Twilight's Last Gleaming

by Hertzen Chimera

  “My baby!” the girl suddenly found her voice, wailing like a black maria. She struggled loose of Stanley Washington's clutches, racing for the door and standing on the threshold staring bewildered at the empty pushchair.

  “MY BABY!!” she shouted up and down the barren, sweltering street. “Oh, sweet Jesus.” she was eating gulploads of panic now, lurched back into the shop.

  “Pardon?” Stanley Washington asked, as casual as you like.

  “MY BABY!!” Rite gasped, tears gouging their kohl streaks, down her puffy face. Sobs, gulped back without breath, caused her face to go a very peculiar colour.

  “MY BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY!!” Her red eyes were pinpricks inflated to the size of bowling balls with panic.

  “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD…” Her face was distorted into a handicap's mask. She gasped. Her legs having had enough, let her drop; an act of mercy.

  Stanley Washington watched the cold, lifeless heap of adolescence crumble to the newly-tiled floor of his shop. He watched her unconscious body. He took one large intake of breath as the nervous twitch played silly buggers with the right hand side of his face. He licked his dry lips moist. Basically, he panicked; for his own particular warped or paranoid reason, he panicked. At a time when he should be telephoning for an ambulance and the police to whom to relate the peculiar circumstances surrounding this sad event of the loss of a child and a fainting on his premises, he was locking up the shop; activating the off-licence’s steel safety shutters. On autopilot. Totally focussed. He wiped his clammy hands on his shirt, gulped back hard. And, as the premises was enshrouded in the descending darkness, dragged the youngster by the feet through the shop to the storeroom at the back.

  Must not lot them see. he muttered to himself like a sweating psycho ward nutter, Can’t let them find you here, my dear.

  It was only when he has dragged her to the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the living quarters did he see that the girl's mauve cotton summer dress had risen up over her face, exposing the immature cladding of her young body. The neat sandals. The white ankle socks. The white-cotton panties darkened at the crotch. The white-cotton bra cupping the insubstantial mammary mounds. The perfect innocence of the show. The stained discomfort behind his zip.

  Stanley Washington suddenly got it. It was like a great moment of understanding. He was in deep shit. He realised that they (whoever they way be) were sure to pin all the blame for this one on him. He realised in that same instant that, as yet, no-one knew about this at all. It was his little secret.

  He must phone the police. Tell them how it happened. Explain that it wasn’t his fault. He knelt down by the girl to replace her dress but instead studied the soft smooth skin of her belly. The little tuft of fine hairs peeping out from behind the panties. The rise and fall of her ribs. The little tuft of fine hairs peeping out from behind the panties. The discomfort behind his zip became unbearable.

  Must own up to the truth. Tell them all about it. The way it happened. Stanley Washington convinced himself as he stroked the smooth, hot inside of her right thigh with his thumb. Let the stubby thick appendage run over the cotton genital lump. He found himself suddenly breathless. His heart was pounding for fuck’s sake.

  “Who’s to know?” he was shouting now. Shouting out loud. The stinking sweat dripping from his face. The shirt stuck to his hairy back. “If I use just one finger...” he came to this absurd agreement with himself, “Just one little finger.” Shuffling a hand under her back while his free hand slipped off the briefs. Gasped at the heat coming off her; the occasional sparkle as the pubic hair caught the light. He was ready to shoot off at this tiny glimpse, this pre-view.

  “Time for the main feature, I think.” Stanley Washington girded his loins, altogether banishing to Hell & Damnation the potential repercussions of his act in favour of this perverse desecration. He lifted the Summer dress off over her head so he could get a better look at her cute little face. Pulled the bra off in the same fashion, her arms up, over her head, her mouth half open. She was fucking begging for it, thought our Stanley Washington of sick-prick-ness.

  He stooped in low, laying his slavering mouth on her lips, tonguing her tobacco-tasting gums and sucking first the upper then the lower lip in turn. Kissed her tasteless nipples. He sat up, his heart pounding in his temple veins, as he spread her legs and gazes hungrily at that tarnished crevice. Tickled the outer then the inner labia with an index finger. Wriggled the finger in, corkscrewing it to the fingertip in the damp heat. His cock was bucking for release as he sucked on the retracted digit. Ecstasy. Stale, revolting ecstasy.

  “I’ve just got to fuck that hole.”

  Frantically, Stanley Washington unzipped himself. Flipped out the veiny member; pulling back on the foreskin. Positioned himself over the girl, one hand under her, lifting her arse for ease of entry. Put the pumped up tip of his cock into her labial splice, shifted the head in a couple of centimetres to get a good feel for the heat of her all round him, then pulled her onto his hard cock, a carefully savage gesture. Her warm, snug cunt accepted the vile intrusion quite effortlessly. He had barely begun working up a shooter’s rhythm when he felt a tremendous twinge of tightness around his cock as Carroll Maryland awakened from her unconsciousness so suddenly that Stanley Washington came inside her, quite by accident, unable to stem the spasmodic spurt.

  Carroll Maryland screamed. Scrabbled away from the still-ejaculating rapist. Screaming. “FUCKIN GET THE FUCK OFF ME, YOU ... YOU SICK, FUCKIN WANK!!!”

  Afterglow haunting his eyes, Stanley Washington gathered himself and crawled to the girl huddled shivering into the cold corner covering her embarrassment with her hands like Venus de Milo. She got a handful of Stanley Washington’s dripping cum all over her hands and nearly pissed herself with the horror of it.

  “What an amazing cunt.” he gave her a brutal précis of her ashamed genitalia.

  “Don't come near me.” Carroll Maryland screamed looking about her. “HELP!! HELP!!” she screamed.

  The sight of her white flesh as she got to her feet, his spunk dribbling slimily between her fingers, kept him hard. Carroll Maryland raced for the door. Stanley Washington, urged on to super-human feats by his animal need to rut, anticipated the attempt and almost caught her by the ankle. But she was slick with sweat and, like the proverbial bar of soap, slipped free. She raced into the dark humid confines of the shop front. Dashed at the shuttered door. Realised she's made a grave error. Turned to once more to face her assailant.

  A sledge-hammer elbow smashed her into next week. She hit the floor hard, her nose spewing red. Stanley Washington took her by the hair, looked at her rapidly-swelling face. Fingered the blood from her lips. Tasted it.

  “Yes..” he leered, “A good stiff fuck solves all my problems, I do declare.”

  SESSION III

  He was sat at the bar of a, let’s call it, restaurant. Watching a magic show. I snuffled. The doppelganger of Steve Martin, I am telling you. Probably waiting for his table.

  I approached the guy.

  “What's your poison, mate?” he piped up in a broad Australian accent.

  “You speak English?” I was astonished.

  “My lucky day.” he beamed.

  I smiled, not knowing if such a facial gesture was as offensive to the inhabitants of this planet as a smile exchanged between higher primates on Earth was. It didn't seem to ruffle too many feathers. One or two of the restaurants less human looking diners shot glances of disgust over at us.

  “Don't mind those dingoes.” Mr Whysilage grinned indicating that I take a seat beside him, “Who cares if you just insulted the whole lot of them in the worst way possible.”

  I turned to mime my apology to them.

  “No!” he grabbed my waving hands, “Don’t... Christ. You'll be dead in seconds. Nobody here apologises. It's written into the constitution. The twelfth amendment, or it could be the fifth; though no-one can read the fucking thing as the official written language is so fucking abstract. Based on fourth
gender semantics ... or some other ballsy long-winded concept. You drink?”

  “I have been known to.” I forced bravado.

  “Ha! Ha! That's my man. Oi, shit for brains…” Mr Whysilage called the bar-man over. The creature, a very robust looking octopus on top of an emu's body acknowledged Mr Whysilage in an obviously manufactured English dialect.

  “Two more of the same. Easy on the antidote.” Mr Whysilage jested. Cheery soul.

  The bar-man went about its task with a stunning competence, all eight arms working with blinding efficiency. A black blur. A chinking of decanter against lead crystal. A visible pride presented by the creature’s flesh which, as he performed his bar-manly tasks its entire head would phase from black to leopard spotted through olive green and up into mauve mounds of volcanic octopus glee.

  Its emu feet scratched out a sandpaper percussion, two-three; two-three.

  Voila.

  Two ornately cut crystal tumblers half-filled with a highly effervescent potion. By the side of each glass - a tiny syringe.

  “What's that?” I gawped at the syringes.

  “Antidote…” Mr Whysilage looked astonished, “I thought you said you drank. Don't tell me...”

  He scratched his very large, very smooth chin, “You're not from round here, are you?”

  I stumbled, just a little embarrassed at how naive a display I had obviously put on since my unfortunate crash-landing on planet Randal.

  “I'll not apologise for my naïveté.” I pouted.

  “Ah, but you learn fast kid.” he raised his glass, to me. Expecting me to join him. What the hell. I picked up my glass and knocked back the full measure.

  “Brave man.” Mr Whysilage grunted and knocked back his own. Slammed down his empty glass on the bar. An action I copied.

  “Quick, get your arms on the bar like this.” he showed me how to position my forearms; veins up. I complied; understanding a little of the symbolism of the syringes but nothing of the potency of the poison I had just so foolishly imbibed.

  After a time when nothing profound or in any way spectacular happened, at the point when I resigned myself to the simple fact the as a 'greenhorn' I had been taken for a ride; been duped into believing I'd just drink a dangerous drug, and there was old Whysilage rolling about on his back pissing all over himself and chuckling at me with my veins to the bar-man. Very sick humour, if you ask me.

  Suddenly, Mr Whysilage bellowed, “Now!”

  The bar-man, whose name I later discovered was Kelly, grabbed both syringes with air-popping simultaneity and jabbed each neatly into our respective forearms. Me protesting, “But nothing's happened. I don’t feel a thing.”

  Which was, of course, utterly and humiliatingly wrong. On Mr Whysilage's command, the syringes, inserted at the exact critical moment teetering on the knife-edge of life and death, might have saved our lives but not our reputations in these parts for many years to come, I can tell you.

  My fingers, I am ashamed to say, exploded. Just blew right off. God, the stench of exploded phalanges. The marrow cooking. The blood evaporating. Just the septic stumps depending precariously from tethers of sinew. I put them to my mouth and sucked soothingly on them as their rough edges reddened with blood.

  Cinnamon. No, it wasn't cinnamon. It was cocoa powder. Gritty. Granular. Black bitter chocolate.

  I took a bite; the texture melted from rough cut diamond through crusty French bread down into children’s plasticene and back up again into the leathery flesh of an unripe grape and the squish of sour liqueur inside. I was very contented by the overall melange of taste and texture. My stomach, however, had a far more sinister trick up its sleeve. And for no particular reason, my diaphragm lurched violently. Forcing me to want to vomit. But the gush wouldn't come. It lodged chokingly in my gullet. A trash can rattling deep in my oesophagus. It wouldn't come. It didn't come. I turned to Mr Whysilage but he had vanished; I don't mean really vanished as in going POP! or PING! in a cloak of theatrical smoke. He was heading drunkenly for the exit door, swaying this way and that.

  I fell from my barstool and hit the floor with a stupid farting sound. Every customer in the place shook their heads at my drunken display. Remembering the advice, I didn't apologise, I stuck out my now-blue tongue and spluttered childish raspberries at the clientele. My stomach lurched again. That jolt really hurt; like an overlarge piston shooting up the burning cylinder of my gullet trying to butt my jaw apart with its reinforced steel head. Slamming up against the roof of my mouth. My chin suddenly gave under the onslaught. Just split; my jawbone shearing in half, spilling blood into the flesh of my chin like a burgundy beard. Blood seeping from the pores and dotting the synthetic tiled floor as I staggered for the door; the alien in me still head butting its way to freedom. The lack of pain associated with the trauma was disturbing to say the least. My lip split. The floor began to shift unhealthily. Some thing ejaculated from my mouth before I could scramble outside.

  And the being, a beautifully rainbow-hued cheetah-thing lost its footing in the greasy ejaculate and skidded away comically. A pandemonium of panicking patrons ensued.

  It was strange, and probably of great anthropological interest, to see exactly how these odd beings moved about. One of the diners actually folded over on itself like a hedgehog and rolled out the door; a lucky escape.

  The cheetah-thing steadied itself facing a group of trembling and rapidly-colour-changing customers, at the far end of the restaurant. And though I was expecting it to honour its felinity and pounce at them. It made the living fabric of the corner contract - don't ask me how - bringing its cowering quarry close in to its indescribable many-shaped end and whisked them up into a screaming, howling slurry. Stirring the physics soup into a gravity-defying swirl before it; all golden and gleaming and alive. Then BLAM! it leapt into the vortex.

  I tumbled through the Hollywood Wild Western style corrugated platinum doors into the white-sand street. Pedestrians (only the vaguest implementation of the word) had gathered around the front of the restaurant attracted by the spectacular lightshow within. A sound, probably planet Randall’s idea of a siren, approached from a couple of blocks away. The bar-man burst out of the place via the crystal window, sheering its bulbous octopus upper body; lopping off several of its pulsating tentacles. Green blood shooting everywhere; very corny, I thought at the time. An explosion of snow destroyed the front of the restaurant, killing many; injuring more. The stinging calm that followed turned every creature's accusing gaze at yours truly.

  The siren sound grew louder.

  I scrambled to my feet. Mr Whysilage was already walking away. Walking away in his drunken way. Curious escape mode, I thought, but copied the action in case a composed exit on this odd planet was more constructive than a mad dash.

  “Where are you going?” I took him by the arm. I hadn't noticed before how hard his arm was. How tubular feeling. You know, that light, hollow quality on contact. He continued his pedestrian escape. I tugged on his stick arm again.

  “Hwa-gu-thla!” he barked then, having realised what he’d said and more importantly how he'd said it, mouthed soundless apology and waved his hands a lot. Walked away from me, indicating that I tag along behind him. Directly behind him. What queer customs. The siren sound exploded round a corner. Directly in front of us, excuse my repetition, was a thing I had never before seen. It was hard to see exactly what it was but it moved like a spider with twelve legs. It scurried to a dust-storm halt directly over us hurling sharp white sand granules into our eyes; noses; ears; down our throats.

  Before we had a chance to clear our senses of this sandy assault the vehicle had disembarked its dozen officials, or rather the vehicle had disembarked itself of its twelve integral beings. Hulking circular monsters. Black like flies. Many eyed. Bullying. One of the black bastards kicked me up the behind, hustling me over to one side. The other eleven, finding no decent sport with me being such a pitifully spasticated thimble of urine reformed and cavorted over to the hubbub outside the
utterly demolished facade of the restaurant.

  Mr Whysilage barked, “Gwi-na-nu!”

  “Dau-tha!” the darker official retorted.

  “Thi-g-ha!”

  “Dau-tha!!” the official reiterated with infinite vehemence.

  Mr Whysilage pulled a pink shape from one of his long, blue mackintosh's many deep pockets and shot the black thug; turning it to sand. A soft white sand breeze; no screams. From across the road the eleven black officials, attracted by the sand vacuum one of their number had been blasted into, regrouped and began to scuttle ferociously in our direction.

  “G-hath!” Mr Whysilage grabbed my hand and walked.

  Walked.

  I could not muster such self restraint. I overtook the dolorous fellow, picking up my pace to a whirlwind of heals. Mr Whysilage yelling, “Znu!! Znu!!” as I hit cruising speed. Both my feet, in mid-flight, clear of the soft sandy surface. Mr Whysilage screaming, “Znu!! Znu!! Znu!!” long after I tripped and fell, grazing my left cheekbone on the paying stone of a multi-storey glass tower-block city stretching its vain structures into the brilliant lemon sky.

  What the fuck had happened?

  Dr Bradburg seemed to come round from a brief period of unconsciousness.

  Cleared her throat self-consciously.

  Pushed her glasses back onto her nose.

  “Yes.” she blurted, “Go on...”

  “I don't believe this. Thank Christ I'm not paying for these so-called therapeutic sessions.” She couldn't give a soft shite, look at her - part-time psyche scavenger. Wonder what she does with her fucking notes after hours. Probably scrunches them up into a tube and shoves them up her rancid arse hole. Paper cuts up the bum, as no song goes.

  “I think I'm wasting my time here.” I struggled to my feet, grunting with the exertion.

  “Don't get me wrong, Mister Deniz...” the foul excuses drip from her cracked lips with professional simplicity, “I was just ... I don't think it is the storyline of the dreams that is important to us to here. Their content is just a distraction to the task in hand.”