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Other Voices
d: <tap, tap> n: go away. d: <tap> n: go away. d: <tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap> n: mother of bleeding christ, is there NO PEACE? not even in HERE? why can't you just GO AWAY and let me rot in solitude? aren't you content with alienating my friends, spending all my money and, for the sake of the goddess, chat-fucking eddie clulow in fidonet? EDDIE CLULOW? have you no sense of RESPONSIBILITY? d: i wanted to talk to you about this doctor thing. n: (long, drawn-out sigh) what about it? d: are you really - n: YES, i am really. i don't think it'll do any good at first, but, hey, you never know. d: but what if he decides that you're a voice in my head instead of the other way round? what if he gets rid of you? n: (enthusiastically) then i'll be at peace. either way, i can't lose. and if he does remove me instead, then, heh, you'll have to deal with the real world instead of me. you'll have to face up to responsibility. no more of that chatting up guys and then running away when they get interested. no more spending the rent money on hardback editions of John Shirley horror books. no more hanging up the phone on my friends while i'm talking to them and then saying "oh, it was one of the other Aspects, not me" and then interrupting when i try to apologise and explain what happened. d: not that anyone believes you. m: excuse me! am i interrupting? d: m: oh, good. who was it spent $38 on that Hematite ring at Morticia's and then wrote in the diary that i did it? n: (taps fingers on arm) d: well, you're the goth, mirikai. are you saying you didn't do it? m: what do you mean, "I'M the goth"? while we're discussing finances, who was it spent sixty dollars on three metres of black vinyl for a Cenobite costume? d: ... n: possibly the same Aspect who picked up that leaflet from Slow Glass, about the Costumer's Ball in June. m: i only spend money on alcohol at Abyss. i can see no nobler purpose for money than this. n: if i lose any more brain cells, it's coming out of your patch. m: aaaah ha ha hah. "i see you have made your decision. now, let's see you enforce it." d" see? Crow quotes! you're a goth! m: and you're a pain. n: you're BOTH pains. why can't you leave the disbursment of funds to me? d: maybe we don't want to spend all of our money on tiny little silver grommets from sewing supplies shops. n: yeah? i noticed you suddenly got very interested when i said i was going to use them in making a corset for Jabberwok. i might even be able to get rid of some of that black vinyl. d: are you going to let your m- p: excuse us. we're thirsty. (pause while a 1-litre `Pepsi Max Big Slam' bottle is fetched from the freezer. it has four centimetres of icy, half-frozen water at the bottom; the bottle is topped up and drunk, the cold causing intense pain in the fillings of our teeth) d: and how long have you been listening in, Mr Natural? p: (rasps) "we've always been here." d: oy. still think you're a Cenobite, huh? p: (sneers) still think you're female, huh? looked in the mirror recently, dava? d: okay. that's it. where's that fucking X-acto knife? i'll settle this once and for all. m: (bemusedly, to n) you think she'll do it? n: (laughs) nah. she doesn't see pain the way we do. she'll press the knife about half a millimetre into the skin and then chicken out. remember when she wanted to impress Skud and tried to pierce her nipple? m: heh. it was a dance, like the Lucrezia back-and-forth two-step. needle touches skin, retreats, touches skin, retreats - d: (sobs) you bastards are always ganging up on me. maybe i should just throw myself in front of a fucking bus. m: maybe you should, dava. it would be a nice touch if you could do it without involving us. d: oh no. when i go, i'm taking you all with me. n: what is it, that time of the month? dava, aren't you content with making me feel stomach-cramping phantom period pains? you have to do the whole hormonal roller-coaster thing as well? d: why should i have all the fun? p: indeed. we want to reserve next wednesday. n: why? d: no. i know what you want to do, and i don't think you should. p: shut up, child; this isn't a democracy. very well. we recommend that no-one should make any definite plans for wednesday, as we will be assuming control as of seven thirty pm. d: (quietly) i'll fight you for it. p: (incredulous) you'll what? m: oh, this'll be good. blinding headaches at ten paces. d: i said i'll fight you for it. i'm not going to let you confuse her any further. you wouldn't listen to me when i said, `leave her be', would you? you're like a child, picking at a scab until it bleeds. p: (sneers) it's not hard to see where the poetry comes from, is it? d: (derisiviely) what would you know? you couldn't write a poem to save your life. that requires emotional involvement. you might have heard of that, somewhere, but you wouldn't recognise it if someone rammed a metric tonne of it up your ass with a fucking pile-driver. p: (to n) it must be that time of the month again. m: why don't we install nethack, run it and see if it tells us what phase of the moon we're in? n: (pause) i beg your pardon? m: (somewhat embarassed) i mean... i thought, uh, that sort of - i thought it was associated with the phases of the moon... d: (rolls eyes) and you wanted to be female? n: (to the outside world in general) and people wonder why i have trouble dealing with reality.
Not New Shoes This has gone on long enough. He might want to do the whole tortured saint routine, but I have to use those feet too. When I'm walking with them, I feel every tiny stone, every twig; when he walks over those metal grates, it's like stepping over broken glass. He's just sitting there, watching Twin Peaks; I gently schmooze him out of control and find the Reeboks. They're old; four years worth of wear and tear, split along the seams at the heel, the soles coming away at the outside edges, one sole worn right through. I collect needles, thread, glue, the cushion insoles i'd bought while he wasn't watching, the old pair of black jeans, some anti-static padded bags that once held memory cards for Sun workstations, scissors. I sew the split seams together as best I can, using his clumsy fingers, unaccustomed to such involved tasks. I loosen the Reebok's laces, cut out four sole-shaped pieces of antistatic plastic, glue them inside the shoes, set them aside to wait for the glue to set. I'm not entirely sure how to proceed with the next stage, so I'm forced to use some of his processing ability. He's better at three-D visualisation than I am. I see the shape, a kind of sock that will fit inside the shoes; I cut the lower twenty centimetres off the jeans, cut slices out of the sides, sew them up, cut wedges out of the front of the tubes thus formed, sew those edges together, forming two crude sock-shaped tubes of black denim. Some more glue holds them inside the Reeboks. When the glue dries, I'll try them on his feet. Maybe I'll spray-paint them black.
It's a Saturday night (or, more accurately, Sunday morning), in Frankston, a suburb not known for its peaceful Saturday nights, or Sunday mornings, for that matter. There are three pubs near the intersection that Dava is wandering through (unable to remember how she got there), and each of them is spilling its excess of rowdy, drunken males into streets darkened by vandalised overhead lights. She's kept busy trying to stay out of their way and find a phone so she can ring the only number she can remember. Thankfully, she found thirty cents in the wallet that was in her back pocket. No ID or driver's licence or any clue as to whose wallet it is. She knows it isn't her's. She spots the telephone at the same time as two shadowy figures spot her. She darts towards the phone booth, but stops dead as they emerge from hiding. She's gravely miscalculated; she is exactly halfway between them, the phone booth behind her. Nowhere to run, and as if to make their intent plain, one of them produces a knife from his sleeve and gestures at the wallet she's clutching in her left hand. She's frozen. Ordinarily the most timid of people, she has trouble dealing with regular social interactions, and being confronted by these two is enough to halt her CPU. Her pupils dilate to their limits, her breathing all but stops, her skin temperature drops ten degrees. The man (he's in his early thirties, at least twenty centimetres taller than her and of a particularly imposing build) steps forward, leading with the knife (one of those vicious double-bladed things one usually sees hanging in the window of an army disposals store), and something in the way he's looking at her would indicate to the casual observer that he's not just interested in her money. She's not unattractive. And then, just in time, the change comes over her. Within a fraction of a second, she's no longer the timid, reticent Dava; she's Tsiry, the Moridani warrior, eight hundred years old, experienced in every form of hand-to-hand combat there is. No matter that Tsiry's a fictional character; no matter that her usual body is something like a six-legged centaur, Tsiry blithely dances into the fray. Dava's left leg sweeps up, easily kicking the knife from the man's hand and breaking his wrist. She turns on the ball of her right foot, whipping around completely and bringing her leg in for a smashing blow to his forearm. The sound of the bone snapping is the loudest thing in the street. As he begins to fall towards her right, she brings her leg back, and as soon as his head is low enough, she plants her foot flat in his face, breaking his nose, pushing his jaw out of alignment and grinding his tongue between his back sets of teeth. Confident that he isn't going to trouble her for the next few parts-of-a-minute, Tsiry uses the rebound to push herself back at her other opponent. He hasn't had time to establish what's going on; it's possible that her unorthodox stance has confused him. Not many people would lead into a physical assault with both arms and legs outstretched. She hits him with all her weight, knocks him over, rebounds almost a metre and a half into the air and lands on his ribcage, caving it in, driving splintered bones through his internal organs. He'll be dead within two minutes. She crouches, warily scanning the scene with eyes that turn to the direction she's looking at before her head looks that way (something she picked up from a book by Frank Herbert); the scene is quiet once more. One assailant unconscious (or at least, not moving); the other fatally injured. She turns and runs on all fours, moving faster than a human being should, not stopping until she determines that she's at a safe distance. Tsiry begins to look for another phone for Dava. |
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