Rollerskater: Her
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
This instalment contains themes of gender dysphoria, transphobia and trauma. It also contains scenes of graphic violence.
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With thanks to Jo, who made Chelsea Rose the character she is.
Chelsea could not see herself in the mirror.
The person she saw in the mirror was dressed in a red Spider-Man shirt and blue jeans, with short, spiked hair, and big, thick-rimmed glasses.
She had just had the epiphany that this person was not her.
That person was a young boy, with a different name. The same white hair, the same parents, the same toys and books, but he was not Chelsea. He was somebody else, and she was expected to be him.
Mum entered the room, ruffling Chelsea’s hair and seating herself on the bed behind her.
“There he is,” she said. “My handsome little man.”
There was a horror that gripped Chelsea’s heart, and an indescribable emotion like a sadness she had never felt before, a screaming chasm in the centre of her being that looked almost like a fading image of the future, and the life she could never have.
It was a feeling she’d had a few times, laying in her racing-car bed, clutching dollies she had stolen from her older sister’s toybox, hiding them between the radiator and the mattress. But it had never been this strong before. Now it was forceful, irrepressible, ever-present.
It was as though the realisation looking in the mirror was petrol, and her mother’s comment was a lit match. Something began to burn inside her skull, a pain whose origin and mechanism of action could not be spoken.
She burst into tears on the spot. Mum came to her side, crouching and putting arms around her.
“No need for tears,” she said. “What on Earth’s the matter?”
Chelsea babbled a few words, wiping tears away from her eyes. But they were meaningless, so meaningless that almost twenty years later she would not remember them.
The words were something like “I don’t like it when you say that.”
Not understanding, Mum tried to her best to wipe the tears away from Chelsea’s eyes.
“There’s no need for all that crying,” she said. “Big boys don’t cry. You are a big boy, aren’t you?”
And somehow that was like twisting the knife, because Chelsea had no answer for it. A few years later, she would have been able to say, “No, I’m not.” But right now, here she was, small and frightened and miserable, wearing clothes that were wrong, with hair too short and a heart that hurt in ways that were inexpressible.
So instead, she said, “But I’m just so sad.”
“Everyone gets sad!” Mum said. “It’s alright to be sad. But you mustn’t cry all the time. What will the other boys think if they see you crying, eh?”
What the “other” boys might think, indeed, was that she was a girl.
But she was a girl. She was a girl.
And the crying abated momentarily, as she realised something.
“I’m a girl,” she said.
Mum looked at her strangely.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re a boy.”
There had been a moment of happiness. But it was gone now. And so, the crying continued.
“You’ve spent too much time hanging around girls,” Mum said, indignantly. “You ought to be spending time with other boys.”
Chelsea was too exhausted to argue. She whimpered, “Yes, Mum.”
“That’s a good boy,” Mum said. And she walked away.
*
She could see the dynamite sailing towards them.
The realisation didn’t strike Chelsea until the moment it left Mr. Ection’s hand.
There was an eye stuck over her eye, swivelling in nystagmus. But the eye was able to see where the dynamite was going, and where it would land.
Wasting no time, she threw herself at Dolly, knocking her to the ground, as the dynamite went sailing past them, bouncing against a large boulder and detonating violently enough to rend the rock into sand.
She sat up and looked at Ection, who pouted childishly, stamping his feet like an overgrown toddler.
“Not fair!” he said, turning to Pretty Priscilla. “Priscilla, be a sweetheart and murder them for me, would you? I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Aye-aye,” Priscilla replied, saluting him.
Ection clicked his fingers and vanished, taking with him the backdrop of boulders and sand, and suddenly they found themselves in a drizzly concrete square outside a set of post-war office buildings somewhere in Greater Manchester. A concrete bench – designed to be uncomfortable and hostile to prevent unhoused people from sleeping on it – had been destroyed by the blast, cracked and disintegrated into silicate dust.
Chelsea got to her feet, helping Dolly up also. Pretty Priscilla smiled.
“You were lucky,” she said. “But your luck is running out.”
Chelsea wanted to respond with something infuriating, something like “Is that a bet?”
The mouth, instead, uttered: “My own mother pretends I don’t exist.”
The words hurt. She didn’t want Dolly to hear them. But she couldn’t focus on that.
No, she was focused on evening up the odds.
The eye was still swivelling, but she could make out roughly where Priscilla was standing.
And it was then that Priscilla noticed what Chelsea Rose had been clutching in her hand the whole time.
In one swift movement, Chelsea charged at the woman, striking her once across the face with her cane, hard enough that the cane snapped into two pieces.
Pretty Priscilla howled and wailed in pain, falling to the ground.
“Oh Christ!” she shrieked. “I’m BLIND!”
That makes two of us, Chelsea thought.
With that, she set upon the stricken woman with a viciousness and ferocity that surpised even her.
*
Dhoot, dhoot
The tram came careening towards them. They could not leap out of the way. From the driver’s perspective, two women had suddenly appeared in front of her on the tram tracks, and there was no time to slam the brakes.
“Shit!” Nas shouted, holding her arms up in front of her face reflexively.
A few moments passed.
She lowered her arms and looked at Ella.
The tram had come to a complete standstill, as though it were a video, and had simply been paused.
The side of the tram opened, and out stepped a short, plump figure wearing a yellow jacket and red boots. The figure approached them, with an incredulous expression on her face.
She gestured to them to step away from the tracks.
Ella and Nas stepped away from the tracks and on to the pavement, and the yellow-jacketed woman banged her palm twice on the side of the tram, as though it were a stopped horse. The tram whinnied back to life and continued on its journey as usual, the driver apparently unaware just how close she had come to killing two people.
“What the hell are you two doing playing silly buggers on the tracks?” asked Demeter Lincoln.
“We didn’t do it on purpose,” Nas said.
“Sorry, who is this?” Ella asked.
Demi pulled out one of her yellow business cards, manifesting it in her hand.
“Demeter Lincoln, Spirit of Greater Manchester Transport,” she said. “I’m a friend of Nas.”
“Ella Foe,” Ella replied. “I’m Nas’s minder.”
Nas scowled.
“What on Earth is going on?” Demi asked. “I…oh God.”
The tram had passed, and visible on the other side of the tracks was a pinkish-purple pile of destroyed meat, sitting in a dark red puddle, peppered with chits of splintered bone.
She reflexively wrinkled her nose in disgust, flinching away from the sight.
“Seriously, what the hell happened here?” she asked.
“FERDINAND!”
The three of them turned.
His face twisted in rage and despair, there stood Martin S. Martinez. If he was not the original, then he was a very immediate duplicate, his mole and eyebrow scar clearly visible.
“He killed himself,” Ella said. “Threw himself into his own machine.” It wasn’t even really a lie.
“Give up!” Nas shouted.
“Would anyone care to explain what’s going on?” Demi asked.
Martinez shook with rage.
“Ferdinand was only trying to do what was right,” he said. “And you terrorist motherfuckers killed him.”
Ella had already begun to turn around, because she knew what was coming next.
With a terrible, guttural yell, Martinez exploded into an enormous array of screaming duplicates like a deck of cards being flourished by a dealer. He did not cease until he had amassed a small army of himself, each of whom began to charge at them.
At this, Nas and Demi followed Ella, and began to run deeper into the city.
“We’ve got to stop him,” Ella said. “We need to keep an eye out for the original.”
“How do we do that?” Demi asked.
“I’ll explain on the way,” Ella said.
“If you say so,” Demi replied. “Least I can do is buy us some time. This way! I know a shortcut!”
They barrelled into one of the back streets, pursued by an army of duplicates.
“Where have Dolly and Chelsea got to?” Nas wondered aloud.
*
It is said that women like Chelsea Rose were born in the wrong body. But that isn’t true. A body is a plastic thing, unnaturally restricted by the twin forces of culture and sensibility. And so, Chelsea hid herself away for many years, behind a false name, behind aggression. In that time, her heart felt cold and empty. But she was Chelsea all the while.
Eventually, the day came that she abandoned her old name entirely. There is power in names. By choosing a new one, she could be reborn. By any means possible, she destroyed her old name, blotting it out wherever she could. This record is no exception.
Some time afterwards, she told her parents of this. She had hoped, in her heart, that her parents would understand.
Her mother wept, and her father became angry.
And so, late one cold and rainy night, she packed whatever she could carry into a rucksack and caught a cab by standing for a long and terrifying quarter-of-an-hour with her arm stuck out by the side of the road, scared out of her wits that her mother or father, whom she could not see, would come to drag her back home any moment.
After a long and tense journey, she stuffed all the money she had into the hand of the driver and ran, making her way towards a flat block in Southwark with only a white cane to guide her.
Auntie Trish, her father’s sister, opened the door to the sight of a neighbour from another block, her face the image of concern, and a frozen and frightened fourteen-year-old, her chin-length white hair wet with rain, who immediately burst into tears.
Chelsea explained what had happened with her father, the threats he had made. Trish was outraged. She never forgave her brother for what he had said to his own blood. She had always been fond of Chelsea, and, making her a hot mug of Ovaltine, promised to take her under her wing.
Chelsea went to bed that night feeling guilty for imposing on her aunt and uncle.
The next morning, she sat down with Trish and Uncle Baz, and explained what was going on, why she had changed her name, and why she had felt it imperative to flee across the river from Newham to Southwark at eleven o’clock of night on a weekday.
Baz was a nice man, but slow on the uptake. He meant well, but he didn’t quite understand the change, continuing to refer to Chelsea as his “nephew”. Still, he agreed to let her stay. He said he strongly believed that blood was thicker than water. Chelsea apologised over and over, but Trish told her that she was welcome to stay as long as she pleased, so long as she kept attending school.
Things started to look up, for a while.
Trish and Baz, who had never had children of their own, became Chelsea’s primary caregivers. Trish took her to the GP to register for a consultation, and after much back-and-forth, she was finally placed on a waiting list for treatment.
Eventually, Uncle Baz got the hang of the new name and pronouns. He began to make an effort to refer to Chelsea by that name, and started to call her his “niece”.
It wasn’t all plain sailing. More than once, Chelsea’s parents arrived with a car ready to take her back, but each time, they were refused by an irate Trish while Chelsea hid in the spare room, listening to her father’s voice grow louder and louder.
In the end, they stopped coming. They didn’t even attempt to get the authorities involved.
Her parents had abandoned her. She never heard from them again.
For her fifteenth birthday, Trish took her clothes shopping, where she tried on dresses for the first time.
She spent hours trying different clothes, asking her aunt how she looked and being assured she looked beautiful, but none of the dresses felt right.
She became momentarily upset, wondering if all this upheaval and change in her life had been part of a big lie she’d been telling herself. Perhaps, she thought, she really had been a boy all along, and the argument with her parents and the running away had been for nothing.
Her aunt handed her a pair of jeans and a women’s fitted tee, telling her to try them on.
Chelsea did.
She fell in love with them straight away, and she and her aunt found several more, buying the lot. She laughed and cried all the way home, finally feeling like she could look the way she had always felt.
After that incident, she came to realise that there were dimensions to femininity, that womanhood was a personal experience, embodied by conscious performance. For a long time, she had believed that to be a woman, she had to fit certain standards of behaviour, to be delicate, to wear certain clothes, to wear makeup and to paint her nails.
But she knew now that this was a womanhood, not womanhood itself. And so she chose to wear what she liked best. She ceased to wear makeup, ceased having her aunt polish her fingernails and toenails with anything but clear varnish.
She began the long process not just of becoming a woman, but of becoming Chelsea Rose.
*
“I sometimes think a girl like you could do much better than me!” Chelsea’s mouth shouted.
Dolly shook her head, watching as her girlfriend threw herself at Pretty Priscilla, straddling her and raining down blows on her face. Priscilla’s face erupted in great blue-black welts, with gouts of blood issuing from her mouth.
“Stop it!” Priscilla screamed. “Stop! STOP!”
The mouth affixed to Chelsea’s face obeyed its mistress, and as Chelsea raised her fist once again, the mouth launched forward and crunched its teeth into Chelsea’s right bicep. Chelsea clutched her right arm with her left and fell away from the injured Priscilla, who struggled to her feet. She spat blood on the concrete, feeling around in her mouth with her tongue.
In the puddle of blood was a premolar, something Priscilla was too preoccupied or rattled to notice.
“Sometimes when I’m alone, I fantasise about being with someone else!” Dolly’s mouth shouted. The mouth affixed to Chelsea’s face remained quiet.
Priscilla swayed, trying to steady herself with the scythe.
“You…nearly killed me,” she wheezed, nasally. Her nose had been bent out of shape, such was the violence of Chelsea’s attack.
“I worry that I’m just damaged goods,” Chelsea’s mouth replied, nonsequitur.
Dolly looked at Chelsea, who looked back at her.
“I’m too fucked up for someone like you,” her mouth said.
“How could you love someone with a body like mine?” Chelsea’s mouth replied.
Dolly stepped back.
She had realised something.
A tear dripped from Chelsea’s uncorrupted eye, horrified at what the mouth was saying.
But it wasn’t what the mouth had said that had triggered the realisation.
It was what the mouth had done.
Each mouth could only speak one at a time.
Chelsea’s attack had limited Priscilla’s concentration on the mouths. She could only reliably control one at a time.
Dolly turned to Priscilla, who was still blinded. Furrowing her brow in hatred, she reached into her pocket.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Dolly withdrew a handful of jelly beans.
“Mouth, what is she—”
The beans glowed with an eerie gold light. Without hesitation, she tossed them into Priscilla’s face.
Priscilla had no time to react.
The jellybeans exploded instantly, burning her face and knocking her on to her back.
As Priscilla hit the ground, winded, Dolly felt a release of pressure.
The eye that had been affixed to her face peeled off and fell away, landing on the ground in a quivering heap.
Wordlessly, Dolly stepped on the eye, smearing it on the ground like dog muck.
Chelsea looked at Dolly with her swivelling eye, and Dolly motioned with her hands to attack Priscilla once again.
Priscilla roared in anger.
“I’ll get you both for that!” she bellowed.
She swung her scythe, and from it issued a cascade of body parts – hairy hands with broken nails, mutilated ears, legs with knobbly knees, feet wearing incongruous shoes.
The parts affixed themselves to Chelsea and Dolly, who turned involuntarily to face each other.
“Now let’s see how you really feel,” Priscilla hissed, getting back to her feet, as the two launched themselves at each other, locked by force into a wrestler’s grip.
Pretty Priscilla clutched her scythe in both hands as the two women fought against their will.
“The mouths don’t lie,” she said, spitefully. “Hurting each other is all you’re good for…”
*
From around a corner came a pale, thin man. He looked as though he was made from papier-mâché, brittle and ghostly.
The figure stumbled towards them, arms outstretched, zombie-like.
With a blast of energy, he was destroyed in an instant, shredded to ribbons.
“He’s running out of duplicates,” Ella observed, muting the strings on the guitar. “This way.”
They darted into a back-alley, the sort of place that would be called a ginnel in Mancunian slang.
Demi placed her hands on her knees, steadying herself against the wall.
“God,” she said. “D’you girls like to run, or what?”
“It’s kind of a running theme with us,” Ella said, smiling. “No pun intended.”
Nas said nothing.
“We need to find Chelsea and Dolly,” Ella said. “Something tells me that they’re in trouble, too.”
Nas shook her head.
“Is this the rest of me life?” she lamented. “Running ‘round Manchester like a scared rat?”
“Hopefully not for much longer,” Ella replied.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Nas said. “I was just living my life when the government decided I shouldn’t exist. Shit, man.” She turned her eyes to the ground.
Demi tightened the corner of her mouth sympathetically and placed a hand on Nas’s shoulder. Nas looked at her, then back at the ground.
Quietly, there came the sound of footsteps.
“We’d better get moving again,” Ella said.
“No,” Nas replied.
Ella was genuinely taken aback.
“What?”
“I said, ‘No’.”
“Nas,” Demi whispered. “He’s going to kill us.”
“So what are we running for? Wasting our energy? Last time this happened, we ran away. Yet again, we’re running away. We shouldn’t have to run away. We should be fighting this lot.”
“Nas…” Ella said.
“No!” Nas said. “We’re not running until we pass out. I’m fucking done with running. We’re not giving up. We’re fighting our way out of this.”
Ella’s shimmering, pearlescent eyes looked up at the grey, overcast sky, then down at the ground.
“Alright,” she said. “I trust you.”
“Ella!” Demi hissed.
Ella shot her a glare.
Demi drew back and turned away, forming her hands into claws as she clutched at the air in frustration. She turned back around, pouting.
“Alright,” she said. “I trust you, too, Nas.”
“All for one and one for all,” Nas said, smiling slyly.
The footsteps grew louder.
A crowd of duplicates thundered past the alleyway in search of the three.
One stopped, equally as pale-faced, his face disfigured and distorted, the nose just two snake-like slits in the centre of his face, the eyes two sunken black marbles, with a mouth that resembled a child’s scribble.
“Innnn heeerreeeee,” the degraded Martinez said.
The duplicates turned, gathering around the entrance to the alleyway, pushing their way through.
Nas turned to Ella.
“You trust me, aye?”
“Aye,” Ella replied.
Nas smiled. “You got a cable for that guitar of yours?”
Ella raised an eyebrow, confused. Nas raised both her eyebrows in response.
Ella thought for a moment.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my God.”
“What?” Demi said. “I really hope you’ve thought of something!”
The crowd of Martinezes was nearly upon them, ready to tear them limb from limb, their arms and hands stretching towards them, but they were buffeted by each other, falling over each other like a slow stampede.
Waving her hand, Ella manifested a cable plugged into the bottom of the guitar, holding the other end in her hand, which she passed to Nas.
“Best cover your ears,” she said, grinning. “This is gonna get loud.”
Nas placed the end of the cable between her teeth.
Just as the horde had them backed right against the wall, Ella struck the strings of the guitar.
The sound, channelled through Nas’s mouth, was amplified a thousandfold. Bricks shook, dust fell, somewhere was the sound of shattering glass.
They had no time to run, no time to scream.
Curling ribbons of orange fire and rainbow lightning swirled through the air, tearing them asunder, dismembering them, obliterating them. It was like watching newspaper in a bonfire, bodies twisting and breaking before turning to dust.
Yet more came, following the direction of this unearthly sound, only to be destroyed by this indiscriminate death-ray, this all-annihilating wall of noise.
At last, when the sound had passed, at the very back of the alleyway, there stood a lone figure.
Martin S. Martinez, severely injured, stood there, bleeding profusely from his ears, his eyes and his nose.
He stumbled forwards.
His lips moved uselessly as he put his hands out towards them.
Just as he got close to them, his leg wavered, then collapsed, and he tumbled to the floor in a defeated heap, twitching softly.
“Is he dead?” Demi asked, after a few moments.
“If he’s not, he’ll wish he was,” Nas said, kicking at his limp body with her shoe. “How’s your ears?”
“They hurt a bit,” Ella said. “Didn’t expect to be needing ear-plugs today.”
Nas nodded.
“Let’s go find Chelsea and Dolly,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” said a voice that seemed to come from all around.
The three looked around them, and saw the alley fall away from them. Martinez vanished, and they found themselves standing in a vast, empty landscape of sand and red rock.
“Girls,” Demi whispered. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Ella said. “It looks like an old cartoon…”
“Look!” Nas said.
Standing atop a large red cliff, there was Mr. Ection, wearing a blue turtleneck.
Ection clicked his fingers, reappearing before the three of them.
“Up yours,” Nas said. “We’ve defeated two of your guys.”
Ection smiled and laughed mockingly.
“I saw the whole thing,” he said. “Miss Osmani, you say you’re tired of running away. Well, perhaps that’s just because you haven’t been given a good enough reason.”
Nas eyed him suspiciously.
“What are you saying?”
Ection laughed again.
“Well, what’s a coyote without a runner? Let alone three.”
The three women looked at each other, bemused.
Ection dropped to all fours, and began to laugh.
The laughter turned to snarling.
Thick brown fur began to sprout from all over his skin. His clothing burst apart as his body transformed monstrously, his flat snub-nose lengthening into a snout, his mouth filling with sharp, carnivorous teeth. His bare feet became haunches, and he sprouted a tail from the base of his spine.
Before them, on all fours, stood a canid, large as a wolf but resembling a coyote, drooling from his maw.
“If I were you,” said the coyote-man, “I’d start running.”
*
Her hair had grown to the length of her waist. She had long forgotten what her mother’s face looked like.
It was the summer after her first year at sixth-form. Chelsea had begun studying engineering at BTEC, at an academy that specialised in education for young people with visual disabilities. By now, she had lost most of her vision. She had been learning Braille since before running away, but she now relied on it. Her relationship with the world outside had changed significantly.
She had long come to terms with the realities of this. Her life would not play out like that of other people, and that was something to live with and work around. Of course there were days when she would grieve the life she could not have, but those days were fleeting, and she did not live in despair. She felt that despair was pointless, self-serving, and didn’t help her get anything done.
Besides, she was seeing a counsellor now, as part of her transition.
By the time she had run away, her body had already begun to change, and the doctors’ refusal to prescribe her medicine to stop the changes had been the cause of great distress. There had been one or two serious scares in the past few years, where she had become unwell enough that she’d nearly ended up in the hospital. But things were changing for the better, now; her aunt and uncle had begun exploring private options, and she hoped to start hormone replacement therapy soon.
Things had begun looking up for Chelsea, for the first time in her life. It was still so strange to be called ‘she’ and ‘her’, things that she would have thought impossible just a short decade ago.
One idle Thursday afternoon, the impossible happened again, and everything changed for the third and final time.
Her uncle had always been a lover of motorbikes. He kept a couple in the garages outside the housing estate. She was on her way home one evening when she heard her uncle calling to her.
“Y’arright?” he called.
“Yeah,” Chelsea replied. “Working on your bikes again, Uncle Baz?”
“Yes I am,” Baz replied. “Just a tune-up.”
Chelsea smiled, walking in the direction of Baz’s voice. He took her by the hand – a habit she kept asking him to break – and led her into the garage.
“Feel that,” Baz said, sounding proud of himself.
Chelsea laid her hands on something cool and hard, running her fingers around its shape.
“Chrome,” Chelsea said, whistling. “That must be what I’m feeling.”
“You’re sharp,” Baz said.
“Well, you do go on and on about chrome,” Chelsea teased. “Sometimes I think you love chrome more than you love breathing.”
Baz chuckled.
“I wish you could see her, Chels. She looks bloody magnificent.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Chelsea replied.
There came the sound of buzzing and a marimba.
“Shit,” Baz said. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this. You gonna be alright in here on your own?”
“No,” Chelsea said, grinning.
“I’ll be two ticks. Don’t go anywhere, alright?”
“Sure thing, Unc.”
Baz ducked out to answer the phone, and Chelsea was left alone with the bikes.
She ran her fingers along the cool chrome again. She wondered how pretty the bike must look.
There came a voice, so quiet that Chelsea thought she surely must have imagined it; it was a voice like leaves rustling in the trees, like passenger trains on the railway line chuntering past late at night.
The voice said: “Mistress…”
The voice was not that of Baz.
Chelsea turned her head around, trying to work out where the voice had come from.
“Who said that?” she asked.
There came no reply.
Chelsea shook her head. She’d skipped lunch, maybe that was it. Idly, she leaned against the bike.
The voice returned again. It was a deep, growly sort of voice.
“You…Bike…mistress…”
“That’s not funny,” Chelsea said. “Right, come out. Who are you? Is that you, Jerry?”
“You…touch the chrome…” the voice intoned.
Chelsea withdrew her hand from the cool metal.
The voice stopped immediately.
There was nothing else for it.
The bike was…
Oh for Christ’s sake.
The bike…was…
She felt dumb for even thinking it. But it was true.
The bike was talking to her.
She placed her hand back against the chrome.
“Erm,” she said. “Hello?”
There was silence. Chelsea became convinced she was going crazy.
“You…Master…niece,” the Bike said, to Chelsea’s relief and horror. “You…Mistress.”
In an odd way, it was nice that the bike correctly identified her as a girl.
“This isn’t possible,” she said. “Bikes don’t talk.”
“Bike…always talk. Master…not listen.”
“Alright,” Chelsea said. “Then what do you want with me?”
“Ride,” the Bike replied.
“You want me to…to ride you?” Chelsea asked.
“Yes,” the Bike replied.
“But I can’t,” Chelsea said. “I can’t…see.”
The Bike went quiet again.
“What does it matter to you?” Chelsea said. “It’s not like you’d understand. You’re a…a bike, what am I doing talking to a fucking bike?”
“Ride,” the Bike repeated. “You see.”
Baz re-entered the garage. Chelsea hurriedly whipped her hand away from the chrome.
“I see you haven’t burned the place down,” he joked, before noticing Chelsea’s bewildered expression. “Hey, are you alright?”
Chelsea snapped out of it, blinking a couple of times.
“Yeah,” she said. She nervously hooked her thumb into the belt loop of her jeans, then out again. “Yeah, just fine.”
“You don’t look it,” Baz said. “What’s going on?”
Chelsea placed her hand against the chrome again.
That wasn’t possible. Was it? Had she fully lost the plot?
She shook her head in disbelief at what she was about to say.
“Erm, Uncle Baz, would it be alright if I took this bike for a ride?”
Baz was shocked. He blew air out of his cheeks.
“Not sure that’s a good idea, Chelsea. I mean, you can’t…you’re…”
“I know,” Chelsea said. “It’s just…I dunno. I have a feeling…it’s silly, I know…”
Her uncle stood there for a very long time.
“Alright,” he said. “But I’m going to watch you the whole time. No monkey business, alright?”
“‘Course,” Chelsea said.
She straddled the chrome-plated bike, donning her uncle’s helmet.
Her uncle started the engine for her.
She revved the engine, and sped off.
For the next hour, her uncle watched in disbelief, as Chelsea revealed how intuitively adept she was with the bike. She amazed even herself.
It was as though the bike gave her a kind of blindsight; it could see without seeing. She could feel the proximity of objects, their shape and size. She began to realise quite quickly that the bike was piloting her as much as she was piloting it.
When the hour was up, her uncle finally called her to get off the bike. Laughing incredulously, he patted her on the back.
“That was amazing,” he said. “How’d you do that?”
“Dunno,” Chelsea replied. “Gut feeling, I s’pose.”
Her uncle laughed again, half-nervously.
“Well,” he said. “Best be getting in for dinner, eh?”
He walked ahead of her.
When she was sure he was just out of earshot, she placed her hand on the bike’s chrome, and whispered:
“Thank you.”
She did not understand by what means she had been granted this power, but soon took a keen interest in motorcycling, learning how to service and maintain motorbikes by sound and feel.
She grew more and more adept at riding the bike, until they had reached a perfect symbiosis. She ceased even having to touch the bike to communicate with it, so synchronised were they.
Never did she feel more free, more herself, than when she sat in the saddle of this creature of chrome and plastic, feeling its engine rumble and throb like her own guts, her own heart. It was an organism as much as she, and together they formed a system, a clownfish and an anemone.
She knew this shouldn’t be physically possible – she should have been thrown from the bike at least once – but it was as though her spirit and the bike’s spirit could commune closely.
It defied all explanation. And in some ways, she didn’t want it to be explained.
Nevertheless.
It happened, one day, while she was out riding around the estate, that she heard a voice call her name.
It was a woman’s voice, deep and yet unmistakably feminine. It reminded Chelsea of her own voice, in a way.
She stopped the bike and removed her helmet, searching for the voice.
“Chelsea Rose?” the voice called again.
Chelsea turned her head in the direction of the voice.
“Who’s asking?” she replied.
She heard the trundling of wheels, and the shape of a person moved into view, her face framed by purple hair.
“My name is K-Os,” the shape said. “I think you and I ought to have a chat.”
*
Chelsea strained against Dolly, against the foreign limbs that were trying to force her to harm the first woman she’d ever truly loved.
She had met Dolly not long after her ex had turned to the side of the umbric users. Dolly had been fragile, then; prone to outbursts of intense self-hatred. Always pushing herself so hard that Chelsea feared she’d die of a heart attack before the umbric users killed her. Chelsea could empathise. In many ways, Dolly’s level of distress reminded her of herself, just a few short years ago.
Initially, she had been nervous about Dolly – all too many times, she had met a woman like Dolly who seemed nice, but then betrayed her prejudice, hurriedly suffixing it with “Oh, but not you. You’re alright. I like you…”
Dolly was different. She was special. She saw Chelsea for what she was, and she loved Chelsea, and Chelsea loved her. It continued to blow Chelsea’s mind that such a woman could fall in love with her. The false mouth, even now, exposed her deepest insecurities, cackling as it screamed them in Dolly’s face, while Dolly’s own mouth responded in kind.
Time seemed to crawl to slow-motion. Chelsea pulled away from Dolly, who shook her head, horrified. But Chelsea didn’t care. The mouth sunk its teeth deep into her bicep, drawing blood, but she didn’t care. And Pretty Priscilla raised her scythe, ready to swing it down and cut Chelsea’s head off. But still, Chelsea didn’t care.
Priscilla laughed madly, blindly swinging the scythe.
She missed.
The blade’s weight unbalanced her, and that was all Chelsea needed.
Priscilla’s legs were taken out from under her, and the scythe clattered to the pavement uselessly as Chelsea pinned Priscilla to the ground.
The rogue body parts peeled from her body, fluttering to the ground. She held Priscilla down as the mouth and eyes fell from her face, adhering to those of their mistress, who screamed and struggled to get out of Chelsea’s grip.
“Look at me,” Chelsea said quietly, hatefully, as Priscilla moaned and thrashed. Chelsea gripped her by the throat. “Look at me,” she repeated.
Priscilla went still.
“You have no idea what it feels like to have a body that works against you,” Chelsea said, venomously. “For you, it’s a funny little fucking party trick. But here’s the thing: I’ve been dealing with this my whole life.”
She leaned in to Priscilla’s ear, and hissed: “If I were you, I’d stay the fuck down.”
She pushed herself up on to her feet.
The body parts released from Dolly’s face, and she quickly snatched up the scythe from the ground, and approached the stricken woman.
Priscilla looked up at them both, tears streaming out of the one eye that had nothing stuck to it.
“I really, really don’t want you to hurt me,” the mouth moaned.
“I won’t,” Dolly said, quietly. “Provided you answer some questions.”
“I’ll do anything,” the mouth said.
Dolly looked to Chelsea.
“It’s alright,” Chelsea said. “You can ask.”
Dolly turned to Priscilla.
“Why do you look like…like her?” Dolly asked, the anguish noticeable even in her calm tone.
The mouth twitched, bit its lip, and blew a raspberry.
Dolly raised the scythe.
“Okay, okay, okay!” the mouth shouted. “There…there was a complication in the root system.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dolly asked.
“A scar left behind by the one called ‘Terminal Felicity’,” the mouth said. “She was able to manipulate space and time in ways that confounded even the timeless entities in the strings…her destruction left echoes…echoes that persisted even beyond the end of time itself…”
“She really was special,” Dolly said. She glanced at Chelsea. “But she was also a coward, and a fool.”
“This body is one of those echoes,” the mouth continued. “There are many like it, scattered throughout the root system. The Circus are, all of them, blessed with the tattered shards of her base pattern. But none of those echoes are, nor shall they ever be, complete. She is gone, Dolores Mykhailiuk. She is gone forever!”
The mouth cackled again.
Dolly scowled.
“Come on,” she said to Chelsea. “Let’s go.”
“You’re not gonna kill her?” Chelsea said.
“What’s the point?” Dolly said. “I’m over it.”
Chelsea grinned.
“Atta girl.”
They turned to walk away.
The mouth cackled again.
Suddenly, Dolly felt a sharp tug.
The scythe had flown from her hand, into the hand of Priscilla, who was standing.
The false body parts peeled from her body, including the facial features, fluttering to the ground like tired stickers on a lightpost left in the rain.
“Did you really think you had me beaten?” she laughed. “I was the one in control of the mouths, you imbeciles. What would make you think my own mouth would turn on me?”
She laughed madly once more, then raised the scythe and charged at Dolly.
“Die!” she shrieked.
There was an indescribable sound, something like wet meat being thrown into a jet turbine.
She did not so much burst open as evaporate instantly, vanishing in a flash of blue light, leaving behind a smell of ozone and a black circle on the ground.
There, purring in the centre of the courtyard, was Chelsea Rose’s motorbike, standing on its kickstand as if proud of itself.
“He does like to make an entrance,” Chelsea said. “I take it she’s dead?”
“So it would seem,” Dolly replied. “Although I think ‘dead’ is an understatement…”
Chelsea laughed, then stopped herself.
“You alright?” she said. “That was scary.”
Dolly breathed in and breathed out.
“We can talk about it later,” she said. “I’ve a feeling the others need our help.”
Chelsea nodded.
“Any idea how we’re going to find them?”
Dolly looked around on the ground, and found what she was looking for.
A tiny, broken shard of metal, with a sharpened edge, that had once been part of a scythe.
“I have an idea,” she said.
*
They fled across miles and miles of desert. All sense of time disappeared in here, in the endless desert, the red rock, and the harsh sun beating down from bright blue sky.
Nas had tried to repel the beast with her shout, but the amplified guitar blast had injured her vocal cords, and she could scarcely speak. Ella’s guitar didn’t seem to have much power in this alternate reality, anyway. And as for Demi, the three of them were a long way from Manchester in here, and so her abilities were irrelevant.
They hid among rocks, resting for mere minutes before they heard the snarling and the characteristic coyote-cry that meant they had to start moving again. This was far from a cartoon. This was persistence hunting.
They were, slowly, being worn down, and soon, they would have to stop running. At that point the coyote would catch them at last, and it would all be over.
It wasn’t long before they found themselves standing at the edge of a vast canyon, which stretched into the horizon in both directions.
“Nowhere left to run,” Ella said.
Nas looked at Ella, horrified.
“Must be something we can do,” she said.
“We’ve been running for God knows how long,” Ella said, with doom in her voice. “We’re cornered.”
Demi fell to her knees, exhausted.
“It can’t end like this,” she said.
“I beg to differ,” a voice growled.
He was there, right behind them. Ection, triumphant.
“It seems we’ve reached the end of the road,” the coyote-man said.
“You can’t win,” Ella replied. “We’ve got friends. They’ll find you. They’ll kill you.”
“You mean those two I ran into across town? I’m quite sure my associate has already taken care of them.”
“No…” Nas said, hoarsely.
Ella stood her ground.
“Even if you’ve killed them, there are plenty more where they came from. They’ll find out, one way or another. They’ll come for you.”
“I doubt that very much,” Ection laughed, licking his chops.
The three women tried to back away from him, but they were getting closer to the edge. There was no escape.
“Ah,” Ection continued. “Here we are at last. You know, watching cartoons as a boy, I always did want the coyote to win. Just once. Just so I could see what it would be like.” He laughed inhumanly, a coyote’s scream pretending to be an ape’s chuckle. “I suppose I shan’t have to wonder now. Please, do try to scream as much as possible. I want to hear you die.”
The coyote-man lunged.
There was the sound of something like plastic sheeting ripping, and then a low rumbling noise.
Ection turned.
“WHAT?!” he howled.
The others followed his line of sight, and their jaws dropped open.
“Oh my God!” Demi said.
A motorbike was surging towards them, and on its back rode Chelsea Rose and Dolly Mixture, bruised, but alive.
From the front of the motorcycle, two thin cylinders unfolded.
“Get down!” Nas shouted.
There was a rattling noise as projectiles were fired from the front of the bike at Ection, who had to do a sort of strange dance to keep from being shot. The bullets threw up an immense cloud of dust. The bike came to rest just at the lip of the canyon, and its riders disembarked.
Ection stumbled through the dust, coughing and spluttering. He had, in the confusion, transformed back into a man, apparently too distracted to keep up the coyote disguise.
It took him a few moments to get his bearings. He wheeled on the five women, jabbing a finger at them.
“No, no, no!” Ection said, stamping his feet childishly. “That’s not how the game is played! You’re not following the rules! I—”
He stopped himself.
Four of the five women had turned their gaze downwards. The fifth, a tall woman with albinism, smiled widely at him.
“…oh no,” he said, in a quiet voice.
He told himself, pleaded with himself, not to look. Because he knew what would happen if he looked. But he had to look. It was, after all, the rules.
He looked down.
His face was the picture of abject misery.
There was no ground beneath his feet. Just the abyss below him.
And he knew what would happen next.
Defeated, he took the only course of action available to him: he reached behind his back.
The women assumed defensive stances.
But there was no need, for he withdrew not a weapon, but a piece of wood painted white, attached to which was a sign, on which there had been painted one word.
YIPE!
Without another word, he immediately fell, hitting the ground with a loud thwack.
The desert died with him. The sand gave way to concrete, the red rocks to steel, and the blue sky to the overcast grey of Northern England.
Around them, the urban sprawl. The faint smell of burning petrol and the sound of a tram merrily blowing its whistle.
They stood on the roof of a tall building, with not the foggiest clue how they had got up there.
Ella peered over the edge, then flinched away. A crowd had begun gathering around an unrecognisable pink puddle that had once been a human being.
She turned her attention instead to Chelsea and Dolly.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“I think we’re still figuring that out,” Dolly said.
“I’ve certainly had better days,” Chelsea replied. “Looks like we had a run-in with the same bunch.”
“Are we sure that’s all of ‘em?” Demi asked. “No more baddies for one day?”
“I should think so,” Ella said, smiling.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Dolly said. “Dolly Mixture.”
“Demeter Lincoln, Spirit of Greater Manchester Transport,” Demi replied.
“Chelsea Rose,” Chelsea said.
“I know who you are,” Demi said, tersely.
“Just where the hell are we, anyway?” Dolly asked.
Demi inspected the skyline, and confirmed her suspicions.
“Top of the CIS Tower,” she said. “Tallest building in Manchester.”
“Christ,” Ella said.
“Can I just say?” Nas interjected. “I really hate clowns.”
“Me too,” Chelsea said, locking arms with Dolly, who blushed softly. “Me too.”
Below, there was the sound of sirens, and above, they could hear the steady rumble of helicopters approaching.
“Best get a move on,” Dolly said. “I’ve got a shortcut.”
As the police closed in, there came a faint sound of tearing plastic once more, and the five of them vanished.
*
He woke to the sound of someone talking outside the room.
The room was spare and sterile, all wood-panelling and ceiling tiles. On the wall was a clock with the word “QUARTZ” printed on the face. It read as about twenty-past-five, and sure enough, early evening sunlight was streaming in through the window, casting long shadows across the floor.
He was laying in a bed, he realised. There were wires attached to his body, a tube running into a vein in his arm. His legs felt numb, and his eyelids felt almost too heavy to hold open. There was a tube running into his nose attached to a machine that, he realised, was mechanically doing a lot of the breathing for him. He felt like he wanted to throw up, or pass out.
The sound of talking was muffled, and he could only hear it out of one ear.
While straining to hear the sound, the door came open, then shut again, then opened once more.
A man entered the room.
Suddenly, his eyelids didn’t feel so heavy any more. His eyes bulged.
The man used a cane, walking with a limp. There was an eyepatch covering his left eye. He wore dark military fatigues, and kept a large handgun holstered at his hip. The man sat down by Martinez’s side, his face totally expressionless.
“Good afternoon, Mister Martinez,” the man said. “Do you know where you are?”
Martinez looked at the man fearfully, then shook his head slowly.
“You are at a hospital,” the man said. “I understand you were quite badly injured in Manchester.”
Martinez tried to speak, but couldn’t, so he just nodded.
The man scratched at his brow, then sniffed.
“I commend you, Mister Martinez. You and your allies came closer to achieving something we have been trying to achieve for almost a year now.”
Martinez said nothing, only continued to stare.
“Unfortunately,” the man continued, “your targets were able to escape. That was not part of the deal, sir.”
Martinez began to breathe more heavily, wheezing despite the machine.
“All the other members of the Circus are missing or dead,” the man said. “Priscilla, Ferdinand and Ection. All dead. Murdered, it would seem, by associates of the Rollerskater. Mister Martinez, do you think this government tolerates such errors?”
Martinez shook his head once again.
“I’m afraid I come here today to notify you of the end of our agreed amnesty,” the man said, morosely. “We have zero tolerance for failure within SAID-MI5, and the Black Swans are no exception. I am sure you understand the implications of this.”
Martinez was trying to get away, willing his body to move. But his legs were so heavy and painful. He could scarcely move his toes.
“Don’t resist, Mister Martinez. It will only make things more difficult.”
Martinez watched as the man produced a vial from a pouch on his vest, along with a syringe.
Calmly, methodically, the man removed the needle from its protective packaging, inserted it into the vial, withdrew the plunger to fill it, then raised the needle, flicking it a few times and squeezing out liquid to remove bubbles.
He then inserted the needle into a small valve affixed to the intravenous drip which ran into Martinez’s arm.
“A special formulation of pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride and diazepam,” the man said, coldly. He glanced at the clock. “You should die within thirty to forty-five minutes. Quick medical intervention would be enough to save you, which is why I have men stationed outside that door, with orders to shoot anyone who tries to enter this room for the next hour. Their life for your life, Mister Martinez? I shouldn’t think so.”
The man stood.
Martinez’s face contorted in hatred, and he spat at his murderer, hitting his cheek.
The man simply wiped his cheek, glancing one final time at Martinez.
“Goodbye, Mister Martinez,” the man said.
He turned and walked away.
Martinez didn’t feel anything at first. He wondered for a while if it was all some sick prank, to test his loyalty. But then he started to feel strange. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake. Somewhere, a machine was beeping insistently.
His eyes fluttered, and he fell asleep.
He was sure he’d feel better in the morning.
*
They lay in bed for a while, not saying anything.
Chelsea had her right arm around Dolly’s bare shoulders. She was drawing circles on Dolly’s shoulder with her thumb. Dolly nestled her head in Chelsea’s neck.
“Rough day,” Chelsea said, after a while.
“Yeah,” Dolly replied, looking up at her. From this vantage, she thought, Chelsea’s visage looked magnificent, like gazing up at the profile of some ancient colossus.
And yet, she could see the pain that lined Chelsea’s face all the more clearly for the proximity.
She averted her gaze, looking away at the bedroom wall.
“Listen,” Dolly said. “What the mouth was saying, it…I hope you didn’t think that…listen, I’m fucked up, and I’m sorry I didn’t…”
“Shh.”
Chelsea stopped drawing the circles and tightened her grasp on Dolly.
“I wouldn’t have my arm around you if I was cross with you.”
“Mm,” Dolly replied. Her eyes began to brim with tears. “I just don’t want you to be in a position where you can’t trust me…sometimes I worry we moved too fast…I was still grieving Fliss last summer. I still am. And then we both almost died, and I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I’m hurting you or using you as a replacement…”
Chelsea was silent for a few moments.
“Chelsea?”
“I won’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt my feelings,” Chelsea said. “But like you said. You’re fucked up. You’re grieving. Healing isn’t…a linear process, babe. You just need time.”
Dolly nodded.
“I’m sorry the mouth said what it said. About…you know…you being trans.”
“Darling, I know damn well what transphobia looks like. My own mother hasn’t spoken to me in over a decade. I know that’s not what you think about me. That’s how I knew not to trust what the mouth was saying.”
Dolly bit her lip.
“I just worry sometimes,” she said. “That I’m saying the wrong things, that I’m hurting you without realising. It’s just…I was born, no, sorry, raised as a girl, so I’ve never known that struggle. Sure, I’m lesbian, but that’s different…”
“I’m not so sure,” Chelsea said. “It’s true that your experience of womanhood isn’t the same as mine, but all womanhood is struggle. Especially queer womanhood. We’re made by our experiences. ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’.”
Dolly sat up, leaning away from Chelsea.
“You have read Beauvoir?”
Chelsea laughed.
“Frankly, that’s the most insulting thing you’ve said to me all day,” she said. “What, you think the hot biker chick you call your girlfriend doesn’t read books?”
“I’m sorry,” Dolly replied.
There was a pause.
“I mean, I haven’t read her book,” Chelsea said. “Thing’s like a thousand pages long, Jesus wept. But I like that quote. I think I read it on Facebook once.”
“You never fail both to impress and disappoint,” Dolly joked. “To be fair to you, I’ve not read it, either.”
“There we go! Two pretentious dykes, quoting books we haven’t read at each other. We’re a French director’s wet dream.”
Dolly laughed.
“I love you, Chelsea,” she said.
Chelsea blushed.
“I love you, too,” she said.
There was another pause.
“It was true, what the mouth said,” Chelsea said.
“What?”
“I…I sometimes think that you could do better than me,” Chelsea said. “Compared to you, I sometimes feel like…I dunno, big and lanky. I mean, I wear a size 10 shoe, for God’s sake.”
“I wear a size 8. So?”
“Yeah, but like…for you, that’s not a mark against you, that’s just…”
“How I was born,” Dolly said. “And that’s how you were born, my love. I assure you, I wouldn’t be in a relationship with you if I didn’t fancy the bones of you. You’re my girlfriend, and every day I get to say that is a miracle in itself.”
Chelsea swallowed. She turned away from Dolly.
“Oh no,” Dolly said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Chelsea laughed, sniffling. “I just didn’t know you felt that way.” She wiped her eyes. “God, look at us, eh? We’re both so very insecure. In a way, we’re a match made in heaven.”
Dolly laughed too.
“We’re both fucked-up,” she agreed. “But I think we can figure it out in spite of that.”
Chelsea rolled back over. She beamed.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you,” Dolly said.
They kissed, embracing one another, and had some very well-earned sex.
*
She was barefoot on a gently rolling hill lined with flowers.
She wore a yellow dress, which blew softly in the wind. A little way into the distance, a river rolled past, and by its side stood a brick Victorian water-tower, overgrown with vines.
She found herself walking along a dirt path through the flowers.
There was another woman standing at a crossroads. Her shoulder-length red hair also blew softly in the wind.
“Fliss?” Dolly asked.
The woman did not turn around, simply stood with her hands at her sides.
“A memory,” she replied.
“I’m sorry,” Dolly said. “But I’ve found someone else now.”
The woman still did not turn. She was silent for a few moments.
Then she said: “The time will soon be upon us.”
“What?”
The woman remained silent. Dolly stepped towards her, but she seemed to move further away with each step.
“You must warn her,” she said. Dolly realised suddenly that the voice was not one she recognised.
“Warn who?” Dolly asked.
“The time approaches,” the woman replied. “Armageddon draws near.”
And she began to turn.
And turn.
And turn.
And there stood a figure who was not Fliss, but a skeleton, with lungs filling and emptying in its ribcage, its heart pulsing, two eyes staring out of skull-sockets, muscles visible only in its arms and legs.
Dolly bolted upright.
There, standing at the end of her bed, was the apparition from her dream, all bones and organs, and slowly sliding into view was the face of a young woman, her eyes filled with an inscrutable sadness.
“Warn her,” the woman said.
“Warn who?!” Dolly asked.
“She who governs without governing. The one constant in this finite universe. The central pillar of the root system.”
“K-Os?” Dolly said.
“So many names…so little time…the strings, they speak through me…the Second Coming approaches…the man in Downing Street is not what he seems…beware the Blood Moon…beware the Second Sun…it ends soon…warn her…warn her…!”
And the apparition vanished.
Chelsea sat up, bleary-eyed.
“What’s going on?” she said, half-yawning.
Dolly blinked in the dark.
“I wouldn’t say this if I wasn’t absolutely sure,” she said. “But I think we need K-Os.”
“What? Why?”
Dolly swallowed.
“…I think the end of the world is closer than we think.”
Another time, another place…
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII