Escapism 2
It was hot and dark in the theater. Body warmth was building together thanks to seating that was too close together to fit the maximum number of people in. Mingling scents of sweat and perfume and cigar smoke and alcohol assaulted the nose, and the chattering of over a hundred different lines of conversations rattled the air.
Tori’s head throbbed a little at all the stimuli. She raised a little jar of smelling salts to her nose in the hope of calming herself. It was not too long before the house lights fell and the talking fell to a dull murmur and then almost silence.
The master of ceremonies, a short man with greased down hair and glasses with round thick lenses, walked onto the stage and declared that a night of untold wonders awaited the audience.
It wasn’t strictly true. The usual mixture of dancers with glazed smiles and frilly knickers, tired comedians who would engage in cross-talk before heading off to separate bars to drink away their tears, and old men with leathery vocal cords, growling old standards, paraded over the boards.
But that wasn’t why she was here. She was here for Eric.
(more…)
Thanatos/eros
‘It’s a magnificent beast,’ said the girl, leaning against the open gate in a languorous manner. She wore a short t-shirt and linen trousers and a rucksack hung by a strap from her right hand.
He nodded and glanced swiftly at the remade man. Slack greasy hair, sunken eyes and bluish white skin; it wasn’t his idea of beauty, but he understood that some people could find something attractive in death.
‘Can he talk?’
‘He can barely walk,’ the boy said.
‘Don’t be mean,’ said the girl, rubbing her bottom lip. ‘It’s not his fault he’s dead.’
‘It is a bit,’ said the boy. ‘My dad says he was caught with another man’s wife and stabbed through the heart.’
‘He died for love?’ said the girl. ‘How romantic.’
‘I don’t think that’s what I said.’
‘And now he’s being made to work for a living. You should let him run free.’
The boy shook his head. The girl didn’t understand how much it cost for the reanimation process. There was a generator over by the farm that was pumping energy that kept the remade man’s artificial brain moving his cured muscles.
In a world where no one wanted to work anymore, the dead had a job to do.
‘Let him go,’ said the girl. She stepped away from the gate and inside the boy’s comfort area. The top of her head came halfway up his chest and as he looked down on her parting, he was surprised by the sudden pressure of her hand on his. ‘Let him go and I’ll kiss you.’
She looked up into his eyes and unconsciously moistened her lips.
Her eyes were beautiful with an odd exotic fold to the eyelid. Her lips were dark red and he could see just a little of her teeth.
As he stooped down, the leash of the remade man slipped from his grip but he made no effort to snatch it back.
The remade man grunted and swayed, but did not make the most of his freedom.
The eternal coast 4.0 crueller and stupider
Time was wasted on the young. They didn’t value it. They wasted it on pointless, trashy little moments of fumbled, soulless physical intimacy or incoherent narcotic indulgences. Sometimes they gave up their time in a moment of brainless stupidity.
This was brought home to Arthur Redbelly as he looked over the corpse of a boy, covered in blood and vomit. They were in the town square of Seaton, in front of the memorial to fallen soldiers. The clothes were very nice, very expensive. No doubt this was the son of a teacher or a lawyer. No doubt the local newspaper and radio and television news would all be deluged with family members and teachers saying what a wonderful boy he had been, how happy and how much he contributed to society.
(Probably he had been a callous, self-absorbed little thug with blood full of drugs. That was the majority of middle class teenagers, wasn’t it?)
Arthur scratched his balding head, and felt a need for his pipe.
‘Not on the job, Redbelly, not on the job.’ He nudged the body with his foot and grunted. ‘Can we get rid of this thing?’ he called.
One of the men in plastic suits nodded. Well, he supposed it was a man. Maybe it was a woman. He wasn’t really bothered.
Some child overdosing on crap. Had the world always been so cruel and stupid? Had people always been so idiotic and blind and self-destructive? Would the world carry on getting crueller and stupider? Why was the world heading towards 1984, instead of Star Trek?
‘Did we ID him?’ asked Redbelly as they started bagging up the body.
‘Wallet,’ said the uniform. A woman with hair in a bun. Any other details, to Redbelly, were superfluous. ‘Says he’s an Alan Yaxley.’
‘Yaxley,’ said Redbelly. ‘Isn’t there a councillor called Yaxley? Oh sod, there is. My life is going to be hell until we come up with an answer for this.’
‘It’s an overdose,’ said the uniform.
‘I know that and you know that,’ said Redbelly. ‘But our councillor will want to know who sold him the drugs, where his friends were when he overdosed, did they coerce him and whose fault it was.’
‘Usually an overdose is the fault of the person taking the overdose,’ said the uniform.
‘You’re not really quick, are you?’ said Redbelly, needing that pipe a good bit sooner. ‘The councillor will be looking for someone to blame for this. And they will not want to blame their son. They will not want to blame their son.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘You suppose not and you’d suppose right.’ Redbelly sighed. ‘Ah well, I’d better start thinking of a good answer to that question, eh?’