Torado felt his body thud up and down every few seconds, throwing his back up before it crushed back down onto the hard yet itchy surface he was lying on. The claustrophobic space he found himself occupying was full of the stale and sickly smell of the same beer he had been so carelessly pouring down his throat only a few hours earlier. It was hot wherever he was and difficult to breathe, a sense of nausea kept overwhelming him, forcing involuntary retches out of his throat. It was the same feeling of nausea he had used to get when taking the long journey by car as a little child to his granpapapas avocado farm. Torado tried to look around but everything was completely black he couldn’t see even a glimpse of light coming from anywhere, trying to move he felt his head smash against something hard and metallic that did little to improve the thudding pain marching across his head, wriggling and writhing about like some kind of mal coordinated slug, it became apparent to Torado that his hands and legs were welded together by something, tape, rope maybe he thought? Then again thud, thud, thud he was flung back up into the air repeatedly and deposited back down onto the hard floor with a spine shattering crash. He was sure that wherever he was, he was moving but not of his own accord and to where god only knew. Torado was in fact bound by rope and currently inhabiting the boot of a non-descript 1990s Ford estate car and the thuds that kept reverberating through his spine, were the pot holes that dotted the narrow country lane that led up into the mountains and the episcopal town of Kudowa.
Opening his eyes Torado looked around, he could feel a heavy ache across the whole of his back, his mouth was so dry he could feel his tongues rubbing roughly like sandpaper against the inside of his mouth, which tasted stale and unpleasant, he swallowed trying to summon some saliva to calm the rawness of his throat and mouth. The décor of the room was equally unsmoothing to his stinging eyes although reasonably bare its furniture was all a hideous salmon pink that made Torado remember the socks of the men. On the wall hung one sole painting of a grotesque pink hippopotamus with the beadiest of eyes. Torado realising that he had regained the use of his limbs and the intense burning in his groin reminded him that it was a very long time since he had last urinated made his way towards the two doors at the other side of the room. He opened the right had door which revealed a tiny bathroom complete with a horrifying pink toilet and sink. He stood over the toilet and felt an immense sense of relief as a jet of urine came out splashing all over the salmon pink seat, conscientiously he wiped it off with the toilet tissue that hung on the holder, which was of course salmon pink!!
He walked back into the bedroom and wondered what had happened to his clothes, as he was completely naked, what the hell was going on? Who had taken his clothes and where in “dio de rio” was he? Torado opened the door that was next to the bathroom; it was a wardrobe and inside on a solitary hanger was a jump suit. It reminded him of the prison clothes that the convicts had worn when working on the chain gang to construct the railway line across the Rio Grandean mountain pass, except instead of black and white stripes this jumpsuit was a hideous pink and on its breast was the embossed figure of a hippopotamus. He took it down from the hanger and hung it over his arm and walked back towards the pink duvet covered bed. The material of the jumpsuit was rough and cheaply made thought Torado but the embossed figure of the hippo was as soft as silk when he touched it. Shivering from the cold, Torado decided that he had little choice but to put this monstrous article of clothing on, he climbed into the legs of the jumpsuit and pulled his arms into the suit, he bulled the front together and started to do up the buttons, the cloth felt rough and uncomfortable and made his shivering skin itch but it felt warm.
Wrapping his arms around his body to try and warm up Torado sat down on the salmon bedspread and stared at the child like painting of the hippopotamus that hung crookedly on the wall opposite him. After a few minutes he snapped out of the trance he had fallen into whilst staring at the painting, got up and tried to find a way out of the gaudily decorated room. As he walked around the room he noticed that the only two doors appeared to be the ones that led to the bathroom and wardrobe respectively. There seemed to be no other apparent exit from the pink cell he found himself in. Torado started to feel scared and anxious, running into the tiny bathroom he could find no other door that might allow him to escape the room, he walked out and opened the door to the wardrobe, climbed inside and desperately started scratching and banging on the dark wooden panels at the back of it out of hope more than anything else, but they did not move, just echoed back the sound of Torado’s fist hammering against them. He fell to the floor and huge droplets of tears started to run down his face, leaving dark wet spots on the pink jumpsuit, that seemed to spread out until the joined into one huge damp circle almost in the same shape as his heart that the wet cloth now clung to. It was at that point that Torado first noticed the tiny window high above the bed. He pulled himself up from the floor and ran across the room and leapt onto the small pink covered bed and with all his strength clinging onto the tiny window ledge lifted himself up so he could just about peer out. Hundreds and hundreds of feet below there lay a tiny town square, covered in tables and chairs with café umbrellas advertising many different brands of beer, that made Torado feel an overwhelming urge for alcohol. The square looked like one you would find in any small town except for the fact that as Torado stared down at the toy like square below, there was not a single soul to be seen.
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