MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  “There’s no reason for anyone to get hurt. Take me as a hostage, I swear I won’t resist. I’ll order the rest to back down so you can let the kids at a sidewalk, and then we can go wherever your plan is. You and me. Whaddaya say?”

  “Lemme see. Noble, but no. You want to die so much for these kids, here you go then.”

  “Oh skata,” Antioche said and covered her face instinctively.

  Bremusa steered closer to the school-bus and knocked on the driver’s door with the tip of her shotgun, as if it was a house’s door and she just showed up with wine. “Hey dick face,” she snarled at him and caught his attention. She nodded with her helmet down-wards and the driver saw the shotgun pointed straight at his crotch.

  He startled, veered right in an attempt to put some distance between his balls and the angry lady and at that point, his lungs lost access to oxygen.

  Antioche spread on the dashboard, choked him with her legs and held the steering wheel steady, her head tilted sideways and minded the road. As the school-bus jerked from one side to the other and the man fought her, her helmet banged in rhythm on the plastic and Bremusa could hear it popping the mic.

  The driver got redder by the second, he thrashed and flailed his arms around trying to grab Antioche but she wasn’t gonna let him go. He managed a punch at her side and she winced for a moment, loosening her grip on him as he took in a breath. He tried to push her thighs away from his throat, then tried to dig his nails in her skin but her motorcycle suit protected her.

  His movements became slower, and she leaned close, putting all her remaining strength in the chokehold until he dropped unconscious to the side. The kids wooed and aah’d. She pulled herself straight up, took off her helmet and steadied the school-bus.

  Antioche’s hair fell on her shoulders and they were a brilliant shade of blonde. She adjusted the mirror to her height and smiled at the children, who all stared at her and snotted their sleeves. “It’s all right now. The bad man is sleeping, you are safe.”

  Antioche nodded at Bremusa. The leading rider gave an order to stand down and the convoy of bikes came into an easy formation as they rolled down the highway, all tension gone from their shoulders.

  One female rider, who stood out like a jester in a fancy-suit restaurant, drove next to Bremusa. She had a flamboyant yellow bike and a red helmet with fluffy ears on it. An action camera was strapped on the helmet, and she turned her head towards the victorious Antioche.

  Antioche waved at the camera and made a thumbs up gesture, smiling for the audience.

  Playlist: Video 2/67

  Aura leapt down the stairs two-by-two and almost slammed her face on the bend.

  Her mother came next to her and grabbed her by the arm. “What is this sort of entrance? Behave young lady!”

  “As if anybody bothers with me. All they wanna see is dad anyway. Don’t care,” she said in the tone of voice teenagers adopt when whining like that.

  Mother patted Aura’s hair down and pulled her rebellious clothes in check. Aura winced and pulled away every time like a cat avoiding a bath. Mother muttered, “I told you to wear that top with the deep décolletage. Show them while you have them dear, it will be much harder and more expensive after a few years, trust me. What is this fabric? We have Andre on call you know, you must sit down with him and let him pick some clothes for you.”

  Mother dragged Aura into the centre of the gathering. Everyone was bunched up in a corner, around the place with the band instruments. A middle-aged man with meticulous hair and a custom-tailored suit was finishing his solo on the bouzouki. His voice was deep, the microphone was on the precise position to fit his height, the audio set up on the mixer to bring out the best inflections in his voice, the speakers top-notch and arranged for the precise amount of people attending. The band-instrument corner was lit from a permanent arrangement on the ceiling and across the room, to light him up perfectly, hide what little double-chin the years had brought on him, and make him look like a star.

  Everybody clapped and cheered. The crowd opened and let Aura and her mother space to approach.

  Mother said to everyone, “What a performance! My husband didn’t want to sing today but he couldn’t say no to you, could he?”

  People smiled and said no in unison.

  Aura went up to her father and the phones already recording the impromptu performance were now focused on them both. Flashes fired.

  Tony Nightingale grabbed his daughter in a fatherly tight hug and said to the people, “My lovely daughter, top of her class! Couldn’t be any more proud than that.”

  A man asked, “Will Aura follow in your footsteps and record an album anytime soon?”

  Other people looked at her in anticipation, “Yeah, will she?”

  Tony looked at Aura in the eyes and smiled. “Well. If Dionysos wishes to. Who are we to deny him such pleasure, right?”

  People applauded. As Tony stepped down they spread across the room again, in the relaxed groups that people in parties usually tend to form.

  Tony held Aura by the hand and brought her to a group of supermodels and pop stars.

  Literally.

  The group of teens had hundreds of millions of followers between them, about a hundred fan sites and topping the charts regularly.

  Every single one of them signed and owned by Dionysos Entertainment of course.

  Aura forced a smile at them and said simply, “Hey…”

  “I bet your classmates are wondering where you’ve been since they came to the party!” Tony said, practically shoving her into the group. He turned to them, “I’m sure her mother said something to her like, arrive late, leave early, that sort of thing,” and laughed. Everyone laughed along.

  “Haha,” Aura added like a dead fish.

  “Yeah, make a splash!” one of the superperfect girls said.

  Viko hesitated for a moment and then walked up to Tony. He showed his phone and said, “Should we pay tribute?”

  Tony smiled and put a hand on Viko’s shoulder. “Of course. We all know Dionysos can never have enough tributes, don’t we?”

  The group laughed and agreed. Viko took the selfie with the legendary Tony Nightingale and sent it up to the digital cloud, tagging it with #dionysos.

  “Right! But this is your own party dear, not mine alone. Here, I’ll let you youngsters alone, I know that you are dangerously near the recommended exposure to old-people,” Tony said, and they all laughed at the joke with perfect smiles showing perfect teeth.

  “Riiight…” Aura said, and she was left with her frenemies.

  “So, won’t you sing for us tonight Aura?” a blonde girl said. Her name was Desha or something, a made-up name that Dionysos’ analysts had come up with to force the next Madonna to the market.

  Aura squinted at her and said, “No, I’ll save it for the recording room. You know, make a splash and everything.” She pantomimed the effect with both open palms.

  “That’s cool,” Desha said and laughed. The girl laughed at everything.

  Aura wanted to yell in her face but decided against that. She took in a couple of deep breaths and then snatched a drink, non-alcoholic of course, from a server who was too delighted to be there amongst the pop idols.

  She gulped it down and burped.

  Desha of course giggled at that.

  The boys high-fived her and for a moment, Aura thought about leaving them hanging. But she high-fived them in clockwise order while making sure she was totally bored by this.

  She wasn’t bored. The teen supermodel-slash-former-child-actor-slash-pop-singer in front of her had a six-pack that Aura dreamed about every day. Not that hard to do since she had his poster glued on her ceiling over her bed, so the first thing she saw when waking up every day was him on top of her.

  Aura blushed bright red. She took another non-alcoholic drink that Tony Nightingale endorsed in bill boards and video ads, and turned her face to the side, throwing tufts of her hair down to hide her face.

  Viko, th
e teen guy from the poster stepped close to her and tried to strike up a conversation with her. Aura tried to avoid that.

  She thought that there were teen girls, as well as plenty of older ladies, who would have killed without second thought for a chance to stand so close to Viko, let alone have his attention.

  Aura sighed and glanced around the room. Yup, her mother had arranged that. She didn’t know what she had told the young man, but it had worked. People were taking selfies of themselves but tilting their pose to get the young pair framed in the background.

  This was already up on social media.

  “How are you Aura?” Viko said. “I see you at music classes but you don’t really participate or hang out with us. I send you an e-vite on my last party, didn’t you get it?”

  The girls behind Viko were on their phones. Latest tech of course, sponsored by Hermes Information Technology and given to them to advertise the latest model to the teen masses. They were standing beside one another, tapping away at their screens, but Aura knew they were gossiping about her.

  She played with her hair and told Viko, “Yeah, must have been lost or something. Spam, you know?” She was so uncomfortable.

  He, on the other hand, was relaxed and confident. Extremely confident for such a young man, but fame gets to your head. Now that he was close enough, Aura could see that he was wearing makeup. Airbrushed invisible makeup, but makeup nonetheless. “I’ll text you directly next time then,” he said and touched her on the cheek.

  Touched. Her. On. The. Cheek.

  Aura would never wash that cheek again.

  “Okay,” she wheezed out and met his gaze for a moment.

  She could see Desha and her stupid supermodel friend mouthing O-M-G.

  “Perfect. Can’t wait to show you my pool.”

  Aura thought about wearing a bikini next to those supermodel-perfect girls who giggled at everything and perched up their butts nicely and made their boobs bounce with every step.

  She would rather die.

  Aura smiled and mumbled some excuse and went away. She went in the kitchen, past the chefs and the sous chefs and the waiters and got into the pantry, and shut the door.

  Yes, it was a closet, and she shut herself inside like a little girl.

  She picked up her phone and called her only friend.

  “Oh hi,” a young voice said that was deep and melodious like her father’s.

  “Orestes! Where the fuck are you?” she angry-whispered.

  “I’m on my way. I thought you said you’d attend the party later.”

  “I was planning to. But mama sent a poor servant every three minutes to knock on my door, and after a while he was crying that he was gonna lose his job. I had to come down,” Aura explained.

  Orestes was speechless. “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

  “Don’t say anything! Just come here so that I have a regular person to talk to till the end of this hellish party.”

  “You are in the closet aren’t you?” Orestes said, certain of the answer.

  “Pantry,” Aura said with surrendered fury through her teeth. “There’s pickles and everything. Smells have seeped into my panties. Mama won’t look in here.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Playlist: Video 3/67

  “Lemme go you snotty, filthy animals!” cried out Antioche, but she was smiling. The kids grouped up around her and hugged her with their little arms.

  They had parked in front of the orphanage. It wasn’t really an orphanage the way people picture it, those things didn’t exist anymore except in general terms. This was an SOS Children’s Village, a non-profit that housed orphans or abused children and took care of them.

  A Mother, one of the caretakers of the SOS Village, came close to the Amazons and bowed, her arms extended. She was of African origin, perhaps a Greek-Nigerian. “Thank you, warrior, for bringing my children home safe.”

  “Yeah-yeah, take your midgets off me!” said Antioche but patted their heads, messed up their hair and still smiled, all in direct contrast to her words.

  Bremusa stood next to her leader and crossed her arms, feeling proud of her. The kids went to ambush their Mother now, so she leaned close to Antioche and said, “I didn’t see you actually struggling against their hugs.”

  Antioche scoffed. She addressed the Mother and pointed a thumb back at the school-bus, “Keys are in the ignition. I think it’s safe to drive, but if there was any damage send an email to Artemis and ask for repairs.”

  The black woman hugged and kissed her children, tears in her eyes. “You’ve done more than I could ask for.”

  Antioche turned around and walked back to the rest of the team, who was enjoying the sun, laying back on their bike’s seats. The second team had split already, these were only the ones under her direct command.

  Bremusa fell to her side as always.

  “Can you believe those charity guys? If it were me, I’d charge us a wax job, an oil-change, an ecologic interior cleaning. Something. Everything!” Antioche muttered as she walked.

  “I think that’s what makes them suitable for charity work and us, well, unsuitable,” Bremusa said, grinning.

  They got to the rest of the team. Antioche’s body language changed, and the team sensed it. They didn’t stand attention or anything, but their eyes all focused on their leader.

  Melousa, the chubby Amazon discreetly put something away in a pocket.

  Orosa sat upright on her tall bike’s seat, alert, but appeared bored. She was only a temporary member of Antioche’s crew, a camerawoman to record the team’s exploits and put them up online. She had to follow her orders but wasn’t a regular teammate.

  Antioche glanced back to the SOS Village, saw that the kids were safely inside and out of sight and squeezed her fists. Bremusa could see it coming a mile away. She didn't even try to avoid it. As Bremusa casually stepped behind her, Antioche spun and punched her hard on the face.

  Bremusa fell on her back and stayed down. Her leader sat on her and punched her again and again, but she didn’t fight back, but simply covered her face with her arms.

  “Didn’t I order no guns? Are you fucking deaf you bitch? There were kids everywhere,” Antioche screamed in her face. “Why did you pull your shotgun? Against my direct order? Why?” The woman became red with anger, leaning down over her subordinate, veins pulsing in her throat. Her blonde hair fell forward over Bremusa’s bloodied face and she breathed hard, as if she was the one taking the blows, as if she was the one hurting.

  Melousa extended a hand in protest as if to stop her leader but she didn’t dare say or move any closer.

  Orosa just watched, her expression blank but her eyes focused on Antioche.

  Bremusa stared at her leader with killer eyes. She was the fierce warrior after all. She kept down the tidal wave of fury, the instinct to preserve oneself, with merely her own will keeping her passive and taking the blows. She said nothing.

  Antioche stopped and sagged over Bremusa’s body. She breathed in hard and cried. “I know that the fucker had a gun on me but you shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t. What if-” her throat dried up, and she stopped talking.

  Melousa went to Bremusa’s bike and took the rifle out of its side-holster. She clicked the weapon open and checked the chamber. What she saw was apparently enough to give her courage, and she showed it to her leader, whispering but making sure she was heard, “It was empty. The shotgun was empty, Antioche.”

  Antioche stared blankly at it and then at Bremusa underneath her. She wiped her fingers on Bremusa’s bloodied lips and shook the droplets off into the ground. Then she stood up and said, “That’ll do for tribute.”

  Playlist: Video 4/67

  “What kind of a stupid name is Viko anyway?” Orestes asked.

  “Well, you know. It’s probably generated through mountains of data and statistical analysis to cover as wide an audience as possible with multicultural appeal,” Aura said and munched on her gyro.

  “Plu
s the Japanese girls,” Orestes added.

  “Puh! Yeah! They are like, crazy. If they grab onto a celeb, he becomes a mega-celebrity in like a day.”

  Orestes thought about that. “There’s a mountain peak you know named Viko. I think it used to have mineral water and stuff.”

  “Then it suits him just fine! His brains are inflated! Ha,” she said, and they both laughed. She cut the laughter earlier than he did, bit on her gyro and decided to take down that poster from her room.

  They had escaped together, Orestes had come and made up an excuse for them to ditch her dad’s party. They went a few blocks down to a nice gyro place, for fast-food. They were just sitting outside on the chairs and enjoying the sun. They were both famous enough to make some heads turn and produce hushed tones, but people had seen them plenty of times.

  Everything loses its glamour at some point.

  Orestes was more loved by his audience. She was the black sheep. The rebellious teen. He was kind and talented.

  “Why are we buddies?” Aura asked.

  Orestes frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why are we friends? Why do we hang around? I’m nothing like your pals at the band, I’m not a good singer nor will I ever be, I’m certainly not making your PR firm happy by being seen with you…”

  “Stop. Right there, stop. Aura, do you really think I care about all that? We’ve been friends for years, since we were kids. We grew up together. I care about you. Today, when you freaked out-”

  “-Did not!”

  “-I came to you, even though it’s silly having a reaction like that to a plain old dad-party for soft-drinks. Here we are having fast-food when there are caterers at your house preparing dishes with names I cannot pronounce and cooking amounts large enough to feed an army. I’m your friend, I don’t mince my words in telling you when you’re being stupid, but I’m there for you.”