“Clarence Percival?”

Suddenly he was there, the sound of a woman’s voice shocked him as if he’d been jolted awake.

Clarence looked around uncertainly, as if checking whether there was another Clarence Percival in the room. Which of course there wasn’t, given that the room was empty. Empty that is apart from himself and the woman who’d called him, or wakened him?  And she didn’t look like a Clarence.

Of course, he didn’t know her name, he couldn’t know, he’d never met her before. He’d never set foot in this room before. In fact, he had no idea what he was doing here, or why. He’d been having his breakfast and then the dog started yelping at the door. He’d stood up and knocked over his coffee and then suddenly he was here.

The woman was smiling at him, it was a sweet smile and there below that smile was a nametag, the woman was called Lucy. So, she wasn’t called Clarence. That only left him.

“That’s me,” he acknowledged uncertainly. He glanced around again, trying to get some sense of what was going on. The room looked normal, like a hundred waiting rooms that he’d been in throughout his life. A small cheap, flat-pack type table sat on a functional blue carpet. The walls were that generic cream colour, bog standard and yuck! The room was brightly lit with a cold LED blueness. On the table sat some scuffed copies of National Geographic, which seemed to adorn every waiting room everywhere.

Everything seemed normal, he was in what looked like an average waiting room in an average building. It could have been a hospital, or he could have been waiting to be called for an interview, or to see a solicitor. Only thing was, usually he could remember the purpose of his visit, or have a memory of actually travelling to the place, or even some kind of hint in a calendar that he was due to visit such a place sometime in the near future. But he had none of these recollections, he was just here, sitting in a cheap vinyl chair. Wearing his silk pyjamas with the still wet coffee stain. 

“If you’d just like to follow me,” the woman called Lucy said, and without the smile fading, she spun and on stiletto heels swished from the room. Clarence stood up and wishing he had worn his slippers and with bare feet slapping the floor, he followed her.

“Where are we?” he asked as he trailed behind her down a long corridor. An almost overpowering scent of some exotic perfume drifted in her wake. And something else, a tinge of barbeque, or even sulphur perhaps?

The woman called Lucy turned her head, still smiling she said, “you’ll find out soon enough.”

“But what’s happening? Why am I here? What the hell is going on?”

Lucy didn’t turn round to answer this time. “All in good time,” she said.

The corridor was bare, the walls either side were painted in that same sickly colour. There were no doors or windows, just the endless walls and the soulless blue light. Except for a single door at the far end, that never seemed to get any closer. The clickety-click of the woman’s shoes was the only sound, a noise that seemed to fill the corridor, echoing off the bare walls. To Clarence it sounded like the ticking of some god-awful Grandfather clock.

His eyes were drawn to the source of the sound. Even he had to admit that she was an attractive woman. She held herself like a model, her skin was flawless, and her long blonde hair glistened and shone as it swept down her back. A straight seam ran down the back of the woman’s black-stockinged legs. The skirt she wore came to halfway down her thighs, showing just a glimpse of stocking tops. In another life, perhaps it would have stirred something in him. But not in this life, not in Clarence.   

He looked over the woman’s shoulder towards the door, it seemed as far away as ever. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Here we are,” said Lucy.

The words failed him; Clarence stood with his mouth hanging open. The door had been a distance away an eyeblink ago, how far he couldn’t tell, but their arrival hadn’t been imminent, yet now here they were. It simply wasn’t possible.

Lucy held the door open for him, tentatively he stepped past her and into the room.

“Just need to complete some paperwork and we can get you settled in, isn’t this exciting?” she said, rubbing her hands together happily, she followed Clarence into the room.

This time Clarence didn’t even bother trying to speak. He just let his mouth hang open.

Everything up to this point could be considered, not normal as such, but familiar. The waiting room had just been a waiting room.  The corridor, a bit out of the ordinary, he supposed. But, the incident with the door had left him feeling confused and a bit disorientated, and a little frightened. But then again the whole experience had.

This room, on the other hand, was a different ball game altogether. The light from a blood red sky streamed through an open window. Bare granite walls reflected this light, the whole room felt – well, it felt red. It was an effect enhanced by a roaring log fire which blazed in the huge fireplace that took up almost the whole of one wall.  It was a majestic sized, grotesquely carved fireplace. There was hardly an inch of the looming structure that wasn’t adorned with gothic carvings. It was covered in skulls and crossbones and gargoyles and horrific creatures that seemed to contort and dance in the strange light.

The floor was of a rough flagstone, upon which sat a large desk that looked beyond being an antique. On one side of the desk sat a massive throne-like chair, while on the other side there was a simple rickety wooden affair.

This was not a Doctor’s office, or a tax office, or like any office he’d ever experienced. It was like nothing he’d seen before, a surreal nightmare vision plucked straight from a horror movie. Clarence grabbed the wooden chair and with his