Paintshark

by Kingsley Pilgrim

  “Oh Sabrina,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say.” Aphrodite hugged her friend and took a step back. “Wait, maybe my dad can help, he knows stuff and knows people who know people.”

  Sabrina bit her lip, her turn to look puzzled. “Shouldn’t I go and see a doctor?”

  “NO, just leave it to me, let my dad speak to you…he’ll take care of it.”

  Sabrina nodded nervously and only just noticed Aphrodite wearing sleeves. “Have you been affected?” Aphrodite shook her head, keeping her eyes in line with Sabrina’s.

  “So why are you wearing sleeves?”

  “I got this in a sale,” said a confident Aphrodite. “End of season it was.”

  Aphrodite kept her arms covered keeping the fact that she had large brown hairs forming on her arms as Sabrina had scales. She took Sabrina by the hand. “Come on, let’s get a drink and get out of this dump.”

  The bar was buzzing. Some had just gone for a quick drink after work, while for others it was just a stop-gap before hitting the serious nightclubs, this was the case for Aphrodite and Sabrina who were dressed to kill, even with sleeves covering their arms and skyscraper killer heels. They sat at the bar, twisting the stools to see what available talent was on offer. They didn’t have to wait for long. A smartly dressed man sat on the stool next to Aphrodite, he was in his early twenties and his nerves were getting the best of him, he turned around to his table of friends who egged him on and gave him the ‘thumbs-up’ sign.

  He fiddled with his tie and breathed out hard, rubbing the butterflies he could feel in his stomach, he tapped Aphrodite on the shoulder.

  Aphrodite knew what was coming, she was a beautiful young lady and she knew it, there wasn’t a time when she went out to a bar or nightclub where someone hadn’t tried to chat her up, this bar was no exception, usually if she didn’t fancy them she would engage in small talk and let them buy her a drink before she shooed them away.

  But tonight was different.

  “Hello there, can I buy you a drink?” he asked. Aphrodite had already checked him out long before he had taken his seat at the bar and she didn’t like what she saw, her brow furrowed and she swung her chair around to talk.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” The man shook his head.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never seen me before?”

  He nervously smiled. “No.”

  “Then why do you think I’ll be remotely interested in you, did I show you any attention since you’ve been here? Did I smile at you? Wink at you? Or flirt with you?”

  The man was taken aback and his face was confused. “No, you didn’t.”

  Aphrodite kept on. “Are you famous? Are you on the small screen or big screen? Or maybe you’re a footballer? Are you rich at all? Do you have loads of money? What do you do for a living?”

  The man answered while focusing on the drinks selection on the bar shelf in front of him.

  “I’m a school teacher.”

  Aphrodite had a wide-eyed gaze. “Do I look like someone who would go out with a teacher?”

  “You tell me.”

  She sipped her drink. “I just did, it sounds like a very boring job…would you want me to be bored if we were dating?”

  “Dating? But you said–”

  Aphrodite cut him off. “I was talking…hypothetically?”

  She looked to Sabrina to see if she was using the right word in context, Sabrina nodded.

  “What is your name?”

  The man was totally dejected. “Linus,” he answered.

  “Well Linus, you can run along now.”

  He slowly got up to leave and it was his turn to be sarcastic. “Have a nice life then.”

  Aphrodite pulled a sad face. “Are you mad at me? I’m only saying these things for your own good, so you don’t make the same mistake with another girl.”

  Linus shifted on his stool uncomfortably as Aphrodite continued. “I mean look at me and look at you. There is no way we’re suited…look at your clothes, they look so cheap and your shoes are horrid, that is the first thing a girl looks at, obviously the way you dress isn’t an issue to you but clothes are very important to me, I love expensive clothes, I love new shoes, I’ve got a beautiful car, what car do you drive?”

  “I can’t drive.”

  Aphrodite sneaked a look to Sabrina who had her smile back. “I’m not surprised.”

  This time Linus did leave his chair. “Well I’m sorry for wasting your time, I’ll let you get on with your night so you can find somebody…somebody who isn’t a teacher.”

  Aphrodite reached for his arm. “Wait, don’t go yet, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, listen, my friend and I are leaving soon because this place sucks.”

  The barman overheard and scowled as he poured his next drink, Aphrodite noticed. “I’m sorry but it does.” She still had Linus’s arm. “We’re going to a nightclub soon, you can come with us and dance with me, dance close with me… if you could answer me just one question.”

  Linus just listened.

  “Who is the designer of my bag?” He shook his head. “Go on. Have a guess.”

  Linus couldn’t even raise a polite smile as he began to leave. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

  Aphrodite giggled and threw back her impressive blond hair, watching intently as Linus finally left.

  “Don’t be sorry…just jog on.”

  The two girls picked up their drinks and headed towards the exit, as they passed Linus’s table Aphrodite waved as he swallowed and tried to look away embarrassed. One of Linus’s friends thought he could do better and stood up with a glass filled with bravado mixed with alcohol.

  “Can I take you out then, sweetheart?”

  Aphrodite looked back and smiled.

  “Only with a shotgun, darling.”

  Big Man sat in his office alone, his elbows placed neatly in a pyramid formation, his mind miles away, until a knock on the door bought him down to earth.

  “Come in.”

  A man in a white coat and a clipboard entered, he was a technician working in one of the many laboratories that Big Man owned – not only was he a TV Network ‘King’, he also had a growing interest in Science and Genetics.

  He had developed a programme in certain geological areas to take a species close to extinction and bring them back to his Wildlife Parks in order to breed them, but then he would have his Science engineers tamper with their DNA in order to make bigger and better monsters to take part in his violent game shows, but he wanted it to be bigger and better, the humans were being wiped out by new creatures in the games, but it wasn’t making great television and his viewing figures had dipped.

  The Network had explored the idea of mixing their enzymes with the serum they had created and put them into a human being.

  The scientific approach would be to study a human subject and to run tests on them to see how their brain cells adapted to the change.

  But Big Man couldn’t wait and he ordered the serum be tested on a group of people, a group of kids. Children had a longer shelf life, so the serum, designed by the best scientists in the country, was fed through the sprinkler system in a nightclub.

  The results had been available to see by everyone watching the evening news, the technician excitedly spoke to Big Man.

  “They’re on their way, sir.”

  “Thank you, did it work?”

  The Technician nodded slowly. “On some of them, sir.”

  “Groovy…then let the games begin.”

  There was a draught behind him, it made Elias’s back tingle with slight respite from the aches on the other parts of body. He was chained at the wrists, blindfolded and hanging from a ceiling, his tongue explored his mouth and came across a gap where two teeth used to sit, it probed the hole and then he felt his bottom lip with it, he could feel it was still sore and didn’t want to make the split worse so he stopped.

  Twitching his cheeks he could still
feel the dried blood caked to his skin. Elias was aware of the damage to his ribs and now his shoulder ached from hanging for so long, he was unsure how long he had been there.

  There was a smell lingering in the air, noxious and foul like carrion, Elias knew that smell from the Zoo, when he took Gemma there once, a gorilla had died in it’s enclosure, the zookeepers were too busy voting on last week’s reality TV show to take any notice of a sick Gorilla.

  Something had died in this room and he was not the only prisoner in it, tentatively Elias spoke. “Hello, who’s there?” Numerous voices in hushed tones told him to be quiet, but Elias continued. “Where am I?”

  One voice, an older voice calmed him down and from where Elias was hanging it seemed the person was directly below him.

  “You are in the home of the Network King ‘Big Man’ which you won’t be able to tell yet, but it does resemble a prison.”

  Elias breathed out hard. “He finally got me then.”

  The voice continued. “He finally got all of us, we’re all teachers, artists writers – anything different or creative and the Network shuts us down, anything that allows the human brain to think is closed or destroyed, museums, galleries…I believe music has gone underground now. Big Man wanted our schools too and when we refused he threatened us with violence and took our schools anyway.

  “Some teachers were scared and signed their schools away…others like myself made a stand and were made to suffer for it, all to keep the children at home to watch his ludicrous game shows.

  So now he is keeping a number of prisoners in the catacombs under his house, we will be used as contestants on his maniacal game show.

  “I know not why you are blindfolded or the reason you hang from the ceiling, everybody else here can see and is either chained to the walls or to each other…you must be a special case.”

  Elias looked down to where he’d thought the voice was coming from. “What is your name, my friend?”

  “My name is Jago and you’ll do best to call me a ‘friend’ only after I’ve earned the right, trust is a rare delicacy in these parts.”

  Elias rolled his tongue about the insides of his mouth again. “Jago?” I thought the voice sounded familiar, we met at a teachers’ conference last term, you’re a head of a primary school if I remember? Although Elias couldn’t see it, Jago nodded.

  “Yes I was, of a primary school, in fact there’s quite a lot of primary school teachers here, I think Big Man’s ex-wife was a primary school teacher and he hates them, I thought I could make some sort of stand for primary schools…great start I’ve made.”

  “Well, you could start right now.”

  Another prisoner told them both to ‘shut up’. Elias went on but spoke quietly. “You could start by taking off my blindfold if you can; I can smell the wonders placed around here and wouldn’t mind checking them out with my eyes.”

  Jago smiled even though Elias couldn’t see, he shouted to another prisoner. “Hey friend, can you give me a bunk up here? I can’t reach.” The reply was what most uncomplimentary. “No, let him stew! Why is he hanging there anyway? He must have done something real bad…”

  Jago took a step back and thought for a moment and then spoke. “HE’S A TEACHER. HE’S ONE OF US.” Jago breathed in. “Could someone please help me get this man’s blindfold off?”

  A much taller prisoner stepped forward. “Only if it shuts you up, Jago.”

  “Why thank you, Oram, thank you for your kindness.”

  “I’m the prisoner of a so called ‘TV God’,” Oram reminded him. “And when I see ‘Big Man’ again, I’ll show him anything but kindness, old man.”

  Jago nodded as the larger man came forward put his hands together and interlocked his fingers, Jago put one foot on Oram’s hand and was lifted in the air, followed by Oram’s grunting, the old man managed to hold on to Elias’s chains swinging slowly around but didn’t have much time as he felt his hands slipping already, he fiddled with the blindfold hurriedly before falling to the ground, the old man got up and rubbed his backside and on the floor to his left lay Elias’s blindfold. Jago looked up to see Elias looking down on him. Bewildered and still in some discomfort and still blindfolded, there were two blindfolds.

  “Oh for Goodness sake!” shouted Jago. Before he could try a second time to remove the other blindfold keys were heard jangling outside the only door to the room, the lock was turned, a well-suited man in sunglasses entered. He had quite spindly legs, which seemed they would snap at any moment due to his large frame.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Elias recognised the voice instantly, it was the one of the men who had broken into his house earlier, he listened intently. “I am your host for this evening, my name is Apollo and some of you have met me before, for the ones who haven’t, I doubt you’ll enjoy the experience.”

  Another smaller man walked in behind Apollo carrying a sack, his sympathetic eyes wandered around the prison.

  “The cameras are ready to roll, Apollo, we’re going live in a few minutes.”

  “Cool, and leave the sack on your way out.”

  “Yes boss.”

  Dandridge gave an apologetic smile to Jago as he left, leaving the door a jar. Apollo picked up the sack, walking to the centre of the room and increased the volume of his voice.

  “When you understand what I have in store for you, gentlemen, you’d wish you’d signed over your schools a long time ago.” He untied the sack and shook the contents onto the floor.

  “This is not nice and it will hurt, compliments from Big Man, this is a game which I doubt many of you can win, the people at home are tuning in as we speak, we have many games tonight, so gentlemen, prepare yourselves for the game…BEETLE BATTLE.”

  Elias didn’t know what the chirping sound coming from the floor was but he knew it wouldn’t be good news.

  Beetles, hundreds of brown beetles poured from the sack, they were called ‘Hustle beetles’ and were usually found in the Forests of ‘Keene’ but now were bred for the sole purpose of entertainment for Big Man’s show. They primarily fed on the sap of the Fallon tree and Histon mites, but when the beetles were threatened, then they would bore their way through the closest object and hide until the danger had passed.

  The beetles’ incisors would normally cut into the bark of a tree or tunnel into soft earth but if there was the carcass of a dead animal lying nearby, then the Hustle beetle would hide in that and wait until the danger had passed and they would sometimes wait for hours until they were sure the coast was clear.

  The cold grey hard brick floor was now coated in a black carpet of Hustle beetles scurrying around their temporary new home, they had been in the bag for a while and the bag was kept in a mild freezer to numb their senses to keep them from escaping, they wouldn’t have anyway as they only fled from predators and not their own kind, so they would of probably stayed in the bag without having to be frozen.

  The beetles made a distinctive clicking noise as they scurried around the prison, the prisoners contorted their bodies from left to right as bodies were something new for the Hustle beetles to discover, they crawled along the walls and hurriedly along the prison’s hard surfaces.

  Apollo laughed at the prisoners squirming away from the beetles.

  Cameras clicked and whirled and filmed the carnage, which was beamed back into the homes of millions of viewers.

  Elias shouted to Jago to let him know what was happening, he swung from his hanging state unaware that he was safe from the beetles’ touch, suspended from the ceiling. Apollo shouted for Dandridge, his assistant once again and in the little man came back through the door with another wriggling full sack and emptied the contents on the floor, just as this happened, Elias managed to shake off his second blind fold, and that’s when he joined in with the screaming.

  Out of the sack dropped a cockatrice and after a few more shakes from Apollo, another two, which had been clinging on tight from within the sack, also followed.
<
br />   The cockatrice had the body of a large rooster and its wings were bat-like, dark but leathery and also useless as it couldn’t fly. The creature’s tail was long and heavy and lizard-like, and it dragged on the cold prison floor, anchoring the creature to the ground and its weight kept the bird flightless.

  From its mouth flicked the forked tongue of a serpent and very tiny fangs.

  They were venomous and humans in experiments bitten by a cockatrice initially felt none of the violent pain that the bird’s usual prey did, but if the creature was starved (as these ones were) then they would eat anything such as beetles and grubs.

  The bite from a cockatrice was like a pinprick, and could be treated with the right medicine, so the scientists in the labs said, but it was the stare of one which was much more deadly.

  The cockatrice hunted by paralysing its prey with a direct stare, the longer the creature held that stare the more paralysed they became until they went into spasm and death took over, the venom was just a precaution, anything the birds felt to be a threat, they would try and paralyse.

  These species were made like all the creatures in The Complex by genetically engineering and gene-spicing various animal DNA and mixing them with creatures created by Big Man’s team of lab workers; the three in the bag were the ‘Red’ cockatrice because of their plumage.

  A starving cockatrice would gladly feast on Hustle beetles and the three birds flapped awkwardly around the prison chasing the beetles. Hustle beetles would normally tunnel through bark or soft earth to escape from predators, but there was no bark here, only prisoners, and they pulled at their chains as the beetles crawled over their face and body, they were also trying to avoid the clumsy advances from the Cockatrice pecking at them to reach the Hustle beetles.

  The beetles had nowhere else to scuttle to, they were being hunted by the bird-like creatures and inside these men was the safest place to hide.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No Crime, But Punishment

  Big Man sat in his office with a bemused look on his face, there was a small box on the table which had been opened and the Network boss had what was inside in his hands, he fiddled around with the small contraption before giving up and pressing down on his phone intercom.