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sweat. Cop was cool.
"Well, it has been pleasant," said Beetle.
The shecop was looking all around the room, searching for clues. "I'm just
warning you.
Don't go upsetting the neighbours."
There you go. Nosey bitch from the next floor down.
"We'll do our best," the Beetle told the cop.
"Listen good, kid. I'm not easily satisfied."
"Well I can see that."
"You got a job?"
"Not as such."
"I have this thing about dripfeeders; they really get on my case."
"We can't all be in sugar."
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There were some intense moments passing by, as Beetle tried his best sex
charms on the woman. She was having none of it. She just stared right back,
her eyes full up of hard metal.
Beetle meets his match!
It was the dumbo partner that broke the spell; "Let's split, Murdoch. Just a
bunch of wasted kids."
Murdoch didn't look back at him. She just jabbed a long finger at Beetle, like
a weapon.
"I'm coming back for you. You got that?"
"I've got it," replied the Bee, cool as fuck. The door went shuck behind them,
closing with a comfort fix. Beetle was out of the cool in an instant; he
popped two Jammers and went straight for me and Mandy.
"What's this about the neighbour shit?" he demanded. His face was full up of
anger. One long streak of hair had escaped from the grip of Vaz, and was
swinging around against his powdered face like a black plant creeper. "Well
what the fuck's going on?" he shouted, and
Mandy and I couldn't even look at each other any more.
"It was my fault," Mandy said.
"Tell me about it," said Beetle.
"We got caught on the landing, carrying the Thing," I added.
"Oh, brilliant."
"Some woman on the second floor," said Mandy.
"Didn't you cover it?"
Mandy looked nervous. Her eyes turned to mine.
"You know that we didn't, Bee," I offered, praying to the God of Vurt to take
me right out of that room and up to the theatre of heaven, where the angels
play.
No such luck.
The Beetle hit me. Across the face. Felt like a hammer. The real kind, mind.
Hardened steel, with a hard wood handle.
I took my hand away from my nose, and there was blood on the fingers and the
palm.
That guy is gonna suffer one day.
And he would. But not at my hand.
JAM MODE
We were in Jam mode, screaming down the back roads, all rattling around in the
van. Me, the Thing, Brid and Mandy. Beetle at the wheel, jammed up to the
nines. The scenes of south
Manchester sped past the black windows like a bad foreign movie. The Beetle
had popped so many Jammers, fear was just a bad memory. The man was on a demon
trip, and he was taking us with him.
Brid was wide awake for once. It had been my job to wake her. Which was like
waking up a stone, some dead lump of inanimate matter. Man, she had screamed
at me, and then, whilst the half-dead world came rushing back, she had called
for Beetle's blood, promising slow tortures.
I'd had to slap her.
She slapped me back.
Which hurt.
Which hurt the both of us.
Then I'd half-kicked her down the stairs, into the van. And then back for the
Thing-from-
Outer-Space. He was just coming round from the night of feathers. I'd give him
about an hour or so, and then he'd be screaming out for more memories of the
homeland. Christ! Who'd want to live there? It was Mandy and I, of course,
left with the task of carrying the Thing. This time we covered him in a
blanket, and the journey down the stairs went like a dream, until Twinkle
showed up.
"Is that you, Mister Scribble?" her tinkling voice asked.
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"Get lost, kid!" was my response.
"Mister Scribble, that's not fair," she answered back.
Twinkle was a blue-eyed sweet kid of ten, with a patchwork bob of hair, as
blonde as the day was doomed. I loved her dearly except that she was a total
pain, and a bit of a nutflake.
"What's under the blanket, Mister Scribble?"
"Kid, fuck off," said Mandy.
But the kid was hot: "It's that alien from space, isn't it?" she asked.
Twinkle lived on the first floor, the child of a three parent family; man,
woman, hermaphrodite.
"It's just Bridget under here," I offered. "We can't wake her up."
"No way. I saw you kicking Brid down just before. You've got an illegal
alien."
"No we haven't," said Mandy.
"I've seen him before. I've seen you carrying him around. The whole place
knows."
"Listen, Twinkle. . ." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]