Spanner Interlude 8: Rebel, Rebel

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Chaos Angel Spanner
Interlude 8: Rebel, Rebel

Willa:
I’m a rebel.

Shira:
I’m a rebel too.

Willa:
They call me Rebel Mudlark.

Shira:
They call me Rebel Styles.

liverpool, 1982. Even before Jonnii Angel came out of his stage-electrocution coma, the Band with No Name had hired new guitarist Ric Thomas, a hot-tempered, seriously weird, and damn pretty redhead from Seattle halfway through their first British tour.

He brought his even prettier blond kid sister Willa with him. She was supposed to be some kind of teenage violin prodigy. She had already decided to change her last name to Richter-Thomas (with the hyphen missing from her recently divorced mother’s married name) because it sounded more fashionably British. She arrived in an outfit that looked not so much punk as post-apocalyptic.

Despite, well, the entire New Wave, producer Billy Shears was somehow shocked. “You’re the girl prodigy? You look bloody mental like a rebel mudlark!”

Her violin tortured his ears for the rest of the night. The No-Names laughed helplessly. The outfit stayed. She kept the name.

mudlark(wave).1984 = take her for myself
All I want is a fuckable girl
I gotta have me a fuckable girl
I don’t give a damn
If she's already got a man
I’ll beat that man to death
Then I’ll take her for myself

seattle, 2006. As much as they liked playing around with boys, they sometimes got bored. They liked each other, but they wanted variety. They wanted to play dangerous games. As much as the adults tried to warn and scare, they chose perversity over prudence. Shira and Kira, six years old, homed in like twin rockets on the new neighbour as soon as they were certain he was a pedophile.

Dave was a priest and a Scoutmaster. Rumor said he had an appetite for children. He liked boys, but was interested in girls. The twins Charmed their way into his life. They asked him to make love to them. He was surprisingly gentle. He fell hopelessly in love with them. They dominated him. All three believed theirs was a beautiful secret love made in heaven. Society and the Law disagreed.

Mean white men in clean white coats took him away. Police and priests and psychiatrists tried to force them to hate him and think of themselves as victims eternally entitled to vengeance. Shira and Kira's perversity defeated them. They concluded these children were freaks, possibly psychopaths, certainly children of Satan.

It was too late. Shira and Kira had discovered they possessed absolute power over child-loving men. Teenage hacker friends (and gay boyfriends) set up a website and studio for them. They recorded a series of disturbingly sexy videos on an unmade bed. But they needed a name.

Shira and Kira: “What will we call ourselves?”

El Kabong: “You’re definitely rebels.”

Shira: “Like Rebel Mudlark!”

Kira: “But what Rebel are we?”

Evil The Cat: “You crazy stylin’ like the Mudlark?”

Shira and Kira: “That’s it! We’ll call ourselves Rebel Styles!”

They became instant millionaires.

styles♪funk.2013 = your secret is mine
You’ve got a secret that is safe with me
Unless you leave and break my heart
Until you rip my heart apart
You’ve got a secret that is safe with me
Unless you leave me all alone
And then I’ll tell the wife at home

Shira:
I was born a poor black child.

Willa:
I was born on LSD.

san francisco, 1967. When the Summer of Love began to sour, Alec Power, lead singer and most enigmatic member of the Nine Unknown Men, most mysterious of all psychedelic rock bands, spirited away pregnant future writer Eleanor Richter Thomas to India on a whirlwind spiritual tour. She returned to San Francisco and her husband completely changed. People change quickly when they are young. But she had ingested unknown quantities of LSD, sacred mushrooms, and guru wisdom during her trip. Willa's brain chemistry was permanently altered before she left the womb.

She inherited the ability to see auras from her mother and grandmother. But her altered brain developed an uncanny ability to recognize patterns and connections no one else noticed without getting paranoid. It also destroyed the inborn taboos most people inherited from ancient ancestors. She lost her virginity at seven. She proceeded to seduce her older brother and sister.

mudlark[wave].1986 = finders keepers, losers weepers
Too late, boy, I found her first
Look all you want, but you can't touch
She's now mine for all of time
Finders keepers, losers weepers

vancouver, 1999. The world would end in three months. The world would end in two years. The world would end in thirteen years and three months. On the last New Year’s Day before the turn of the millennium, Shira Miranda and Kira Amanda were conceived in a Tantric sex ritual. On September 9 — 9/9/1999 — their lives began.

Their father was a No-Name, their mother a half-black activist. They were gorgeous children. They soon developed an uncanny ability to wrap you around their dainty fingers. Eventually they developed the uncannier power to disrupt fate itself.

Their mother and Willa were not just sisters-in-law but lovers. They loved to put each other’s children to their breasts. One day Willa decided to nurse Shira and Kira while on LSD and smart drugs as a scientific experiment. It was a success. They ceased to be just adorably charming little girls. They became Charmers with power rivalling Steve Jobs himself.

styles©funk.2014 = bat woman
And now I shall become a bat
Right upside your twisted head
Oh yes I shall become a bat
Beat you red and beat you dead

He comes to Willa in a nightmare. He appears to her in costume. Richard Becket used to be a superhero. He thinks he still is. In the Scarab lineage he is number eight. She greets him as a nude spirit. He gags.

Dick: You cannot win.

Willa: You have already lost.

Dick: I’m the real hero, and you’re just a wicked witch.

Willa: You’re just another bully. Sit still while I put a spell on you.

Dick: You cannot beat me!

Willa: You always beat yourself, good and hard.

Dick: I’m bigger than you!

Willa: I’m the ant in the elephant’s trunk.

Willa:
I was always in love with my brother.

Shira:
I was always in love with my twin sister.

Willa:
We were born without a single taboo.

Shira:
We were born to fuck and never gave a fuck.

seattle, 2007. Ric loved to play “guitar” on Shira and Kira’s bodies, everywhere they were ticklish except there. Willa played them there like a guitar virtuoso to produce the sweetest music known to Rock ’N’ Roll. They swore eternal love for her and vowed to be her perfect instruments. She played them again and again.

Big sister Charlie had a different playing style. She played her little sisters with her whole body. Willa’s daughter Jennifer, smitten with her redheaded twin cousins, begged her mother to make music with her body too. Charlie brought in a friend named Amanda who had fallen in love with them. Willa played her daughter, Charlie and Amanda played the twins; they formed a band and played delicious secret music.

mudlark{wave}.1992 = burn your eyes
Look at me behind the mask
Blind man, blind man, open your eyes
I’m all fire when inside the flesh
Look real hard, I’ll burn your eyes

new york, 1983. A strange unearthly man came from the future to meet Willa. He called himself Klaus Nomi. Actually, he used to be an Austrian opera singer till the New Wave began channelling the music of the future and the future possessed him. He craved men, she had an older woman who spoke his language and her own brother; but they loved each other and sang an ethereal duet. She changed her style from No-Name glampunk to New Wave science fiction, one year before the cyberpunks began to roar. One fateful night on Saturday Night Live, they upstaged David Bowie, aging rock star turned New Wave video star, to warn him what he had gotten into, he with his beautiful alien voice, she playing all the lead synth parts on her electric violin without guitar pedals.

Klaus Nomi soon died an empty shell. The world shrank away from him, carrier of the new “gay plague.” She refused to stay away. She was one of the few who came to his funeral. It was the first great loss of her life. She would dedicate her first album to him.

styles♥funk.2014 = captive girl
I will slay your terrorist
Make love to you among the carnage
Lick his blood off your soft skin
Kill him for your love

But the man with the plan came to destroy them. The Crusader invaded their dreams. Willa was married to him for one month, the single worst month of her life. After that, he made himself pure through force of absolute will.

He came to murder Willa in her dreams. She welcomed him as an abstraction of terror, all patterns and connections in eleven dimensions, without human weakness he could use to destroy, overwhelming his mind with multiple clashing fates.

He came to murder Shira in her weakness. She met him as a reality distortion, chaotic flows of time fate and freedom, turning matter into liquid and light into stone, giving him vertigo and causing migraines.

Willa:
We’re gonna blow your mind.

Shira:
We’re gonna fuck your brain.

Willa & Shira:
We’re gonna rock your bodies harder and faster
and you’ll never be the same again.

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Copyright © 2012 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.

[Revision 4, 11/2/12: Originally written as a short story for AugNoWriMo 2010, left incomplete, and made into a later Interlude for Book 2. Now radically re-edited and new to Book 1 Revision 4.]
[Revision 5 Final, 4/8/13: Revised to connect better to Fourth Revision continuity (especially in later chapters) and simply to read better. 5/9/13: formatting corrected.]