www.morpheustales.com the street outside he sees a police car pulling up outside his shop. “Oh dear, what will become of me now,” he whispers to himself. The diode begins to flash with increasing urgency and so Gloom, fearing imminent arrest, decides for want of any better option to pull the lever above it in the vague hope that somehow it will save him. Given the queer events of the day, stranger things had happened than him being saved by pulling a lever, he thought. To his pleasant surprise a burglar alarm at a nearby shop on the High Street began to ring, the policeman paused halfway out of the vehicle and then opted to investigate the piercing bell rather than to purchase one of Gloom’s special breakfast rolls. Gloom had forgotten in his panic that the policeman always purchased a roll from him at 9.30. Gloom allows a sigh of relief to whistle through his uneven teeth, but this calm moment of being oblivious to this newfound demonstration of cause and effect is desperately short lived. Gloom’s eyes roll slowly down, slowly adjusting to the half light, until they become fixed on the console before him and then rest upon the fossil-like phallus-lever gripped in his hand, its base resting on two bulbous bearings in a leathery encasement of leper-white lips. There is a hissing sound as of gas escaping and the room shimmers for a second like a mirage. Gloom is alone and surrounded by inexplicable machinery; pulleys tug in silence and great wheels spin with mysterious purpose. Bending low beneath fleshy pulmonary sacks that inflate and empty quietly above him, he decides to explore this strange world that he has found himself in, and he soon discovers his wanderings are limited by walls the colour of decay and a distinct lack of any exit. The windows are few and without hinges, and besides, they are all far too small for him to fit through. In each room he enters, the same machinery turns to obscure ends and Gloom begins to panic. He feels claustrophobic. Gloom returns through a corridor of eldritch shadows and heavy cogs to the control panel where he first entered this strange place. Beside him a chattering piece of machinery comes to life. Rigid wires whose extremities terminate in pointed tooth roots tap up and down on a piece of paper that extends jerkily before him. A bar toothed with sharpened fingernails suddenly drops and guillotines the paper sending a slip drifting downwards to Gloom’s feet. He picks it up and reads the message upon it. Welcome to The Function Room.
65