by Will Madden
“Stiletto” Anne Fleck had never worn a heel over an inch and a half in her life: a thing you oughta know before you cross her.
Before their marriage, she and Arnold had partnered on dozens of gangland jobs. Undercover as a quarreling couple, they constituted one the most ruthlessly efficient assassin teams Dodoville had ever seen. They anticipated each other’s actions and behaved as a single organism, able to salvage a well-laid plan gone sour or to disappear a witness who wasn’t supposed to be there.
When Arnold decided to reinvent himself as a member of Dodoville’s suburban leisure class, Anne was the obvious co-conspirator. The money was a small matter. Forging the ancient lineages, the trusted connections, that unfakeable above-it-allness, even that was manageable. By working opposite ends of the room in tandem took something special. But dividing, they conquered. Arnold and Anne: the Flecks. Their deepest covert op yet.
The transition to domestic life did not provide the peace and quiet they had hoped for. The Prism, too, they found very much a war, only now the trenches stretched through rose gardens and piano recitals. The same arguments which they had once shammed in public now lost their flavor in the privacy of their new home. Neither could stand the same foods or movies as the other. The scent of the dish soap proved a minefield.
Sexual compatibility, let’s don’t even talk.
The most treacherous thing of all: the dysfunctionality of their marriage proved the most convincing part of their cover.
The pool of eligible partners for Prismites was small, and since they seemed to cultivate themselves as people of few qualities, building an emotionally supportive partnership was sort of a lost cause. Profound spiritual isolation was simply the fee you paid to live above the fracas of Dodoville.
In every parlor and smoking lounge, the laughter was forced or nervous. Whenever you looked at a lawn, either yours or a neighbor’s, you were scanning for weeds. A dinner party was deemed a success if everyone had been made too anesthetized to complain.
Dinner was always a success.
Of course, the Flecks hated each other. Of course, each was waiting for the other to die. Otherwise, people would have smelled something fishy.
Anne was waifish, like most Prism wives. Naturally petite, the slight figure was not difficult for her to maintain, but sometimes she starved herself anyway, as recreation. Hypoglycemia spiced up an otherwise insufferable day.
After living here a few months, she resolved that someday she would execute everyone in town—one at a time as the lights went out, like some campy whodunit. But as the years passed, she decided she could wish no greater evil upon her neighbors than to leave them in their state of restless paralysis. It’s what she would do if she was exacting revenge upon herself.
Finally, she realized everyone else thought of themselves as letting her live. The peace here was spite-based. It had always had been.
Today, Anne had spent the morning having her hair processed until you could no longer say whether it had a color or not. Her tea dress, Christmas red, cost as much as a small ship. It cinched just below her armpits and hung in a way that obliterated any sense of physical form. Like the robe of a Dickensian ghost, it could be hiding anything under there: a desert oasis; a Tony Award-winning musical; a cloud-swirling portal to Narnia. With a pair of blocky shoes at the bottom.
She stared at herself in the mirror. She looked like an overused shuttlecock.
With a sewing needle, she drew a drop of blood from her finger and smeared it across her forehead. With the back of her hand, she wiped her lipstick across her cheek in the other direction.
As she slipped a stiletto into the belt of her dress, an electric charge flooded her body. She felt like an old computer coming back online.
Snarling at herself in the mirror, she ran the flat of her tongue across her reflection in the glass. The mousy Prismite she’d been this morning lay in a trunk somewhere, buried under last season’s fashions. This was the real her. Stiletto Anne, dressed for war.
The Pestilence was hard at work. With laser lassos and turbo thrusters, they pulled down obelisks of priceless crystal and watched them shatter across the stones of the plaza. The pieces lay in pools of massage oil and toilet cleaner, spilled by the domestic defenders now routed and retreating into the shadows of the surrounding porticoes.
Time and again, stories of heroes have taught us that however much courage and tenacity you bring to the battlefield, no weapon is more powerful than a good pedigree. The Prism domestics had fought fiercely but ultimately proved no match for the Pestilence, who’d had the foresight to grant themselves noble titles, on account the houses they came from were technically very old.
Also, the servants had been forced to fight with like a waffle iron, so who knows.
When vandalism started to bore them, Brum drew up his knights in a line.
“Valiant sirs,” he said, “have a look on yonder hill. You could not say any of those ugly fucking houses to be uglier or fuckier than the rest. Prissytown has a byzantine set of building codes to make sure every home falls in line with some dead lunatic’s concept of what Vienna under Emperor Leopold the Somethingth might have looked like.”
“So what is our strategy?” asked Heckley.
“We must strike them where it hurts most,” said Brum.
“The groin?” suggested Abhoc.
“The lawns.”
“That’s what I meant. Loins.”
A late afternoon wind whistled over his balding head, splaying strands behind him.
“Sir Abhoc, beat yourself twice the face twice,” said Brum.
The red cavalier made a fist, then paused.
“It’s already very badly bruised, Knight Commander.”
“Three times.”
Abhoc administered the punishment, swearing profusely with each punch.
“Sir Bubo!” cried Brum. “You know your duty.”
“Yes, Lord Commander. Say no more.”
The leather-goggled knight of the realm attached one end of a hose to a tank on the side of his horse, the other to the butt of his lance. On the handle, he toggled a switch from STABBY to FLAMETHROWER.
“Ever since a botanist killed my uncle,” said Bubo, “all I yearn for nightly is a world without privets.”
“See,” cried Abhoc, pointing indignantly, “he’s calling ‘em groins too!”
Brum cast him a dark look. Abhoc instinctively covered his swollen jaw.
“A privet,” Brum explained calmly, “is those hedges lining the estates here.”
“Oh, I see. On account it’s privet property and all.”
“Good Lord on a Lipizzaner!” cried Heckley. “The boss was giving you a chance!”
“How many lives has a cat, Sir Abhoc?” asked Brum.
“Nine,” he replied.
“And how many tails?”
“Just the . . .” Abhoc’s face sunk. “You’re having me whipped again after this, aren’t you, m’lord?”
Brum scowled. “Don’t give me ideas.”
A jet of black-tinged fire spat from the tip of Bubo’s lance. Spurring his mount, he passed down the road at a light trot, applying the burning edge of the flame to the bushes on one side. Where a tree overhung the shrubbery, he paused to drench it with dollops of sticky fire. His horse shied as the flames shot up, but Bubo patted its neck and whispered soothing clicks in its ear. Once the animal had steadied again, the two worked on till the bend in the road. Then the knight lowered his lance and made a pass back along the other side.
The road had become a corridor of flame, towering four meters high.
“This is exactly what my dreams are like every night,” mused Abhoc, rubbing the smoke from eyes.
Up ahead, a long automobile rolled out onto the gravel path. It came to a full stop and turned on its headlights, flooding the burning passage with an eerie lavender glow. The engine revved like the world was coming to an end, then softened to a purr.
The Bratmobile. Flanked by an inferno o
n each side, it was truly a terror to behold.
On the driver’s side, a long metal pike rolled off the roof to settle onto a pair of bracing arms. At the end of the pike, a red targeting light winked at the knights.
A yellow glove on a purple wrist reached out the window and beckoned.
“Does he want us to tourney with his car?” Abhoc asked incredulously.
Heckley crossed his arms. “For all I know, he expects us to wash his windshield.”
An unsettlingly tranquil voice emerged from a loudspeaker. “I, the Violet Storm of Dodoville, challenge your champion to a contest of arms, in the solemn rite of the joust!”
The knights glanced at each other. “Is that even fair?” asked Abhoc.
Heckley lifted his helmet to scratch behind his ear. “On a pass of lances, I’d rather have my horse than his car. Isn’t that right, Sir Bubo?”
“I dunno, let me ask. Tweet toot twerp tawhit,” he said into his saddle console.
Slowly rotating digital diagrams of both the Bratmobile and the Pestilence’s equo-gear lit up with point-by-point comparison analytics.
“That witchy box understands him!” remarked Abhoc.
“With this build,” said Bubo, studying the screen, “you should have slightly better odds for survival in a head-on collision. Although . . .”
Heckley trotted out into the road. “Hey Artichoke! If you wanna joust, you have to sit on top of something. Those are the rules!”
As if anticipating this, the Purple Onion climbed out a window and scrambled up on the roof with a rope in his hand. Leaning over the side, he pulled up another rope from the opposite window. As he tugged on one end then the other, the front wheels of the Bratmobile turned left and then right.
Abhoc nodded toward the rope-steering mechanism. “Hey Heck, you think I should try that sometime?”
Heckley laughed. “Could only really improve your driving, Sir Abhoc,” he said.
Straddling the car, the Purple Onion hefted the makeshift lance in his right hand. A trapdoor opened atop the roof and locked in place to serve as a shield. It was emblazoned with the Violet Storm insignia.
“That configuration does not meet league regulations for motor-powered mounts,” observed Bubo.
Heckley shrugged. “Remind me to file a complaint with the tournament board after I kill him.” He lowered his infrared lance-guider goggles over his eyes and ignited his light shield.
“Stand down, Sir Heckleham,” said Brum. “I got this.”
Heckley trotted to the shoulder of the road and let Brum take his place.
The sound of the steed’s engine coming online sounded like a fighter plane preparing for takeoff.
“To the winner of the joust goes Prissytown,” spoke Brum into his headpiece, the voice amplified over his horse’s saddle speaker.
“And the loser,” replied the Purple Onion, “will make a full confession of his crimes and inadequacies amid wailing and gnashing of teeth!”
Brum shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said.
“Agree or disagree,” said the Onion’s computerized voice.
“Agree,” said Brum, impatiently. “Sir Bubo! Ready my autolance!”
(This was a lance for skewering automobiles, not a lance that operated by itself. Confusing, unfortunately, but no one is going to say “carlance.”)
It was the largest, thickest jousting ram ever made. Veins of computer light ran the length of the shaft, and it was front-loaded with a four-finned head designed for brutal penetrating power.
“Abhoc!” cried Brum. “Make yourself useful. Trot out halfway between us and be ready to drop your lace hanky.”
“It’s not lace, it’s just a hanky,” sneered Abhock, but going all the same.
“Dismount,” called Heckley. “And don’t just stand there, look pretty!”
The Purple Onion flashed his headlights in the smoke, and the engine revved. Dash controls seemed to have been installed on the trapdoor panel.
Brum shifted the gear stick on his horse into neutral then flung it into first. The tail thruster began to glow, and the air around it could be seen to bend and ripple.
Abhoc waited on the side of the road with his handkerchief raised above his head. It wasn’t lace but it was definitely embroidered.
Heckley whistled. “Show us some leg, you sexy thing!”
“You’ll see more than you can handle if you don’t shut your hay hole!”
The Purple Onion tapped the roof of his car twice to show he was ready. “Your ride of terror ends here, Pestilence.”
“You want my tears, Onion,” cried Brum, “come and claim them!”
Heckley, miffed at his knight commander for benching him in the lance games, displaced his anger at the Onion. “What makes you think you can hold your own against the greatest jouster of the End Ages?” he asked.
“Horace Skelton Brumfield is only a man,” replied the Onion.
“And what are you, freak?”
The Bratmobile’s engine revved in response.
Brum nodded to Abhoc, who dropped the handkerchief.
The car leaped into motion. The Purple Onion straddled the roof, holding the reins to the steering wheel in one hand. In the other, he gripped the lance in his glove. Brum spurred his horse into a light trot. With quarter the distance between them covered, he lowered the lance and the horse began to run. At half distance, the booster kicked in and his steed disappeared into an equine blur, his lance’s computer light racing in pulses down the length of the shaft.
Both pairs of eyes locked firmly upon their opponent’s shield.
Neither saw the ballista missile strike Brum’s horse just behind the shoulder.
The spider silk armor deflected the bolt, but the momentum knocked the animal around sideways. Brum’s mare whinnied in dismay as her booster’s propulsion veered her helplessly into the path of the Bratmobile. The Purple Onion, steering by some kind of pulley system, yanked sharply on the reins to avoid a high-speed collision with the enormous horse. The car disappeared through the flaming hedges.
“Yussss!” Arnold Fleck shouted, his voice ghostly in the thin mountain air. “Got him. Right in the goddamn horse!”
Either due to the roof control panel being thrashed with foliage or because it was now drenched in liquid flame—or maybe because not even a superhero can find the right button while careening atop an automobile—the breaks never activated. The Bratmobile sped up a ramp into a gazebo, launched over the front garden, smashed through a bay window, and careened through several of the manor’s more expensive rooms.
Finally thrown clear of the roof, the Onion’s lance embedded itself in a free-standing replica of the Venus de Milo in the marble foyer. The angular momentum spun him head-over-heels around the handle several times before he made a clean dismount.
When the world stopped spinning, the Onion glanced up at the statue. The lance had pierced Venus right through the heart, as cleanly as if Cupid himself had fired an arrow.
Nice shot , he thought.
Hals Crick shuffled through the house in his smoking jacket and slippers. He’d been puffing serenely on a pipe in the west parlor when he’d heard the Johnny Cash roaming the backroads. Once the roaring flames started to consume the foliage out front, he got up to change the phonograph. Finally, when it sounded like a bomb had torn through the Fleck manor next door, he felt compelled to step outside and investigate.
It’s rather pleasant out , he thought, as he stepped onto the veranda.
Through the rails of the front gate, the blur of a half-naked man ran past screaming. He was wearing a metal cone on his neck, like the kind that keeps dogs from gnawing at a bandage.
“Help!” he cried. “Some crazy munchkin lady is trying to stab me! With a shoe! With a shooooe!”
Hals took a long draw on his pipe. “Don’t be Anne don’t be Anne don’t be Anne.”
A few seconds later, he saw Mrs. Fleck charge after the knight, wielding a yellow pump with a knife for a heel. Her h
air was a little bit on fire.
Hals sighed. “I better get the good cognac,” he said as he disappeared back in the house.
The Flecks’ vesper nook wasn’t large enough for six men. But the Bratmobile had destroyed the dining hall, the breakfast nook, the second dining hall, the snacking atrium, the parlor refreshment kiosk, and the eating room. The Purple Onion sat at one end of the table, Arnold Fleck on the other, with the four members of the Pestilence taking up the side benches. You couldn’t fit an elbow anywhere, but despite the cramping, everyone was very polite and made an effort to appear to be having a good time.
“Can I offer anybody more tea?” asked Anne.
“No thank you, Mrs. Fleck,” said Brum, “you’ve already done so much.”
“I would have had a nicer spread prepared,” she said, “but I don’t know where Lacey has gone. She was here about an hour ago . . .”
“About this high?” said Abhoc, raising a hand to his chin, “short hair, charming little mole below her lip?”
“Yes, that’s her, Mr. Abhoc. Have you seen her?”
Abhoc snickered as he glanced at Heckley. The blue knight elbowed him in the ribs.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fleck,” said Heckley. “You have been so kind. I’m afraid she . . . won’t be coming back. I hope that’s not an inconvenience?”
Crestfallen, Anne tried to smile. “Oh, not at all, not at all! I was going to fire her anyway. It’s so hard to get a girl who can crust a sandwich correctly. You’ve done me a favor really, I just . . .”
Anne burst into tears as she ran out of the room.
Heckley frowned toward Arnold Fleck. “Should somebody . . . ?”
Arnold shook his head. “No, don’t think about it. It’s all the soot in the air. Her eyes water whenever the volcano acts up like this.”
The Purple Onion, wearing a mask over his mouth and nose, lifted his cup with a pinky raised, then set it down again. “Let me try, Mr. Fleck. Managing manifestations of emotion like this is kind of my thing.”
“Not at all!” protested Arnold. “Please, you are a guest. And call me Arnold.”