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Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 10: Fashion Meltdown
Part 2: She’s Got the Look (Revision 3)
Part 2: She’s Got the Look (Revision 3)
24 september 2014.
Shira’s apartment. Ayla hides under Shira’s bed while Shira makes love to her hot new girlfriend Leila. She wonders what Leila has that she doesn’t, and worries that she has lost Shira’s love forever.
Jennifer quietly closes the door and returns to the living room and sits down on the couch next to Sparks. He finishes off the last of his current cup of coffee and prepares to pour more. “Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?” he asks her.
“What do you mean?”
“Shira sleeping around on you.”
Jennifer smiles sweetly. “Of course she does. It’s her nature.”
Sparks cocks his eyes. “Meaning?”
“The first thing you need to know about her is she’s polyamorous. Meaning she’s incapable of loving just one person at a time. She needs to love at least two. That used to be me, Cory, and Dexter. Now it means me, you, and Leila.”
“Does Leila mind?”
“Do you?”
“No. Not really.”
“I bet you’re probably wishing for a threesome.”
“Who knows? I might even join you girls for a foursome.”
“You know, you might actually be right.” Jennifer winks.
Ayla runs out of Shira’s bedroom, picks up an unwilling Mikan, and flees to the spare bedroom. “What’s with her?”
“I say we go and see.” The bedroom door is open, so they go in and see Leila on the bed on her back, legs wide open, buttocks raised to expose her cunt. Her skin is covered in beads of sweat; her cunt drips a stream of sticky fluid onto a towel below. “Uh, Shira darling, is this for Oliver?”
Shira holds a digital SLR camera. She winks. “No. Art.” She gets in front of Leila and takes pictures of her buttocks and cunt at various distances and from various angles.
“I asked her to be my Mapplethorpe,” says Leila.
Sparks says, “Theme must be ‘what depraved prudes like Ollie Thorwald fear most.’ Did you know Mapplethorpe took pictures of penises in guillotines?”
“Hmm. Maybe sticking metal skewers through my cunt lips would be an excellent female version.”
“I bet you’d enjoy the pain.”
“That’s why I’d do it.”
“Sounds more than a little insane to me.”
“I’ll take that as a sign we’re doing things right.”
Thorwald penthouse. The vidphoned head of Governor Brinkman stares ominously at a clearly disturbed Oliver Thorwald from his brand new big-screen TV. The cleaning robots have cleared away all the debris from the previous one. “So you’ve been hearing about Leila.”
“Mr Governor, I’ve been hearing from Leila. She’s sending me perverted pictures of herself. Pictures of her naked in pornographic poses, her having sex with other men, with four men at the same time — do you realize the pure horror of it, Mr Governor?”
“Oliver, do you realize she’s living in sin with another woman?”
“Oh, do I ever know. They gave me a live performance last night just to spite me. She even told me she was doing it because she hates me. She hates me, Mr Governor! Do you realize the torment I’m in?”
“We do not care about your personal misery, only about the security of Our Nation.”
“Nobody understands what a torment it is to be so handsome, popular and rich! Women throw themselves at me! Fags throw themselves at me! Women beg me to kill ’em just so they can say they got killed by such a handsome dude! I live such a tormented existence filled with torment! And that backstabbing bitch rejects me, for another woman? And a fucking mudblood at that! Leila doesn’t know what she’s throwing away!”
“I regret having to add to your already great torment, Oliver, but Shira Thomas has already publicly stated her intention to destroy the Eugenics Institute, and thus the purity of blood that keeps our race, and therefore human civilization, alive. I’m afraid she’s trapped you in the middle of a political crisis. Shira Thomas is a dangerous subversive we’ve never been able to catch, and whenever we do we’re never able to hold onto her for long because of that accursed lawyer of hers.”
“You’re telling me Leila’s trying to commit treason? Now that’s something we can kill her for! Can I do it?”
“She’s my blood, Oliver.”
Thorwald grins and waves his finger. “She’s a pollution of your blood, Mr Governor. And you know what we do to pollution, don’t you? Like, what the Eugenics Institute recommends?”
“And what is that?”
“Purge it.”
“Easier said than done.”
“And how’s that?”
“She possesses powers you are clearly not aware of. She can destroy things and deflect projectiles with just a thought. She is as invincible as I am. You are merely immortal, and only as long as your clone supply holds up. Foolishly self-destructive as he was, at least your father had admirable foresight when it came to you. I’m willing to rescind the marriage arrangement for your sake, and find you another. Then I can deal with my Leila problem once and for all. Otherwise, you should be concerned for your safety.”
“No!” Thorwald trembles, breathes heavily, waves his shovel around, and barks crazily, “I want that bitch! I’ll kill everyone she loves just so I can have her! Me and only me! I’ll even kill her, just so she’ll never leave me again! And the world will forgive me ’cuz I’m so handsome and rich! I love Leila, and I’ll make her love me if it’s the last thing I do!”
“Then you are already dead.”
“Ha. I’m immortal, remember? You said so yourself.”
photographer’s studio. Click.
Shira makes love to the camera. She wears black lacy bra and panties, black fishnet stockings, high-heeled black patent leather boots; her hair is styled and professionally tousled; she wears gold earrings and locket pendant. She lies on her back, caressed by the fluffy blankets on the bed, seducing the camera. Click. She turns on her side, bending her waist and legs, gazing sideways, keeping her eyes on the lens. Click.
“Beautiful,” says Pierre Moretti, the man behind the camera.
She sits up and braces her arms on the bed behind her. Click. She raises her leg so that her foot rests on the bed; she puts her arm around it and rests her head on her knee. Click.
“Perfect.”
After the shoot ends, Pierre inserts his camera’s memory card into his laptop and shows Shira the raw photos on its screen. “Wow,” she says, “they’re beautiful.”
“I believe this is the best shoot I’ve done yet. And that’s only because you’re the best. You’re a natural. You could rise to the level of Cindy, Linda, and Tyra before you turn seventeen.”
“I’ve had a bit of practice, really.”
“Keep it up. Even at your young age, you’re a total professional.”
“I pride myself on it.” She winks.
The pictures will be printed only in Europe. In prudish America, the Church of America condemns fashion, and pictures of women in their underwear are banned as pornographic. Americans consider Cascadia to be European; to them, this is not a good thing.
Warren Avenue Bridge. A beautiful sunset greets a sober Leila as she takes a leisurely stroll across the bridge. The cool wind whips her hair and skirt.
When she reaches the center of the bridge, she takes off her backpack and opens it. She takes out the big plastic bottle of antidepressant pills and opens it. She shakes the jar: still half full. Two hundred capsules of suicide remain. She reaches across the railing, holds the jar over the water, and tips it so that the pills fall out, then lets go of the jar and its lid. She watches them fall until they disappear. She knows she might be fined for littering if anyone bothered to report her. But she feels even another minor charge on her criminal record would be better than throwing herself into the water below.
None of the preoccupied motorists speeding by her notice.
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[Revision 2, 7/31/11: Added new opening scene, inspired by a writing prompt.]
[Revision 3, 10/23/11: Extended opening scene (from “Ayla runs out” on), added new Thorwald/Brinkman scene.]
