Chapter #78Alarums and Diversions by: Seuzz   Night has long since fallen by now, and you're starving. You have Joe send Jacob a text asking about the status of his search; the reply is that it will be awhile, as "Paige Dear" and "Rob Darling" are out on a date. So you and Joe pop around to a nearby pub, where you wolf down a bowl of Thai curry while pestering the help about their wages and whether they'd be up for doing something about them. You get no takers.
But you're back in the bedsit, lounging in the dark with a couple of beers, when Joe's cell goes off. "They're on their way," he says.
You keep the lights off, so when the door creaks open after a knock you see only the backlit forms of three people in the dimly lighted frame. "Come in," you call. "Don't mind the dark. Dark rooms for dark talk. I'm Hal. Pleased to make your acquaintance."
"Uh, I'm Paige," comes the quavering voice of a girl.
"Rob," says a sturdier one.
"Jacob, close the door," you say. A suffocating darkness falls over the room. You cover your eyes. "Joe, light 'em up."
Even through your fingers and eyelids you see the flash.
It's faded to a warm, dim glow when you open your eyes again. Your three visitors are pinching their blighted eyes. You only have to stroll up to get masks onto two of them, and catch them when they fall.
"Joe, was that you?" Jacob mutters as he blinks and peers about near-sightedly.
"Who else?"
"Alright, let's get the girl on the bed," you annouce. "The lad'll be quicker work."
"You could'a warned a guy about your light bomb," Jacob growls as he scoops up Paige Knotts.
"What would be the fun in that?" Joe laughs.
Then, as though, sprung from a catapult, he flies across the room to smack into the wall with a grunt. He takes the rest of the flag down with him has he slides to the floor.
"You're right," Jacob says as he lays Paige on the bed where Joe had been sitting. "It is a lot more fun to spring it without warning."
You strip Rob Oliver of his clothes while waiting for the mask to finish copying him—not that you're going to use the mask. Exposed he reveals himself as an almost boring exemplar of the pampered, upper-class university male. A rug of brown hair covers his broad, deep chest, and a line of such trails down a tapering torso and over a flat stomach to the wild thatch at the crotch. He has strong legs and arms, also downed with light brown hair that matches the respectably short hair on his crown. His well-scrubbed features are very regular and handsome in a way that might be rugged if it weren't for a certain softness about the eyes and mouth. You doubt he plays sports, except very mild forms of rugby and football, and that he got most of his physique from the gym. Possibly an expensive home gym, too, as his clothes are, if not Abercrombie & Fitch, at least of the same general form. Only a thin gold chain that dangles from ear violates the otherwise perfectly composed form.
You blow him apart with a lightning strike after you've peel back the carpet and set him on the operating table. Paige, on the bed, doesn't stir, but a couple of car alarms go off outside.
"Let's get his face onto you, Joe," you say as Jacob hefts the resulting golem into a corner. Your colleague is already out of his clothes and only has to drop onto the operating table. "Before we have the bobbies out here."
"Is this guy the local version of Jonathan Straussler?"
"In reduced form. His daddy's a supremo at Sainsbury's, so he's got plenty of ready."
"What's he doing with a girl like her?" Joe nods at Paige.
"Striking a blow against his mum and dad," Jacob puts in. "That's what we think. Same as with the earring."
You reposition the candle and the mask, and with the flick of a lighter smash Rob Oliver's imago onto Joe.
He's still looking like his old self, though, and scrambling backward to grab his clothes, when voices start jabbering outside, and someone pounds on the door. "We know that's you, Swann, or whatever the fuck your name is!" You recognize the voices of the girls from upstairs. "Swann!" They pound on the door some more.
Then comes a much louder and angrier voice, in an accent so thick you can't make out the words through the door. That will be Mr. Nizamani, and after some loud shrieking he succeeds in driving your neighbors away. "God bless the Third World," you grin. "Ah," you add as you turn around.
Paige is sitting up and blinking stupidly. The mask tumbles onto the bed next to her. "Frank," is all you say.
Paige gasps as she rises into the air and floats into the middle of the room. She kicks, but her arms remain clapped to her sides, and they remain there even after she is resting on the operating table. "Jacob!" she yells. "What—?"
You pull off your armband and stuff it in her mouth. Her eyes roll and roll. "Shh, all be over in a tick," you assure her. "Consciousness raised and all in on the class struggle." You shift the now-empty mask over a spot on the sigil, and replace the bottles and bands now filled with Rob's essentia and anima with empty ones. "Comes the revolution," you announce as you light the candle.
Another stroke that leaves your ears ringing, and there's a blank golem where Paige Knotts had been lying. "You can let go now," you tell Jacob.
"Are you stepping in for her?" he asks.
"In a manner of speaking." You slide the golem over to another spot on the operating table, and snuff out and resettle the candle. You light it.
No lightning strike this time, but a crackling hiss like tearing paper. A smell of burnt matches pervades the room. The chest of the golem darkens with an intricate criss-cross of lines. "Is that what I think it is?" Jacob says.
"Brilliant, isn't it?" You dive into some of the luggage Joe had hauled over, and pull out the remote mask.
"I thought you left that back home."
"Don't worry, I don't foresee much use of it on you lads." But you glance around the room. In moving Paige, Jacob has knocked some more junk to the floor, and the sense of an emerging pattern has your senses throbbing. "But if we're going to go spelunking in the belly of the beast, best to use a drone."
"How much are you going to be using her?" a new voice chimes in, and you look over to see that Rob has joined you. He's in his trousers and undershirt, and is buttoning up the silk dress shirt he was sporting. He's already got the earring in, you notice. His lips twitch. "Like, when it's just her and me?"
"Likely only when I'm in class," you retort. You pull out a bottle of Eric Kim's essentia. "When I'm not there, you can run her."
"Brilliant," he murmurs, and shoots the cuffs of his shirt. Give him seven years of proper care, and he'll be one of the biggest mid-level corporate tossers between Leeds and Southampton.
It takes the sigil another minute to finish burning into the golem. The car alarms are all off by now, but the night explodes with them again when you hammer Paige Knotts's imago and Eric Kim's essentia into the golem. She sits up with the same terrified expression as when you put her down. "Rob, tell your girlfriend not to scream," you say. It takes a few more words from him to get her to stop looking so stressed out.
Paige Knotts is a small girl, a pale girl, a girl with baby fat all over an otherwise attractive figure. Half her head is shaved close; the rest of her hair, which is probably naturally dark, has been dyed an unnatural black and it hangs down the side of her face to her jaw. She wasn't wearing any piercings, but she has the holes for them. Her eyes continue to dart truculently about the room.
"I'd like to talk to her alone for awhile," you tell your colleagues. "I'll send her to catch up to later."
There's a pause. "You can't tell her what you want to say in front of us?" Rob asks.
"No. But you can ask her about it later. It won't be a secret."
That draws you a very hard but uncomprehending look, but after shuffling their feet a bit, Rob and Jacob step out, leaving you alone with the naked golem of Paige Knotts.
"You should get on the bed," you tell her. After blinking rapidly at you for a few seconds, she moves onto it, to sit with her hands folded in her lap and a pinched expression on her face.
You take off your jacket, kick off your shoes, and put out the lights. You're out of your shirt and trousers in three seconds, and on top of her in two. Your wick is granite hard, and you cover her mouth as you guide it into her. She struggles, but your thrusting weight keeps her pressed into the bed.
You've neither the time nor the patience to play the lover. You jam yourself in deep and spend yourself quickly.
* * * * *
It's an astonishing and disconcerting discovery to find that you are stimulated to frenzies by a golem. The naked girl herself stirred little but a mild physiological reaction in you; the golem, when it sat up, lifted you into ecstasies of desire.
And as you gulp and gasp in the girl's ear, you see even deeper into yourself: You'd have done the same thing to a golem of Rob Oliver.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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