Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  The Many-Headed Misadventurer hardly bats an eyelid as we manoeuvre through the orgy, where all manner of men and women and whites and blacks and inbetweens and carnivores and crustaceans and dairy products are indulging in every sex act imaginable – as well as a few sex acts you couldn’t imagine even if I had the words for them.

  ‘Uhm, here,’ the beast mumbles, stopping outside Shed 4123. ‘Uhm, you should knock.’

  The door – painted fluorescent lavender, with a large gold letterbox and doorhandle – is shut. As the Multi-Headed Misadventurer slopes off, I place my ear against the gloss finish, but the noise of the orgy out here far exceeds the faint mumbling within. I decide to give it a knock.

  ‘Clang clang clang!’ the door says first, then from behind it: ‘H-h-howay in, my l-lovely!’

  It certainly sounds like my Stevie. I’m not sure what he means by ‘my lovely’, though – perhaps it’s the MDMA talking.

  I twist the gold handle and swing the door open. Bright, white, nice light spews from the shed, along with the choking stench of angel sweat. I cover my mouth. Through the fluorescence, the first thing I see is Stevie Wallace – stark naked except for an eye-patch – laid on a pink, quilted four-poster bed. I step into the blinding light, ready to swing my arms around him, when I realise he’s got eight female arms around him already.

  I freeze.

  The four girls look up at me in various states of undress, with perfectly raised eyebrows and breasts. They carry on clutching Stevie, stroking him here and there with the delicacy of professional kitten-groomers. The girls are impeccable: 25ct-gold skin, beautifully sculpted hairdos, legs like buffed banister rungs. I think one of them might even be Marilyn Monroe – unless it’s Paolo’s dead wife.

  I feel sick. At first, Stevie doesn’t seem to recognise me, thanks to my size 6 skeleton and cracked crack-lips. However, even in Heaven I’ve managed to retain those pesky evil eyes, and they narrow as I watch Stevie shuffle awkwardly, before the penny finally drops.

  ‘K-K-Kimberly?’ he mutters. ‘Wh-what are you you doing here?’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing?’ I snap, feeling defensive in front of those delectable bints. ‘I died.’

  Stevie’s cock and balls shrink and his cheeks glow red. Nevertheless, the ladies carry on pawing him, like begging dogs. Just looking at them, I can tell they’ve all got crap personalities.

  ‘So, er, hm, how have you been?’ I ask, trying to ignore their pouting glares.

  ‘Oh, er, f-fine,’ Stevie stumbles.

  ‘I found the note. About the seal,’ I say, glad in a way he seems to be over his trauma, although I wish he wasn’t getting over it quite like this.

  When I mention the seal, Stevie’s chest seems to crumple. I imagine there aren’t any seals swimming on Stevie’s version of Cloud 6 (the Animal Kingdom). You see, each angel’s Heaven differs slightly from the next angel’s, since some people like sugar, while others prefer spice; some people like coffee, while others prefer tea; some people find blubbery sea mammals adorable, while others are allergic. The only problems arise when two angels’ dreams overlap, and begin to override each other’s; for example, right now.

  ‘L-l-look, Kim, er, can you give give give me fifteen m-minutes with the g-g-g-g-girls?’ Stevie says. ‘Then I’ll c-c-c-come out and talk.’

  I make a sound halfway between a sigh and a scream, then storm out of the shed, slamming the door behind me. All around, the cavorting couples and animals mock me, enjoying their no-strings sex far too loudly. I perch myself on a slightly clammy sofa and cover my ears. I want Stevie to be happy now he’s dead, but somehow I feel a bit used. If your boyfriend dies while you’re still going out with him, is he technically still your boyfriend if you bump into him in Heaven? Is he cheating on me in there?

  Admittedly, I’ve had my fair share of sexual encounters since Stevie tied himself to the climbing frame but – don’t forget – my escapades were purely selfless acts of kindness. Four gorgeous pinups on one Stevie, on the other hand, does seem a little selfish.

  I press my chin against my chest. Maybe if I focus my mind hard enough, those four beautiful bimbos might disappear in a puff of odd-sock-scented smoke. Perhaps I can override Stevie’s sordid idea of Heaven with some careful meditation.

  Concentrating, I imagine the girls suddenly coming down with appendicitis, or leprosy. I imagine their breasts and fingers falling off. I imagine their mouths, vaginas and bumholes becoming filled with cement and hardening in seconds, refusing entry to Stevie’s knob, or any of his other appendages. I sigh. I’m just adding colour to an image of their make-up and collagen implants spontaneously combusting, when the fluorescent lavender door swings open again and Stevie storms out, panting.

  ‘Will you st-stop imagining all th-those bad things?!’ he yells. ‘The g-girls are in a r-right state!’

  I smile, but keep my chin down. Absolutely shattered, Stevie collapses next to me on the sofa. He’s got his clothes back on now – a creased Dirty White Hugo Boss suit, with all the pinstripes going in different directions down his arms and legs.

  ‘You f-found my note, then?’ Stevie asks, getting his breath back. I nod, gently placing my hand on his, despite where his hands have been.

  ‘You’ve settled in here alright,’ I say, not meaning to sound so catty.

  Stevie smiles shyly, then scratches the back of his neck and says, ‘Yeah, s-sorry about … the g-g-g-girls … it’s just just just been hard g-getting my senses back after the s-s-s-s- … after the s-s-s- … the s-s- …’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I whisper. ‘I understand.’

  S-S-Suddenly the boy s-s-seems so fragile, it’s impossible not to wrap him up in my arms and wings. It’s just a shame he smells of bottomless ladies.

  ‘I feel like I was bad to you before you died, though,’ I say to his neck. ‘I thought it was my fault.’

  ‘N-noo,’ Stevie coos.

  Lips pressed against him, it’s tempting to say ‘I love you’, but I’m worried I won’t hear it back.

  ‘So,’ I start, releasing the grip slightly, ‘tell me about all these vixens you’ve been seeing.’

  Stevie looks me in the eyes with just the one of his, and sighs, ‘Ah, the-the-they’re nothing. I couldn’t even g-get it up, when I first g-got here. Because of the s-s-s- …’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, still understanding.

  ‘I I I was dead sad when I got here, just c-c-comfort eating and that,’ Stevie explains. ‘But but then then I found this cl-cloud. I was afraid to take my cl-clothes off at first, still w-wound up about the s-s-s- …’

  ‘Seriously, Stevie, I understand, love.’

  ‘B-bu-but then then I found those g-girls,’ Stevie continues. ‘They c-came up to me with all these l-lines about w-w-w-w-one-eyed men being irrerrerrerrerrerresistible. I couldn’t stop myself. I’m so sorry. I d-didn’t think I’d see you again. Or, not yet.’

  I chew my lips, a little ashamed to be dead so soon after my boyfriend. In a way, me and Stevie have been fairly useless human beings, not even managing to make it into our thirties. I touch his hand again, watching the tops of the clouds turn from lilac to bright magenta to moody blue, as the sun slides slowly off their sides.

  ‘But don’t you find it all a bit, like, unfulfilling?’ I venture. ‘All the endless debauchery?’

  Stevie shuffles on the sofa, feathers all ruffled.

  ‘See, cos I’ve been a bit poorly,’ I carry on. ‘I went and overindulged myself on Cloud 9 – you know they’ve got crack and all that, over there? And now look at me. I mean, it was alright at first, but soon I realised I was missing out on all the other good stuff – like, you know … being with someone you actually love, or loved, or whatever. And that’s why I came looking for you.’

  Stevie’s cheeks pulse red again, as he scans the shenanigans of Cloud 8. He sighs. Nearby, a girl with a mouth as wide as the Tyne Tunnel is giving head to sixty-odd men simultaneously. Stevie wipes his nose. I can tell he’s been brai
nwashed by the bawdy goings-on of the cloud, but surely the love of one person is worth more than the cold, lusty, flippant dribblings of the masses?

  ‘So you’re off the dr-drugs?’ Stevie asks.

  ‘Yeah. I’m quite buzzing off fruit now, actually.’

  Stevie smiles. For the first time in almost a year, he slips an arm round my waist. He tries to kiss me on the lips, but he has a bit of trouble judging distance with only one eye, and he ends up kissing my nose instead. Nevertheless, it does the trick.

  I whisper in his ear, ‘Might you want to get back together?’

  Stevie gazes blankly over my shoulder. His grip round my waist slackens as I become aware of a menacing presence towering over us. It’s a 6ft, leggy presence, with an hourglass figure and at least DD breasts. I think it’s a woman.

  ‘Stevie, darling,’ it says, ‘it’s time for your nine o’clock, my little love pup. Whenever you’re ready, darl. I’ll be in the shed.’

  It smiles, swinging a pair of leather trusses, pink fluffy handcuffs, and a 2l bottle of transparent Harmony lubrication. I scowl at it, grinding my teeth.

  ‘O-o-o-o-o-okey … okay,’ Stevie splurts. The menacing presence waltzes off, wiggling its perfect bottom.

  ‘L-look, Kim,’ Stevie says, flustered now, ‘I’d better go. I’m s-s-s-sorry. I’ll see you s-soon. S-Sometime. Soon.’

  And then in a flash he’s gone, stumbling through the fog, back into Shed 4123. The lavender door goes clunk. Locked.

  I pick the skin out from under my fingernails, rocking back and forth on the sofa. I feel utterly useless and unattractive. Stevie didn’t seem to appreciate my slender size 6 skeleton – then again, I probably looked like a Holocaust victim, next to his juicy pinup ladies.

  I feel the halo trying its best to sedate me with MDMA, but it does nothing to combat the crush of rejection. Unpeeling my legs from the sofa, I hide my snivelling face with my hands, then begin the slow trek back to the Crystal Castle.

  Despite all the free cake, cock and crack, Heaven’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Those of you who read page 236 and are now desperately trying to paper-cut your radial arteries in an attempt to join me up here – don’t bother. You’re better off where you are, with your books and your own beautiful, banal, bewildering existence on Earth.

  I try not to think about Stevie in the leather trusses, as I hover in front of the Crystal Castle, searching for my keycard. I just want to get my head down.

  On my way up the glass staircase, I feel like everyone’s eyes are on me. I swear all the angels keep nudging each other and pointing at me, unless it’s just paranoid backlash from the MDMA and heartbreak. As I slope through Methuselah Block B, the bastards’ faces leer at me, reflected millions of times over in the prisms and rhinestones. If it wasn’t illegal to swear or vandalise in Heaven, I’d scream obscenities at them and smash all their windows through, from Magnum Block to Nebuchadnezzar.

  Once I’m safely inside my dorm (a 50m² dwelling, with all mod cons, and a double bed which doubles up as a Jacuzzi, with optional running hot water, champagne, or melted chocolate), I rip the halo out of my skull. The barbed spike gets snagged on my scalp at first, making my eyes water, before finally coming loose and landing with a clang on the mother-of-pearl linoleum. I fall onto the bed in a sudden spasm of exhaustion. I detach my feather wings, then pull my Titanium White shift over my head and yank the White Strike tights down. As the tights land in a snaked pile between my legs, I realise why everyone’s been pointing and laughing at me. My heart sinks. Stuck to the gusset of the tights is an elephant’s-trunk-sized condom, smeared with spunk. I must’ve sat down on it by mistake, while I was waiting for my ex-boyfriend.

  The first thing that strikes me when I wake up is the hangover and heart-wrenching depression. My head kills, like someone’s been practising brain surgery on it with a pickaxe, and my white sheets are soaking wet with sweat. The reflective crystals sting my eyeballs. I let out a groan.

  Once the initial suicidal sensation passes, I roll out of the bed, grabbing blindly, manically, for the dented stainless-steel halo. Clumsily reattaching it, the MDMA softly trickles back into my nervous system. The relief is sublime. I literally make the sound ‘Aaahh’, like someone forced into an orgasm.

  Pulling the wings on again, I stare at my ugly features in the stretch mirror, bordered with many smaller, sparklier mirrors. For now the hangover and heart-wrenching depression have been replaced by a soothing, nondescript contentment, although I’m aware the contentment’s a con. Karl Marx was right: religion is the opiate for the masses. Outside the Crystal Castle, I watch the other angels dithering about in a vaguely happy trance, gurning a lot, but I don’t believe their hearts are in it.

  I decide to go out for some breakfast. As I flap hard against the breeze, with my nose aimed towards the greasier end of Cloud 2, I try to think up ways to steal back Stevie’s heart. It seems to be a strange sort of beast, that boy’s ticker – not susceptible to ordinary coaxing such as flattery, cuddling, or desperate begging for forgiveness. It only seems interested in people with bigger breasts than me.

  I order a Full English ‘Belly Buster’ breakfast and a triple-chocolate milkshake, hoping to quickly put on weight and grow my curves back. I yank the steel halo out of my head again to conjure up an appetite, then I get stuck in. I haven’t eaten meat in months – the sausages and bacon are indescribably delicious, sailing around the beans, two eggs, chips, hash browns and black pudding in a shallow pond of grease. As I slurp up the last of the milkshake, making the glass burp, I surreptitiously rub my waistline, feeling for expansion. I wonder if there are any plastic surgeons in Heaven willing to give me a free boob-job. Having said that, surely there must be a less superficial way to win Stevie over? After all, I was with him for four years – I must have some insight into the boy, to help me steal control of his heartstrings. Apart from sticking his penis into perky, personalityless pinups, what are Stevie’s interests?

  Fourteen sips into another triple-chocolate milkshake, the idea finally surfaces. On a white napkin, I scribble in lipstick:

  WEIGHT

  SUNGLASSES

  BEARD

  CLEARASIL

  FOOTBALL (CHEESE ETC.)

  Two months and two larger dress sizes later, I find myself back on the sex cloud. In sunglasses, an overcoat, and Fred West’s false beard (robbed from the edge of the Stairway-to-Heaven, under the cover of darkness), I breast-stroke round the back of the Crystal Castle and emerge Ursula Andress-like on the pink fluff of Cloud 8. There’s a lot of breast stroking going on here as well, not to mention penis stroking, bottom stroking and puppy stroking. It’s a wonder the place isn’t just a sad A&E full of STD and carpet burns.

  It hasn’t been easy putting the weight back on. Underneath the Guillotine, my scalp’s in tatters, thanks to the constant removing and reattaching of the halo. While the MDMA’s been useful in keeping my spirits up, it’s impossible leaving it inserted when you’re trying to chow down an extra-large McDonald’s. Overchewed chips are spat out. Juicy burgers turn stale and dehydrated.

  Throughout spring, the ex-demons working at McDonald’s watch me balloon to a size 10. Once my hips and tits are sufficiently rerounded, I flutter over to Cloud 1 to buy a long overcoat in Vanilla, some scanty Semi-Skimmed Ann Summers lingerie and a canister of Jacob’s cheese footballs from Cloud 2.

  Back on Cloud 8, with the beard and overcoat on, and the fancy lingerie underneath, I creep furtively past the spooning seahorses, 69ing giraffes and housewives having their clitorises bashed with vibrating Newton’s cradles. I wince, trying to keep focused on Shed 4123, approaching just as furtively in the distance.

  Apparently, the best route to a man’s heart is through his stomach. So, ignoring the muffled moans and groans of Stevie and co. behind the fluorescent lavender door, I lay out a Hansel and Gretel trail of cheese footballs from Shed 4123, all the way to my glass doormat at the Crystal Castle. Fortunately, the horny creatures nearby are to
o busy nibbling each other’s flapping genitals to be interested in nibbling my cheesy breadcrumb trail.

  Back in the safety of Methuselah Block B, I throw off the beard and overcoat, then lie in wait for Stevie with a sultry expression and the Jacuzzi taps set to CHAMPAGNE. The silky Semi-Skimmed underwear shimmers in anticipation.

  Six hours later, the sultry expression has sagged. The bows on the underwear look like angry, crossed arms. Stevie hasn’t shown up.

  Despite the MDMA trying to reassure me I’m not completely pathetic, I can’t help ruining my make-up with tears. Once my mascara’s run all the way down my chin, I almost don’t want Stevie to appear. Just as baby tapirs are born with stripes, to camouflage them from prowling lionesses, I want to bury my daft, black-striped face in the pillows, and never be seen again.

  The next day, I work my way through the wasted cheese snacks and champagne, plotting new ways to woo Stevie. Aside from eating and drinking, apparently men’s favourite pastimes are sex, sports, and driving fast cars. There’s no use for any cars in Heaven (although there’s a racing-track round the back of the Olympic Stadium, where James Dean, Grace Kelly and Ayrton Senna regularly battle it out), and Stevie seems to have had his fill of sex already, so I flap over to Cloud 4 (Sport) to see what’s on offer at the old Wembley Empire Stadium. (In Heaven, even the football stadiums are dead.)