1-16:Pornography (part 3)

Elvis and The Assassin ran along the gantry from which Donnie had fallen some hours earlier. A size eight ladies shoe lay there, a stain of blood on it.

The skylights exploded with flashes of light and glass showered the two men and the surrounding area.

Dozens of white and black-clad people rappelled down like a French trapeze act. The white were rabid members of The Sisterhood; the black, BSD thugs.

‘Got any bullets? Mine’re gone.’ said Elvis as he ran beside The Assassin.

He caught the box of shells that The Assassin tossed him, and reloaded as he ran.

The Assassin fired two shots at the door at the end of the gantry and they pushed through into another section.

They turned and rushed down some metal stairs and once at the bottom they stood a moment, to allow the new arrivals to depart. As ordered, the white and black members of the opposing groups had other fish to fry.

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1-6:The politics of thought

She woke with a killer headache and instinctively felt between her legs.

The arm was restrained. As was her other one.

She opened her eyes and winced from the sudden dazzlingly bright lights before her. Her ears were being assaulted by screeching sound from somewhere in the room.

‘All right,’ she yelled, closing her eyes as tightly as she could. ‘For crying out loud, turn it off!’

No-one responded; it was entirely possible they didn’t hear her.

On and on the sound went, screeching up and down. She couldn’t see anything past the lights, her senses were on overload. Nothing was getting through, not the surface she was lying against, nor what was restraining her.

Suddenly the lights and sound stopped. The room was plunged into darkness.

She shook her head, unable to see or hear, but glad of the sudden quiet.

‘Hello,’ she thought she said; she knew her lips moved, but heard nothing.

Again the lights went on. The noise followed.

‘Fuck,’ she yelled. ‘What do you want?!’

The noise and light continued for what seemed like an eternity, then stopped again.

She shook her head and glanced around, eyes still unable to focus. A new rectangular source of light became evident; a doorway had opened.

Two shapes, perhaps human, walked quickly into the room and pulled her head upwards.

She tried to focus, to lift her head away, but it was held firm.

She was slapped hard across her face. The force wrenched her head to one side and her cheek smacked into the wall.

Before she knew it, her bonds had been removed and she was being dragged along a corridor, blinking madly.

‘What’s this about,’ she asked in a whisper.

Neither of the guards answered.

She tried to get her legs beneath her, but they were too weak. Her senses began to report that she was horribly and sickeningly hungry.

A doorway was opened before her and she was thrown inside.

Her body went into shut-down and everything went dark once again.

* * *

Sudden cold woke her; she was soaking wet.

She opened her eyes and saw water. Struggling slightly she realised someone was holding her head beneath the surface.

She fought as best she could, but her strength was gone; her body weak from lack of protein and constant abuse.
She gulped, trying desparately not to breathe-in the water, but it was not enough.

Convulsing she fought one last time, and was yanked upwards out of the water, choking and spluttering; water had gone down into her windpipe and she was unable to clear it on her own.

She was dumped onto the floor and pain exploded in her abdomen; someone had kicked her stomach.

The water exploded from her throat and she gasped, gulping air.

She heard boots walking around her.

‘You were caught,’ said the voice in a monotone, then repeated: ‘You were caught.’

Daisy gulped air and shook from fear and confusion. What was all this?

‘We have you now,’ said the voice.

Was the voice female?

‘I’d let the others at you, but there are rules,’ said the woman derisively. She continued to circle, then repeated, ‘you were caught.’

‘Caught,’ whispered Daisy flatly. ‘Caught?’

‘Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said the woman, continuing to circle. ‘And now we’ve got you.’

‘What is this,’ Daisy whispered, now blinking far faster than was normal; the shock had caught-up with her and her body was shuddering uncontrollably.

‘You were caught and now we have to make an example of you,’ said the woman.

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ said the woman.

1-7:Wine, Women and War

She opened her eyes and winced from an eye-watering, skull-splitting headache. She felt instinctively between her legs and found something different.

Donnie looked down and saw an empty plate. On a table.

He looked up with a frown.

‘Would sir like to see the wine list,’ asked the waiter.

Donnie fell sideways from his chair, pain the only thing registering through the violent headache exploding through his brain.

‘Ahem,’ said the waiter. To Donnie he sounded like he was yelling through a 6000 watt PA system with the volume set to 11.

‘Please don’t speak so loudly,’ hissed Donnie as he clawed his way upwards again.

‘Terribly sorry sir,’ whispered the waiter, playing along. ‘Would sir wish to see the wine list?’

‘Ooo,’ said Donnie, a grin on his face. He winced from additional movement and while his conscious mind tried desperately to work out which muscles should stop moving, his unconscious formed a rather useful algorithm:

Donnie blinked a couple of times, and the logic made sense. He looked up and smiled some more, though not without further pain.

‘I would love to see the list,’ he said in an agonised whisper.

The waiter handed him the document with considerable distaste; it wasn’t becoming to lust after alcohol.

‘Hmm, old and dusty, old and dusty… ‘murmured Donnie. He looked up and addressed the man in another whisper.

‘I’ll have the Chateau Neuf ’35.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘And something to eat? Sir.’

Donnie gave him a blank stare.

The waiter coughed an ‘A-hem’; politely pointing out that he was making some kind of point which had hitherto not been noticed by Donnie.

‘Just the booze,’ whispered Donnie, now sure his brain was being pushed out of his ears like mince through a mincer.

‘The Armenian salad is particularly good tonight,’ insisted the waiter.

‘Does it have alcohol in it?’ whispered Donnie, checking his ears. No blood; of course, all that proved was that he was fundamentally brainless.

The waiter looked uncomfortable.

‘I am not aware of this possibility, sir.’ He coughed another ‘a-hem’.

‘Right, off you go then,’ said Donnie, fingering his ears; there had to be something coming out, surely? Other than earwax of course. ‘And bring my plonk forthwith.’

The waiter turned on his heel and stalked off.

Donnie closed his eyes in an effort to reduce the pounding agony he was experiencing, slowly letting the pain migrate from hemisphere to hemisphere and finally coalesce in his upper neck.

A can rattled loudly beside his left ear.

Donnie screamed and fell sideways from the chair, holding his head in his hands in an effort to stop the agony.

‘Would you like to make a donation,’ asked the young man standing beside the now vacant chair. ‘It’s to save endangered sea life.’

‘Only if you stop shouting,’ hissed Donnie. With white spots popping in front of his eyes and the pain back in his cranium, he crawled back onto the chair.

The waiter placed the requested bottle on the table and, in a most contemptuous way, paced off once more without even so much as pouring a sample for Donnie to try.

Not that it mattered of course. Donnie focussed on the bottle while murmuring to himself.

‘MyHeadHurts is true, Booze is true.’ He nodded with a smile. ‘Repeat…’

One of Donnie’s great unsung talents was a total lack of a gag reflex. He synchronised his breathing and guzzled the contents of the bottle in one go.

The man with the can winced slightly at the sound of the last of the expensive wine being sucked from the bottle.

Donnie pulled the empty receptacle away from his mouth. He gasped and sniffed, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Oh,’ he said after another moment, and noticed the pain had dulled substantially; the nuclear bomb tests going on in his skull had been successfully disrupted by a protest flotilla of nearly a liter of a good quality French red.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Donnie with a grin. ‘That feels better.’

1-4:Cake and Eat It…

image by Rose

He woke with a killer headache and instinctively felt between his legs. He found what he’d needed in the last reality, which was a pity, really.

Daisy opened her eyes and saw stars.

‘What a pretty night,’ she said.

She sat up and looked around. There was a mucky looking river in front of her and a slight breeze in the air, flowing from the river and up the banks. There was something amiss, though. Something not quite right, something missing…

‘Where are you?’ yelled a familiar voice. There was real anger there. ‘You fucking bitch!’

Ah, that was it. She nodded to herself, there being no-one else around to nod at.

Panix was definitely unhappy about something. Perhaps it was as a result of Donnie’s knee-jerk reaction in the last reality. Oh well.

‘When I catch you, I’ll make you pay for what you did to me!’

Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah.

Something tugged at her memory. Oh yes, that kiss! Of course, it only came about because The Assassin had, quite unexpectedly, blown a hole in her chest. Well, Donnie’s chest.

Ugh. She held her head to try to stop it exploding. She had never been able to adequately get her head around the dual-personality dual-gender issues. If she kept thinking about it, she’d need to hunt down a warm bath and a couple of Gin and Tonics to accompany the pain.

She shuddered to think what Donnie would do. Probably something involving video games and pornography. Boys!

Panix screamed again, this time in a particularly blood-curdling fashion. He was really mad. He would also need a good vocal surgeon.

She rolled onto her chest and looked around furtively. The wind picked up and blew cold air up her skirt.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, then slapped her hand over her mouth. Bugger!

1-1:Fire with fire

image by FroggyFrog

He woke up with a killer headache and instinctively felt between his legs. He didn’t find what he was looking for, which meant he would have to remember not to answer to the male pronoun.

She opened her eyes.

A set of train tracks lay three feet in front of her. She looked over her shoulder and read the graffiti on the side of a building.

She remembered that slogan from the last time.

Daisy Penfolde stood up and looked around. In the distance in front of her was a bridge. Behind was the sound of an approaching train. It was probably time to get off the tracks.

She examined her clothes as she walked, while simultaneously shortening her steps and forcing herself not to walk with a cro-magnon gait. She was dressed for a night out, and as a result, she was freezing.

Slowly, the memories of the last brief existence flowed back. It was the closest she’d been to death in quite some-time.

The bridge finally presented itself and she climbed carefully down, arriving at the bottom in a what appeared to be a university district. This assumption was reinforced by a large number of semi-literate youth, together with an expansive set of second-hand record and book-shops. The presence of a whopping great sign with ‘University’ on it was also a pretty good indicator that her supposition was correct.

The university building, the one with the sign on it, was the biggest in the district and was  topped with the biggest satellite dish she had ever seen.

As she walked past the kids, some of whom she recognised, others she didn’t, a graveyard of Goths presented itself. One winked at her, then pulled a zippo lighter with an engraved symbol on it that looked rather like a bird.

Her mind put the imagery together: goths=coffins, lighter=cigarettes.

Just what she needed.