A herring-gull appeared out of the fog and landed with a knock on the prow of Pete and Thomas’ row boat, rocking it slightly. It blinked at the pair, shuffled around on the spot, then launched off, rocking the boat again. It was soon lost to the fog.

 
“That was weird, Pete.”

 
“I can’t see it already.”

 
“Follow it.”

 
“What?”

 
“Follow the seagull. It went that way.” Thomas pointed a smidgen port of the prow.

 
“Why?”

 
“It must have come from the shore.”

 
“What makes you think that?”

 
“Do you have any idea which direction the beach is in?”

 
Pete pulled the row boat around with one oar, then rowed straight until his arms began to ache. Thomas was right, they’d lost all sense of direction out here.

 

After a while, Thomas said, “Can you hear that, Pete?”

 
Pete gratefully raised his oars. Water dripped into the calm water as the boat slowed. He listened. “It’s just the water against the boat.”

 
“No it’s not. Look. It’s Brighton pier.”

 
A pair of rusty columns appeared in the fog. Then another set behind, all shadows and wire beneath. The muffled sea lapped against steep metal steps at the pier’s end.

 

“Are you sure that’s Brighton pier?”

 
“It just looks different from down here in the fog.”

 
“You’re right. I’m going to tie her up here. I’d rather walk than row. These steps should lead us round the back of the rides.”

 
The friends’ metal footsteps clanked in the dullness. Pete held onto the cold rail. The steps were small and slippery. At the top there was only a plain wooden deck leading endlessly into the fog. There were no rides or huts selling doughnuts, no seating or stacked deckchairs. Only the ornate Victorian railings on either side of the deck.

 
“This is definitely not Brighton Pier, Thomas.”

 
“Not West Pier either.” West Pier had been a fire-damaged wreck for years.

 
“It’s not Worthing?”

 
“Don’t be a dick.”

 
“No, you’re right, too far, it can’t be.”
“Let’s go, Pete.”

 
The end of the pier soon disappeared behind them. To Pete, their knocking footsteps felt like an intrusion upon the silence. He squinted forwards, waiting for the beach to appear, or a seat, or a lamp-post, anything to break the repetitiveness.

 

Every so often he looked behind him. The view was no different. Nothing changed. The same railings went by, the same pattern of breaks in the planking, the same echoing footsteps.

 
“How long is this pier, Thomas?”

 
Thomas shrugged.

 
“It’s going on forever.”

 
“It’s just a long pier, Pete.”

 
The railings. The planks. Their footsteps. The railings. The planks. Their footsteps. Pete started counting the posts, but soon gave it up as pointless. A pattern of rust on the post looked like the state of Texas. He chuckled.

 
“What’s funny, Pete?”

 
“Nuttin’.” He laughed again.

 
Thomas shook his head.

 
The railings. The planks. Their footsteps. The railings. The planks. Their . . . hang on. That post. Was it the same one? The one with the rusty Texas pattern? No it couldn’t be. Pete studied the floor instead. White fog showed through the gaps in the planks. A knot on one edge had fallen out leaving a hole, reminding him how little separated them from the invisible sea.

 
The railings. The planks. Their footsteps. The planks — that plank. It had the same knot missing on the edge. Pete was certain of it.

 
“Seriously, Thomas, this isn’t funny. A pier can’t be this long. We never rowed that far out. My legs ache more than my arms.” Thomas didn’t answer.

 

“Thomas?”

 
“Just keep walking.”

 
“Look. Stop it, Thomas. Lay off the funny voice, okay?”

 
“Just keep walking.”

 
“I said stop it! This is wrong. I’m going back.”

 
“Just keep walking.”

 
“Hey, Thomas. Stop mucking around all right? Look, I really don’t like this. I’m going back. You coming?”

 
Thomas turned his head slowly to look at Pete, but didn’t slow his walking.

 

 

“Just keep walking, Pete. We’re almost there.”

 
“No. Fuck you, Thomas. I’m going back.”

 
Pete ran back along the pier, alone, and the fog soon obliterated his friend and his footsteps. He stared straight up, ignoring the planks, ignoring the railings. He fancied he could hear the beat of his own heart echoing the tempo of his feet upon the boards. He ran, but he may as well have been walking. It was like running on the spot. Like the pier was some giant fucking treadmill. He began to doubt whether he had actually turned around at all. He was stuck in a one dimensional world with only two choices, and they both lead nowhere.

 
Suddenly seized with the fear that the pier would never end, no matter which way he ran, he sprinted forwards, breathing hard. Knock, knock, knock. Railings, planks. Railings, planks. The wood was wet underfoot. He might slip. He didn’t care. He ran faster, spit filling his mouth, his throat and lungs burning. Should he turn around and find Thomas? No. The fucking pier went on forever.

 
Railings rushed out of the fog towards him. Pete stuck out his foot and slipped up, landing hard, getting wet all up his back. He sat rubbing his knee, feeling sick that the trip had only just saved him from tumbling down onto the metal steps. He spat out stringy gobs. His breathing shallowed. His heart slowed.

 
He made his way carefully down the slippery steps. He felt cold and weak, and couldn’t grip the handrail. One slip and he’d be gone. But he soon sat huddled in the boat, looking up, wondering at his decision. He felt calmer now, and his rational mind began to reassert itself.

 

He’d never freaked out like that before. He hoped Thomas was okay. Pete shivered in the wet air. He would wait here until the fog lifted. There was no way he was getting back on that pier.

 
Pete eventually got back to shore. No one ever found Thomas.

_______

©2010 Barry J. Northern

Barry lives not far from Brighton Pier and would like to see more pier-based horror. Have you ever walked under a pier? It’s scary. He blogs and writes at barryjnorthern.blogspot.com, which is also the home of his weekly podcast, Friday Fables, available in iTunes now.

There is no sensation that compares to an orgasm.
 
This was his earliest deduction. Even before he was mature enough to experience the physical effervescence of ecstasy, he had a notion, a primal sense that there was an ultimate pleasure in life that he would one day taste.
 
He felt its warm breath whisper in his ear as a child, when he sat on the toilet, watching his cousin’s friend in the shower. He felt its gentle fingertips caress him when he spotted the perplexing yet enthralling photograph on the back of the rolled up magazine protruding from beneath his father’s side of the bed. He felt it pulse inside him when he lay in the grass beneath the silver birch at the bottom of the playing fields with Cassie Smith, and kissed her warm, sherbet-frosted lips.
 
He captured it for the first time in his dreams at the age of twelve, and was truly in love from that moment. A week later he had learned how to consciously summon his rapturous mistress. His life from then had been dedicated to her pursuit, in all her wondrous guises.
 
It occurred to him two years ago that he had exhausted every conceivable facet and form of orgasm. There was no depth to which he had not stooped, no depravity left untested, no perversion unindulged; and this deeply saddened him. When one finally captures the nymph they have so lustily chased, they invariably break her wings.
 
He had found the limitations of physicality, and was caged by them. Patsy claimed she could stack her orgasms like dominoes, then let them all cascade throughout her being in a waterfall of ecstasy. And he’d seen it happen. The trembling contractions she was seized by as he’d glanced up from between her legs were unlike anything he had experienced. Her pleasure was otherworldly, deific; and he envied her with a sulphurous spleen.
 
So William began researching. He stole books from museums and libraries; he joined ancient secret societies; he communed with atrocious entities through diabolical séances in his pursuit of the answer to the ultimate sensation. A human being is allowed a vague glimmer of what it is to be divine, what pleasures the greater senses of a god may feel, in that one transient explosion of ecstasy. So William sought to escape his flesh’s shortcomings and become a god.
 
He doesn’t know what went wrong. All he knows is that he will kill himself some time soon, for his despair is absolute. Dawn begins to bleach the bedroom and throw pale blue light over the loose pages of notes scattered across the floor. The sunlight will soon fall across the crooked archway in front of the bay window to highlight his failure. He weeps as Patsy snores.
 
He had calculated every minute element of the archway in conjunction with his abstruse studies. The angles had been exact; the weight was correct; the organic liquids were balanced; the flesh had all decayed to the correct levels; the colugo’s vocal chords had been pulled until they reached the unearthly tone required, and then had been amplified to the correct number of decibels. The celestial alignment had been perfect as he crawled through the structure at exactly seven minutes past three that morning, clad in exactly the right materials to allow him to pass into a state where his soul may cum for this first time; where every part of him may become a living orgasm; where everything he’d known until then was nothing more than tepid foreplay; where pleasure was infinite and where gods may be.
 
And now he sits in bed, still a man, numb to divinity. Above the stench of decaying viscera, he can smell the vinegar and cake dough of Patsy’s sweat. His tear-shattered vision drops to the cigarette burns he scarred into her bosom two nights ago, and he thinks for a moment that her very presence may have unbalanced all of his carefully placed elements and made him fail. His hands contract into trembling fists. She was just another toy; she was never supposed to be here on this sacred night. He pulls the sheet down to her midriff and squeezes her breast angrily in his hand. Her nipple erects, though she still snores. He pulls her hair, yanking her head up from the pillow, forcing her fat greasy lips against his own. Now she is awake. She seems startled at first, rigid. But she soon becomes malleable beneath his weight, and he pushes her thighs apart.
 
And then he jolts as though he has been stung, and tumbles backwards from the bed, trembling. His body falls into the archway, sending each perfectly placed structure into a cascading chaos.
 
Patsy sits up and crawls towards the edge of the bed. She is saying something, but William cannot hear her. All of his senses are fixated by the semi-engorged prick swaying between her legs. She grins, and as she reaches out to touch him, her phallus twitches with excitement. William recoils, pulling the duvet over himself as his bare back falls upon the bone, metal, wood, urine and other debris behind him. Patsy sits back on her haunches with a confused look on her face, but it is her cock, sat with hideous majesty on its scrotal throne that William cannot look away from. It seems to watch him with its one knowing eye, daring him to face the brewing madness in his head. He puts his trembling hand on his navel in answer to the phallus’ goading. His skin is slick with sweat, and his palm slides quickly down to his own loins.
 
He screams.

 

__________

©2010 Gary Bewick-Raven

Gary crafts nightmarish worlds and lures us in to stay as long as we dare. The British author is published both in print and online, and is currently working on his first collection of stories entitled Red Mass.