Silence your gibbering, fool.”
  Cold blades had cut him asunder once more, slicing skin from bone, bone from marrow, until pulp stained the floors of Hell.
  He was reborn, and the suffering commenced again.
  “Let me be your bait. I’ll show you the darkest desires of those I kill for your respect. I’ll write your names on the skin of angels, taint the purest, kindest of souls and bring them crawling to your door, lustful and brazen, hot and wet with desire. Then, then they can be yours…forever. Souls you’d never have the opportunity of touching will be yours to harvest. I can be your tool -
  Long staples of iron snapped his mouth shut with a bite that crunched bone and severed muscle. Blood.
  The pinheaded Cenobite spoke, his voice coming like an approaching summer’s storm. “So be it. We will return your human form, with a bonus: the power to win over the sternest of souls, the most precious of bodies. Bring these to us.”


His smile: all Niles had to do was smile and girls flung themselves at him. From cheap whore to catholic princess, they all wanted him. He gave them what they desired, and then threw their souls to the Cenobites.
  Not that his last conquest had taken much to seduce, hell, he could’ve bedded that tart without his gift. She’d been wet when he’d gotten to her flat; he could smell her begging for him before she’d opened the door, when she’d fucked herself the night before as he’d sent another bitch to Hell in the flat next door. He’d heard her moans, felt the warm yearning of her sex, and he’d answered her call.
  Now she was as dead as the rest of them; the box opened, the girl torn.
  He sipped the last of his coffee, and after pocketing the phone number of the waitress, left the café and made his way back to Penny’s flat. He had to collect the box before someone discovered her remains. He couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of Penny’s mother stumbling across a gaping corpse later that day, mother’s innocent young thing splayed out like the cheap whore she was.
  It was a good life.

Carefully, he nudged open the door with his foot (he’d slipped the latch on as he’d left, knowing he’d return within the hour) and stepped inside. Slipping on gloves as to avoid leaving any traces for forensics to discover, and knowing that all previous trails of his presence would be wiped clean by the Cenobites, he strolled into the living room.
  The Cenobites had outdone themselves this time.
  Blood matted the floor about him, thick pools of red glistened down the walls. Battered folds of flesh hung suspended like flags from hooks in the ceiling, and bones - snapped, sawed, chewed - littered all surfaces. A long thong of muscle flapped wetly under his foot as he bent to recover the box from a battered stump of flesh that had once been a hand.
  As he prised the box free, something caught his eye: The ring on its finger.
  He snatched the wet lump closer and examined it. It couldn’t be! His eyes now went to his own finger – the same ring adorned the flesh there!
  “What…?” he mumbled.
  He staggered back and slipped in a pile of steaming entrails, which saw him falling to the floor. His hand squelched into a pile of red skin. Niles looked down.
  He found himself staring into the flat features of his own face. It had been perfectly carved from his skull and lay pinned to the floor with gleaming, wet staples.
  “How…how is that…?”
  A sound filled his ears, a sharp, biting noise that he’d wished to never hear again: the chattering Cenobite as he kissed forth a demonic rattle.
  Niles looked up. They were all waiting for him. The female, with her scarred arms and studded tongue that’d found his flesh so succulent; the chatterer with his battered scars and wire-bound jaws; the thing with its masked face and blades for fingers. Then came the Black Pope of Hell, the lord of suffering himself – the Cenobite with nails rammed into his skull. It spoke to him.
  “Ah, Inspector Niles.”
  “What is this? Why am I…?”
 “Butchered, laid out in all your glory?” He nodded his glimmering head to the hall that led to the bedroom.
  A naked Penny Blake stepped into the red mess of the room.
  “What… She’s supposed to be dead. I gave her to you, as an offering, the way I always do.”
  “Indeed,” the female groaned wantonly, circling Niles as her hands played over her voluptuous, black-clad form, “ ‘the way you always do’. How trite.”
  “What do you mean? I’m your loyal servant, I bring you the souls of…”
  Pinhead spoke. “We’ve grown tired of your stale ways. We want to taste the desires of someone new, something fresh to our pallets. Penny here will fit the bill quite satisfactorily.”
  Penny wagged her tongue at Niles and traced the outline of her naked body. She smiled a vixen’s grin. “It was good whilst it lasted, Niles. But I intend to have a lot better than you in the future.”
  “You slut!” Niles raged and went to stand. The female’s heel found his chest and pressed him to the floor.
  “I think not, Niles. It’s been a while since I tasted you. I’ve got so many new tricks for you to explore. Let’s start with a razor-wire castration, shall we?”
  She grabbed his collar and dragged him to his feet.
  The masked creature’s claws stabbed into his hands and hauled him sternly into a cruciform. It exhaled a long hiss of breath that snaked through the room, icy and baleful.
  “Let us begin.” The female sighed.
  Pinhead barked at Penny as she slinked deeper into the room, unbridled callousness oozing from her every pore. “Leave us,” he snarled.
  Penny smiled and drew herself into the arms of a chair, exposing the heat between her legs. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll watch…”