by Graeme Hurry
She made an attempt to move but each limb was constricted.
“Hmmm,” she gave that groan of pleasure, turning playfully to Rene (so she assumed). Had he surprised her with a morning of bondage?
Instead, as she twisted her neck, she found her lover’s hands tied and his lips sealed with duct tape. Rene let out a muffled scream. Each of his nostrils had been plugged with cigarette butts and his eye socket was filled with ashes.
“Rene?” She blinked her eyes, finding a link of chains around her wrists and ankles. She shifted, hoping to loosen them. Looking about the dungeon, there was a glimmer of hope that one of the visiting masters would be standing over them both, preparing to gloat at a prank well played. Instead, she found herself surrounded by the guests and slaves of the chateau sleeping. At the top of the dungeon’s stairs was Tim.
He took a step forward and his shadow grew over them both, cold and giant.
“Nine o’clock,” he chimed.
Rene moaned of a horror he could no longer smell.
“Chef Tim?” Gloria frowned and glanced down at her own bound body. “I appreciate the gesture… but it is highly inappropriate to perform bondage on unwilling participates. Especially the head masters of the house.” She struggled and the chains loosened a touch.
He stepped down the stairs. “It’s time for breakfast.” He drew his knife out, unfolding it. A sweat broke over Gloria’s forehead.
“You must stop whatever it is you think you’re doing. Because the other guests will awaken soon and they will not take kindly to this kind of disobedient behavior.” A scowl crossed her face. “I do insist that you undo these chains before I free myself, because if I am forced to free myself you will have a hell of a problem on your hands.”
Several murmurs sounded as the others awoke.
The knife drew closer.
“I said stop it.” She twisted in her chains.
He took another step closer. She grimaced and shut her eyes, awaiting the plunge of his knife. When nothing happened, she opened them back up again.
A small burlap sack dangled above her head, bleeding. A drop fell, thick and black, smacking her forehead.
She froze and her jaw clicked loudly in response.
Tim tossed the knife and bag aside.
“Bon appetite.”
She hissed.
As he ran up the stairs and shut the dungeon door, nailing it shut, Gloria writhed in her flimsy chains. The others awoke, seeing what had become of Gloria and Rene. They ran for the door, shamefully leaving their master and terrified of their mistress. Finding it bound shut, they screamed. Rene closed his one good eye and focused on their cries for help, hoping it would drown out the terrible sounds that came from Gloria.
By the time Tim reached the surrounding forest of the Chateau, the shadows closing around him in a cold embrace, the first chain broke.
Then she began to feed.
THE SQUEEZE MAN
by Caroline Dunford
Jimmy made a mistake when he was seventeen: he wrote a novel. It wasn’t even an original story. However, it had a plot of sorts, good characterisation, one witty line and a mildly unpredictable ending. In short, it was competent. He’d written it for a dare. He wanted to prove there was nothing so special about the privileged author classification. This was back in the days before the long-term effects of the squeeze were known.
Overall, he’d managed to keep his sordid past pretty quiet, but today when he was on the labour line, he’d had a moment. The house group had been on at him to finish his turn at clear up, so he’d used the headset to do his e-ploy update. He could have gone to the Shop, but with the amount of grease they had managed to spread round the kitchen in the last few nights of Kwik-fire food, he’d known he’d need as much time as possible before the inspection.
Their landie, Mr Porty, wasn’t a bad sort. Tammie joked you didn’t turn your back on him, if you wanted to keep both your kidneys, but that was typical Tammie weirdness. Jimmy had managed to wrangle a couple of deals on their garbage allowance in the past. Mr Porty had agreed with him that all this recycling “malarkey” was a bit of a knicker twister.
“Funny way of putting it, lad. Watch out there, you might have a way with words,” Mr Porty had said, laughing, as they’d thrown an extra couple of sacks into his van.
He’d have to watch Mr Porty. He still owed him a favour for that trip. And Tammie had a point. Why, oh why, had he used the headset?
“Thank you for calling in Mr Sebastian. What update on your e-ploy skills do you have for us?”
“I’ve been doing double clear-up for the house…”
“You wish to add clear-up to your rezz?”
“Er, no, I was thinking more of organisation skills and people tactics. It’s a large house. I managed to store up all the stuff, sort our recycle quotas and I negotiate with our landie.”
“Negotiate?” the professional female voice had said, “Are you suggesting your Landlord is open to negotiation beyond the normal legal contract? That would be improper and I would need to lodge a formal record of your complaint.”
“No, no,” he’d said far too quickly, his mouth moving without the benefit of sense. “He’s not a cheap-smith, not a wheeler-dealer type. More of a Johnnie New Shoes, who likes to pretend he’s younger than he is. Thinks dealing with youngers is hip. Probably spent years on the Rezz before he landed this e-ploy.”
“That’s very insightful, Mr Sebastian. Perhaps I should add that to your Rezz. This has been the most entertaining conversation I’ve had all morning.”
Jimmy sweated, remembering that. At least she hadn’t said all week, or even, runes relent, all year. All day didn’t really mean anything, did it? He thought seriously about tuning in the cable to the ‘scope channel. He hadn’t looked at a ‘scope or had a divination done for over two months, so it wouldn’t look bad on his record.
Tammie came into the room wearing a green sweater and a petulant face.
“You finished with that head-set? It’s my day for calling my oldies.”
“This isn’t the only one,” he complained, handing it over unwillingly. “Petro has the other one. Why didn’t you ask him?”
Tammie shrugged.
“He’s listening to a private ‘scope and I didn’t want to hear.”
“Yeah, I snag that.”
Jimmy nodded. Petro was the luckiest in the apartment. He was always on a roll of good-time stuff, from e-ploy to relationshiping. None of the group liked him much anymore. He understood why Tammie hadn’t wanted to hear him get any more good news, but now, his only option was to dial up the cable ‘scope on broadspeaker, and he didn’t want everyone to hear his woes. He could talk to Tammie. He wanted to ask her all sorts of things, not least of which was what did he have to do to get under that green sweater. But it was never a good idea to show too much originality. It was ok with Mr Porty, but then he was a character himself. Tammie, Petro and most of the others in the group were boring normals and proud of it. They were the epitome of “safe and steady”, the current government’s catchphrase for the social agenda. Tammie did everything by the book. Jimmy caught himself mid-thought. He had to get out of using those phrases. He was going to let something slip.
He got a latte from the kitchen, and sat down opposite the main window. Grey skies grizzled onto the neatness of the urban project. None of the programmes for weather control had worked, so no matter how neat the streets, how tidy the uniform buildings with their wrap walkways and communal mediation spaces, no-one was going to meet and greet in the cold miserableness leaking from the sky. As ever, the permanent problem of his generation was entertainment.
He reckoned he had to sit for at least half an hour or the others would think he was too restless and schedule him for a doc-visit. They all looked after each other, which he had always thought was a good thing. The mutual dependence charter for apartment groups had made everyone feel safer. You knew each of the groups in each of the buildings was looking out for
each other – and that was a legal enforcement. It was only in the last few weeks that Jimmy had even noticed how intrusive it felt. The truth, he told himself, as he watched three women walking three dogs round the outer track a routine seven times, was that for everyone else its wasn’t intrusive; for everyone else it was homely and safe.
The only ones who got spice and adventure were the proggers, who existed in their own virtual communities and had little contact with outside world. There were rumours they had on-line stories that they were allowed, even encouraged, to create inside. Most of the group couldn’t even conceptualise that. To Jimmy that would be like walking with the gods, but he’d been born into the under-tech class, and he hadn’t had the brains to get out. Actually, he thought he might have had enough smarts to get somewhere if he hadn’t written that novel. He’d kept his head down after that. Once that first shocker about the Squeeze had hit the headlines, he’d done his best to be middle of the road in everything. Only now, this normal life, didn’t seem enough.
Why is his head suddenly full of BIG questions, when all he wants to think about it what is under Tammie’s green sweater and whether the new flavour vodkamix really will taste like peaches and crème? He turned on the tube; his favourite channel was showing a 20th century period drama. The cast interbred, suffered unbelievable chains of misfortune and wept copiously. This was terrible. They just couldn’t get the Squeezes now. There hadn’t been a decent story in ages.
Another character started crying. Jimmy couldn’t always tell if the weeping was for sorrow or joy. The basic premise and lifestyles were anathema to him. Would life then have truly been this chaotic? How did those people make any sense out of life? He tried to feel profoundly grateful that his lifestyle was safe and steady. He focussed on his future; in the same way he had focussed on clouds as a child, lying in his parents’ backyard. In a few years he might decide to choose a family, settle down and move to a family block. Just like the clouds the images floated by beautifully, and unobtainably. His family had been one of the last to move out of the single residences into the block settlements. His folks seemed happy enough in their retirement zone. His father joked he was happy to relinquish his battle with the leaves in the yard. Strange, Jimmy had always thought he’d enjoyed gardening. He’d gone off to the Single City.
Here in the group apartment were meant to be his most carefree days, but everyday he is thinking about what will happen when he dies, and why some people got good ‘scopes and some people, like him, got crap. His head is swarming with questions like psychic bees, buzzing away, honeycombing his life with insanity.
Who decided what fell? He didn’t believe the ‘scopes dictated your life, but they did encourage you to act in certain ways. Everyone knew broadspan propaganda was the new political tool, but most of them seemed to miss the personal touches. He smacked his forehead, hard. That was it. That was what started it. His last ‘scope.
He’d dialled up late one Tuesday night. He’d always thought Tuesday should be exciting days – the day you knew you were on the way to the weekend. It didn’t matter he was on the Rezz; weekends were when everyone relaxed.
He’d only had the money for a rune-read; the kind where you had to work out the answers yourself. Petro seemed to always have enough for a personalized one to one with Lady Fortuna herself. Once he’d let Jimmy listen while she predicted what Petro’s sex-life was going to be like over the next three months. Jimmy hadn’t known whether to be envious or simply glad he didn’t have to live up to that level of performance. Sometimes it felt like he was living up to no performance at all, but Petro’s life was almost too big. Already his mind was pulling him away from remembering what the rune reading had said. He forced himself to look back. The screen had spat three runes at him: fehu, rido and anzuz. The first had been reversed the others fair. Literally he’s translated it as coming from a place of wealth (or work), travelling a long way and becoming a voice to be listened to.
Funny how in this techno age, all the ‘scopes had gone dead retro. Yet, the little he knew of social history suggested that the New Age was something all times heralded, and something that always failed to appear. His father had taught him the runes, saying it would be useful wherever he ended up working. Then, he’d laughed and said his dad had said the same thing to him about learning to play the piano.
“It’ll always get you invited to parties – as long as you don’t mind you’re being invited for your use rather than your personality.”
His mind flickered across the telling again. The first two were clear, little to mistake there, but the last one, the rune based on the ancient god, Odin, was about leadership, teaching, everything that wasn’t him. His dad had said the shape of the rune was based upon the image of the god standing on a hill, his cloak blowing in the breeze. Odin, the wily one, once human, who became divine, walked all the paths of priest, warrior and healer, but ultimately was loyal to his own vision, and ruthless to the insignificant around him.
How he wished he’d got Lady Fortuna with her pretty Dali cards, and not an obscure warning from an ancient religion. He kept blinking back the rising fear it was message he would become a Squeeze-head after all. Maybe they would come for him. He didn’t even know how they were recruited. He didn’t want to know. He practised very hard being very normal for the next week. When no one was around he repeated “safe and steady” under his breath. He said it to himself a dozen times day in the bathroom mirror, and wondered if he was already quite mad.
The weekend arrived and demanded the group’s attention. They hadn’t had a formal apartment meal for three weekends, and if they let this one slip it would be entered on their Rezzes. Only Petro and Tammie were on permanent contract, so the others were getting starred. Tammie offered to do mock-meat and roasties, and the Stetson twins offered to generate a rare sugar-stir. Petro said he’d get in some bevy and softies. Swania, late twenties and jiltily broody, threatened to report him if he came back with anything classed outside a soft-hit. In the end all of them had come up with something they could do, that would satisfy the charter and keep them on the right side of the social. Jimmy reckoned it wasn’t a bad evening. There were a few fights, and Petro was snaggingly loud, but the food was good and the govt grass mellow as a buttered soap bubble. Tammie had worn her green sweater again, and he’d almost got drunk enough to ask. Because his fortune was fickle, it was Jimmy’s turn on clear-up the morning after.
“Clear-up is just another word for karzying in this house,” moaned Jimmy. “Its not snagging fair.”
Tammie threw him a sympathic look from the sofa, but didn’t move more than her eyelashes.
“Look! Just look at what Petro’s done to this seat.”
He held it up, and Tammie went green.
“Rather you than me chummie.”
“And I’ll tell you another thing,” ranted Jimmy, “there’s going to be more than our share of bags to go out.”
“Bags? You’re worried about bags again. People are going to start talking about you and Mr Porty at this rate.”
He rounded on her.
“What the snag do you mean by that?”
“Nothing. Nothing,” she looked white now. “I wasn’t threatening report. Just meant it’s unusual, interesting, for someone to get on so well with their landie. I never even saw my one at my last place.”
“You got booted, didn’t you?”
Tammie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. You didn’t talk of such things.
“I thought you were my friend.”
She left the room. Jimmy rather thought she was crying. At least when girls slammed doors that hard, they were usually crying.
“What did you do, lad?”
Mr Portie had entered the apartment by the service door. It was supposed to be permanently closed. The occupants could let their Landie in, but he had to have a juro-date to simply walk in.
“What’s happening?”
“Answering a question with a question shows an unusual
mind. You’d better watch that. I thought after your big party, you’d want a hand getting all those bags out.”
“How did you know about that?”
“You’re being assessed.”
“Me? What for?”
“All of you.” Mr Portie put his head on one side. “I would have thought you’d have some idea what it was about.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” lied Jimmy.
Once the flat was tidy, and Mr Portie gone, he tried to talk to all the members of the flat. Most of them didn’t want to know. They had pop-pics of “Safe and Steady” bannered across their walls, and were sure of their status as “normals”. Frustrated, for the first time, Jimmy understood why the contras called them “planks”.
“We could be in real trouble here, “ he said.
“Not us,” they said.
Only Petro and Tammie gave him a reaction.
“It’s bound to be about my luck,” said Petro, lounging on his bed, in his newest, tightest pair of trousers, re-arranging his hair. “Maybe, I’ve qualified for the breeding station.”
Jimmy was almost reassured. He could believe Petro was fortunate enough to be chosen for the stud programme. Only Petro wasn’t smart, and what would the programme want producing stupid, lucky people? It would be a recipe for social disaster. His mind ran through a scenario where overly fortunate planks destroyed the world, but escaped on a passing spaceship to be pampered sex slaves of curiously humanoid aliens. His imagination was running unhinged; he’d have to keep his mouth shut.
Petro told Tammie what was up, implying it was something to do with her previous booting. Tammie, who had just stopped crying, started again. Petro took Jimmy to one side and said, “That full-sweater is soggy in the head. It could be stud-time for me, but it’s just as likely it’s a psych-boot for Tammie.”
He kicked the freshly cleaned table and muttered, “bitch!” as if Tammie’s problems were what stood between him and a bonking-ticket. Jimmy nodded, but kept dumb. Everyone had there little fantasies, didn’t they? Even Petro, it seemed. He eyed Petro side-ways. He was tall, thin, fond of dressing in black, and wore cover-up to disguise the spots he’d obviously plundered during his adolescence. He had larger than usual eyes, and black hair worn in loose ringlets. He used the apartment home-gym, but lazily, so instead of bulk he had a bit of wire. Jimmy could imagine him on the latenite fem-ent channel, and plastered across single-fems walls everywhere, especially the familyjuniors. Petro would love it; that his talk was at best dull and at worst anti-fem, would likely go unnoticed.