“Won't find any tender morsels down there.” I quipped.
T-ROOSEVELT came up behind me and stabbed me in the back with something blunt.
I fell on my face; the fact that my wrists were tied to my ankles meant that I had to use my chin as a brake on the gravel surface. Chunks of diamond-sharp gravel slid up under the facial skin, grinding against the bone.
“No.” the final NOMADIX (or is the singular NOMADIC?) was female. She brushed away the bunny-goat/Pit Bull porker as it lapped and snuffled at my blood smeared face.
“Shoo. Shoo,” she said. She dropped to her knees beside my face. “Not like that, A-WASHINGTON.” She took my grotesquely proportioned bald head in a kind, soft hand, Like this. And cut my eyelids open with one of her razor-sharp fingernails. A nauseating nail edge catching momentarily on my left eyeball.
“Oops, sorry.” she apologised for her clumsiness as my screams began at falsetto ascending to a shriek whistle. T-ROOSEVELT dropped beside her for a more intimate appraisal embedding his knee in my brittle back as my vision scarleted over.
“Shush, shush, now, little spac-man.” he breathed. The soft hand holding my head clenched tighter, the fingers penetrating cranial skin, scraping the skull bone. The Nomadix bitch took a handful of gravel and rubbed it into my lidless eyes. Scalding me blind.
What fun we were all having suddenly.
Maggots under my skin jostling about madly between the muscle and bone substrata and the epidermis. The wriggling evil bastards. Itching like fury. Itching furry creepy crawlies: spiders now, not maggots. Spiders. A swarm of large black spiders below my cold flesh; nibbling it loose with ravenous mandibles; tunnelling irritating passages with their hairy feelers; tickling; pushing away at the subdermis; no bodily region exempt from this unabashed burrowing. Below my gums. Behind my eyes. Under the flesh of my back. In my arm veins. Itching. In my leg arteries; tickling the knee caps; the shine. Laying their fat spider-laden sacs down in my heals; under my toenails. Itching. Itching. Itching. My ears burned but I heard no roar of immolation, only the incessant whispered scampering of the millions of tiny feelers. Rooting. Laying. Displacing nerves causing them to short out like when the dentist's drill slips because he's too busy fingering his pouting assistant stood over you with her white tunic open, her bra open, I AM THIS DENTIST’S FINGERING PROPERTY tattooed across her small white breasts in Chinese ink. Her creamy aroma hypnotising him as he jerked the diamond drill-bit into a root; his cock squirting a thimble of spunk into his pristine working clothes.
2-2 amalgam, Please, nurse, he'll fluster as he then rams the foul-tasting latex appendage into YOUR mouth unsterilised to staunch the flow of blood. Pressing down on the exposed nerves until your eyes try to bleed. And you shit yourself at the murderer's clumsy dental fingering. And your eyes can’t look away from the action of dentist and assistant. In the dentist’s chair, in the dentist’s dental surgery, sat in your own stinking shit watching him thumb-fuck then fist fuck the assistant over the basin. Banging her supermodel face full of perfect white teeth into the porcelain rim so her groans of fist-fucked joy flip to choking screams of fear and pain and degradation.
“Next…” some Scottish voice announced.
“Me. Me.” a large voice joked, “Let me have a go. Please, C- MERCEDES. Please let me have a go.”
“Come on you soft wee get. You’ve been a good lad, it’s about time you had your turn. Just a little go, mind. Don’t overdo it.”
Their silly little titters ended abruptly in a body flash of pain.
A sky congested with innumerable stars. Pulsating due to the effects of this weird planet's peculiar atmospheric quirks. Glimmering dots and corpulent spheres undulating with life. Shimmering hazels and emeralds and lilacs above. A breathing night's shroud. Inhaling the stench of my annihilation. A woman's face shimmered just beyond this dark veil of night. Tried to press its heavily-lined features into focus. Ease an expression through unrecognisable constellations.
A reviver's horror scribed all over it with a savage quill.
The interrogation of my human soul through those mercilessly brutal alien ways continued unabating for ... I don't know how long.
I don't even remember the final perverse horrors.
So much pain -- you don't realise just how much pain the human body, even one so poorly formed as this, can take. How many bones can be broken. How many bits can be sheared off. The unimportant tips of ears. The eyelids. The nose. Fingers; toes; hip fat; buttocks. Most of the muscle groups can be cleaved from a victim's body without inducing death. You just hack a piece off; wait for them to be consciously reborn into their world of new pain and lop another bit off. Service with a smile. A smile - another non essential. You know, even your extremities; your legs; your arms, even right back to the scapulae if properly heat-sealed, can be whipped off. Until you're nothing more than a torso and a skull.
Of course, it's the blood loss that kills you. Staunch that and your candidate lives to experience even more unearthly delights. True professionals they were these Ornamentals ... sorry, Nomadix. Gave great service. Gained real job satisfaction, they did. I must have worn out even their patience with my determination not to die no matter what abominations they carried out on my fragile frame.
“Fucking soft bastards.”
“And?” Staff Nurse Lily Veyne asked, “What happened then? They let you off? Their bleepers call them away to more important mischief? A more prominent torture assignment?”
“Jest away.”
“No, come on, I am truly tickled now. Tell me.” she pouted.
“Don't know if I should.”
“Please.” she sidled up my bed, “Pretty please. With a big ride red cherry on the tippety top.” And drew her thin pink tongue along her top lip; wetting it.
“Silly bugger.” I choked.
She punches me in the chest, “Come on then...”
“It was just…” I hesitated, “My lips are sealed.”
“Pretty. Pretty. Pretty.” she pursed her lips up to mine cajoling me to give her a little pecky weck. I resisted the offer gallantly as I can see something unmistakeably sinister behind her pouting invitation. This is not the way staff in a hospital, mental or medical, should comport themselves.
She tugged my nose between her fingers. Was she getting desperate? Resorting to violence to achieve her aims? She jabbed a hard fist at my chin then gives me some more speed. Cruelty with kindness?
“Okay, tight lips.” she conceded.
I flicked my eyebrow muscles, mischievously, to see how she would react.
She narrowed her eyes, clowning, “Bad thoughts, boy.”
She took hold of my chin then gave it a nasty bite. You could call it a love bite if you were sadomasochistically inclined, but the bite was a bite, on the chin, and it hurt. A definite alien-ness had set into her ever-impenetrable facade.
“Don't let Fanny Braddy know I'm giving you these uppers. It'll be my job.” she threatened me.
I half-smiled; there was something very wrong with her manner.
“Alright?” She asked before making a brisk exit.
TWELVE
“A golf stick...” Jenifer Maryland was totally drunk.
“Golf CLUB.” Penny Massachusetts asserted.
“That's what I said, golf CLUB!” Jenifer Maryland balanced the imaginary item on the end of her finger.
Penny Massachusetts knocked back the fifth of her Whisky-sodas with a right royal flourish.
Jenifer Maryland copied her, downing her own bravely, “Can't be left out!”
“Javelin.” Penny Massachusetts shouted, balancing that one on her outstretched fingertip.
People were beginning to take notice of these two loudsters, “Bicycle.” Jenifer Maryland bettered her, over acting appropriately.
“Motorbike.” Penny Massachusetts balanced the icon unconfidently.
“Piss Poor! What about this?” Jenifer Maryland slurred drunkenly, “Hippopotamus.”
The ladies e
xploded with high-pitched screeching cackles. Nearby customers shook their heads disconsolately at the pissed-up pair.
“Something wrong?” the Gothic Jenifer Maryland goaded the couple opposite. They averted their gaze, huddled closer together to deny the existence of the hooligans.
“Giraffe.” Penny Massachusetts screamed, finger out.
“Elephant!”
“Lion!!”
“Noooo!” Jenifer Maryland had and answer, “An elephant is harder to balance than a lion.”
“A live lion would bite your arm off. That’s gotta count.” Penny Massachusetts hooted.
“Ford Fiesta!” Jenifer Maryland shouted.
“Rolls Royce Silver Shadow!” Penny Massachusetts countered.
“Hummer!”
“Amphibious vehicle!”
Jenifer Maryland faltered…
“In the rain!” Penny Massachusetts reinforced the magical enigma.
“Yacht.” Jenifer Maryland jabs the air.
“Trawler.”
“Mississippi Steamer.”
“Frigate!”
“Battleship!!”
“Battleship??” Penny Massachusetts asked, eyebrows aloft, Can you really imagine balancing a whole upended battleship on the tip of your one itty bitty little index finger? With all that mass? All that stainless steel? All the hundreds of crewmembers on board clinging on for dear life like something out of Titanic? Some falling to their death from the great height? All that heavy gunnery? All the anti-aircraft missiles and armour piercing shells? The planes on board? The tons of catering equipment, fruit and vegetables? The fucking maniac centre of gravity.
“Yeah…” Jenifer Maryland was nodding confidently, her finger hold out strongly, her head right back visualising the event. I can even see it in here. Right here.
The pair of them were focusing high past the sculptor ceiling.
“In here? Definitely?” Penny Massachusetts asked, not lowering her gaze.
“In here.” Jenifer Maryland pouted self-righteously, “I can even see what would happen if it fell over. Over there it would land. It'd smash through that wall. Crush the jukebox. Destroy the bar. And crash through the front of the pub out into the street, scattering bodies and debris, crushing cars and vans and buses and half of Dicconson…”
“A battleship..” Penny Massachusetts guffawed.
“BATTLESHIPS.” Jenifer Maryland held out her other index finger. One for each finger.
“BATTLESHIPS??”
“Ra! Ra! Ra! BATTLESHIPS! Ra!! Ra!! Ra!!” They shouted for drinks in unison, “More whiskey chasers! More shorts!!” They fell about all over each other, holding on for dear life while the pub spun and spun.
PC Peter Alaska swanned into the pub just then, in plainclothes, off duty.
He dodged through the clot of drinkers barside and hotfooted it to the lounge of the White House where he had dropped the two ladies off nearly two hours ago. As he approached the giggling pair, a crackly old slice of bigoted nationalism cranked up. It’s lyric hauntingly familiar.
0, say can you see/
By the dawns early light/
What so proudly we hailed/
At the twilights last gleaming.....
fade to static hiss.
“That's Last Orders.” Peter smiled down on the drunken louts, “The landlord thinks he has a sense of humour, you know, White House pub, ‘Oh say can you see’ at Last Orders.”
The ladies looked up at him and burst out laughing.
“I’ll get them, eh?” he stroked his eleven o-clock shadow. He sniffed the ladies’ empty glasses. “Whiskies, do it?”
“Dead piggin’ right.” Penny Massachusetts burped.
“I'll be moments.” PC Peter Alaska frowned, bemused yet in the same face highly amused.
He set three neat whiskies on their table and sat himself opposite Jenifer Maryland, Penny Massachusetts regularly sprawling herself all over his shoulders whispering disgusting suggestions in his ear.
“I have someone I'd like you to meet. She's a very good friend of mine. Invited us all back for… a party.”
“That's very gentlemanly of her.” Penny beamed. The ladies laughed. They’d have laughed at anything, these two, tonight.
PC Peter Alaska actually saw the words SUCKERS written all over their gormless foreheads in garish five-inch high throbbing neon letters, you could actually hear the popping of the mercury switch as the idiot sign came on. Shaking his head to dislodge the callous advertisement, he smiled to himself, the corners of his mouth turning down mixing equal measures of delight and disgust at what was going to happen at the ‘party’. Even allowed himself a sick little chuckle that sounded like indigestion. He knocked back his whisky and smacked his lips, slouched back in the mock-leather comfort of the seating in this end of the pub. The ladies followed, knocking back their drinks so as not to be left out of the competition.
“More!” Penny Massachusetts cried out like a scalded cat.
“I'll get them.” Jenifer Maryland climbed the table to her feet, rocked back on her heals completely out of balance. PC Peter Alaska shot to his feet and caught her as she swooned, at least he thought she was swooning.
“You sit, for God's sake.” PC Peter Alaska insisted.
“Drunken whore!” Penny Massachusetts roared.
Jenifer Maryland laughed at that.
“I'll get them.” PC Peter Alaska headed off barside.
“Peter!” Penny Massachusetts hailed, “Here! she held up a large banknote, Take some money!”
“Take some of mine!” Jenifer Maryland held up a note too.
PC Peter Alaska shook his head.
“Louts.” he huffed to himself.
After what seems like a dry-throated eternity PC Peter Alaska returned. As well as three more whiskies he had brought back a vodka & orange and a strange-looking albino woman attired in a luminous orange latex cocktail dress with matching shoes, stockings, earrings and make-up.
“May I present..” PC Peter Alaska used humbling diction for the first time, “My very good friend, Lily Veyne.”
“It's the White House barmaid dressed like the Tango Girl.” Penny Massachusetts screamed.
Lily Veyne smiled politely, there was something old and Chinese about her demeanour when not roughing it behind the bar. Something like as undersea calm, not predatorial as such just … only her eyes moved. Her lips moved, as an aside to PC Peter Alaska, “I see what you mean…”
Then to all, “So, you've agreed to make your presence felt at my little get together later on?”
“Yeah.” Jenifer Maryland pouted, “I am always up for a party.”
“Me, too.” Penny Massachusetts added – somehow it didn’t seem out of place for this old dear to be acting so tonight. It seemed right. Which made it all seem so wrong in retrospect.
“Right, then.” Lily Veyne smiled, “Whenever you ladies are ready, Petey here will give you a ride. I have to tidy up here; lock up. I’ll see you all there, then.” smiling again.
“See you there, Miss Veyne.” Penny curtsied.
“Lily, call me Lily, Mrs Massachusetts.” She didn’t make mention of Penny’s recent loss, that would have been out of place.
Penny Massachusetts held out her soft hand. Lily Veyne shook it warmly. Jenifer Maryland, again not wanting to be left out, also proffered her hand. This also got a proper shaking.
The Party really was well under way by the time Penny Massachusetts and Jenifer Maryland had clambered from their seats in the White House's lounge, fallen into PC Peter Alaska's white Ford Fiesta 2.0 Turbo and climbed the mountainous staircase to Bedford Delaware’s apartment above the butchers shop.
Bedford, of course, was there acting as host in Lily’s absence; his duties included getting massively pissed and camping about like a social butterfly as if it was rapidly going out of fashion in this part of town.
One or two of Bedford's dubious sexuality friends were hogging the settee in the corner. There was a gang of pint gl
ass holding onlookers just stood there watching them as they petted quite heavily and stuck their hands in all sorts of warm friendly places. No body on the settee seemed to mind the audience gawping and salivating
The kitchen, as usual, was packed. Guests were emptying the fridge with frightening efficiency, helping themselves to the coffee machine and the spare cans of ale - emergency rations which everyone was already dipping into.
Unknown to most, so loud was the Sisters of Mercy blaring from the CD Player, there is a couple doing it in the bathroom. They had met on the stairs, one just leaving the lav, one on her way, and there it started in the space of a few minutes, a look of love, a testing open mouthed kiss, the groping, the tumbling, back up the stairs into the bathroom, door got locked and they were within three minutes fucking in the bathroom – she had one foot on the toilet like she was trying to fit in a tampon and he was getting thigh ache behind her. After the brief mating, they had sat themselves in a bath of cold water, applied shaving foam to all the hairier parts of each other's bodies and had given each other a serious shaving. The dancing queue of people waiting to use the bathroom had got to the point where they were hammering the door and shouting abuse at the scraped occupants.
“Fuck off!!” had come the resonant water-splashing-giggling reply from within. Some really intelligent partier replied to this by kicking the bathroom door off its fucking hinges. And while party guests sat and stood to pies and shit and what have you, the now shaven and bleeding couple in the bath were splashing water everywhere as they once again fucked each other's brains out – it was like a wet Karma Sutra show, all the angles, all the aggression. One short man had actually got so excited by the wet show as he tried to take a leak that he had the audacity to wank up on them as they were shagging. The couple were oblivious, goes without saying. Wrapped up in each other's motion; grunting and snuffling. All sorts of faeces and spunk floated on the rust-coloured surface by this time. Really wallowing in it they were…
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