Rollerskater: Motley
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This instalment contains strong bloody violence and some emotionally intense scenes.
“They’re calling him the Grey Man. Heard anything about him?”
It was afternoon in the dessert café. It was on the eastern end of a street, simply named “High Street”, that bisected the town near K-Os’s university.
To its north was the local park, located within which was what remained of an old Norman fortification and its surrounding environs, as well as part of an old Roman wall that had once bounded the town.
K-Os was far more ancient than that castle. She had seen empire after empire rise and fall, kings seize the land, only to become the very earth they claimed to own. She had seen the Great Pyramids of Giza in their prime. She had seen the Roman civilisation that built this town transform from a Kingdom into a Republic, a Republic into an Empire, and an Empire into a backwater, blackened by ashes. She had seen Europe dissolve into warring states for centuries. She had seen Shakespeare perform his own plays at the Globe. She had seen plagues ravage the land. She had watched as Notre Dame was built. She had seen the horrors of Flanders, the massacres of Normandy. She had seen all these things – the horrors and treasures of many millennia – and her expression had never once wavered.
Yet, the look in her eyes indicated that she was more afraid than she had ever been.
Dolly Mixture looked across the table at her. She was halfway through a Belgian waffle with strawberries, and two scoops of Italian gelato – one noisette, the other chocolate. K-Os had ordered nothing.
“No,” she said, quietly. “I’ve never heard that name before.”
“That makes two of us,” K-Os replied. “I managed to get the name out of one of my contacts a few days ago. He has been trying to keep people quiet. It seems that he wants me dead.”
“Hm,” Dolly said, sticking a fork into a strawberry and biting into it. “So, what do you need to meet me for?”
“I need you to speak to someone,” K-Os said. “She…insisted it was you that she meet.”
“And who would that be?”
“Terminal Felicity.”
Dolly almost choked on the strawberry. The sweet tartness filled her mouth as a face filled her mind’s eye. Bright, unnaturally red curled hair, piercing green eyes.
“Her?” Dolly said. She swallowed the piece of fruit in her mouth. “She…she defected years ago, K-Os. You know this.”
K-Os sighed. “That…isn’t true.”
Dolly sat, stunned for a moment. She put down her cutlery and wiped her mouth.
“What.”
“She didn’t defect, Dolly. She has been working as a mole for the last three years…she has always been on our side.”
Dolly stared blankly for a moment, then hit K-Os across the face. Her hand went through K-Os’s face as though it were made of cornflour and water. K-Os did not so much as flinch, much less try to block the blow.
“You bitch,” Dolly snarled. “You knew what we were. What we had. You didn’t care? You just let her believe she’d turned? You just let her leave me?”
“The fate of reality is more important than your love life,” K-Os replied, coldly.
Dolly gritted her teeth in rage.
“Don’t you fucking dare with that, you bitch – you fucking bitch. You know what you did.”
“Dolly…”
“We were in love, K-Os. Why did…” Dolly’s lip trembled. “…why did it have to be…her?”
K-Os looked down at the floor, then back up at Dolly.
“She said it was easier to leave you believing she had been turned than to simply leave you. She believed it would…hurt less.”
“Hurt less?” Dolly barked. “Hurt less? She was too much of a fucking coward to break it off with me? That’s why she left?”
“I understand human behaviour much less than you do,” K-Os said.
Dolly said nothing.
“But the fact remains,” K-Os continued. “She has information on the Grey Man, and she refuses to divulge it unless she speaks to you specifically. Can you do it?”
Dolly cut off a piece of the Belgian waffle with her spoon, stabbed it with her fork and put it in her mouth. She chewed, savouring the sweet flavour and the chill of melted gelato which, like a sauce, had soaked into the cooked, sponge-like batter. It was comforting.
“Where?” she replied.
K-Os pointed outside the front window.
“The castle park,” she replied. “She will be waiting by the Roman wall.”
“And where will you be?”
K-Os sighed. “With him,” she replied, jabbing a thumb to a young man, standing outside the café, checking his phone. Socks.
“That’s funny,” Dolly said, bitterly. “He’s not your type.”
K-Os looked at her, puzzled.
“Tch,” Dolly said. “Like you would understand.”
She stood, picking up her white handbag and turning to leave.
“Aren’t you going to finish this?” K-Os asked her.
“No,” Dolly replied.
With that, the waffle and ice cream exploded like a small firework, shattering the plate in two.
She turned to look at K-Os, who looked back at her with dispassionate, cold eyes.
“We will wait for your report,” K-Os said.
“I’m sure you will,” Dolly replied, raising her middle finger and walking away.
*
Socks realised, as he was fumbling in his pocket for his keys, that K-Os had never actually seen his flat before. He thought, for a moment, that she had, but realised that that had been Chroma. It was strangely comforting to see her enter his kitchen and not really remark on anything, much as he would expect.
“What was all that about?” he asked, as she sat down on the sofa. He had recognised Dolly, but she had barely looked at him as she left the café. She seemed angry.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” K-Os said. She reached into her pink shoulder bag and pulled out a newspaper. “Have you seen this?”
She handed it to him. It was a copy of the Evening Standard, on whose front page was a headline:
BOY, FIVE, SLEPT THROUGH PARENTS’ MURDER
“What’s this about?” Socks said, his eyes scanning over the article.
“A young boy in Acton woke up a few days ago to find police in his bedroom. His parents had been murdered in their beds.”
“Jesus,” he said. “And what’s that got to do with us?”
K-Os looked out of the window. A wagtail landed on the sill, cocked its head at them a few times, and flew away.
“It was the night we met Chelsea,” K-Os replied.
“Oh my God…you don’t think…”
“No, I don’t think, Socks. I know.”
K-Os produced a small sheaf of paper from her shoulder bag.
“What’s that?” Socks asked.
“A copy of the coroner’s official report,” K-Os said.
“Right…”
“The victims died from multiple stab wounds.”
“That’s horrible,” Socks replied.
“Yes,” K-Os said, dispassionately. “But that wasn’t the strange thing.”
“What was that?”
“The coroner found that every wound on the victim’s bodies was an exit wound.”
“What?”
“The cuts appeared to have been made from inside the skin. The killer didn’t just stab them. Something inside their bodies stabbed its way out. They bled to death.”
“My God…” Socks said, sitting down. “That must have been agony.”
“Apparently, the neighbours heard screaming, but did nothing about it. The police were only called the next day when the boy’s father didn’t turn up to school with his child, nor the mother to work.”
“So, how are we involved?”
“The boy told investigators that he had been visited by someone,” K-Os said. “He called him ‘the bogeyman.’ The man came into his room one night and put something in his head, which made him see things and hear things. For a moment, they thought the boy had done it, but then…”
“What?” Socks asked.
“The boy began complaining of head pain. They took him to the hospital to check his head out.”
“And?”
“They found a structure in his limbic system, connected to the pineal gland. It was…from what I can gather, a psychic aerial.”
“So the guy…cut the kid’s head open and implanted something in there?”
“No,” K-Os said, uncertainly. “There was no sign of brain surgery. No scars or anything. No, whoever did this…can create umbric out of pure organic matter.”
“Oh my God…”
“We believe the killer to be the Grey Man,” K-Os said. “But we don’t know his name, what he looks like, or even where he is. That’s why we’re hoping this girl will be able to give us some answers.”
Socks flipped the page.
Six dead in Westway collapse: Disaster still a mystery, say investigators
“Six people died because that road collapsed,” Socks said. “More will die because of us.”
“That’s not true. It’s not us. It’s them.”
“Is it, K-Os? That’s eight people dead in one night because we’re busy fucking around trying to find this guy.”
K-Os folded her arms.
“The quicker we find him, the quicker we finish this.”
“I hope so,” Socks said. “For everyone’s sake.”
“We just need to get that information from Dolly,” K-Os said. “After that, we can make preparations.”
Socks switched on the television. There was a news report about the Westway collapse. He changed the channel, and there was another report about the murder in Acton. He switched it off. People were dying, and the situation would only get worse.
He thought back to his hospital room, and to his parents, and the worried looks on their faces as they had seen their boy all smashed to bits, not knowing how or why, and how he had lied to them. He couldn’t face doing that any more. His parents had to know what was going on, before it was too late.
*
Past the castle, which was now a museum that was open to visit for a fee, there was a footpath heading north, that took the walker under a canopy of trees and down some stone steps, which led past what had once been a northern rampart and ditch, and then down a hill, at the foot of which was part of an old Roman wall, and past that, a lake. That was where K-Os had said the girl would be waiting to rendezvous.
She could still smell her former lover sometimes – in vanilla beans, in breakfast cereal, between the pages of old books. The smell she had breathed between her lover’s neck and her shoulder, in her hair, between her breasts. A powerful method of torture, Dolly thought, would be weaponised nostalgia. If you could take a man political prisoner and subject him to the smells of all his lost loves, his late grandmother’s baking, and his childhood toys, you would break him in minutes.
On the wind, she swore she could smell it, even now. The Roman wall was in view. She looked over at the open grass slope. She imagined the castle above, besieged by French invaders some eight hundred years ago, during the First Barons’ War, men clearing the ramparts and charging upwards, and at the wall below. Peace, now – a field that played host to little more than squabbles and interpersonal conflicts, no longer a site of national importance.
She made it to the bottom of the slope. The wall was just up ahead, and next to it, an iron gate. And standing by that, a woman, her back turned. Her.
Her curled hair was as bright red as it had been those years ago, when she had last seen her, and it blew in the soft breeze. On her head she wore a small green bowler hat at an angle. She wore a leotard patterned with multicoloured Harlequin-motley diamonds, bright blue nylons and red ballet flats with ribbon ankle-ties, patterned with yellow stars. It was as though she had never left.
As she heard footsteps, she turned. She wore paleface Pierrot makeup, with bright blue lipstick, and red dots on both her cheeks. Her eyelids were “slitted” by eyeliner that covered them and stretched above her brow and below her cheekbones to the dots on her cheeks, and from the centre of those slits gazed a pair of piercing green eyes.
There she was, as clear as day. As though she had never left. Terminal Felicity. Felicity. Fliss.
Both stood, staring at each other for a moment, not sure what to say.
“Hi, Fliss,” Dolly managed to say, walking towards her.
There was a pause.
“Oh, Dolly, my Dolly,” Fliss replied, responding in turn.
Dolly opened her arms. Fliss hesitated for a moment, and then walked into them, putting her arms around Dolly.
Dolly wanted to be angry. Wanted to explain to her how badly she had been hurt, about the betrayal she had felt, the sleepless nights, the suicidal thoughts, the anguish. But now Fliss was standing before her, and she could find no words to criticise her. Fliss did the speaking for her.
“How have you been?” she said, in a voice like the sweetest honey.
“I’ve been better,” Dolly replied. “I’ve missed you, Fliss.”
Fliss nestled her head against Dolly’s neck.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said.
Dolly held her for quite some time before saying anything else.
“K-Os, er…asked me to speak to you.”
Fliss pulled away, putting her hands against Dolly’s chest.
“Yes,” she said. “It…didn’t feel right, not speaking to you. I wanted to tell you in person…to explain myself.”
“K-Os already explained,” Dolly replied, her tone hardening.
“Are you cross with me?”
“I am absolutely livid with you,” Dolly replied, unable in the moment to fully emphasise it.
“You must understand,” Fliss replied. “What we’re dealing with is dangerous. I recognised that it was bigger than us. That’s why I made the difficult decision to leave. But know that I never stopped loving you.”
“You hurt me,” Dolly said. The anger came through now. “You let me believe that you had turned.”
Fliss said nothing for a few moments. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s…fine. Just tell me who this guy is and we can move on.”
Fliss nodded. “I don’t feel comfortable doing it out in the open.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t know I’m a mole, Dolly. If they catch me giving information to the other side, they’ll kill me. They’re already getting suspicious.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Dolly asked.
“My…abilities have developed somewhat since the last time you saw me,” Fliss replied.
“Developed how?”
“It’s best if I just show you. Look at my eyes.”
Dolly looked around her, to see if anyone was watching them, then gazed into Fliss’s eyes. As she met her gaze, the world appeared to crumble away beneath their feet, and Fliss seemed to evaporate into the darkness, and suddenly, Dolly was tumbling, as though in a dream of falling from a great height, about to be jolted awake, and she landed on something soft.
She opened her eyes. Above her was a yellow sky, not sunset yellow, but yellow where it should be blue. She sat up. She was on a dirt path cutting through a field of flowers, multicoloured like the Harlequin diamonds on Fliss’s blouse, growing out of thorny purple stems. In the distance, there was a small forest of trees, from the branches of which there sprouted purple leaves.
“What is this place?” Dolly asked, standing up and brushing herself off.
Abruptly, Fliss manifested in front of her, as though she had simply popped back into existence. “This is my new ability,” she said. “I call it the Blossom World.”
“Blossom World,” Dolly said, looking around herself, at the flowers. “When I last saw you, you could only do minor-level reality warping…nothing on this scale.”
“It’s the same methods I’ve always used,” Fliss said. “I merely…refined them.”
Dolly walked over and smelled a flower. It smelled like Fliss, and she recoiled for a moment, overwhelmed.
“How?” she asked, turning to look at Fliss.
Fliss stood before her.
Clutched in her hand, she held an umbric scythe.
“Fliss,” Dolly said, in a quiet voice, reaching into her handbag. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Dolores,” Fliss said, charging at her and swinging the scythe.
With a quick motion, Dolly pulled from her bag a sherbet fountain, and pointed it uneasily at Fliss, who seemed to react with shock. The fountain went off like a gun, and a blast of energy knocked Fliss back several feet.
Without thinking, Dolly abandoned her wedge heels and ran, barefoot, through the field of flowers, trampling them as she made for the woods, tears of betrayal and rage streaming down her cheeks.
*
K-Os was looking at her phone in frustration. It was a Motorola flip-phone of a sort that Socks had not seen since he was at least nine or ten years old. He supposed that she had no desire or need to maintain a social media presence, therefore a smartphone was not of any use to her.
“Why hasn’t she called yet?” she said. “Damn it, all she had to do was meet with the contact and get her to explain.”
“Maybe she got held up?” Socks said. He was playing a game on the communal Xbox.
“She couldn’t have been held up. The walk from there to the Roman wall can’t be more than ten minutes.”
“Does she know who she’s looking for?”
“Of course she knows who she’s looking for. They were in love a few years ago.”
Socks paused his game and turned to K-Os.
“You’re wondering why two people who used to date a few years ago are having communication problems?”
“Surely she must see that there are bigger things than her personal issues.”
Socks cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s how it works, K-Os.”
“You people really do confuse me,” K-Os said. “Your priorities are so utterly skewed.”
“It’s our fatal flaw.”
“Yes, you are absolutely correct on that.”
“I just hope she’s okay,” Socks said.
“She can look after herself.”
Socks looked away, thinking about his conversation with Daisy a few weeks prior – his last conversation with Daisy.
He sighed. “Did you know that me and Daisy aren’t friends any more?”
“No,” K-Os replied. “Why?”
“She was angry that we came to her show, knowing we could invite dangerous people.”
“Well, everyone was all right, weren’t they?”
“No,” Socks said.
“What do you mean?”
“The guitarist of Ella Foe and the Oscillations – Jules – died. He was murdered by Derrick le Prince.”
K-Os looked up from her phone and was quiet for a few moments.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I thought you knew.”
“No,” K-Os replied. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“This is what I mean, K-Os. We’re getting people killed. Daisy stopped talking to me because I was too much of an arsehole to recognise that. We’re not playing a game here—”
“And if Daisy cannot recognise the graveness of the situation, that is her issue,” K-Os said. “It is unfortunate that she lost someone she cared about. If I could prevent every death in this fight, I would. But I can’t. The only way to stop people dying is to fight these people head-on. Some of us may die to prevent that, but that is the price we pay to protect reality as we know it. Daisy has acquired abilities of her own. She is as much a part of this fight as you. Even if she runs, they will come for her. That is the truth of the situation.”
Socks leaned back in his seat. He was reminded of his mother’s anxiety in the hospital.
“K-Os,” he said. “Would it be okay if I went to see my parents?”
“Yes,” K-Os said. “So long as you keep this a secret.”
“That’s the thing,” Socks said. “I want to tell them about my abilities.”
K-Os blinked twice.
“Why would you want to do something so stupid?”
“Because I feel terrible lying to them about what I’ve been doing,” Socks elaborated. “I want to tell them. It’s right what you’re saying. I could die in this war. You could die in this war. And I don’t want my parents to not know what’s going on.”
“Your parents are safer not knowing,” K-Os said.
“I’m hurting them if I don’t tell them.”
“You’re hurting them more if you do.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Socks asked.
“Keep quiet, that’s what I suggest,” K-Os snapped. “After we have won, then you can tell them.”
A silence fell in the room. K-Os went back to her phone. “I really hope Dolly phones soon.”
“Me too,” Socks replied, but his mind was preoccupied with something else.
*
Dolly crouched in the forest, beneath the yellow sky. The purple trees blew in the breeze. That damned smell filled the air.
She rummaged in her bag, pulling out her Zenit camera. She pointed it up at the sky and snapped a picture of the forest canopy, then quickly packed it back in.
Next to her, a small flower grew from the ground spontaneously, a rose with white petals, whose tips were blue and red.
“You can’t hide, Dolly,” the flower said. “You are trapped in my psychic space. The totality of this space is me. You cannot escape.”
“Then kill me,” Dolly replied.
“No,” the Fliss-flower replied. “I owe you a personal execution.”
“You lied to me,” Dolly said. “You let me believe you still loved me.”
“I do still love you.”
“No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t be trying to kill me.”
“Dolly, these things are so much bigger than us. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to make it quick for you. K-Os’s side is the side of oblivion. It’s not personal, I promise.”
Dolly stared at the flower for a few moments.
“You evil BITCH!” she screamed, clutching a bundle of liquorice cables in her hand, which she swatted at the flower, decapitating it. The stem retreated back into the ground.
There was the sound of footsteps and snapping twigs from somewhere in the distance. Dolly could see her approaching, like the Grim Reaper, carrying that scythe.
“Please, Dolly,” Fliss said, desperately. “Come out, so I can finish this.”
“Make me!” Dolly shouted.
“No.”
“Then let me go!”
“I can’t do that,” Fliss replied.
“Why? Did I mean nothing to you, Fliss?”
“No, it’s just…we are the side of good, Dolly.”
“Did they convince you of that when you turned?”
“I didn’t turn, Dolly.”
“Yes you did, you liar!” Dolly shouted.
“No,” Fliss replied. “At first, I really was working as a mole. I really was gathering information on them. But the more people on their side I met, the more I began to realise the truth of what they were saying. What they were teaching. We may use violent methods, but we are not evil. K-Os and the Product, they are the evil ones. I didn’t turn, Dolly. I merely realised which side was the side of good.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You couldn’t understand. Not unless you were also willing to defect.”
“You know that I’m not.”
“Exactly. That is why I have to kill you.”
There was a moment of silence, then a crinkling of a wrapper.
Something sailed through the air towards Fliss and exploded in a ball of fire. The forest floor almost immediately burst into flames.
Dolly discarded the Mars Bar wrapper on the ground and fled, escaping the burning forest, running back out into the field of flowers. She ran on to the dirt path, pulling out her camera and taking another picture.
“Why are you taking those pictures?” the flowers asked, in the voice of a tiny legion.
“I’m psychically connected to the camera,” Dolly replied. “It tells me information about anything I take pictures of.”
“And what is it telling you?”
“That you don’t really want to kill me.”
“That’s right.”
“Then don’t.”
“I have no other choice.”
“Bullshit.”
“Dolly—”
“No, you listen to me. You’re telling yourself a fucking fairytale, Fliss. You want to believe that you have to kill me because of these notions of personal loyalty, because you want to believe that you are more moral and justified in your actions that way. But that’s not the truth, is it? The truth is that you were too fucking cowardly to tell me you wanted to end the relationship, so you fucked off with that lot for years, and when they gave you an out, an opportunity to finally get away from me, you took it. You’re not killing me because you think it’s the right thing to do. You’re killing me because you want to wipe the slate clean and pretend I never existed. Don’t pretend that you’re motivated by politics here. You’re a fucking coward. That’s all you are and all you ever will be. And if you kill me, you’ll prove me right.”
There was silence for a few moments.
A column of fire ripped from the forest, and atop it was Fliss, riding her scythe into the sky. She somersaulted forwards, grabbing it as she flew down, swinging it. Her eyes flowed with tears, and her face was filled with an incomprehensible rage.
“You know nothing!” she screamed, swinging the blade.
Dolly reached into her bag and withdrew a bag of Wine Gums, which she threw overarm at Fliss. It burst in Fliss’s face and knocked her into the field of flowers, where she crashed to the ground.
Despite herself, Dolly watched where Fliss fell, and ran through the field.
Fliss was laying in a patch of flowers, motionless. The smell of her lingered.
“Fliss?” Dolly asked. “Are you okay?”
Fliss sat up, bloodied and bruised. “Yes,” she said, smiling. She held up an arm.
A mass of flowers burst from the ground and coiled their stems around Dolly’s arms and legs, rendering her unable to move.
“I’ve never been better,” Fliss said.
*
“I’m hungry,” Socks said, getting up from the sofa. “Can I get you anything, while I’m up?”
“No, that’s alright,” K-Os replied.
He grabbed a small bag of bread and opened it, removed two slices and popped them into a crap toaster that he’d bought before starting uni, which was by now covered in disgusting sticky stains, the origin of which he had decided not to dwell too long on. He set the dial for four – he had learned quite quickly that the adage that the numbers on a toaster dial are equivalents to minutes of toasting time was total nonsense, and eyeballing it was better. Therefore he set the dial for four, and resolved to eject the toast after around one minute and fifty seconds of toasting.
“Look at me,” he said. “Making toast while people want me dead.”
K-Os said nothing.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“If I’m being honest,” K-Os replied, “I’m feeling uneasy.”
“That’s not like you.”
“I’m worried that we can’t win this war. Every fight we’ve won along the way has been through sheer luck.”
“Don’t talk like that. I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”
“I have done this for so long,” K-Os said. “And I’m tired of it. I just want to finish it, so I can rest.”
“As soon as Dolly gets back to us, we’ll be one step closer to that,” Socks said. He smelled something. “Oh, shit!”
He quickly hit the “Cancel” button on the toaster, ejecting some rather blackened pieces of toast, and quickly put them on a plate, while painfully intoning “Ooh, that’s hot, oh, that’s hot.”
K-Os looked at him. “I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this, Socks.”
Socks went to the fridge and pulled out some butter, then to the cupboard and pulled out some Marmite.
“Don’t be. It’s my fault for being nosy. I probably should have left well enough alone.” He grinned.
“I want to apologise to Daisy as well. But I expect she won’t want to see me again.”
“We live and we learn,” Socks said. “Sometimes the best thing is to keep your distance.”
“We have to beat the Grey Man,” K-Os said. “If his abilities are what I think they are, no-one is safe as long as that man draws breath.”
Socks buttered the toast and spread it with Marmite.
“We’ll survive, no matter what happens,” he said.
K-Os simply looked at him, silently.
“I envy the human capacity for reckless optimism,” she said. “Even in the face of apocalypse.”
“If we didn’t have that, we’d have all crawled into dark holes and died by now,” Socks said, biting into a slice of toast. “If there’s one thing that unites us as a species, it’s that we’ve evolved to use our stupidity to our advantage.”
“And somehow you survive, after plagues, wars, and more paradigm shifts than I can count. I’ve watched you people since you were four-foot-tall apes. Look at you now.”
“Have we done a good job?” Socks asked, facetiously.
“That remains to be seen,” K-Os replied.
*
Dolly strained against the stems that gripped her arms.
“Your powers have developed,” she said. Fliss seemed to be pacing around her, unsure of what to do. “This is very new. You couldn’t do this the last time I saw you.”
“Shut up,” Fliss said.
“Feeling guilty?”
“No, I just don’t want to be reminded of those days. That Felicity you knew is dead.”
“Last time I saw you, you were able to create small pocket realities that had cartoon physics. I thought that was cute. I see you’ve matured.”
“I was a teenager and I thought it was funny. I’m a woman now. I have no time for stupidity like that.”
“And I suppose you think the same of me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you implied it.”
Fliss held her scythe to Dolly’s neck. “I’ll kill you right here.”
“Then do it.”
Fliss faltered for a moment. “I’m building up to it.”
“You can’t kill me. You know it would destroy you.”
“No. I can’t kill you because…because…”
“Why?” Dolly asked.
“Because I still love you, Dolly. After all this time. I wanted to make this quick. I just wanted it over quickly so I could move on. But then…”
“What?”
“You looked at me, with those eyes. And I remembered you and what we were. And now I have to kill you, but I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have to,” Dolly said. “You can come back. I won’t tell K-Os about anything.”
“I have already explained why that isn’t an option,” Fliss said. “Dolly, I’m giving you an opportunity here. Please take it. Join us. Become an umbric user. We can maintain order, together.”
“You’ve changed, Fliss. What happened to the rebel I used to know? The girl who used to spraypaint slogans on the pavement?”
“I grew up,” Fliss spat. “Why haven’t you?”
There was a silence.
“What do you mean by that?” Dolly asked.
“Still playing with candy like you’re a baby. Look at you, it’s pathetic. I grew out of that childish shit years ago.”
“Oh, please. You still dress like a clown.”
“This is harlequinade.”
“Oh, excuse me – a pretentious clown.”
“Besides, you can talk, still dressing like that. How many cavities have you developed after your years of eating sweets?”
“None,” Dolly said. “Thanks to my abilities.”
“Tch,” Fliss said. “This is why you and I never worked. Because you’re immature, and I’m not. I’m ready to grow up and face the grim realities of the world, and you still want to live out this idealistic fantasy.”
“She says, from inside her idealistic fantasy world.”
Fliss scowled, gritting her teeth in rage, and readied the scythe once again.
“You’re beginning to push your luck.”
Dolly laughed, mockingly. “Oh, bra-vo. They taught you how to play tough girl, did they?”
“I’m being serious,” Fliss growled.
“You’ll never kill me.”
“Want to bet?”
“You won’t kill me, because you love—”
“SHUT UP!” Fliss yelled, scrunching her eyes.
She swung the scythe, and there was the sound of something sharp hitting something soft.
She opened her eyes.
Before her stood Dolly, her head very much still on her shoulders…and the stems that held her arms in place had been severed. Blood from thorns dripped down her arms.
Wordlessly, Dolly lunged forward, taking Fliss’s momentary loss of focus as a window through which she could extricate her legs from their bonds, and punched her in the face. Fliss fell, and her blade clattered to the floor.
Dolly leapt on her and hailed fists down on her head, smearing her makeup and bruising her face.
She continued hitting Fliss until she surrendered.
Panting, Dolly fell backwards, leaving Fliss splayed on the ground, her face bleeding from the assault.
“Please,” Dolly said. “Just let me go.”
“No,” Fliss replied.
“I don’t want to hurt you any more. For God’s sake, Fliss, it’s over. Give up.”
Fliss sat up, unsteadily. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and blood dripped from her mouth.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Dolly stood up and walked over to Fliss. She held a hand out to her.
“Come on,” she said. “Get up.”
Fliss grabbed it, and hoisted herself up.
“I’m sorry,” Dolly said. “I really am sorry for hitting you.”
“No,” Fliss said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay…I’m just glad you’ve seen sense.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Fliss replied.
A tidal wave of flowers burst from the ground and wrapped themselves around Dolly, encasing her up to her neck in a cocoon of thorns. Dolly cried out.
Fliss retrieved her scythe from the ground.
“I’m sorry, Dolores,” she said. “But I’ve made my mind up. This ends now.”
“Fliss…” Dolly wheezed, weakly.
“I love you, Dolly. I wish you the very best. But it’s time for us to part ways.”
Tears fell from Dolly’s eyes.
“I love you, too,” she said.
Fliss stepped forwards, raising the scythe, ready to kill.
She wavered for a moment and lowered the blade.
Gently, she placed a hand on Dolly’s chin, and raised her face to meet hers. They shared a final, deep kiss, and both remembered what had once been, and what could never again be.
After a short time, Fliss finally pulled away from Dolly, then took firm hold of her scythe again.
She raised it, ready at last to finally end it, to complete her mission, to join the other side.
She moved to swing it down…
The scythe clattered to the floor.
Fliss cried out, and fell to the ground, writhing.
She moaned, clutching at her stomach.
“What have…what have you done to me?!” she shrieked, wracked by paroxysms of pain.
The thorns instantly rotted. Dolly punched her way out of the cocoon, kicking the scythe away.
“You’re not the only one that has been developing your powers over time,” she said. “I’ve also developed a new ability since you last saw me.”
Fliss cried out in pain, trying to get away from the advancing girl who loomed like a giant above her.
“Dolly…pl-please…make it stop…”
“You see, I don’t just turn sweets into bombs any more. Did you know that the human body contains approximately four grams of glucose at any given time? That’s not a huge amount, but it’s enough to start a chain reaction with the glucose in your body, as well. Do you want to know what I just did, Fliss? I just turned you into a ticking time bomb.”
“Reverse it, please, I’m begging you!”
“It’s too late for that now,” Dolly said, bitterly. “I gave you an opportunity to escape…I gave you an out, just like they did. And instead of taking it, you tried to kill me, after all we went through together. You leave me no other choice. I’m sorry, Fliss. I really am.”
“Please,” Fliss said. “PLEASE!”
Dolly stood silently over her.
Fliss gasped in pain and then screamed, screamed the agony of a snared and mauled prey animal, screamed the scream of finality.
There was an explosion. It sounded like a gun going off in the middle of the woods.
The Blossom World immediately disappeared, and Dolly found herself back in the castle park, by the old Roman wall, laying next to Fliss. Her wedge heels lay a small distance away.
Fliss was mortally wounded, her body streaked with blood and burns. Her scythe lay beside her, cracked. It was beginning to burn up.
Dolly crawled over to her and put her arms around her. Fliss had been blinded in one eye by the explosion. With a blood-streaked hand, she reached up to Dolly’s face.
“Oh, Dolly, my Dolly,” she said, softly. “Oh, what have you done?”
“I’m sorry, Fliss,” Dolly replied, her eyes welling up.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” Fliss said. “I really am…”
“It should never have ended up like this,” Dolly said. “Never.”
“Dolly…” Fliss said. “His name is…his name is…”
She coughed violently, spitting up blood, convulsing. She could no longer speak. With her last strength, she put her hands around the back of Dolly’s neck, and pulled her in close, to whisper in her ear.
“His…name…is…Chesterton,” she murmured, almost silently.
“Thank you, Fliss,” Dolly said. “I’m so sorry…”
There was a pregnant pause.
“…I love you,” Dolly said.
“I love you too,” Fliss mouthed.
And the light died in her eyes.
Her scythe burst into flames, and with it, her corpse disappeared, and Dolly was left on the grass, alone.
Dolly stood up, uneasily.
Numbly, she reached into her bag, and picked up her phone, dialling the number. It rang for a few moments.
“Hello?”
“Hey, K-Os. It’s Dolly.”
“Did you get the information we needed?”
Dolly looked off into the distance, across the fields and the lake, where ducks softly quacked in the dimming light. She inhaled. She could no longer smell her. She would never smell her again.
“Yeah,” Dolly said. “I did.”
“Good. Tell Felicity I said thank you.”
“I can’t,” Dolly replied.
“What? Why?”
“She’s dead, K-Os.”
“Dead? But how…”
“I think you had better come here,” Dolly said. “Meet me in the dessert café.”
With that, she hung up, put her wedge heels on, and staggered out of the park, wounded, but alive.
*
Dolly had a haunted look in her eyes. Socks had seen that look before, in his hospital room, a few weeks prior.
“What happened?” K-Os asked, pointedly.
Socks looked at Dolly, then back at K-Os. “For God’s sake, K-Os, look at her. She’s in shock.”
“I need to know,” K-Os snapped. “Why is one of our agents dead? Who killed her?”
“I did,” Dolly said.
“You killed her?”
“Yes,” Dolly replied. “I burned her alive. Destroyed her.”
They were sitting in the dessert café where K-Os had initially met Dolly. It was getting dark and the place was starting to get busy.
“But why?” K-Os asked. “She was the only one who could give us information.”
“She was a traitor, K-Os,” Dolly said, gazing strongly at her. “She wasn’t a mole. She defected for real and joined their side. The whole thing was a setup, so she could kill me.”
K-Os sat back. “Is this the truth?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence for a few moments.
“Fuck,” K-Os said.
“I managed to get some information out of her,” Dolly said. “Before she died.”
“Yes?” K-Os said. “Like what?”
Dolly sighed. “K-Os, can I ask you something?”
“I need that information, Dolly.”
“You’ll fucking get it IN A MINUTE,” Dolly roared, loudly enough for other patrons to turn their heads. “FUCKING LISTEN TO ME FOR TEN SECONDS, YOU ARROGANT BITCH.”
K-Os was stunned by the girl’s anger. Socks knew well that it took a lot to startle K-Os.
Dolly buried her head in her hands, shuddered and cried, then wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“Did she…did she ever talk about me, K-Os? Did she ever…say she missed me?”
K-Os seemed dumbfounded, like she didn’t know what to say.
“I…can’t recall,” she said. “Once or twice she may have asked about how you were. I had assumed that after the termination of your relationship you would have no interest in each other…”
“See, that’s your fucking problem,” Dolly said, bitterly. “You have no idea how to relate to us humans, do you? K-Os, the rollerskater, the great goddess of chaos. We’re nothing but ants under your feet.”
“That isn’t true,” K-Os said.
“We’re just your pawns to sacrifice in the pursuit of a greater good. That’s all we’ll ever be.”
“Dolly…”
“It’s no wonder she defected. No wonder at all.”
Socks fidgeted uncomfortably, unwilling to speak. He could only watch silently.
“Today, she told me that on the other side…they think you are the evil one. That you are the villain of this story. And right now, I’m having a hard time not believing it.”
K-Os remained silent.
“Whatever,” Dolly said, coldly. “Ask me what you have to ask.”
“I…need his name,” K-Os said, quietly.
Dolly inhaled deeply and exhaled.
“Chesterton,” she said. “No forenames.”
“Did you find anything else out about him?”
“Yes, actually,” Dolly said.
She pulled out her camera, the one she had used to take the picture of the watertower back in the village those months ago.
“While I was in her psychic space, I was able to take a few pictures. She apparently hadn’t sealed off enough of her ego-essence. Enormous security holes, amateur-hour stuff.”
Dolly did something to the camera, made some kind of hand movement, and a photograph manifested in her hand, as though it had been professionally developed.
She slid the photo across the table towards K-Os.
The photograph had been taken in portrait orientation. It depicted a dark corridor, and standing in the middle of it, partly obscured by shadow, was a man.
He wore an impeccably-tailored grey suit, a grey shirt, and a grey tie. His skin seemed to be as grey as the suit he wore. His face, though not fully visible, was framed by a pair of semi-rimless spectacles, through which his eyes seemed to shine. Most disturbingly, he seemed to stare right at the camera, as though he knew he was being looked at. He grinned widely – diabolically.
Socks knew at once that this must be the Grey Man – Chesterton.
“We have a name,” K-Os said. “And we know what he looks like. This is very helpful…”
“Pleasure to be of service,” Dolly said, resentfully, rising to leave.
She began to walk, and then turned. “K-Os?”
K-Os looked up at her.
“I will never forgive you for today. I want you to carry that with you for the rest of your life.”
K-Os looked away, and Dolly turned on her heel and walked out.
Socks looked at her for a few moments.
“Are you alright?”
“No,” K-Os said. “No, I’m not.”
He tried to put an arm around her, but like a cat, she swatted him away.
“Go home, Socks,” she said, irritably. “I need to be alone.”
Socks nodded, and got up to leave the café.
He looked behind him as he left.
K-Os sat silently, staring at the wall.
The door closed behind him, and he walked off into the night, alone.
Another time, another place…
This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
ARC ONE: UMBRIC SPRING
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