It should make for a good show.
<~~O~~>
One of the Straws has a wet patch at his crotch, Joey notices; the little bastard must have pissed himself. Well, the fascists do like their Nietzsche and their natural selection, so it seems only fitting to play the game by their rules, show them what will-to-power and might-is-right really mean. He grabs the kid by the shoulders and drags him forward and into centre-frame. The image on the viewscreen is clear and, with a zoom out just a smidgeon wider, the black flag with the white Circle-A, nailed to the concrete wall of the basement, should be visible enough. He checks that the balaclava is tucked tight into the collar of his shirt, straightens his tie and flicks a speck of dust off the shoulder of his black suit jacket. He picks up his katana from the top of the cardboard box in the far corner of the room and walks back to the camera, hits record.
“You getting this okay,” he says. “Sight and sound?”
The laptop sitting open on the box beside the tripod gives a beep, and Joey crouches down, clicks to open the window with Coyote’s response. Loud and clear. He takes his position behind the Straw and waits for the second beep. There’s no need to read it; it means On The Air.
He sweeps the sword out of its sheath in an elegant arc that curls round and up and to a stop, to a pause, a stillness among the screams and sobs of the Straws, before he slices the blade down through the neck of the mewling cretin child on its knees in front of him, this symbol of servility.
Perfect timing for the Six O’clock News.
<~~O~~>
Interview with Tamuz Masingiri
DCG: Interview recommences 18:00. Present in the room are DC Powell, myself, and Tamuz Masingiri. Right, Tamuz. Mr. Mackie tells me you’ve been spinning him a right wee dreamworld. He thinks you’re in need of psychiatric help, but myself and DC Powell here, see, we think there’s more to you than you’re letting on, my lad.
TM: Where’s my solicitor?
DCG: It’s gone past that now, lad.
TM: What do you mean? What is this? Is this some fucking TV prank show? Did Jack put you up to this? It’s a set-up, right?
DCG: Don’t try and play games with us, boy. The schizo routine won’t wash. We’re no daft, son. We’ve seen it all before. Wee rook gets caught flying home to his nest, thinks—you know—just flap your wings hard enough, act like a mental case, and we’ll call in the shrink instead of Special Support. What was it, Tamuz?
TM: Come on, this isn’t funny anymore.
DCG: Your prints aren’t in the database, Tamuz. You know that? So you’re either a ferry-rat with no business being in this country or you have some contacts in the identity trade and a dirty past you wanted cleaned. Either way you’re in deep shit, boy. Suspicion of sedition. For the record, Mr. Masingiri is shaking his head. Come on, Tamuz. What were you up to when we picked you up? Grazing wallets? Casing houses for the Guild? Drug run? Data courier? Nah. You’re old enough to have graduated from the kiddywork long ago. You’re into something deep, boy. That’s what this loony tunes routine is all about, isn’t it?
TM: You’re the ones who’re fucking loonies. This is all—
DCG: Are you a good Muslim, Tamuz? Pray five times a day? Fast for Ramadan?
TM: I’m not a Muslim. What’s that got—
DCG: You don’t expect us to believe that.
TM: What? Just because I’ve got darker skin than you I must be a Muslim? Man, this is sick. This isn’t fucking funny—
DCG: Sit down.
TM: Let go of me.
DCG: Sit down. I said, sit down!
TM: Ah!
DCG: You sit down when I tell you to, lad. Now. You have two choices: you can ditch the act and tell me who you really are and what you were up to; or I walk down to Special Support right now and tell them I’ve got a suspected subversive in the interview room. If I were you, I know which option I’d prefer.
TM: This is all wrong. I don’t belong here. This isn’t—
DCG: Too fucking right you don’t belong here, Ali Baba. You belong in the desert with all your suicide bomber chums. Or maybe it’s the Rookery you belong. Come on.
TM: Ah! Hey, you can’t—fuck!
DCG: What are you, Tamuz? A political or a religious? What are you mixed up in?
TM: I’m not answering any more questions. This is fucked up. This is fucked. You’re crazy. Where’s my fucking solicitor? I know my rights.
DCG: You don’t have any fucking rights, son. You don’t exist. Suspicion of sedition, Tamuz. That’s what it is now, and that means you’re up shit creek. Now, I’m giving you a chance, son. You can talk to me or you can talk to Special Support. Your call.
TM: This is bullshit. This is fucking bullshit. Let me out of here.
DCG: You’re making a big mistake, son.
TM: Let me out of here. I’m—ah! Jesus fucking—uh!
DCG: Interview terminated 18:03.
TM: Let me go. Let me go. Let me—
<~~O~~>
Report of Agent Jack Flash
Crouched on the flat gantry on the roof of the wireliner, the thrum of the Cavor-Reich engines all round, I click at my Zippo again and again, trying to spark it into flame to light my hash cheroot. It’s just too damn breezy up here, the ray-tanks of the monster machine sweeping up to each side of me forming a perfect wind-tunnel, billowing my greatcoat peachily but thwarting my best efforts at full cool. Bastards. In the Society of the Spectacle, style is the psychic weapon of choice, and this is like having your voice crack on you at Rourke’s Drift with the Zulus bearing down: men of Harlech, hack cough splutter; sorry, mate, frog in the throat. Can we take it from the top?
Unlit joint dangling from my lips, I clunk my way forward along the gantry, muttering dark curses and radiating Bad Vibes, man, as I slap the Semtex packs left and right, flick the detonators on. Twelve charges, six for each side, is overkill, I know—twice what we planned—but if there’s no stone for Jack today, well, a boy’s gotta get his buzz some way.
<~~O~~>
At the front of the wireliner, my wings are waiting where I left them, clamped down with magnetic grapnels. Light as paper, stronger than steel, ray-tanks in the harness to counteract my body-weight, the twelve-foot in span synthe pinions lift with the wind beneath them, fighting to take off on their own. The modified waldoes are one of my favourite toys and I slip in under them, latch the harness shut under my arms and around the waist, shove my hands into the gauntlets, like a knight of yore putting on his armour. Up ahead I can see the junction of the wire, already jacked to take the wireliner off course and southeast, towards Ibrox and the football stadium where the torchlight procession should just be arriving. Thirty years ago that stadium’s where the Jews and Asians of the South Side, the Catholics of the East End and the academics and bohemians of the West End were all gathered for the Purification; there’s no record of how many had their souls stripped down, their bodies stolen to the service of the Empire, but if Straw had been from Kentigern—it’s kind of ironic that this is where they would have brought him to die the first time. Now I can see it off in the distance, getting closer fast, a golden glow from the massed ranks on the pitch lighting up the night. I’d swear I can hear the roar of the crowd, the rhythmic chant, the Seig heils, the God Save the King.
As the wireliner lurches left on its new course, aimed directly at the stadium, I flex the wings and release the clamps, lift up into the air. In the gondola bridge below they’ll be pulling levers now, spinning wheels, trying to radio the signalman with a frantic what-the-fuck, but the inertial dampeners, the wirebrakes, the retro-jets and the radio—all of that shit is already taken care of.
I spiral up to a safe height on an updraft, hold my position in the air like an eagle scoping the treetops for its prey. I figure distance, height and momentum, hold for the perfect moment before I hit the detonation button.
The Heidelberg goes boom.
<~~O~~>
A few hundred tons of metal and fireball heads down in a
parabolic curve, hitting the near end of Ibrox Stadium fast and hard, taking out a solid quarter of the terraces and raining a shrapnel meteor storm on another half. Baby, I can definitely hear the crowd roar now. I flick the wings back, aim myself at the far end of the stadium, at the Director’s Box where the Culture Secretary, Jack Straw should be standing behind bullet-proof glass, trying to register the carnage below, the flame and the smoke, the rows and columns of blackshirts on the pitch all broken into pretty chaos, the celebrants on what’s left of the terraces piling over each other in panic, the landslides of flesh, living and dead. High up on a scrap of terrace, through the billows of smoke, I spot a lone figure with a camcorder held up to his eye, a vulture in Babel
I hope Coyote’s picking up my own broadcast. He fucking well should be; my senses are acid-acute right now, so this report, this vision of devastation, should be beaming out white-hot over the astral airwaves, a psychic EMP in the aethernet of Kentigern’s dreams. Radiovision, no matter what Joey thinks, is so Twentieth Century. Old news. This is the Kali Yuga, mate; in a war for hearts and minds, the subconscious is the battle ground. You can switch off the news but you can’t switch off a nightmare.
I blast through a billow of hot black smoke a-crackle with orgone blue-green sparks and come out with the Director’s Box dead ahead, tuck my wings in tight, a human harpoon aimed at the heart of the Great White Empire. There’s no glass made by man can stop this bullet, motherfucker.
<~~O~~>
Shards spray into the room around me as the window shatters. Wings jerked back, nearly ripped off in the impact, I whiplash forward but manage to pull off the landing neat and square, down on my knees in a jitterbug slide that takes me right to the shiny shoes of the last Straw, the Culture Secretary, minister of bread and circuses for the masses. I rise to my feet, hands out of the waldo-gauntlets now, Curzon-Youngblood in the right, a Scorpio .99 in the left, flicking my arms out in a crucifix of armament, firing left and right, to take down the bodyguards at the corners of my vision without once losing eye contact with Straw. I holster the guns and take the jack-knife from its sheath at my waist.
He knows we got his vatlings. He knows this angel with shredded wings means not just death but extermination. He knows he’s not a human being here, just a poison pen letter to the Blunketts and the Blairs and the thousand other motherfucking muppets waiting to take his place. And we’re going to make it nice and personal, signed…
Yours truly,
Jack
<~~O~~>
Death Certificate of Tamuz Masingiri
Certified Copy of an Entry
Pursuant to the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953
<~~O~~>
DEATH Entry no: 2313
<~~O~~>
Registration district: Greater Kentigern
Sub-district: Kentigern West
Administrative area: Lanarkshire
<~~O~~>
1. Date and place of death:
Twenty-fifth April 2006
Partick Police Station Kentigern
2. Name and surname:
Tamuz Masingiri
3. Sex:
Male
4. Maiden surname of woman who has married:
N/A
5. Date and place of birth:
First April 1984, Tell-el-Kharnain, Palestine
6. Occupation and usual address:
Unemployed
No fixed abode
7. (a) Name and surname of informant:
Nicholas Griffin (D.C.)
(b) Qualification:
In Loco
© Usual address:
c/o Partick Police Station, Dumbarton Road, Kentigern
8. Cause of death:
Asphyxiation
Certified by J. Tyndall M.B.
9. I certify that the particulars given by me above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief
D.C. Nick Griffin Signature of informant
10. Date of registration:
Twenty-fifth April 2006
11. Signature of registrar:
Derek Beackon
<~~O~~>
Certified to be a true copy of an entry in a registrar in my custody.
The Thing in the Jewellery Box
—Mitchel Rose
The surge of vomit burned the inside of Romez’s throat as he gagged on the trucker’s cock. Instinctively, he tried to pull away but the trucker held his head against his thrusting crotch refusing to let him go. The trucker grunted as the thick glob of his seed spilled over Romez’s tongue. Then he got out of the way as Romez puked it back up again along with the semi-digested remains of the burger and fries the boy had scavenged for lunch.
After several moments of noisy hacking, Romez wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie and looked up at the trucker. The other man was shoving his fat and sated cock back into his jeans, and without a word he unlocked the door of the bathroom stall.
“Five dollars,” Romez snapped. “Five dollars!”
The trucker paused at the door and shoved one calloused hand into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up note. He tossed it into the viscous pool Romez was still kneeling over and left. Romez fished it out of the vomit and secreted it away into his skinny jeans. “Cunt,” he muttered, and got to his feet.
<~~O~~>
Side-stepping the mess he’d made, he emerged into the squalid, dimly lit washroom and headed for one of the grimy sinks to clean his face. The place was a shithole, literally. But what could one expect from a desolate truck stop in the arse-end of Shell County? Romez had been in worse dives than this.
The tap groaned as he turned it, and spewed out a jet of yellowed water. Romez splashed the foul liquid around his mouth and smeared some on his teeth with one grubby finger. His ablutions done, he checked his hair in the cracked mirror above the sink.
Wet, slurping sounds came from the direction of the bathroom stall he’d just come out of. Romez swore under his breath and turned. His puke had coalesced into the crude simulacrum of a gnomish human being that was toddling towards him. The pearl splatters of the trucker’s cum clung to its faceless, lumpy head, to form crude eyes.
“Go ’way,” Romez said irritably. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
The vomit pygmy kept moving toward him and reached out with one sticky paw to pull at his jean leg. Romez swatted him away. “Not now!” he snapped.
The pygmy yanked harder, and a hole opened in the place its mouth would have been. A long whip-like tendril shot out and wrapped itself around his wrist. Romez yelped in pain as the tendril bit into his flesh. Waddling backwards, the little creature pulled him toward the stall.
“Okay, I’m coming. Let go,” Romez said.
The vomit pygmy yanked harder until he was back inside the stall. He closed the door behind him, and the pygmy released him. Romez rubbed his sore wrist in relief.
“Finally,” he said in a snarky voice.
The pygmy pointed urgently at the toilet. Romez reached behind the basin and retrieved his backpack. It felt cold to the touch, and Romez’s stomach snarled with dread. The vomit pygmy was watching him with its semen eyes, seeming to take silent delight in his fear, and its tendril tongue slithered back into the hole in its head.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself, bitch,” Romez said. “It’s me he needs, not you.”
The vomit pygmy tilted its head and pointed at the backpack. Romez swore again and opened it. A fresh wave of coldness swept over his hands and he gritted his teeth against the numbing pain. With almost deferential respect he took out the small gold lined box that was inside it, and placed it carefully on the floor.
“Happy now?” Romez snapped, rubbing life back into his numb hands.
What sounded like a growl emanated from inside the box and reluctantly, Romez undid the dainty little clasp that kept the lid shut. He felt a great surge of terror as something from within rushed to push the box open. This was the part he really hated. It had been almost a year ago sin
ce he took the jewellery box from the mansion, and he still regretted it every day that came. He had been hitchhiking to Wire City when he’d been picked up by Aubrey in his pink Rolls Royce and taken back to his dilapidated home. Unlike the truckers and drifters Romez usually serviced, Aubrey had been very gentle and had made a real fuss of him. He had given Romez a meal and had bathed him. In return, Romez had followed Aubrey’s instructions, handcuffing him to a table leg and fisting the old man into oblivion.
Sadly, the exertion was too much for poor Aubrey and he had died of a heart attack. Romez had washed the shit from his hand and went looking for money.
Instead, he found the jewellery box. It had been nestled amongst a whole load of strange curiosities and junk Aubrey had seemingly collected over the years. He had been attracted by how shiny it was, and the hope that it contained something valuable. But as soon as he drew near it, a dark dread seeped through him. Romez had wanted to run from the house at that moment but the box held him in a mental vice and forced him to open it.
“There was no need to attack me with my own puke,” Romez protested miserably. He had retreated to the corner of the stall after he had flipped open the lid. “I was going to let you out.”
A shadow fell over the boy, and the unnatural cold enveloped his body. Romez kept his eyes on his feet, unwilling to look the Twisted Man in the face. Whatever the Twisted Man was, Romez learned early on that it was impossible to defy him. He had reached out and strangled the boy’s mind, imposing his brutal, diabolic intellect upon him. The Twisted Man had ripped all of the Romez’s secrets from him without remorse, analysing him like a bug under a microscope. He knew Romez wasn’t his real name, but the name of the lead character from the tacky high school comedy he used to watch for instance, and how Romez’s dad would come into his room every night before Romez ran away from home. The boy could not hide from or resist the creature’s power.
Slave Stories Page 20
