After months of not bathing, laying in her own filth, living on the dwindling coins she saved from her childhood piggy bank, and hardly even lifting her head from her bed cover, she snaps. Using her last bit of change to buy a gun, a pretty chrome revolver. She drives back to the man's house, the one who had raped her. She beats him mercilessly, chasing him through the house, pistol whipping him and kicking him like a dog. Then shoots him in his dick and watches him bleed out whimpering agony. And blows his vapid trophy wife's face off, who was home when she last visited.
The names in her little black phone book become a blacklist for her streak of violent revenge. Remembering the faces of those who’ve taken advantage of her, who made feeble promises, lied to her to appease themselves in the pleasures of her flesh. She drives and hunts each of them down. Killing four more of her abusers, each with her pretty chrome gun. The crowd cheers, rooting in an uproar of applause for her on her destructive path of relentless vengeance.
She gets caught in a high speed chase with a fleet of squad cars barreling down the highway behind her. The young woman, young and naive doesn't know what to do. She panics and drives full speed off a cliff. Screaming her lungs out all the way down until the car smacks with the sound of compressing steel at the bottom of a thousand foot valley. The picture house is madhouse of cheering and weeping for her, showering applause and acclamation's of her story and her talents in portraying her life on screen. Drawing out the crowd’s adoration for the Daisy on the screen, and compassion for the Daisy in the seat.
The Daisy in the seat lives for this two hours of actually living out her greatest aspirations of being a queen of the silver screen. Sitting in the dark theatre as the light splashes from the screen to the faces of the crowd and her own, so she can watch the slightest change in the expressions on their faces, their smiles, laughter and even their sadness as see performs. Rejoicing in every laugh, quivering lip or wet eye. Watching the crowd as though they're the show in the same way they watch her on the screen. The single second of pitch black as the picture switches to the credits, and before the lights come on is to her like the sensations of climaxing, sensually and spiritually in pure thoughtless bliss that tessellates through her entire sense of being. The culmination of two hours of her watching every face in the room, seeing her as the star of the silver screen she is in her dreams, weightless, lost in finding her moment of nirvana just before the credits roll, and the lights come up. The crowd settles to near silence when shuffling up the aisles and out of the dimly lit picture house. Not one of them just cheering could recall anything about what they'd just seen, or felt in seeing the film of Daisy’s actual life. Passing by the Daisy in the seat like they'd never seen her before in their lives, who's sitting, weeping and laughing in both torment and bliss.
“Well that’s that” Daisy says springing to her feet, exuding the beaming bubbly persona that Anna knows her to be. Her deal, contract here, so she may still exist as she is, is to be the greatest actress to ever grace the silver screen, though forgotten the instant credits roll and the house lights lift.
“If that’s your life, then how are you still here?” she asks.
“I’m under contract. They’ll never remember my name when the credits roll. It's was in the fine print,” Daisy says.
“Anyway what'd'ya think?” the starlet asks.
“It was marvelous. Absolutely stunning, warming to the soul,” Anna says.
“Ohh, thank you Carrots,” she says smiling, wrapping her arms around Anna and squeezing her with a tight, vice grip of a hug.
“You’re very welcome. Your performance was immaculate, and you somehow looked even more ravishing on screen then you do standing in front of me now. There was no angle that wasn’t favorable to you,” Anna says to brighten up a friend and because it’s true.
“Thanks. Thank you Carrots. Ya gotta love the magic of the movies, right,” Daisy says wiping her nose.
“Right,” Anna agrees, as Daisy sniffles a last loud sniffle and wipes her last big tear. Ascending in seconds to the towering heights of her usual exuberant, manically soaring self of pure sensuality embodied.
“Wanna get some ice cream, Carrots?”
“Yes, I'd love to, but not carrot ice cream,” she jokes nervously as one does to ease tension.
“Ha! okay,” Daisy says. The two step out from the dark of the picture house into the blinding glow of beaming broad daylight. Anna rubs her eyes adjusting to the outsides brightness deep in the Vivids. Daisy simply flips the black sunglasses sitting atop her head like a tiara, down to the bridge of her masterfully sculpted nose to cover her brilliantly shining blue eyes. Anna sees her, the Daisy standing next to her, as the happy little girl that was on the screen, forever tap dancing in her parent’s living room.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Harley and Popper from the helicopter
Vivian’s been staying locked away alone in her room for the last week. Only letting Daisy or Anna come in to see her. Saying that no man should have to suffer the torture of seeing her as she is. She ordered everyone, even Harold, out of the main hall. An expansive three tiered baroque rotunda of cream colored walls covered in elaborate inlays resembling romanticized mythological scenes. Everywhere is decorated with a grandiose wealth of gilded age grandeur, from its detail of curbed wood, animals furs and gold leaf to the ivory accents dressing. The ground level's been emptied of its rowed seats and converted into a two hundred table white clothed dining hall set with shining champagne glasses and glinting silverware. The theatre, is crowned by a grand chandelier composed of thousands of tiny diamonds, each bend and multiply the others refractive effect, absolutely ablaze in its own paradigm of shifting prismatism. The checkered marble floor slopes up at a slight incline away from the six foot high pine wood stage that sits at the south of the room.
“How do I look darling?” Vivian asks.
“Absolutely ravishing. Astounding to the eye as always,” Cider answers, causing Vivian to roll her true blue's at him. Rolling the long cigarette filter in her elbow length white leather gloved fingers, spinning a trail of smoke in the air.
“Absolutely radiant,” he adds.
“A real gentleman,” she says with humor.
“What else can I be?”
“Radiant?” Vivian says, “as glowing as you I hope.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Oh please little dove, I've never seen you so taken by a dame.”
“Oh yeah?” Cider takes a big gulp of his drink as Vivian draws a breath of her slender smoke. She's been smoking and drinking vodka with a constant thirst.
“She is a good looker. I'll give ya that, but taken. That I don’t know,” he says looking like away seeing a bird that isn’t there.
“Ha! Don't know. What is there to know? It’s scribbled all over your silly face. Even seeming to be smoothing out some of those chicken scratched pocks of yours.”
“She's been getting worried about me going out there lately, to the Fades. Telling me to stay in bed, to stay home. I think she really likes it here,” he says.
“How adorable of her. She must care for you like you care for her. Don't you think so?”
“I hope,” slips from his mouth.
“What? See, there you go. Next time say it louder and to her. Have you ever?” she asks.
“What? well yeah. Of course I have,” he says, though he hadn’t. Neither has she, each wanting to avoid any sort of that subject.
“Well yes of course, darling. You’re grown. And all that time on the road together must lead somewhere. But, have you ever told her how you feel? what you think of her?” Vivian says leaning into her old friend. Who slouches in his chair, smoking as fast as she is.
“No, but I don't think. I mean, I think she knows already. She's a clever chic. She must already know.”
“Chic that's for the others, not the one on your arm, that’s your woman. Though don't worry darling I'll civilize you yet.”
“Civilized?
Daisy kicked a priest from a third story window.”
“In a well mannered way I'm sure,” Vivian says. A silence stands for a few seconds.
“What do you like about her?” the Baroness asks.
“I don't know”
“Oh don't be such a caveman about it. Man up about your feelings will you. To me, there’s nothing more beautiful to a dame than a man who's strong enough to show himself to her. To lay himself bare to his lover,” Vivian says then drifts of into her own thoughts.
“I don’t know...the way I feel lighter when I’m around her. That every thought when I'm away from her is about her. How my mind washes away when I hear her mousy voice calling my name. That my favorite thing to see, of all the things I’ve ever seen, is her smile. Just the thought of it makes my toes tingle and pulse in my palms. Filled with flight or fight at the sight of her eyes, and waking up next to her is like pulling off the greatest job, every second I’m beside her. She reminds me that I'm alive, a person and not just a...that I can feel,” he says.
“Well that's not too bad. Do you want me to send it in for a quick punch up?” Vivian asks. Cider laughs with his friend of playful banter and platonic admiration of the others plutonic ways.
“No thanks.”
“I was just kidding dear. Things like that must only come from one’s heart to another. You do have a heart don't you?”
“It's what she reminds me is there.”
“She is a sweet girl.”
“When she wants to be.”
“Probably your fault when she isn't?”
“Eh, sometimes.”
“Aahh, enraptured hearts. I suppose one isn't truly alive until they've had one. I had one once,” Vivian trails off to a quiet moment of each in consternation of the apple of their own eye. In his case a Carrot.
“A few more Ribbits than usual, and some of the red ones here and there,” Vivian says.
“We got it under control. Daisy's meeting with the mayor went better than thought,” he says.
“I think it's due to all the fun you’ve been having with Daisy and the Vaudevs. It's been all over the InterAltonews. They've been televising the whole damn thing. Get the television will you?”
“The television?” he asks.
“Yes. Wheel it over will you please,” she asks, as an order.
“I can only see a fraction of the cities spectrum from my window, so I've been incessantly watching the news,” Vivian says with shaky voice.
Bwink! The television blinks on the InterAltonews coverage of, “The rising studio syndicate showdown.”
“Oh, it's terrible, terrible. I can hardly stand to look. I'm going to faint. Oh! oh my!. They're effacing my city by the hour, my....oh my dear it’s just, atrocious, what they’ve done,” Vivian says clutching her chest. Shifting in her chair, fanning her face with one hand and holding the other on her forehead feigning a fever spell, wavering as though she’s about to faint, while drinking down a full glass of vodka.
“I can't look, I just can't,” she says mortified, trying to look away but she can't resist peeking to the televised scenes of her splendidly rendered spectrum metropolis erupting into an array of monochrome spreading chaos. Showing the whole of the city spectrum from the bird’s eye view of a news helicopter that's evading rifles and rockets fired at it for sport by both sides.
“Breaking news!” shouts the television as the broadcast switches to the anchorwoman in the news copter, who's reporting with the cadence of a horse track announcer, while wearing a splotch stained yellow rubber raincoat.
“It is absolute devastation out here. The desolation of the Drabs are creeping ever closer to the edge of the city. Boulevards are burnt to the ground. Hues are dripping from the ceilings. Be on the lookout for color sweating from the surfaces around you, a tell tale sign of the draining and dripping of hue. When the colors on the walls are boiling out and evaporating around you, it is likely too late seek shelter, it will become blank in a matter of minutes. Always seek shelter on higher ground, upstream of rushing floods of running hues. Throughout the spectrum, storm drains are filled, there are puddles and small lakes of mixing chroma overtaking whole counties. Panchromatic flash floods are gushing like raging white water rivers, flushing through whole stretches of avenues, sweeping swathes of the city into the frigidly toned Bleaks and Fades. In some places the grizzly grisailles of the growing Bleaks can range up to two square miles in diameter. Refugees have been spilling out from the fading counties in droves, seeking shelter in the remaining Brights. In the soul vivifying grace of our boss, the only boss as far as the audience is concerned, The Lord High Baroness, her vividness Vivian, and may her resplendence radiate for now, and forever. Whatever you do stay away from bleached or burned out sections of town. That is where combat is most likely to be the most intense. And always beware of the miscreants lurking out from the ugly darks of monochrome.”
The broadcast cuts back to the chopper’s view of the achromatic craters, and the colorful citywide carnage of the chromatic Alto awash in the blood and gun smoke of the studio syndicates at total war. The savagery of the combat is making the white and black of the blighted and fading run with red all over town. The camera focuses in on the pastel thruway, an elevated highway whose color shifts abruptly to another shade every four hundred feet or so, that cuts through the matte side of town. The camera lens zooms in on a very high speed chase. Of three police cruisers in pursuit of a super sport ninja bike racing after an armored car speeding in the left lane. Protected by a cream colored convertible with its top down filled with hoodlums and a hot rod pickup truck, also filed with hoodlums. Driving the motorcycle is a tall man in a beige suit with a black tie flapping against the face of a woman, sitting with her back to his wearing a black dress suit with her lavender tie flapping in front of her face. She's relentlessly and precisely letting bursts and volleys from a gold plated assault rifle, interchangeably aiming between their lawful pursuers and the hoods they’re pursuing.
With a stroke of her arm she strafes lead death across the windshield of one of the front two police cruisers. The two cars collide, one pushing the other through the cement side barrier of the freeway to fall thirty feet onto the houses below. Another burst from the two on the motorcycle takes out two goons in the beige convertible, then throwing a spray to hold the police at bay, then another. The motorcycle driver and the shooter react smoothly, as though in sync with the others movements. At a closer look it’s obvious their acting in anticipation of each other, easily releasing two of the goons in the hot rod and it’s driver from life.
The chase comes to a massive entangled interchange, where eight six lane highways meet and split into sprawling curves of on-ramps and off-ramps. Forming into hundreds of ascending and descending spirals and loops. They vanish under the breadth of its hundreds of intermingling levels, though occasionally popping in and out of the camera’s view. Straddling the ups and downs of the rounding roads ribboning into hundreds of interlaced lanes of color shifting pastel asphalt. The whole of it resembling the fruit of life from the bird’s eye view of the aerial Internews broadcast.
“Is that...it isn't?” Cider says with his jaw dropped in disbelief.
“It is, darling,” Vivian says in delight of watching his surprised face.
“They're good ain't they,” he says.
“The best.”
The anchor woman’s voice captivated the two, saying from the screen “The duo on the sports bike have been identified as InterAlto lindy hop champions, Harley and Popper, last names unknown, of the notorious juice box gang,” the camera switches to shows the duo gloating in their mugshots, her smiling lips without lipstick and his eyes comically open with shadowed eyelids. And their bounties with two other portraits, Cider's who's has the biggest bounty and Anna's surprised face with the least.
“They are to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. These two are prone to creating carnage wherever there are found to be,” the anchor says.
�
��The juice box gang?” Vivian sniffles.
“Not my choice. I don't even think cider is a juice,” he says.
“Now you have Anna, so you won't be a third wheel to their motorcycle,” the Baroness laughs.
“Hey, that smarts a bit,” he smirks.
“At least the group is named for you. I mean you are the most notorious of the bunch, and there are a few others aren’t there?” Vivian says.
“Somewhere, sometimes, in some places, I suppose.”
The two in the theatre watch the scene on the television screen of the duo on the ninja bike acting in almost perfect unison. When he leans to swerve and squeal the tires, she punctually strafes lead death with deadly accuracy to the most opportune target. Then draining a drum magazine at the armored car and reaching into a black satchel around his shoulder for another.
“She's a big reader isn't she,” he says.
“Ha” Vivian chuckles “You always do make me laugh.”
“My pleasure to please,” he says.
The duo race up to the rear, nearly touching the back left bumper of the bullet riddled cream convertible. The woman holds the shoulder of the driver and jumps like a flying squirrel onto the trunk and rolls into two dead bodies in the backseat next. Then quickly pulls the trigger of a pistol on the driver at point blank range. The car veers toward the right side barrier as the woman climbs to the center console and grabs the wheel to steer.
The man jumps from the motorcycle, diving into the backseat with a satchel around his front. He aims the assault rifle with a clip of his own and fires a straight line of armor piercing bullets into the side of the armored car. The armored car tries to ram them in response, but the woman of unwavering nerve stomps on the break and narrowly evades, then speeds up to stay the course. Several passes of the man’s straight streams, so precise they're like laser beams of lead, puncture a basketball sized hole in the side of the armored cars three inches of steel armor. The man digs through the satchel for a minute, then lights and pitches a Molotov cocktail through the hole into the armored cars carriage, which bursts into flaring orange flames a second later. The cream convertible slows, cruising behind their prey like a hunter tracks a wounded animal.
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