The nailed head spoke first. "You know why we have come." It was both statement and question. The creature, humanoid, taller than he'd expected, stood in place, half hidden by shadows.
Laslo stood up awkwardly, his hands fumbling blindly against the wall. "Yes," he said. "The box. I am to come with you."
The female watched him intently as he spoke. "No tears?" She asked. "No last minute pleas for mercy?"
Laslo shook his head. "No," he replied, and his voice was calm. The creature with the nails in its head narrowed it's eyes.
"No fear, no regret?"
"Nothing."
"Quite the brave one, aren't you?" The female cajoled.
"Not really," Laslo replied. "You have something I need."
"We know what you need," said the nailed head.
Laslo smiled a lop-sided smile. "No you don't," he countered.
"No? Then we have an eternity to drag it out of you."
Laslo, all backed up against the wall and scared stiff as he was, nevertheless tried to sound calm. "You're boring me," he said flatly. "Are you going to spend eternity grinding me down with your fucking monologues?"
In answer, a hooked chain flew out from the darkness beyond the Cenobites and sank into his thigh; in shock he cried out, and grabbed the chain with both hands to stop it tightening further. But even as he did so, it drew taught, and he was caught off balance and dragged to his knees in front of the nailed head.
"You. Don't. Fucking. Scare. ME!" He gasped. The chain tightened further and he screamed out loud in response, anger and pain combined into a howl that would surely wake the dead.
The nailed head stood above him now; majestic and royal, like a lion over his prey. "No screams, not yet," he snarled. "We have such a long, long way to go before they're merited."
Laslo bowed his head in defeat. As hook after hook after hook curled into his sweating flesh, he shrieked and wailed and begged, but it was no good. The Cenobites had him, and they were merciless and dispassionate in their work. Finally, when his body was at the limits of what it could physically endure without coming apart, and he was losing consciousness from loss of blood, the Cenobites paused to survey the results of their endeavours. Laslo looked up at them, saw them studying him without malice, without longing, without any appetites that he could comprehend, and though his mouth was not equal to the task (hooks pulling his mouth wide to the point where it was splitting open), he tried to speak.
"You're nothing," he said, words and blood from his mouth in equal measure. "You're frauds."
The female fingered the gaping wound in her neck, musing over his words. "Go on," she said, and there was a cool, detached curiosity and amusement in her voice.
Laslo, spread-eagled and hanging in mid air from a hundred hooked chains, turned his head to see her better. "You call yourselves... Explorers in... in the further regions of experience."
The nailed head spoke. "Oh yes. Compared to what awaits you, your current condition is nothing."
Laslo laughed weakly. "And what about your condition?" He panted. "Look at me. Look what you've done to me."
"A start, nothing more," said the female.
"You enjoy being hurt like this?" Laslo asked. "Would you choose this for yourselves?"
The female regarded him intently. "Quite the talker, aren't you?" She cooed.
"I suppose most just scream and beg and die."
"Most," she agreed. "But some go into shock, and they talk, or they go mad, and they talk. You're not the first, nor the last."
"How long have you been like this?" He asked. "All your lives?"
The nailed head spoke again. "Forever," he said.
"Unchanged?"
"Unchanged," replied the female. "We have always been, and always will be."
"Christ," Laslo sighed. "You're not explorers... You're not experiencing anything new. Look what you've done to me. Then look at yourselves... A few fucking piercings here and there that you've had forever." He paused, expecting the chains to tighten and silence him permanently. But he had a captive audience. The Cenobites, through amusement or curiosity, were allowing him to speak. He took a deep breath as best he could. "Your pain is nothing compared to mine," he continued, "and yet you set yourselves up as the experts. The seekers of the ultimate thrill. When did you last experience anything even close to what I'm suffering?"
"Enough," commanded the nailed head.
"You fucking hypocrits. You spout your fucking bullshit about pleasure and pain indivisible but when it comes down to it you're just fakes."
"Enough!" said the nailed head, and this time, the audience over, the chains were drawn tighter so that Laslo could no longer speak. The female drew close to him and put her fingers under his chin, catching his spittle and blood. "When you've come to our playgrounds, you'll understand," she said. "We will feel, experience, savour everything that happens to you. Your agonies will be our agonies, your pleasures, ours."
Laslo shook his head in horror.
"We have guided many, many souls into our realm," she continued. "And we feel the suffering of each and every one, eternally."
Laslo made a noise, but his mouth wouldn't form the words properly. "It's hell," was all he managed to whisper.
"Hell? Is that what you said? No," she corrected. "It's Heaven."
She moved away and let his head drop. "Now," she said. "The pleasures await."
As the hellish realm of the cenobites assembled itself around him, and the weight of the air sank over and around him like a straightjacket, Laslo steeled himself for the ordeals ahead. He had thought they would find him out straight away, but he had been lucky. They were far too engrossed in themselves to wonder why he was so functional even when his body was coming apart. But the last seconds had troubled him; your agonies will be our agonies, they'd said. What would happen when they found out he didn't have any agonies, that even being pulled apart by hooks (although horrific and traumatic on a psychological level) had caused him no physical pain at all? And Christ, what if they had ways of curing him? Of fixing him so that, for the first time in years, he did feel pain?
Too late to start worrying, he thought to himself. Leper or not, his road was fixed before him. He allowed himself to faint in exhaustion and shock, but not before closing his eyes and remembering her face, her laugh, her companionship. The reason why he had summoned the Cenobites. The reason why even now they were initiating him into experiences beyond his wildest nightmares.
"Hold on, Eve, " he thought, and her name, even in this hell, brought him comfort. "I'm coming."