Twilight's Last Gleaming

by Hertzen Chimera

  “You mentioned 'preliminary results'.”

  “Yes?”

  “And?”

  “Oh, silly me.” she flipped over pages and pages, “Everything’s coming along smoothly. Regular as clockwork. No relapse. No irregular behavioural spasms. Levelling out nicely. No more signs of the psychological trauma you were exhibiting only a few days ago. Everything’s A-okay.”

  After a short while in which Dr Fanny Bradburg turned her revolting smile on and off like a broken neon sign, I asked her, “What preliminary results? You only get results by doing tests. If you have results, no matter how preliminary, you must have been doing tests. On me. How come I don't remember taking part in any tests since I vas imprisoned here a very fucking long time ago?! What tests have you been doing? I've no tests done on me.”

  THIRTEEN

  So fucked, literally, was Penny Massachusetts by her adventure in Porn's master bedroom that it was late in the morning when she roused, thick tongued and raw throated. She was all alone in Bedford Delaware’s kingsize divan. Still naked, her baggy body rubbed raw in every fold of her sagging, overweight and wrinkly carcase. Apart from these minor irritations though, she felt fine. This, of course, was a lie; total balderdash.

  Penny Massachusetts felts abso-fucking-lutely marvellous.

  And, after finding her smelly dentures on the floor beside her clothes; dressed and dentured, she stepped out onto a battle scene. She clambered over a body on the landing, deadly silent. Picking her way through the matting of bodies carpeting the living room to the kitchen which was empty.

  There was a large, luminous piece of yellow paper held onto the fridge door by four grinning Garfield magnets. It read:

  Penny, love.

  Help yourself to breakfast. If you can find any...

  Let yourself out. Don’t mind the mess.

  I’ll be in touch.

  Lily Veyne

  XXX

  “Fine.” Penny Massachusetts commented, opening the fridge door. Three large oranges. A half bottle of Perrier. Belgian rapé cheese. One strawberry in a fur lined plastic container. One yoghurt (out of date). One half eaten Mars bar. One egg. Appetising leftovers.

  She took an orange and closed the fridge. Peeling the orange, she searched through the cupboards of plates, saucers, pans, plastic bags and potatoes; an eclectic selection of glasses, large, small, wine, brandy, tumbler, and, eventually, food. For food read: One empty box of Coco Pops and some Margarine. Lots of herbs and spices - Oregano, Dill, Bayleaf, Mint; Nutmeg, Coriander, Ginger. A full packet of Pasta, penne. One can of Semolina. One tube of tomato puree. One mouldy crust of French baguette. She shook her head in dismay and, after collecting the rest of her stuff, descended the rickety staircase. Tearing segments from her orange. And munching noisily; juice dribbling down her chin and crystallising into a beautiful sheen.

  It was truly a beautiful day.

  There was a refreshing Autumn breeze plucking the downy hair from her face. Blowing her hairdo this way and that. She walked into a motorbike shop.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed dumbly, realising what she's done. Intending to about turn and depart she was set upon by a sudden nostalgia brought on by the pristine machinery, dredging up all the wartime memories; their content flooding back photographically intact.

  She'd been posted down in Norwich, of all places. Times were hard in those war torn years. But there were, even in war, perks to be had. She had been the only woman in her bomb capping factory who could ride a motorcycle so most of her working days were spent running errands on her rusty three-cylinder Norton. The memory of the wind buffeting her goggles. The smell of petrol fumes and overheated brakes. The feel of the leather seat. The heat of the petrol tank beneath her chest. Out on the open read. Life's loose schedule. The war was someone else's problem. No sweating it out screwing detonators onto four-foot-high bombs for this mistress of the country lane.

  Having said that, those old workhorses wore no match for these sleek and mighty steeds - that one, there; Suzuki 1200 cc. A beauty. Bet that baby world really move. Or that one, there; all gleaming silver. Or that red one, there,- NORTON 1500 cc.

  “Can I help you, dear?” the middle-aged assistant smiled, chomping his lunch.

  “Oh.” Penny was taken by surprise by this intrusion into her reminiscences. She held a hand to her breast, gasping breath, “You'll frighten me to death.”

  “Can I help you?” the assistant grimaced tensely, masticating slack jawed.

  “I want that, please.” Penny Massachusetts indicates the Norton 1500 motorbike.

  The assistant was well amused, nearly spluttering the half-chewed mouthful of tuna sandwich out of his mouth.

  “Come on.” He helped the daft old lady to the door.

  “Get your hands off!” Penny Massachusetts exclaimed, “Don’t bleedin well push me. Or I’ll, I’ll rip yer fuckin knickers off … she wasn’t sure if she should carry on so but she did … right here, in this shop, so everyone can see what a stupid assistant man you are.”

  The assistant clipped on his defensive face like it was a convenient tie; didn't want some old bag having a heart attack on the premises when he was at the helm.

  “Now.” Penny Massachusetts took out a cheque book, “How much are we asking for that red beauty this morning? That, Norton, is it?”

  “Norton it is, madam. Top of the line model, flat...”

  “Save the sales pitch. How much?”

  “The Norton? Taxed, insured and plated? Thirteen thou'. Sorry you asked now, eh?”

  “I'll need some leathers too, obviously. And a helmet – you can’t be too careful.”

  “Madam, I seriously wouldn't recommend...”

  “I am a woman of no small fortune. Just do as I say and there'll be no hassle.”

  “I'm afraid I must see some ID.” The assistant was still finishing his sandwich and bits of cress were sticking out of the side of his mouth, “credit cards; bank deposit book..” he was dying to say Pension Book but denied himself the pleasure in case it were to inflame an already scorching situation, and fuck up a sale. Or I will have to ask you to take your custom elsewhere.

  Penny considered the request coolly and calmly. Took the obnoxious git roughly by the scruff of his collar and said, “Look, little person, do you want to keep your pissy job?”

  “That's it!” the assistant was throwing her out.

  “Penny Massachusetts.” she thrust her driving license in his face, “Recognise the company name, eh? Indeed he did. Massachusetts: as of Massachusetts Accountancy. Old man Massachusetts had handled the shop's accounts for years and had always kept their tax bills to a minimum; slashing their 'profits' with tactical stock acquisitions one year, major refurbishments the next, and so on; well worth the paltry £250 he asked for his annual services. And here he was kicking their best financial advisor's wife out onto the street like a common tramp.

  “I do apologise.” he began to sweat.

  “I know you didn't mean it.” Penny Massachusetts brushes his collar flat. “I could have been any doddery old get.”

  The assistant was nodding sympathetically, then, “No. Not at all. I mean..”

  “Now, hurry.” she licked her dry lips, “I’m dying to get my fat rump back in the saddle.”

  “You are hoping to ride this away?”

  “And why not?”

  “For a small fee we will deliver to anywhere in the..”

  “Fuck that for a lark!” Penny Massachusetts articulated, “Gimme the keys, lad, and I’ll ride it now.” you hear see the foamy old girl slapping her chops.

  Now the shop assistant knew that if he let this old coot, accountant's wife or not, loose on the road on this monster machine she’s gonna (i) fucking kill herself and god knows who else AND (ii) he's gonna lose his fucking job to boot.

  “Oh, leathers…”

  “Sorry?” the shop assistant snapped out of the horror scenario.

  “I'll need the leathers and the helmet. Don't want to gr
aze myself if I come off, do I?”

  This was going very bad, thought the assistant as he raced to fetch the leathers and a helmet, “What colour would you be wanting?” He came back panting.

  “Geriatric Red.” Came Penny Massachusetts’s gleaming response.

  “Of course.” the assistant muttered to himself dreamily as he went off to fetch the Geriatric Reds.

  Moments later, he returns somewhat flushed, his tone apologetic, I'm afraid this is the largest set of red biking leathers we have in stock.

  Penny Massachusetts snatched them from him. Squeezes her dumpy frame into them. Put on the helmet, “Do you have a mirror?” she asked.

  “Yes, madam. Just here.”

  Penny Massachusetts waddles over to where a tall, thin mirror was set into an alcove near some mopeds. The image that greeted her looked like something out of a Dick Emery movie. The helmet was massive. The leathers were far too tight, making her look like a highly embarrassed Michelin Man - and they were far too long in the arms and legs.

  “I look a right sight.” Penny Massachusetts exclaimed.

  The assistants eyebrows, flipped up, astonished that his day was continuing to go so wrong.

  She takes her cheque book in hand, How much for the whole caboodle, then?

  “Errm...” the assistant consulted the shop calculator. Many button presses later he bore the grim news, “Twenty thousand, four hundred and ninety five pounds, ninety pence. That's including V.A.T.”

  The cheque is speedily written and signed.

  “Here are the keys.” the assistant handed them over like they would explode if roughly handled. The ink on the cheque wasn't even dry before Penny Massachusetts was astride her chosen beast. The assistant knew that as soon as she kicked away the stand all her nostalgic enthusiasm was going to come crashing to earth, along with the ten adjacent bikes in the display, and he’d be phoning up an ambulance to take an old lady to Hospital for a hip replacement. He ground his teeth furiously.

  Key in. Ignition started. Stand kicked away. His heart leapt into his throat. Amazingly, the old girl held the machine up. Built up the revs to a deafening, smoke bellowing crescendo. Tossed a manic smile at the ear-shattered assistant. Kicked it up into gear. Dropped her visor. Popped the clutch. And shot forward with break-neck acceleration.

  Smashing right through the facing plate-glass shop window. Taming the growling beast in the middle of the high street as cars and haulage vans and delivery trucks came screaming to a halt to left and right.

  A 320 bus ploughed into a bus stop, crushing an old bloke and a trio of skateboard wielding kids up against a low, brick wall.

  Not caring a fuck for the devastation she had caused, Penny Massachusetts cranked up the revs. Clutch out. And she was away up the street like the wind off a fart. Front wheel gulping sky.

  SESSION XIII

  You were there in my dream of Nomadix, Lily Veyne. A-WASHINGTON C-JEFFERSON T-ROOSEVELT and G-LINCOLN congealing Messianic as their quartet of deed hungry faces blended sinuously into your bright eyes cowering shyly behind your Lincoln-green surgical mask. The sutures you were busy making in my battered body neatly nefarious. Your healing rubber fingers pulling the flesh back into line; refusing it to the bone and resewing life back into my splintered nerve fibres; rebuilding me from the spine and ribs and skull chassis out through the senses to the vanities of flesh. My arms and legs had begun to work, disregarding their river beds of pain. I laughed out loud for the first time since the sadistic Nomadix had tore the guts from my soul.

  My head-shriek opened like a casket of bronze doubloons singing reckless pub-songs at my miraculous resurrection into your boiling arms as you pulled me motherly from the cold operating table of this starkly-lit theatre. My body healed and rebuilt anew. An enigmatic reconstruction heightened by your predisposition for the perfection of form and function of my new corpse. My buckled back reworked as I stood erect, helped lethargically from the table; a brand-new stature some six foot tall or more.

  My newly naked flesh endowed with a soft ginger fur. My proud penis, yes, penis, jutting with a steady throb at your smock. Indenting the Lincoln-green cotton.

  All circumcised and shiny-domed ammonia. Hot steam suffusing a wild panic in my babies bag of balls as the tingles jutted me stiff.

  Lily, your beautiful pink eyes on my jism maker, took it in hand and held it in a tight fist. Didn't shag it with the hairless palm of a rhythmic wank-hand. Just the constant, steady pump of blood trapped in the member. Compressed to a fat chunk of man's meaty cock. Hot and swollen in your hot grip; the fingernails gouging the bulging grin of my rim.

  Opening of fabric. The smock dropped; a screeching whisper against your soporific flesh. Scraping down your crystalline carcase. You bled that green spunk from your ample form revealing a white bunny-fur nipple-hole bra and crotchless white bunny-fur panties. Stood before me, still masked a-Lincoln-green and swallowed great gulps of me with those fucking bunny eyes. I spasmed, right there, on the spot. Felt the gush of spunk up the dreaded man-tube. Felt the choking gag of sperm in the constricted tip. Felt again the cold steel of the operating table on my back as you mounted me in situ, my spurt dribbling out unstaunchable. Street-gangs of eagerly whispering student nurses watching voyeuristically, ogling your lapping loins from behind glass as your jagged rhythm rocked me till my scrotum roared a wild storm of electric life up into the deep reverberation of your rampant insanity of Cunt Worship on Overdrive. You bled me out; my legs all fucked with your demanding exertions on my new frame. I fucked you as I've never fucked before. You were mine. Your lover's nails in me, under the skin of my furry back. I was there beneath your roasting, incestuously hairy gash. You were there as the twin sister I'd never met in the flesh; about whom I'd fantasised till it hurt. Clinical copulation envious of neither method nor the prognosis, just baying under the inauspicious eyes of many for collision. A motorway pile-up where cocks and cunts ploughed into one another with a deafening casualty of steel against bone. A sexual shriek banging at the very fabric of perdition.

  I told the silly bitch exactly what she thought I should, at this crucial stage in my therapy, be telling her. Sublimation/affirmation/theory/pep/talk. Oh, the lies my life had once adopted to wile away the letter-writing day now a necessity to get me the hell out of this carnal madhouse charade. Practise makes perfect as those with the symbolic skulls of their numerous conquests strapped about their putrefying necks still purport to say.

  Staff Nurse Lily Veyne begins, flush-faced at the honesty of my tirade, “It was I, you

  know, I was your Ornamentals all along?”

  She laughed out loud.

  “That's brilliant.” she laughed again, “Your a very weird kid, Mister Deniz.” she beamed, collecting her tray of syringes she'd neglected to use and slipping me some more of the doppelganger tabs she'd had the bare-balls to call speed: probably the same shit they dropped in my food.

  They must think I'm a fucking prat.

  “Thank you.” I thanked her for my non-prescription medication, make certain palming-off corrections towards my mouth and take from her the preferred beaker of water to ‘wash them down’.

  Back in the world of my dreamer's sarcophagus sanctuary my resurrection was far less miraculous and nowhere near as theatrical. In all honesty, nothing at all happened, or seemed to happen, for a very, very long time. An utter coldness, blindness, soundless, scentless numbness - a sensual Purgatory of deprivation and dismay. Just lingering, for aeons in a dead place. Not even the crinkle of worms and maggots tunnelling my decomposing corpse to keep me company. No scourge of Satan. No Heavenly exaltation. A darkness of soul that wavered between the void and the hopeless drop of the abyss. No salvation for this soulless meat.

  Then WHACK.

  Life; illuminated; scorched alive. Blinding grey face; all wrinkles and white hair. Deafening blast of my rejuvenation. Sensational electricity blazing through long-dead, nerves severed and teased apart in the Nomadix playful intermission with
me. Smells of solder; of cooking oils; of effluent; of freshly-cut green grass. Then the relapsing death of a body too punch-drunk to fight back as it slowly faded back down that long dark tunnel, its infinitely engulfing depth a siren song in the diseased trauma of my callously wrecked existence.

  Again a blast of unwelcome life tore through me; the Mach 7 of nerve-screams to the brain. My body jolts alive; dragged against its will into harsh reality and all its incumbent pains and despairs. The face of my saviour a lighthouse stroked through nights of fog and storms to guide me safely back into being in this bizarre place. Reptilian shapes, both dark and light, climbed the visible wall space. Seem to bow over at the top where the living wall meets the glimmering, roiling cosmology of the ceiling.

  A blistering Universe of stars in constellations in galaxies in clusters in super clusters shimmering down on me; their adoring gaze eternally fixed. All the things I felt and heard and saw and smelled and tasted were slightly wrong. Oblique. Foreign. As if the body I had woken in had been borrowed from a very high-class body-hire shop under strict contractual stipulation that should my sense of disorientation diminish or be defused in any way, like if I should begin to feel at home in the particularly exclusive accoutrement, an alternative casing would be instantly provided.

  “Dnyaah? Vgi? Pidrom? Zpittehik?” the grey-faced woman recited the words as if teaching me her alien tongue, “Dthththththalaah? Fibzib? Nig Nag-dok?” I recognised that one with its distinctive glockenstop.

  “Nig…” I try to say, but Nig is as far as I can take it.

  “Urh-hak. Nig A-byik? Ti Nga-gyip. Nig Byak-an?” her fluent diatribe spilled from her unfixed lips filling my head to bursting with its indecipherable babble so that I am forced to…

  SCREAM ! ! !

  …that hurt.

  “No! No! No. I don’t understand you, woman.”

  “Hello?” she tried, her face bright as a beacon at finally working out which formal language greeting I'd recognise.