Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 12: Bad Girls Can’t Win
Part 2: Waking Up with the House on Fire (Final Revision)
Part 2: Waking Up with the House on Fire (Final Revision)
dreamspace. She runs from the men in black. She tries to hide, she tries to escape, she tries to break free, but stil they pursue her like a machine with a single mind. She can’t let them catch her!
In the distance she can see Leila, Shira, and Jennifer; she runs to them, hoping they can save her from her faceless pursuers. Leila reaches out to her. She tries to take her hand—but some force pulls her away—Leila cries out, “Sylviaaaa!”—
Suddenly she finds herself alone in a dark place, stuck in place, unable to move or scream or even breathe. A giant head emerges, at first indistinct, then becoming a faceless face through waves of visual distortion; the face grows huge eyes that terrify her, then a malevolent grin that she instantly knows belongs to Richard Becket, a man rumored to be a vampire who feeds on Factor Positives. In a despotic voice louder than God himself, he says, “Here’s the one I missed. How did it ever manage to escape my notice?”
But then a protective field surrounds her, and the Chairman screams in pain, a scream that shakes the universe—
red house. She wakes up to find herself drenched in cold sweat and completely naked. She struggles to catch her breath. She feels someone’s protective arm on her body. She turns onto her side to see her bedmate and sees—
Desiree? Wasn’t it supposed to be Charlie?
Desiree smiles at her sweetly and gently strokes her cheek. “Good morning, Sylvia,” she cheerfully sings. Sylvia freezes up, afraid of Desiree’s jealousy. Desiree laughs and slips her arms around Sylvia’s body. “No, I won’t dare hurt you.”
“But aren’t you Charlie’s wife?”
“Of course I am. She’s the love of my life. But you’re special. We need you.”
“What do you want with me?”
“We want to protect you. Me, I wanted to meet you so I can love you in person. Charlie says really wonderful things about you. You’re every bit as beautiful and sweet as she says.”
“You love me too?”
“Mm-hmm! Now I’d like to make love to you. Please let me.”
“But—“
“Please?” Sylvia reluctantly nods. “Thank you. I love you.” She pulls Sylvia close and gives her the most passionate kiss she has felt from any lips not Charlie’s. She moves her hands from Sylvia’s sweaty back down to her soft buttocks, caresses and gently squeezes, making her moan. Then she slowly rolls Sylvia onto her back and shifts her right hand to her moist and trembling cunt—
mudlark house. Leila and Fiona wake up to find themselves naked in each other’s arms. They stare at each other, still stunned, silent, for an endless moment. Leila breaks the silence. “Oh my god, it was real...”
Fiona blushes a deeper red. “I didn’t know I loved you that much...”
Leila starts to cry. “At least I know whose arms’ll be waiting for me if this thing with Shira fails.”
“Leila, I love you,” Fiona sobs. The sisters share an intense kiss through their tears.
Shira drapes themselves over them both. “Please don’t wait on me. You’re too adorable together.”
Suddenly the bathroom door slams shut. Marina has locked herself inside in a panic. “No! This is too weird! You guys are crazy! I want out! Helllp!”
“What’s wrong with her?” asks Fiona.
Shira’s smile disappears. “Somebody must be having second thoughts.” The three girls get up and join the others at the bathroom door.
Jennifer says in a comforting voice, “Calm down, Marina. It’s okay. You’re here among friends.”
“Friends schmends! You tricked me! It’s a trap!”
“It’s new to you, that’s all. It’ll just take some getting used to. Please give it some time.”
“No I can’t! Get me outta here! Pleeease?”
Arisa asks, “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s spent too much time among Conservatives,” says Jennifer. “She’s suffering from severe acute culture shock.”
Mimi wanders by in a daze. Shira pulls her close. “Mimi, you all right?”
“Is this real?” she replies deliriously. “I feel like I’ve just died and gone to heaven.”
nameless girls’ apartment. The brown-haired girl opens the door to find a tall black woman who looks a lot like Shira. “Hi, I’m Shira’s mom from next door. She can’t stop talking about you.”
“Does it bother you if we’re naked?”
“Only barbarians wear clothes in the house.”
“The brown-haired girl smiles. “Then come on in.”
Shira paces around with unusual excitement. “Wow! I can hardly believe they actually get away with not using any names.”“So how’d you manage to find a way to live without any names?”
Hope cocks her eyebrows. “I don’t know how anybody can be satisfied being just ‘hey you.’“
“I’m sure they got some way to get around ‘hey you’ and still tell each other apart, and I’m gonna find out.”
“For some of us it started with sexual experimentation,” says the brown-haired girl. “At first we avoided using our names out of fear of being discovered, only to find that anonymity gave us an incredible freedom that just wasn’t possible with our names.”
“Names are almost always bound with social obligations that can be suffocating,” says the slender Asian girl. “When we gave up our names, we left behind all that baggage. A heavy load was lifted from our shoulders. It was like being released from prison.”
“The only obstacle we have left to being totally free,” says the blond girl, “is that we can’t yet be legally nameless.”
Hope looks at them thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I’ve got a cousin who’s a lawyer...”
Angela says, “I thought Rejectionists were all in the terror underground.”“She can help us?”
“These aren’t that kind of Rejectionists,” says Hope.
“I’ve heard stories of people getting dissatisfied with their lives and dropping out, but usually they just change their names if anything, not drop ’em altogether.”
“Well, we now got three neighbours who did.”
A sly smile emerges on Angela’s face. “I’m gonna have to seriously look into it.”
“This is just the kind of challenge that makes her lick her lips.”
“So we’ll be able to gain full legal anonymity?” asks the brown-haired girl.
“The Conservative aristocracy built up an entire system of control around names. This might just be the way to break the whole system.”
“Wow,” says the slender girl, “you’re talking like revolution here.”
Hope winks. “Like Angie said, maybe anonymity really is freedom.”
red house. As Sylvia freely moans, without removing her fingers from Sylvia’s cunt, Desiree sits up, gently opens Sylvia’s legs, expertly slips Sylvia’s left leg over her right, presses their cunts together; she takes her time building up their pleasure until it becomes unbearable, pain and pleasure merged, their soft cries musically merging; all reason vanishes, identities collapse, souls merge, all goes white—
Her body is limp with exhaustion. Her mind is stunned into silence. Desiree’s beautiful green eyes, so full of love, gaze through her eyes deep into her heart; she presses her lips to Sylvia’s and gives her a long soft kiss that lasts for a seeming eternity, then silently gazes into her eyes again.
“Why are you doing this to me?” asks Sylvia.
“Because I love you and want to protect you.”
“But you’re married to Charlie.”
“I do love that woman more than my life.”
“Then why—?”
Desiree silences her with a sweet kiss. “I love you, Sylvia, and I won’t allow anyone to harm you, especially not my evil uncles, one of whom just tried to murder you in your dream.”
Sylvia catches her breath. “Oh my god—“
Desiree nods. She sits up to take in the sight of Sylvia’s body. “You’re a beautiful woman with a beautiful heart, and I refuse to let the cravings of evil men destroy that beauty.” She gently caresses Sylvia’s breasts. “You’re a rare and special person, Sylvia Plame. That healing factor of yours could be the salvation of humanity. So Charlie and I vowed to protect you with our lives. But our uncles are so powerful that we can only protect you if we’re bound together by love.”
“So you have to have sex with me?”
She lowers herself onto Sylvia and stares deep into her eyes. “As much as possible. We need you to love us as much as we love you. Will you surrender your heart and your body to us? Please?”
“And become your lover?”
“Yes. Will you? Please?”
Sylvia gives up and sighs softly. “Okay. I’ll surrender to you. Do anything you want to me. I belong to you now.”
“Thank you!” Desiree kisses her long and deeply. “I love you, Sylvia.”
“I love you, Desiree.”
Suddenly they realize Charlie is at the door, watching, smiling at them. She jumps onto the bed beside them, takes Sylvia into her arms, and kisses her. “I’m so happy!” She takes Desiree and Sylvia by the hand and pulls them up. “C’mon, lovers, our meeting’s gonna start soon so let’s get showered.”
mudlark house. Jennifer surfaces in the pool and gasps for air. Brandi asks, “Jen, how do manage to hold your breath so long?”
“Practice.” She winks.
Arisa is astonished. “You mean you do it a lot?“
Jennifer smiles and raises a finger. Polly says, “Uh-oh, I can feel another lecture coming...” The other girls laugh.
“Did you know we’re the only species in the monkey family that can swim?” explains Jennifer. “The ‘aquatic ape theory’ postulates that we became as incredibly smart and pretty as we are because our ancestors developed the ability to swim. As if to prove it, researchers have found that if people spend enough time underwater with regular breaks for breathing, their brains actually develop more blood vessels and greater neural complexity. As the Japanese inventor NakaMats says, ‘swim until almost die make more smart.’“ The girls laugh. “A side benefit is that it makes us uniquely able to uplift the dolphins.”
Leila reaches the other side of the pool. “I’ve always known I would surrender my body to either a woman or a dolphin. Dolphin trainers discover all the time how incredibly strong an erotic attraction dolphins have to humans. I’ve finally found true love with a woman. The only thing that would make me happier would to be to find true love with a dolphin. Maybe I should start preparing now.” She jumps into the pool.
“That girl is so fascinating,” says Shira. “The more I know about her, the more I worship her. I’m so glad to be the woman she’s in love with.” She dives in to join Leila; they share an underwater kiss as all the other girls watch.
red house. They quickly take turns in the shower. They fix microwave breakfasts. They don’t even bother to put anything on. They crowd around the kitchen table and start the meeting while still eating. Present: Charlie and Desiree Richter-Thomas, Sylvia Plame, Yasmin Khoury, Sally Hatfield, Kitty Carlisle, Chris Jordan, and Elsie Currie. Sylvia marvels, “This reminds me of one of those Rejectionist meetings I’ve heard stories about.”
Desiree gasps. “What do you know about the Rejectionists?” she blurts.
“What’s a Rejectionist?” asks Yasmin.
“The Rejectionists are an underground of people who abandon their lives and identities to escape the surveillance machinery of the State. We know of criminal, sexual, and revolutionary currents, but the most important is revolutionary.”
Elsie says, “That reminds me, Amanda was working on a story about a subculture like that when the Revolution hit. She told me about it once. The anonymous beauties, she called ’em, who gave up their entire previous lives to find fulfillment in the sexual underground. Anonymous, meaning without names.”
Charlie turns to Desiree. “That sounds like those three girls who moved in next door to Shira last week.”
Desiree snaps her fingers. “But of course! If anybody knows about it, they should!”
“We’ll go ask ’em.” Charlie turns to the others. “Right now we got a more urgent problem.”
“SPEC,” the librarians say together.
“That’s right.”
shira’s apartment. “Anonymity is freedom“ is the battle cry of the Rejectionists. Willa had told her about Rejectionists she knew in the revolutionary underground; Talia knows of some too. But Hope never knew of Rejectionism in the sexual underground. Now she does.
She unlocks the door with her personal key. Down the hallway she hears a noise. She looks in its direction. Nothing.
She opens the door only to discover with a shock that Taylor Brinkman is sitting in Shira’s favorite recliner, her tattooed body decked in full black leather goth-slut gear. Two cups of fresh coffee sit fully prepared on the table. “What are you doing here?”
“Protecting you.”
“Protecting me how?”
“Protecting you, Shira, and my daughter with my Shield.” Taylor leans forward. “Daddy’s got the uncles on our arses, so Charlie asked me to stick around since she’s busy and I’ve got the better Shield. We don’t want you getting killed by self-righteous superheroes, after all. The goon that just tried to kill you was Drusilla’s.”
“She’ll never get over the divorce. Me, I was more concerned about Ross.”
“Corporates are known to network, you know.”
Hope tosses aside her jacket and sits in her own chair. “So how’d you get in?”
Taylor tosses her the house keys. “Shira.” She winks.
red house. The women huddle around the table. Charlie says, “Gang invasions, organized riots, mad girls running amok—something suspicious going on and we gotta figure it out fast. Anybody got any clues?”
Elsie reports, “Don’t forget Coach Mobley. He’s all but publicly telling his players to eat steroids like candy, yet they’re supposed to be banned.”
Sally says, “We’ve been having a hell of a time just trying to keep the company from shutting down the libraries altogether while management keeps chasing after the latest stupid fads.”
Yasmin says, “There’s been rumors going the rounds lately that the company wants to sell out to China, or to a prison company—“
“I think that’s the Guild itself,” says Desiree bitterly.
“What?” The others stare at her.
“They don’t want an IPO, they want a quick cash-out at our expense.”
“The only question left is when,” Charlie says.
Suddenly a bleary-eyed Ayla wanders in. “Are you having breakfast?”
“Actually, that sounds like a good idea.” The women lean back and let out a big collective sigh.
fleer house. Frank is surprised to see police blocking the way in. He drives his blue Hummer up to the COPCO agent at the gate. “This is a crime scene, citizen,” the agent says. “No unauthorized personnel allowed.”
He shows his ID card. “The Admiral is my uncle, and my sister is here. I’m authorized.” The agent scans the card; he pockets it. “So what crime was committed here, agent?”
“Someone was murdered here, Mr. Becket. Since your sister and her friends were the only ones here at the time, we believe they were involved.”
“I believe I can help you, agent. Allow me to make a call.”
“Permission granted.”
Frank takes out his phone.
mudlark house. Marina has finally calmed down and the girls have settled into friendly conversation when Leila’s phone calls. She stares ahead in surprise. All the other girls turn their attention to her. “Frank?”
Jennifer asks, “It’s about Nancy, isn’t it.”
Polly’s voice trembles. “I’ve got a terrible feeling about this...”
Leila scrambles to pick up her phone. “Frank! Why are you— what— ...oh my god no...”
“What is it?”
Slowly she turns to face her friends, on the verge of tears. “We’re too late... Nancy’s dead.”
Mimi screams and screams.
red house. The call comes in the middle of breakfast. Charlie picks up the phone. “Hello? Oh hi Jen! What? Who? Oh shit.”
“What is it?” Sylvia asks.
“Nancy’s dead. They won’t say who did it, but they’ve got an idea.”
“I guess the meeting’s over,” says Yasmin, “right?”
“Let’s go!” says Elsie.
The visitors throw on their clothes and hurry out.
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[Revision 4 Final, 11/28/12: The Mudlark House sequence completely rewritten from the original version in 12.1 R2; everything else is new to the Fourth Revision.]
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