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Post By A few domestic scenes of narrative housekeeping as requested, and one or two clues about things to come, from the keyboard of... the Hooded Hood Sat May 15, 2004 at 11:30:08 am EDT |
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#151: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Home Truths | |
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| #151: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Home Truths The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse She turned uneasily in her sleep, the sheets wrapped around her sweating body like a shroud, knowing she was dreaming yet unable to awake. And the images came… Three pretty girls taking a shortcut down Toenail Alley in Hell’s Bathroom, just as it’s getting dark? That’s just asking for trouble. “Hey, chicas!” called Frizzo, leaning out to block the sidewalk. “Wassup.” The young women ignored him, stepping round the Slumtown Blood and making for the main road beyond. But that was enough for Frizzo to recognise one of them. “Hey! Hey sista! I know you!” “Just keep walking,” the black girl he was calling after told the others. “Really?” her friend, the one with the expensive shoes and designer handbag answered. “You think?” “Black ho! I know you. You the sister of that f%&£a** f%£*face supahero Falcon.” Suddenly there were three more youths blocking the alley’s exit; and more sliding down from atop the dumpsters to block off any retreat. “Falcon’s sister?” Razorhead snarled. “Yeah, I heard he got himself a chicken sister.” “&*$”ing Falcon put my brother in the big house,” accused Frizzo. “Big house?” the third of the girls asked. “Does anyone really still say ‘big house’?” Razorhead opened up the flick-knife that had earned him his street name. “I say we send Falcon a message,” he leered. “I say we carve it on his sista’s face.” “Don’t…” Lindy Wilson pleaded, backing up. “Don’t hurt them.” “Hurt them?” Frizzo grinned, staring at Lindy’s two whitemeat friends. “We gonna treat them real good.” “She wasn’t talking to you,” Kerry Shepherdson told the Slumtown Bloods. “She was talking to us.” “Don’t bleed on my clothes,” Fashion Accessory warned the gangboys as the young ladies cleared their way out of the alley. The violence was just getting good, but the scene shifted. She sensed the coldness about her, a ruthless power that lay dormant until required, but that at need could change history. She saw two men, one old, the other young, and she couldn’t help overhearing what they said… “You did what?” Dominic Clancy was seriously worried that his mentor Aldrich Grey might burst a blood vessel. “I joined the Lair Legion,” he repeated calmly. “Do you need your medications?” “I need a brandy,” spat the Grey Eminence, knocking aside the proffered etidronate disodium disdainfully, still red in the face. “I need to be thirty years younger. I need a wife with more IQ than a beachball. But I don’t need that medical crap and I don’t need OPS’ chief officer in the Lair f*%$&! Legion!” “Firstly,” Mr Epitome shot back, “it was by Presidential order. Sir Mumphrey Wilton plays dirty.” “Wilton again! I told you to watch out for that English bastard!” “Secondly, you wanted me to find a way to bring the Lair Legion under control, to make them accountable. Can you think of a better way than this?” “Sure. A friendly fire accident during an escape attempt by the Yurt,” argued Grey. “I’m serious,” Epitome told the Grey Eminence. “I’ve had a chance to watch those people during the Blackout crisis. They’re disorganised and undisciplined, but they’re got something… a spirit, a determination maybe. And it’s something I think the nation needs.” Aldrich Grey wasn’t convinced. “What we need is a metahuman force we can rely on, under command and capable of obeying orders. What we’ve got is an unpredictable rabble of aliens and hybrids and freaks and pinkos running around doing whatever they please. And now it seems we got you there as a card carrying member!” “Probationary member,” Mr Epitome clarified. “And a couple of the team weren’t really crazy even about that. But it gives me a chance to influence them, shape them, push them in the right directions.” The Grey Eminence shook his head. “You’ll do it your way, Clancy, I know that. But this isn’t going to sit well with some of our allies, you know that. And frankly right now I don’t have the political capital to stop things if the Lynchpin or one of the others decides it’s hunting season on the Lair Legion.” “I could always rip Flask’s head off,” suggested Mr Epitome. “You might want to point that out to him.” “The day the Lynchpin of Crime isn’t holding the criminal economy of America in tight reign, that’s the day we start to worry,” Aldrich Grey answered. He sighed and pointed a liver-spotted finger at his protégé. “Just make sure this goes right, boy. You know what’s coming up. We can’t afford any screw-ups from here on, and that includes those screw-ups in the Lair Legion.” “I’m sure this is the right way to handle it,” lied Dominic Clancy. “You better pray it is,” the Grey Eminence told him, “’Cause God help you if this goes sour.” Her dream blurred then, twisting away from the shadowed corridors of power back to the Lair Mansion, that brooding pile of ancient stone and modern technology squatting on secrets that would change the world. She tried to pull free, but her mind’s eye was dragged down, down, through buttress and wall to watch the creatures inside in their tortuous twisted gavotte… dull thud found Uhunalura, Princess of the Abhumans, in her guest bedroom, packing. “Am I interrupting?” he wondered. “Oh, no,” Uhuna assured him. “Glad of the distraction. I hate putting things away.” ~~You’re going home, then?~~ Cressida the wonder worm surmised. The telepathic tapeworm dwelled in dull thud’s intestine, and technically she was the member of the Lair Legion, not her scruffy Hibernian host. “Fraid so,” the princess said sadly. “I’d love to stay longer, but as soon as the stolen Technology Suppressor gets returned to the Antarctic and repaired I’ve got to get back to Atticland. My family’s kind of paranoid about our people leaving the Great Relief. They won’t be happy till I’m safe back in their sight.” “Yeah, I heard about your sister,” thuddy admitted. “Sorry.” “We still don’t really know what happened to her,” Uhuna admitted. “Only that she left Atticland to come join the Lair Legion, and somehow fell foul of the Hooded Hood.” ~~We could try asking him~~ Cressida considered, ~~After he’s calmed down from Sir Mumphrey kicking him out of the Lair Mansion and the things Nats called him over at ITC~~ “In about a hundred years,” estimated dull thud “But that’s not why we called to see you, your um highness?” “Just Uhuna will do,” the Abhuman girl assured him. “What did you want? You’re not ill or something?” Uhunalura’s Abhuman gift was the transferring of health. ~~He’s only got his usual slight hangover and a growing cirrhosis of the liver~~ Cressida assured Uhuna. ~~No, it’s about something you said before…~ “You thought Cressie was an Abhuman,” thud recalled. “But we don’t know who Cressie is or where she came from.” “I could sense her inside you when we first met,” Uhuna explained. “And she’s definitely been mutated by the Plot-Enhancing Mists that are the source of the Abhuman race’s genetic developments, or by something very similar.” “I don’t see how,” dull thud admitted. “Y’see, one night I was on this almighty bender, and long story short I ended up in the water and I swallowed a lot of it. And there’s this nuclear reactor nearby, if that helps. And then the next day I had Cressie in mah gut.” ~~That’s my first memory,” the tapeworm agreed. ~~Except I have the strangest feelings sometimes. Almost memories. Like when I met Knifey, ManMan’s talking knife? I kind of recognised him. I… I think I might have dated him.~~ “Cause stomach parasites and sentient carving tools often get together for a wild fling,” noted thuddy. ~~Knifey recognised me too,~~ Cressida added. ~~But now he won’t tell me anything about it. He’s very cagey about his past.~~ “Interesting,” Uhuna admitted. “So either you weren’t always a mutated tapeworm or you’ve somehow got the memories of someone or thing that this Knifey once knew or… or…” “Or the Parodyverse is even screwier than we expected?” thud suggested. ~~We were hoping you could probe deeper, maybe find something out?~~ Cressida asked. “I’ll try,” Uhuna agreed. “Hold still, both of you. This won’t hurt, but it might tickle.” ~~Sounds like a lot of Davie’s dates~~ the tapeworm suggested. “Okay, this is interesting,” the Abhuman princess reported, furrowing her brow as she probed ever deeper. “dull thud has a minor genetic mutation triggered by exposure to radioactive substances and mind-altering pharmaceuticals, allowing him to navigate outwards along gravimetric force lines…” “I have?” thud puzzled. ~~She means you can teleport straight upwards~~ Cressida translated. “Oh. Right. So I can.” “Cressida, you have a whole host of specialised modifications, and a fascinating lifecycle that I can’t really fathom without cutting dull thud open.” “We’re not that curious,” thuddy said quickly. “You have some traces of radiation in your system, but I think that might be what’s affecting your memories, not causing your mutations.” ~~Could you remove the radiation, restore my memories?~~ “Tricky,” admitted Uhuna, “and I don’t think you’d be able to replace memories you’ve already lost. Anyway, you seem to have some similarities to Abhuman cellular structure, and your psionic powers come from the same basic genetic strands as ours do. If you’re not Abhuman, somebody else developed a similar process.” She took her hands off thud’s belly and wiped them on the duvet. “That’s all I can get, I’m afraid.” ~~It’s a start~~ Cressida assured her. ~~I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it someday.~~ “This life-cycle you said about,” dull thud checked. “It doesn’t involve Cressie bursting out of my stomach in Sigourney Weaver fashion at any point, does it?” ~~I’ll let you know~~ chuckled the telepathic tapeworm. Now she was over the city, its eccentric towers and spires thrusting up into a starry night. Below she saw the gaudy frontage of a sidestreet shop, and it seemed to pull her down and in, until her dream-gaze was inexorably focussed on… “I’m not at all sure I should be doing this,” worried Lee Bookman. “Try it. You’ll love it,” promised Dancer. “There’s got to be a first time for everybody.” “It’s not something I usually do,” the Librarian confessed nervously. “Then is to be a fun new experiencing, yes?” coaxed Yo. “I may well regret this in the morning.” “That’s pretty traditional as well,” admitted Lisa. “Now come on.” Lee cautiously tore off a piece of chapatti and used it to scoop some of the bright orange chicken tikka masala out of the dish and put it into his mouth. “Aaagh,” he said as the food hit his tongue and burned his taste buds. “Don’t drink water,” warned Trickshot from across the table. “That makes it worse. Just get accustomed ta the curry an’ then it’ll taste fine.” “It is an acquired taste,” agreed Falcon. “But there’s some stuff you just can’t find in libraries.” The Librarian agreed with a little shudder. “The Moon Public Library has a whole wing on recipe books,” he noted. “But no food,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! added. “That’s why we decided to let you sample some of the best ethnic cuisine in the Big Banana.” “And also to welcome you properly into the LL,” added Dancer. “We noticed you were spending all your time with us hidden away in the records room, and we thought we’d help you integrate a little more.” “I had a whole other idea about that,” Lisa sulked, “but instead they took you for a curry.” “Yo is thinking we are to be helping cute-Librarian integrate gradually,” Yo suggested to his/her old friend. “Yo is thinking that cute-Lisa’s induction can be to being too much of a culture shock.” “She comes at you again, give me a call,” Trickshot advised Bookman seriously. “I’ll throw myself on that grenade for ya.” Falcon snorted. “What?” demanded Trickshot crossly. “That ain’t pro enough for ya?” “Guys, time out!” CSFB! intervened. “This is Lee’s night. His intro to the wonders of Paradopolis.” The Manga Shoggoth looked up from his consumption of the offered sustenance. “I found it most acceptable,” he noted. “The organics and ceramics blend together to create a fascinating effect on the palette.” “Er yes,” agreed Dancer, “but next time you may not want to absorb the crockery as well.” “But the crockery gives it that kick,” argued the Shoggoth. “Is anybody going to finish off this table decoration?” The Librarian took another mouthful off masala. Suddenly it seemed like the safest thing to do. And back at that strange mansion, filled with stranger people… “Well,” said HALLIE, uncertainly. “Hi.” “Hello,” agreed Al B. Harper, putting down the etherscope inverter circuit he’d been modifying. “You got my e-mail.” HALLIE’s superb holographic form managed a quite unconscious blush. “I am the e-mail system,” she admitted. “I thought we’d better talk,” the Lair Legion’s scientific advisor noted. “About Helen.” Helen MacAllistair was the murdered computer programmer whose brain-patterns had been used as a template for the LL’s resident artificial intelligence. “We know now that she didn’t wreck your engagement with Miss Framlicker all those years back,” HALLIE pointed out. “It was all a mind-control cover-up to hide her murder.” “Your murder,” Al B. suggested. “Her murder,” HALLIE insisted firmly. “I may have a few memories and feelings from poor Helen, but I’m my own being, a new creation, sentient in my own right.” She flashed a brilliant smile for a moment. “I’m unique.” “Fair enough,” conceded Al. “But before it all went bad, Helen was my friend. I mean, she was a brilliant, obsessive pain-in-the-butt who argued with me all the time…” “Like Miss Framlicker?” “Well, except for the sweaty horizontal arguments, yes. But she was my friend. And if you’re kind of based on her… that would make you my friend too, okay?” HALLIE considered this. “I am not yet quite sure what I am going to become,” she announced. “I have a good deal more development before I’m going to be satisfied with my programming. I have a number of things to work out and a lot to discover.” She nodded slowly to herself. “But I am convinced I would like to be the sort of entity that has friends, and I intend to secure some.” “You should,” agreed Al B encouragingly. “I… I don’t make friends that easily. People tend not to understand what I’m talking about. But that just makes the friends I have even more important.” “You seem to get on well with the Lair Legion,” the holographic woman observed. “I am surprised that you haven’t yet joined as an Associate Member.” “Well they’ve never asked,” the scientist pointed out. “Plus, I get a retainer as their advisor. Associates don’t get a salary.” “Oh, they get paid,” contradicted HALLIE, who ran the payroll programme. “Lisa just hasn’t told Visionary about it. She said it would make him blush to know all of his income was being diverted as a charitable donation to St Jude’s Orphanage.” “Lisa is a complex person, isn’t she?” Al mused. “She brought me some… appliances for repair.” “Some of her apparatus was never designed to be doused in Kool-Whip,” HALLIE noted primly. She looked back at the young scientist with the goatee and bubble pipe. “I will add you to my contacts list under the friends section, then,” she decided. “Alphabetically by surname, after Bautista and before Visionary.” “I’d be honoured,” agreed Al B. Harper. He picked up the etherscope and switched his soldering iron back on. “Now I just need to decide who should go into my lovers directory,” added HALLIE thoughtfully. “Oh, did you burn your fingers?” And two floors up, where the shadows gathered… Sir Mumphrey Wilton knocked on Whitney Darkness’ door, and when she bade him enter he put the steaming mug of cocoa down in front of her. “I’ve discovered after many years of adventurin’ that there’s very few things that aren’t better after a spot of hot chocolate,” he noted to his grand-daughter. “My lover is dead and all my attempts to set things aright have mocked me and endangered everyone I love,” answered the Sorceress. “And I’m afraid that’ll still be true after sippin’ the cocoa,” Mumph admitted. “But there’ll be a nice warm spot in your tummy as well.” Whitney couldn’t help smiling. She accepted the mug and tasted the proffered beverage. “Better,” Mumph approved. “Y’know, from what I saw of young Boaz he seemed like a very nice young man. Good grandson-in-law material.” Whitney choked back a sob. “I turned him down,” she confessed. “He wanted to marry me, but I…” “You weren’t ready,” the eccentric Englishman understood. “No shame in that, m’dear. You had no way of knowin’ things would turn out like they did.” “But this is what happened,” the Sorceress declared. “This how things did turn out. And now we won’t ever…” “Hush,” Mumphrey said gently, hugging the young woman and stroking her hair. “It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love. Terrible. I still miss my Marge every single day and every single night, and we had decades together.” “How do you cope with it, then?” demanded Whitney. “How can you go on?” “I have other folks to care about,” the old man answered. “Children, friends.” He looked down at the red-eyed Sorceress. “Grandchildren,” he added. “And I have duties, responsibilities. Isn’t done to just give up. Not right. Not what Madge would have wanted. Not cricket.” “So you’re saying I have to… move on?” “I’m sayin’ you have to decide,” answered Sir Mumphrey Wilton. She struggled now, clawing at the enveloping bedding that stifled her as if fighting free from that would pull her from the sights and sounds of her visions. But it was useless, and like a helpless voyeur in some bizarre carnival her attention was focussed on another domestic scene; of sorts… Visionary flung open the living room door and burst inside with a fire extinguisher in one hand and a defoliant spray in the other. “Right, nobody moves!” he shouted. From separate armchairs Kerry and spiffy looked over at him in puzzlement. “Vizh?” Mark Hopkins checked. “Are you okay?” “You mean apart from him being a fascist oppressor dweeb wannabe-dad-of-me?” Kerry Shepherdson clarified. Vizh tried to conceal the extinguisher and weed-killer behind his back. “Er, what I mean is, anybody need a cup of coffee? Or maybe cocoa?” “He does take a lot of blows to the head in our adventures,” spiffy pointed out. “Sooner or later, one of them’s got to count.” “Isn’t it time you were in bed, Kerry,” Vizh said pointedly. “It’s almost midnight.” “I guess so,” Dancer’s little sister shrugged, “but spiffy hasn’t asked me yet.” And that was the end of Mark’s attempts at being a poised adult in front of the agitated possibly fake man. “Urk!” “Goodnight, spiffy,” said Visionary firmly. Kerry sighed. “Yeah. Night spiff. Don’t, y’know, lay awake all night thinking about me curled all toasty warm and naked in my lonely little bed, soft skin caressed by the rough cotton sheets.” spiffy winced. So did Visionary. The front door slammed quite hard behind the fern-wielder. “That wasn’t really appropriate behaviour for a young lady, was it?” Vizh attempted to scold as soon as Kerry’s almost-date was gone. “It’s not like I let him get my underwear off,” Kerry pointed out. Visionary didn’t dare ask if she was actually wearing any for fear she might tell him. “Besides,” she continued, “this isn’t the nineteenth century or whenever it was you were manufactured.” “I’m real, dammit!” “This is now, and you should just be glad I’m past my biker gang phase. For now.” Visionary somehow managed to survive until Kerry trudged reluctantly up to her room and closed the door. Then he sank down on the sofa, pausing only to carefully move the partially-dismantled land mine from the other cushion. “I must have been pretty evil in any past life to deserve this,” he moaned. Only the quiet fizzing of the Bautistamatic Trash Compactor going into biowar cycle answered him. What a strange man, she pondered, in a strange world. But already her attention was shifting elsewhere, eavesdropping, hearing the ringing of a telephone and the click of a receiver being lifted… “Hello? Is that Bernice Teschmaker? The reporter?” “Speaking,” admitted the cautious voice at the other end of the line. After all, it was the middle of the night. “I need to talk to you. I have a story to tell.” The caller sounded female, and agitated. Bernice would have suspected some kind of pervert if it has been male. She glanced down at her caller line identification module and her eyes went wide as she noted the number her source was ringing from. “What story?” she asked. “My story,” Ruby Waver answered with a little gulp. “And the story of the man who ruined me.” Her mind slipped away from that strange encounter, wondering what the desperate revelation might be, and what the confession might set in motion. But now she was elsewhere, in the familiar institutional severity of green-painted walls and confinement cells. It was still late, very late, but one of the prisoners was still awake… The only reason that Simon Maddicks wasn’t incarcerated in the Safe, the usual penitentiary for supervillains, was that the site was still badly damaged from the recent breakout attempts during the Big Blackout. Instead he was still in a holding cell in the basement level of the Paradopolis police headquarters. It was about two in the morning when a boot nudged him in the ribs and a voice said “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” Prison-honed reflexes cut into action, and Maddicks hurled the blanket over his assailant, rolled from his bunk, and hammered a powerful fist down at where he calculated his opponent’s head should be. His knuckles smashed into the concrete floor. The blanket was empty. “Boy, you’re a grouch before your morning coffee, aren’t you?” the voice said. Now there was a man perched on the upper bunk, watching him. Maddicks picked himself up to fight, but was momentarily winded as his costume was tossed down into his midriff. “Here. If you have to dress like a geek, do it quickly,” said the midnight visitor. It was a tall man in dark clothes. His square-jawed face was dirtied by a few days growth of stubble. He wore a black windcheater that helped disguise his impressive physique. Simon Maddicks backed away, but kept clutching his Killer Shrike uniform. There were weapons there he could use, and built into the boot heel was a reactivation circuit that should get his spine-implanted anti-grav generator back online. “You enjoy watching men dress, do you?” he asked the stranger. “I enjoy hurting smartmouth criminals who can’t spot a lucky break when they get one. Are you getting dressed and getting out of here with me, or do you enjoy prison food that much?” Killer Shrike considered this. “You can get us out of here?” “I got in, didn’t I? So are you coming or what?” “Coming where?” Maddicks demanded. “I just got done with having my butt kicked again by the superheroes, and I’m not keen for another beating till the bruises fade away.” “Coming to do a job for my boss,” answered the stranger. “The pay’s good, the plan’s very good, and it’s got to be better than ten to twenty palling up with Butch and Sweathog, yeah?” “Pay? How good?” Killer Shrike had been in the Parodyverse a while now and he still hadn’t really found the success he’d hoped for. “Out of this world. So are you coming.” Simon Maddicks slid his helmet on and made sure his topknot was secure. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to your boss. Let’s go.” Then, belatedly he asked, “Um, who is he?” There was a golden flash of light and the stranger had teleported Killer Shrike elsewhere. “We’re here,” he announced, looking with contempt at the supervillain he’d just released. “Where?” Killer Shrike demanded. “And who the hell are you anyway?” “My friends call me Bry,” announced the grizzled stranger. “You can call me Blackhearted. This is Herringcarp Asylum. And the guy in charge is the Hooded Hood.” The Hooded Hood? She struggled to wake again at that point, understanding now the thing that linked together her nightmares. She fought to free herself from there unwanted glimpses, pushing herself free of the bizarre city, of the whole troubled world. And there, far in space, something moved and caught her mind’s eye… Slowly and silently, the sleek black Knightjet had threaded its way through the guards and wards that surrounded the Xnylonian star system. It was a hard place to find, detectable only by orchestrating a thorough survey of stellar gravitational fluctuations based on information abstracted from the high security Nacluv database, accessible only by shifting both matter and mind through a series of altered states to pass the neat pleat in normal space that separated the Xnylonians from contamination by the rest of the universe. Or as Fin Fang Foom has put it on their third day of threading the maze, “They sure take their privacy seriously, don’t they?” “We’re almost through,” the Dark Knight replied, finishing his latest rewiring of the spacegoing Knightjet’s systems to enable navigation through the last of the reality barriers. “I believe we’re at the last ward.” Finny checked the monitor boards. “We’re getting readings of the interior now, at least. A thirteen planet system, with life-readings on the seventh world out. That’s got to be Xnylone. And that world has at least twelve moons, maybe more, and some of them have been terraformed to sustain life too.” “Any sign of weapons arrays?” DK demanded. “Orbital defence platforms, transwarp detection grids, that kind of thing?” “I can’t pick up any kind of major armaments or power sources from this far out,” Foom replied. “Maybe they’re shielded.” The Dark Knight looked over the scanner boards himself. “I don’t like it,” he rumbled. “Too easy. We’re missing something.” “Maybe we’re just being paranoid?” considered Fin Fang Foom. “Maybe there isn’t… Nah, you’re right. We’re missing something.” And at that moment of agreement the Gahreams passed through the hull of the Knightjet like ghosts and fell upon the intruders. She watched them struggle. She saw how the dark silhouettes operated, clawing with shadow-hands that tore not at the flesh but at the mind, dredging old fears and horrors then using them to mould weapons to destroy their prey. She saw the Dark Knight stagger back in horror, trying to wipe imaginary blood from his gloves. She watched as Finny’s overpowering shyness and self-doubt became razors that tore him up inside. She felt the Gahream’s dark triumph as they jostled in for the feeding. She saw a pair of them turn and notice her… “Fight them off,” urged Finny, shifting shape half a dozen times in rapid succession, as if the different exteriors could brush off the black creatures fastened to his inner. “They’re only nightmares.” “Yes,” agreed the Dark Knight, focussing his mind to believe that his right hand could grip one of the creatures by the neck. He squeezed and twisted and heard a satisfying snap before the Gahream dissolved in his grasp. “These things can be hurt. Can be killed.” “And burned!” hissed the Makluan dragon, unleashing his nuclear flame in a concentrated, controlled lance of heat and passion. It wasn’t easy. The Gahream were weakened by breaching the hull of the Knightjet, a vehicle ordained by the Chronicler of Stories to be invulnerable, but even then they were persistent and malevolent and they learned fast and worked in unison. Fin Fang Foom and the Dark Knight lost track of time as the hours of combat became a day, then two. And only at the last did they manage to spin the Knightjet through the final barrier and limp exhausted and ravaged into Xnylonian space. …But two of the phalanx of nightmares survived, leaped from their attack on the intruders to chase the softer prey that observed from afar. They jumped across all the barriers between dreamed and dreamer and bore down upon the woman with midnight-steel talons to pick apart her soul. Stifling a scream that would have shamed her worse than all the promised torments of the Gahream, she struggled loose of her sweat-sodden bedding and caught the first attacker by the neck. It’s rubbery head twisted much further than a human’s would have before there was a sickly snap, and even then its cold claws ripped through her breast and spattered her with icy images of a loveless childhood that sent her gasping to the floor. Then the second horror was upon her, dredging up old guilts and failures and lusts and heartbreaks, dreams that could never be and shames that would always be with her, tearing down into her core, exalting as it violated her secrets. “No!” she defied it, fighting back, uncoiling like the wings of vengeance. Nobody did that to her, nobody and nothing. The Gahream understood at the last moment that it had badly misjudged its prey; then it was destroyed. Keiko knelt on the floor beside the ruins of her bed for a moment and caught her breath. She clutched her chest and tried not to be sick. She waited until she was sure she was awake again, properly awake, before rising on legs that seemed robbed of all their strength to pad into the bathroom. The dreams were getting worse, these nightly visions of strange people and stranger places, and she didn’t know what to do. A pair of knowing green eyes flashed once in the darkness, and then she was alone. Next issue: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, they say, so it’s time to test that when we see how things are going with the Nats/Ruby relationship. Throw in the ITC Personnel Review, the interview with Miss Framlicker, a visit from Uhuna’s fiancée, and you’ll see it’s not Bill Reed’s perfect day. Oh, and some stuff happens to other people too. It’s coming soon in Untold Exposés of the Lair Legion: Nats Ate My Gerbil. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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