Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  "Um, I don't think our situation has improved," said Betezh.

  "Shut up!" Pippa struggled with the ferocity of her nature.

  The decapus picked up the two remaining green-flesh nurses, and tossed them aside with contempt. One struck a wall, crumbling into a ball of compressed rotten flesh; the other struck the medical utensil trolley, splitting in half with a crunch so that two body sections spun away in different directions and toppled the trolley. There came a church-bell series of chimes as implements scattered across the floor.

  The decapus roared again, and fixed its many beady eyes on the two patients strapped to their trolleys. Its beak clacked, and to Pippa's panicked mind, it seemed as if the creature was laughing.

  "Oh no!" squeaked Betezh, as the decapus pulled its tentacles together and in a strange, accelerated, crab-like whirling dervish of betentacled squidgy motion, charged at the helpless Combat-K victims...

  Music slurred, a mix of sax and piano, languorous and sleazy, but classy at the same time. Franco leant on the doorbell, and as the door opened he hitched his thumbs in his belt and grinned, showing his missing tuff.

  "Hey baby," he said, "I'm here to fix your Indigo5000 Super Deluxe Helix Washing Machine. I've brought all my tools."

  The woman who'd answered had yellow-scaled skin, long black panther hair, and was looking kinda sexy. She wore a skimpy see-through negligee, her breasts were cupped in silver pointed containers (with tassels), and her horned one-toed feet poked from furry slippers.

  "Hi handsome," she said, purring, "There's only one tool you'll be needing in my hot bitch kitchen." She grabbed Franco's dungarees and pulled him inside, her mouth clamping limp-like to his, her tongue probing into his mouth and searching his many chrome fillings with slurping desire.

  Franco pulled away for a moment. "Wait! I do have to fix the washing machine, love."

  "Well," growled the Fedrax alien female, "let me put it on a high vibrating spin as I watch you work!" Growling, and with hips swaying, she led Franco through to the kitchen with its 360° panoramic forest scene, scents included (at no extra cost!) and began to undress Franco, tugging at his workman's dungarees and stroking at his throbbing member.

  "Oh baby," said Franco, growling himself.

  "Oh darling," purred the alien.

  "Oh baby, yes," said Franco as he sprang free.

  "Mnmnmnmf," muffled the alien, affixing her mouth to his tackle.

  "Oh baby go for it! This is my dream! This is my dream!"

  It was the smell that made Franco suddenly aware that he was dreaming. It was a kind of sterile hospital smell, the stench of an antiseptic ward, the aroma of medicinally-cleaned corridors, the underlying sweet acid hint of gentle putrefaction. He opened his eyes to see something, something, attached to his tackle down below. "Aiiiee!" he screamed, as the colostomy-bag-headed nurse pulled away with a tiny slupper sound as her plastic-bag-integrated-orifice-impeller disengaged from Franco's fast-shrinking member. "What are you doing?" he screamed, yanking at the straps on the table. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing? Can't an honest guy have a peaceful sleep without being... being... being molestated by some -" he stared hard at the mutated and deformed multiple-amputee, his eyes following the nurse's freefall eyes as they slopped around inside the makeshift colostomy-bag skull-sack, "um, freaky shit-bag headed nurse! After all, what have you got in there? Shit for brains? Hell. So you have."

  Franco sputtered to a halt. He realised he had been physically moved.

  "Whoa!" he said, gazing around hurriedly, neck-tendons bulging as he strained pointlessly at his straps. "Just wait a chicken stock minute! What the bloody hell bollocks is going on here, then?" Distant, like a fuzzy Velcro train easing through a treacle-filled tunnel, memories of events trickled a return. Franco visibly paled. He rallied, focused, then realised what he was seeing before him, and slumped back feeling suddenly nauseous and weak.

  "Cut! Cut, I said!" came a gargled echoing voice from inside a bedpan. Franco blinked. The nurse had replaced her decapitated head with a stainless steel silver bedpan, complete with polished wooden handle to one side. Her eyes peered through tiny circular holes in the steel, or indeed, were maybe even attached to it. If she turned quickly, nurses nearby had to duck lest the bedpan handle caught them a thwack on the skull.

  "What's going on?" said Franco, weakly. He suddenly felt weaker than a kitten. More vulnerable than fish on a plate.

  "Ach, you ruin my film!" said the bedpan nurse. "All this kerfuffle and all ve vant is a simple rumpy pumpy oral scene. Have you people got no sophistication, timing, or eye for the finer celluloid delicacies? Hey? Hey?" Her voice echoed, tinny, as if, encased within a bedpan. Which it was.

  "Film?" said Franco, voice shrinking quicker than a Poodle's bravado when faced with a rage-filled Rottweiler.

  "Ya! Ve making porno film! Franco and the Nurses, ve vas going to call it, but now ve settle for Franco and the Sick Nurses." She laughed. All the other nurses laughed, and Franco's deranged eyes twitched rapidly about the room. There must have been twenty of them, all standing around, naked. However, where once twenty naked nurses would have filled Franco with a lust so brain-consuming he would have popped out of sheer primal excitement, now, here, faced by these nurses merged with medical explosion and mutation, Franco simply wanted to die a quick and painless death.

  Hell, he thought, fuck it, make it a painful death. Anything's got to be better than what's about to come!

  "Now then, girls," he said, eyes skipping nervously from one deformed nurse to the next to the next to the next. Never had he seen so much peroxide-blonde hair and cherry-red lipstick. Except for those with surrogate skulls.

  The director, whom Franco had mentally christened Bedpan Head, came close to him, breasts dangling and pierced with... Ye Gods, thought Franco, they're pierced with Brinkerhoff Rectal Speculums! Oh, sweet Mother of Mary! Franco knew this because he'd spent a considerable time in and around hospitals, and had had his fair share of rectal examinations with a fair number of Brinkerhoff Rectal Speculums.

  This was fast turning out to be Franco's worst nightmare. And he'd had a few.

  "Get away!" he screeched.

  "Listen, sweet Franco," said Bedpan Head, "ve have here a movie to make, your very own little pornographic keepsake, so stop moaning because you're holding up veekly production and ve have so many more movie to make! Ya."

  "No!" screeched Franco, "let me out let me free let me go, it's not bloody fair, I don't want to play anymore!" He struggled, pounding against his bonds whilst the deformed nurses stood around, several clinking metal-grafted limbs on floors and walls as they waited for him to burn himself out.

  What's that? he thought. Is that the right-hand leather strap about to give way? He pulled and pulled and pulled.

  Wow! he thought. It hasn't given way.

  He slumped back, finally, exhausted, and stared down at his shame. They had stripped him to his BWAUs. His Big White ASDA Underpants. Franco's lower lip came out. He sulked. "This is not befitting a Combat-K operative," he muttered.

  "Roll the cameras!" shouted Bedpan Head, and coming in close, hands clenching and unclenching as if she was about to enjoy something, she grinned down at Franco (or so he imagined, from inside her stainless steel cage of exo-skeletal skull) and hissed, voice low and filled with the sort of vehemence one did - not - mess - with - "You listen up Franco, and listen good for ve von't stand for you vasting our time and messing up our film! You perform, ya? Your life depends on it!"

  "Ya," said Franco miserably, and watched twenty naked deformed nurses, several with Bowman Lacrimal Probes pierced through noses and lower lips turning faces into a parody of punk piercing, a merged mask of metal, a cage from which even they could not escape, descend on his mostly naked sacrificial beer-bellied body with grunts, squeaks, dribbles and moans of impending pleasure and ecstasy.

  It was later. Much later.

  This can't be happening to me, thought Franco. But it was. This used to
be my fantasy, he thought. And he was right. It used to be. But now it had turned into a nightmare. By a long stretch of deviant imagination.

  Darkness had fallen. The nurses, after doing unspeakable acts to Franco's unspeakable body, had left, somewhat unspeakably. He was alone, covered in baby oil, his ASDA underpants sticky and molten, his raw lips whimpering softly. He was also rubbed red raw in several places, and stinging sorely in several others. I never knew I had so many orifices, he thought miserably.

  Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. His Pearl earlobe comm! He could summon help! Get rescue! If nothing else, summon a gun and start eking out some kind of revenge, gunslinger style. He grinned, a nasty grin, in the dark. He'd show them nurses a thing or two with a slick weapon in his hands. He shuddered, and his smile fell. They had managed to kill his love of double entendre. The bastards. And that was a crime worse than any genocide.

  "Pippa?" he hissed, activating the Pearl.

  Nothing.

  "Come in, Pippa. Or Keenan? You there, buddy?"

  Nothing.

  "Cam? Shazza? Mel? Fizzy? Olga?"

  Nothing.

  "Holy shit. What about you Betezh? You there, you freakish face-mangled bastard?"

  Nothing.

  And Franco realised. Either the earlobe comm was dead. Or he was alone.

  Totally alone.

  Time slipped into a meaningless slurry. Like a torture victim deprived of external sensory stimulus, Franco became attuned simply to The Moment. Like a child, he regressed into a form of simplicity, losing his sense of history, time, worth, dignity. After a while, there were only scenes. Scenes in the movie, the porn movie, that had become his existence.

  In white underpants, he hung by leather bound wrist-straps, swinging gently as a dwarf nurse with external metal hips oiled him over in long, lunging motions, making him swing like a butcher's slab of beef in a breeze. Franco, chin out, eyes ahead, said nothing, did nothing, but as she reached his underpants she smiled at him from behind her CPR facemask, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out, and her hands slimed oil over his tackle. Franco focused. He chewed his tongue. He set his mind wandering to bad things. But still, there came a reaction. A large one.

  "Good," crooned the nurse, applying more oil.

  "Bollocks," said Franco.

  Gagged, and bound, and strapped face down on an alloy bench, with cameras rolling, the nurses massaged Franco's bulging shoulder muscles. They crooned, and chattered, and moaned as they rubbed at him. No no no, said Franco's mind. This is bad. This is dirty. Filthy. Abuse. Molestation. I am nothing more than a sexual object being used for their damn and bloody intense personal gratification, and I will not play ball. Through a hole in the alloy bench hung his distended genitalia, like a chicken hung by its neck, and the nurses with their slick tongues and tracheotomy pipes found their way to him. The camera zoomed in. And despite himself, Franco grew a goodly few inches.

  "Good," crooned the nurse, affixing callipers.

  "Bollocks," scowled Franco.

  They poured blood from O Neg bags over his head, and body, and massaged him. They pissed on him, metal crutch legs clacking on alloy benches as streams streamed rivers across his skin. Cry me a river, he thought. Yeah, right. Franco gagged, and the camera got a close up of his face, beard contorted in rage, eyes rolling. They stabbed him with hypodermics, trailing them up and down his flesh, scratching him, stabbing him and he gave little "yowls" on demand. With pads of pus-filled bandages they teased him, stuffing them into his mouth and watching him choke and vomit. Nothing was too much for these demented creatures, as they stroked him with incontinence pads and whispered sweet nothings in his ears, metal teeth clacking, huge external dental braces shining eerily in the fake glow of halogen lighting. Some wore orthodontic buccal tubes, some monolock self-litigating ceramic brackets, some matrix bands, half hollenbachs and spoon excavators. It was all quite disturbing and Franco hummed to himself, cursing his foolish treasure hunt, and wondering how much treasure could be worth all this aggravation. None. He'd rather die a poor man.

  I should have stayed back in BaseCamp, he realised after a long, long time.

  Not gone running off and buggering about looking for some mythical bloody crown that probably doesn't even bloody well exist.

  I should have chatted up Shazza instead. He considered this. I was in there, he thought.

  "You're so macho," crooned one nurse, wiggling her forcep-clamped breasts in his face. They clanged against Franco's teeth. "You're big and strong, enough to turn me on, with big blue eyes and able to satisfy, baby, you're big and strong, more than enough to turn me on, a man to dominate, to love and protect me and take care of my every need, know what I mean macho man?"

  "Come here," said Franco.

  "Ooh yeah baby!"

  She swung her breasts close, and in a fit of insane hatred Franco grabbed one compressed ripe melon in his teeth and shook his head like a dog with a bone, as the nurse started to screech and blood spewed and flowed and sprayed and Franco wouldn't let go, oh no, this was it; they'd pushed him around and took him for a fool and used and abused and mistreated and molested him and he was fucking mad and totally had enough and was getting some tasty juicy needful payback...

  The nurse broke free, leaving a tit hanging in Franco's jaws.

  He spat it out.

  "Get me a gun!" he screamed. "I'll execute every last motherfucking one of you!"

  Sabrina approached, from the darkened shadows of the "film set". She was smiling. She waved her hypodermic arms in a slow weave, and they caught Franco's frenzied eyes, calmed his frothing mouth, and she moved close and a long needle slid into his chest and the injection was like a long smooth draught of liquor.

  "Relax," said Sabrina.

  Franco's head nodded down. His chin touched his chest.

  "I've had enough," he mumbled.

  "That's OK," whispered Sabrina, cherry lips brushing Franco's ear and tickling him. "Because the next movie is terminal."

  Franco dreamed. He sat in a valley amidst tall black mountains, enclosed, ensnared, seated before a fire opposite Father Callaghan, who wore rough brown robes and a serene look of placid gratitude, as if he'd just eaten the world's greatest hotdog.

  "What you grinning at?"

  "Be calm, my son."

  "Calm? But they're gonna kill me!"

  "Hmm." Father Callaghan placed his chin on his fist, and nodded, thoughtfully, gazing into the fire. "That's interesting. Tell me more."

  Franco scowled. "What more do you need to know?"

  "Well, I've been programmed with a trillion separate response arcs."

  "Ha! You're nothing but a damn chip."

  "Still, I'm here to help."

  "By doing what?"

  "By calming you in your hour of need. By making you think."

  "I don't need to think, I need a machine gun."

  "No no no. First, use your mind. Then, your fists."

  "I can't do anything. They keep drugging me, just like at Mount Pleasant, and they they they keep me strapped up tight. I've tried to escape, but they just keep oiling me up like some huge fish, and and and and it's just not damn bloody fair."

  "You know what I'd do?"

  "Hmm?" Franco was staring into the flames now. He was considering jumping in them. "Go on, bloody Father bloody Callaghan, religious extraordinaire with so much good advice to give. Go on!"

  "Oh, to mock! Franco, 'tis simple. You need to play dead."

  "Easy for you to say! You are dead."

  "No, I am non-living. AI. Still, think about it."

  "Ha! Bloody useless damn Temple Pill. I want my damn $19.99 back."

  Father Callaghan, the fire, the dark mountains, all started to fade in pixellated blocks, like a low resolution computer game or bad video decoding.

  "Think about it," whispered Callaghan.

  Franco opened his eyes. The darkness receded. Lights came up, to reveal no less than forty nurses in various states of dismemberment an
d dress, forming a huge circle around his bound and hanging body. Franco glanced up, at the leather straps which tied his hands tight to a large, rusted, iron hook. Franco swung, gently, like a dead dog on a washing line. He blinked a few times, and gradually became aware of... the silence.

  "Father bloody Callaghan," he muttered. And realised the nurses, all of them, with their peroxide-blonde hair and red lipstick, with their rubber-ring bellies and strapping calf muscles, their genetically grafted medical implements and strong, black, sturdy, comfy shoes; all of them, it dawned on Franco's diseased and whirling mind, all of them carried -

  A weapon.

  "Ha ha ha," said Franco. "Now listen here, girls."

  The circle started to close.

  "Now, just hold on a moment, ladies."

  One nurse gave an experimental swish of a giant scalpel attached to the end of a pole. It reminded Franco disturbingly of the Grim Reaper, albeit with curly blonde wig and a succulent choice of lipstick hues.

  "We really do need to talk about this." Franco stared up, wiggled his hands, flexed his numbed fingers, and breathed the pervading medical stink of sterile utensils. He started to struggle. Infuriatingly, the nurses did not increase their pace.

  They knew when they'd cornered a rat. When it had nowhere left to run.

  And when it was ready to die...

  The Heads leapt towards the BaseCamp's hull doors, and Olga's D5 boomed and clattered alongside Shazza, pale and green-tinged in the moonlight. Their guns roared, fire flaring from barrels, and then Fizzy was back, panting, face sweat-streaked.

  "Stand back!" she screamed, and holding a Nape firethrower, she pushed between her two comrades and as the Heads converged and leapt as a pack, so flames roared out to meet the unholy alliance of spider and nurse, engulfing the mass and spitting them backwards, black and flaming, chittering and stamping little burning legs.