Could take it round - in person. Tell them their boss won't be back from lunch today. Get them to phone his wife - if he had one. Sounds like a good idea. Nothing better to waste my time with - she thought. Hang on. Not so fast, if I waltz in there saying their boss is dead I’ll be prime suspect numero-uno.
She thought aloud, I could phone them, the company, his company. No harm in that. Phone them up. Tell them to come and collect their dead boss from the street corner just across the way. She sniggered to herself, pocketing the ample bundle of notes, easiest money I've ever made. Patting the dead bloke on the side of the face, she saw the blood-marbled brain fluid trickling out of his left ear. Staggered to her feet in disgust.
“Easy does it, miss.” A large hand grabbed her.
She turned to face ... a young policeman.
“This the one?” he asked a large woman standing behind him.
“That's her. She’s got a big flick-knife. Said she’d stick it in my face.” The policeman feigned surprise, Did she now?
“It's in her top pocket there!” the large woman wagged her finger at Jenifer Maryland, “She’s a killer, officer. She did it!”
“What are you going on about, you massive old whale?!” Jenifer Maryland goaded her accuser. A large crowd miraculously formed. Jenifer Maryland explained to the policeman, “This old bloke was in the middle of the street. There’s not a spot of blood on him. No-one stopped to help, so I…”
“I'm sure we can clear this up at the station.” the officer interrupted, turning to the woman for her approval.
“Oh, I can't waste my afternoon down at some disgusting police station…”
The officer again feigned surprise, “Ah, well, it’s like this, you see, if I say we'll have to sort this out down at the station, then down to the station we all have to go. Disgusting though it may be for you..”
“I didn't mean to say..” the aggressive woman softened visibly.
“Save it.” the officer ordered her sternly. He turned to the young Goth, “Now, if you please... holding out a hand ...the flick-knife.”
“I don’t know what the fat cows jabbering on about.” Jenifer Maryland was insane.
“Come on.” he gestured with his fingers, “We don't want to delay the fat cow any further.”
“I beg your pardon, officer?” the woman gasped.
“Okay.” Jenifer Maryland, amazed at the young cop's flippancy, handed over the weapon as the large woman continued to bait the young officer.
“Look!” he warned her, “I’d advise you to keep it schtum. Don't make this any worse then it already is.”
“How dare you!?” she gasped, “I hope you understand there is a police complaints service in operation these days.”
“So, use it.” he commented unconcernedly.
Jenifer Maryland was revelling in this, she was almost wet. A decent cop. Who'd have believed it? Ah, humanity held such sweet surprises for itself from time to time.
“PC Alaska.” the officer spoke into his radio. He looked about for a reference point. “I am on Bishop Gate by the termin…”
Came a crackly female reply. “Say again, Peter.” the crackle interrupted.
“The terminus. I am on Bishop Gate near the terminus. I have one elderly businessman deceased lying in the street and a suspect. Request transportation.”
“Roj, Peter. I’ll have a car there in a jiffy.” The conversation terminated.
Officer Peter Alaska turned to Jenifer Maryland. “Routine.” he shrugged.
“Do you know this slut?” the woman ranted at the top of her voice.
“Oh, please, madam..” he enunciated the word ‘madam’. “You started this. Let’s just do it by the book, eh?”
“I’m not staying in a filthy police cell.” the woman was in a state.
“I'm sure that won't be necessary.” said PC Peter Alaska.
“Can I have that in writing?”
Jenifer Maryland smiled to herself again.
“…and you can wipe that silly smirk off your face, bitch!” the woman squealed.
“Fuck off.” Jenifer Maryland said.
The irate woman lashed out.
Jenifer Maryland sort of saw it coming and kicked her in the shins, following up with a half-hearted head butt. The woman fell theatrically to the floor; a professional-foul merchant. Jenifer Maryland was about to lay into the Oscar-hunting actress with her Doc Martens but PC Peter Alaska stepped in.
“Come on, fatso!” Jenifer Maryland screamed, wrestling with the officer, “Get up and take some more.”
The woman, infuriated with humiliation, clambered to her feet using the shopping trolley and launched herself at Jenifer Maryland, scratching her face with her glued-on nails.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Peter Alaska was shouting, fighting to keep the warring hellcats apart, a stupid grin all over his face.
“Fucking fat bloater!” Jenifer Maryland was screaming as the crowd jostled tightly round to get the best view of the action.
“Slut!” the woman retaliated amateurishly.
“That’s a compliment coming from a whale like you with a face like a slapped twat.” Jenifer Maryland retorted like a professional heckler.
Again the officer has to separate them. “Right, that's it!” he shouted.
“She started it; fat, meddling bitch!” wailed Jenifer Maryland, dragging strands of hair out of her eyes and mouth.
A squad car pulled up alongside them, shadowed by an ambulance. Two paramedics jumped out of the ambulance and physically restrained the warring women.
“She started it!” Jenifer Maryland was still protesting her innocence as she was led to the squad car and roughly bundled into the back seat. The driver of the squad car already had a good, firm hold of the fat woman, “This our suspect, Pete?”
“No, I'm bloody well not!!” she retaliated.
Officer Alaska explained, “This woman reckons she was threatened with this.” he held up the puny little flick-knife, “By her..” he nodded to the nonchalant-looking girl in the back of the squad car.
“Yeah, bet she’s the one killed that poor man there. And I'd like to press for charges of assault on her; she struck me; kicked me. I’d like to see the little bitch put away for the sake of common decency.”
“Hold on a minute.” the squad car driver cautioned her, “You’d like to press charges when there’s not a drop of blood on the man?”
“Of course…”
“You understand…” Peter Alaska butted in, “That the girl has every right to press charges of her own, if she is found innocent of this murder or not.”
“How dare she? The harlot.”
“That's it.” Peter Alaska ducked down into the back seat beside a womb-aching Jenifer Maryland, and suggested that she, “Press for assault on that monstrosity, okay?”
After looking into the officer's eyes for a very long moment, Jenifer Maryland said, “Too right.”
The fat woman was helped into the back seat beside Peter Alaska, almost crushing his left leg. The driver shook his head sympathetically, placing her shopping trolley on the passenger scat. After checking that the dead bloke was safely zipped into his body bag and packed away into the ambulance, he drove the women back to the station in complete silence.
SESSION IX
“Cut?” Staff Nurse Lily Veyne quizzed, “As in...”
“Yeah, the Movies.” I grinned, “Like when the director shouts ‘CUT!’ at the end of a take. Just like that. It was a revelation.”
The four ominously-threatening Ornamentals seemed to reel backwards at the terse command. Their shells splitting and rupturing. Bleeding a fluorescent green light. Quite a spectacular sidewalk sideshow. They staggered about in their enormously heavy armour, their slaughterhouse exteriors breaking down in this brilliant manner. I just stood and watched, my jaw hanging with disbelief. One of the dematerialising Ornamentals staggered close by me, nearly crushing me, but so amazed was I with the spectacle that I watched unblinkingly on.
/>
Mr Whysilage screamed, “YAP! YAB! YAP.” and shouldered me along the panicked sidewalk to safety.
The malfunctioning Ornamentals blindly trampled cars and pedestrians as they ... disintegrated.. not into particles, but into each other.
Heavy armour and slabs of machinery lifting effortlessly from the back of one and landed in the belly of another. Their mutual light on recombination firing ever brighter in a flash of sparks and forked lightning
Mr Whysilage persisted in jostling me as far away as possible. Said we had to get out of the detonation zone.
The Ornamentals under this transference seemed to be shrinking as their mass-to-energy formula so spectacularly short circuited. The air was awash with the brain-burning stench of solder and hydrogen sulphide. A volcanic aroma. As I was shouldered round the corner of a tower block by the erstwhile Mr Whysilage, I swear I could make out three human figures clambering through the resulting jade smog like drinking partners back from a lads' night out staggering over the trash can they've just knocked over in the kitchen as they tried to be as quiet as mice, shushing each other and giggling uncontrollably as they crept through the house so as not to wake the wife Each figure was outrageously attired in formal evening wear. Red tartan thmf--piece suits. One of the trio I recognised as the squat ginger-bearded Glaswegian who had tried to assassinate me at my own front door that fateful day.
The other two suited humans were a lot taller and much younger - a pair of college twins on a fancy dress pub-crawl. The fatter one was holding onto what appeared to be a cross-breed of some description; a bunny-goat; a Pit-Bull-porker; something obscure but genetically decorative none the less. Something that would have a really foul temper and would undoubtedly be predisposed to hating every living, moving thing simply for the fact of its particularly outlandish physical make-up. Mock up. It veered and grimaced its plight, looked ferociously pissed off.
The leaner man in red tartan had a blonde Mohican hairstyle that really seemed to embarrass him.
“DAPDWADARZZZZKKK…” Mr Whysilage pinged and bonged hysterically as he hobbled away just a step ahead of me. He was limping; and a dark stain at his left knee had begun to weep green.
“GADWIPDTHTMLLCHK…” he beckoned me with a 'hurry up' flick of his head. A wild grin on his beautiful, masculine, world-wise-and-weary face. How I envied his maturity. He always knew what he wanted and exactly how to go about getting it. He will be sorely missed.
“You make it sound like he's ... dead, or something.” Staff Nurse Lily Veyne commented.
“Oh, he is.” I said.
I peeled off yet another layer of my life, I had no idea at the time how seriously maimed he was. Thought it was just a cut on the knee. A flesh wound. But any wound from an Ornamental in a ‘soul wound’. You are hurt on the inside. It is the person beneath the skin that suffers; loses all identity of itself; all its attributes; all its breeding; all its quirks, until finally in the languorous decrepitation of mind and soul that an Ornamental death is the body itself becomes thoroughly dilapidated; forgets itself; its purpose of keeping its host alive, just packs up; forgets to breath; forgets to tell its sleepy heart to pump; forgets to be personal molecules; forgets to stay wake. The whole person, mind and body, just closes shop. A denial of existence.
In his final moments, Mr Whysilage slipped nostalgically back into Galimatian. Said it was he who had shouted ‘CUT!’, his final act of love.
Said he'd used the same trick in two similar situation a long time ago when he cared about someone as he cared about me. Said three strikes and you are out. Broken. Said the Ornamentals always return to the form of their prey, in my case human. As he was handing me a small vial of yellow fluid he said I looked like a nice boy and that I should take this, it would get me to Arrenay.
Said I should stand at the edge of the sea at sunrise as the (moutons? sheep?) cruised against the sky - or at least that's what I think he said, after all, he was dying in a foreign language - then I was to think of a good joke to tell myself and knock the whole lot back. As soon as I reached Arrenay, I was to (transplant?) back to Randall and the message in the glasses I should be then wearing would become apparent and all my troubles would be put to rest. Then he pushed me away as If I were a stranger.
“Va te faire foutre, voleur de ma vie.” he puked up black tar. His body broke down to a slimy, evil-smelling syrup before my disgusted, disbelieving eyes. Just a mind-mare, a retching love Puddle.
That just about says it all for me.
“Don't take it all to heart. They are dreams. Only dreams.” Staff Nurse Lily Veyne tried to console me.
I rubbed the tears from my eyes.
“They're not dreams. They're too real to be just that.” I was shaking my bald head in denial of the obvious, “They are memories of what I am, what I used to be, what I will finally be.” I snivelled, it was all very pathetic and yet...
“Are you sleeping okay?” she asked.
“Can't stay awake. I think the soup is spiked.”
“It probably is.” she fumbled round in her Lincoln-green tunic's pockets, “Here.” she handed me several loose pills.
“What are these?” I took the tablets from her and popped them into my mouth. Anything for her.
“Speed? You heard of that? Amphetamine sulphate. They should help keep you high as you like. Fight back against the crap they load everything with here.”
“You're a good friend, Lily.” I smiled.
“Only to the sexy looking ones, I am.” she tugged my chin. Gave me a single sweet little kiss; on the lips. Full on the lips, mind. The soft moistness of her mouth. Her hot tongue. The hardness of her teeth. The musky perfume emanating from her buxom body.
I was besotted; romantic sucker that I am.
“I'll pop in to see you tomorrow, okay?” she smiled into my eyes.
“Okay.” I replied nonchalantly; playing it cool.
She snorted out a short laugh as she rose from her seated position at the edge of my bed and wheeled her meals trolley away. The door clicked behind her. Out in the corridor I could have sworn I heard doctor Fanny Bradburg’s squawk asking Lily something or other. Did Lily really comment, “He’s a fucking pushover.”
TEN
“I’m telling you, Ollee, she took it in her fucking eyeballs, man! I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there myself...” Vini Arkansas was gesticulating furiously to his mate Oliver Connecticut on a street corner as a police squad car escorted an ambulance past them drowning oat the tail end of his accusation with its Doppler-shifting wail.
“She wouldn't do this to me!” Oliver Connecticut was roaring to himself, face deepening redder as more of the story was revealed.
“Ollee, I'm telling you...”
“Just fucking shut it, man, I'm in no fucking mood!” he tried to walk on ahead of his mate.
“Vini Arkansas caught up with him, As a mate, Ollee. I'm telling you…”
“Fuck off, mate!” Oliver Connecticut pushed him away.
“Listen to me…” Vini Arkansas grabbed Oliver Connecticut's arm, “She's bad news, lad.”
Oliver Connecticut punched Vini Arkansas right between the eyes and stormed off.
“Ollee!” Vini Arkansas shouted from the pavement, blood streaming from his busted nose, “She’s fucked! She's a fucking slut, mate.”
“Can I help you, young sir?” a burly middle-aged man was holding out a friendly hand.
“Fuck off, dickrot.”
The man raised his eyebrows; he was about to fuck off, dismissed, as it were. He reaches down and pulled the insolent prick to his feet; poked a big, strong finger into Vini Arkansas’s throat, “I said can I help you up, prick.” Pushing Vini Arkansas back to the floor with another one-fingered assault.
“What a fucking day.” Vini Arkansas sighed, finally back on his feet and dusted off. He chased after his best mate Oliver Connecticut convinced of his destination; the White House up on Standishgate. Picking up his pursuit speed to a light jog he roun
ded the corner onto Standishgate and began the steep accent.
Wheezing moments later, Vini Arkansas was excusing himself to a redhead in a pinstripe suit and an obviously gay bloke exiting the White House. He strode into the chokablock, smoky lunchtime atmosphere.
Oliver Connecticut was at the bar accosting some office junior type who was trying to get Lily Veyne to serve him first. “Hey! No!” said Oliver. “Who gives a fuck whether you were first or not.”
“Just watch it, friend.” the man warned his adversary while punters watched on avidly.
“You and whose fucken army?”
It was like a playground confrontation until the man punched Oliver Connecticut in the belly. Now Oliver Connecticut being a rugby player, loose forward to give him his position, had since his teenage years been what you might call Well Built. Recently, though, he'd put on weight, muscle, overall body mass like nobody’s business. The back four were afraid of him for Christ’s sake. So, that half-hearted little punchette in the guts of steel was more an annoyance than an assault. He regarded the little man with a certain pride for having the balls to even think about such a travesty. Then kicked the fuck out of him. I mean, he went ballistic. The crowd opened up like a blood pit. Uproar ensued. Were the really opportunists taking bets?
“Fucking stupid prat.” Oliver sermonised as he continued pummelling the guys dead face with his trainer.
“Oh, get off!” Oliver was weakly defending himself from Philip Maine, the grotesquely obese owner of the White House.
“Take it easy, Oliver my lad. We don't want any trouble.”
“That fuck is gonna get it!” he struggled to get to the man on the floor out-cold in his own blood, “He’s gonna fucking get it.”
“He’s nobody Oliver. He’s none of your concern. Take it easy big guy.” Philip Maine subdued the red-eyed nutcase, “Come on...” he turned to the barmaid, Lily Veyne. “Lily, give this ruffian a drink - a soft drink, for a soft lad.” he smiled, lightly slapping Oliver Connecticut's cheek. “And less of the fucking around in my pub, eh, before I bar ya?”
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