The Great One Line Thread

[Rules: everyone takes a turn in contributing the next sentence to this opening line from Poe's "The Pit And The Pendulum", inclusive of new paragraphs or dialogue. Any form of prose is permitted, whether it be Ligottian, Kafkaesque or Wodehousian.]

I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.

I had been warned that the first day at St Ruffians' boarding school would be traumatic but nothing had quite prepared me for the truly agonising horror of the Spiked Chair, whose tips had been coated in a devilish concoction of mescaline, absthinthe and lysergic acid.

[trieffiewiles]

Upon the lapse of an hour or perhaps days, four ornately gloved hands lifted my naked flesh from the strange throne, though I could not discern whether it was two acolytes or four who held me for a single veiled hand clasped each of my limbs, and as I tried to look around the auditorium it seemed filled with figures who regarded me, their eyes turning to peacock feathers of menacing color and set afire.