Amputee

Sweet, fresh, blond-for-the-day sloganeer stands in her bright elow tee, torn to measure and wrapped around her skin and bones like a Fryday night getup for Tutankhamunnie; the flasher mummy.

She spots me wanting as soon as I emerge from the shadows of my day life into the glorious street lights of the here and right now. Ready to do business she drops her ciggie a quarter dead and stubs it out beneath her big bad boy boots freshly ripped from the feet of a perforated squaddie, dead for no reason at all. She’ll probably never get rid of all the sand, but no matter, there’s a thousand more pairs where they come from.

“Time for fun?” she says, with a user abuser squint and drawl more affected than effective.

Yeah, but effective enough for me to hand over fifty not-so hard earned.

A blink of an eye later it’s fizzling on my tongue.

I let it sit, just for a moment like. I savour the anticipation, my body twitching with desire. I’m five again and all my Xmas’s and Burfdays have come at once.

Behind me a ruckus erupts; the sloganeer is lashing out at a pissing tourist who declined her offer to reach purest pharmaceutical heaven with a wet mouth projectile of spite and a, “Take that fucking shit elsewhere you skanky death dealing bitch!”

She lightening jumps the chump in the white suburban sports utility wear (for those that either don’t know, don’t care or just plain let the significant other do all the deciding). He takes a towel head kicker boot to the boys and down he goes. His chummies scramble to drag her off but she’s already caused him permanent retinal fuckage with her finger nails which are now embedded deeper in his peepers than a VBC crew covering the killing of innocents twiglets in whatever country we’re pre-emptively striking this week.

At least now there’s always summit good to watch on the Michael TeeVee.

Screaming, shouting and someone’s going to end up Princess Di (Royally screwed). Fuck’em I say. let them dance all night if that’s what they want. I’ve got from her what I need, why shouldn’t he get his?

I cross the road oblivious to all the party motors and march ever onwards to the golden gates of New Shmoo; the spankiest, bestest, coolest, everything ever. A temple of sound, light, movement, screwing, emancipating, ejaculating fun.

That is until it gets shut down by the joyless next week. No matter another joint will scream into life in its place like a body snatcher emerging from its me-pod.

I can’t hold it anymore; this fruit pastel needs to be chewed; gulp it back, gulp them all back my little ‘un’s ‘cause it’s cubed for perfection, free now from it’s cellophane prison, smooth to the touch, sweet and sugary to the taste.

Ten/10 embossed; absolutely accept no substitute.

Just a few moments away now, no long long wait for a kick in, this purest sin sets you burning from the second it hits your cute tattooed tummy.

Yeah man, it’s a farmer’s suit tickle trip to delight. But it’s no good to me anymore. 10mg’s nothing, 50mg’s nothing. 100mgs or more. It’s no good to me I’m an amputee.

You can’t see what’s missing can you? Count my fingers, count my toes, arms, legs, all there yeah?

And before you ask it ain’t them either; meat and two veg all present and correct. Not that they’re any good to me now either.

They cut away something deeper, something you won’t see when you eye-ball me grooving with some lovely dark eyed twig.

What they cut away was deep inside and now it’s gone. All I have is a cock inch wrinkled scar like the buckle clip of an empty purse.

What was my offence? Nothing you’d see on Crim-zone or Blag-watch or any of that midweek paranoia for the proletariat. Stay scat scared, stay behind your gated estate, lock all the doors, don’t breath or they’ll rob you, rape you, slash you, de-cash you and then set you alight so you can watch them piss everywhere but on your char-grilled cadaver.

Nah, I was having fun was all. Didn’t know that was so wrong; not until that night I was snatched from my playground and my ‘maybe a little bit’ immoral ways were used to prosecute me at a trail with no representation.

It was Fryday, or maybe it was a Saturday? It might even have been one of those new days that stuck in between to make us more metric. So difficult to know when it was, every day of the week, Monday to Tenday were somewhat partyesque for the lacking in proper employ, of which there are many many.

Was it Tenday? Not my fault I can’t properly recall. Don’t blame me, blame all those cubes of Frenesí; have you tried the Ten/10? Have you? I know everyone’s had a spin on Lizard Lips and lover’s tiff with Long Runner, but Ten/10 was cerebral bliss. Felt like all the broken bits in your noggin’ caused by way to many pop and pills were being reconfigurated. Made you feel alert, vibrant, alive, invincible and as érotique as the drummers grunt. No vacuum packed size negatory twiglet could resist you.

What’s so wrong with that eh?

With the Frenesí scrambling my brainiac making everything lovely and swirly purple, big hard and purple, oh yes, oh yes.

Snuff and Jinx my BFF and her slut whore twig toy are phasing in and out as I slide by them. Snuff grins at me all Cheshire like and I know she’s gunning for whatever I’ve got so I keep moving. A moment later and Jinx too is trying to pull me back; hanging onto my hand and shouting sugar coated nuttin’s at me. I can’t hear above the deafening sweet beats but I know she’s out and desperate. Could get a suck but how would that be fun when there’s no passion, just gash and craving? Let her want, these treats are mine. I give her a gentle tickle on the siddies and she let’s me go, losing me in the grinding body mass of goodniters from all across this megalopolis.

It was all I was there for, to get a taste of creamy tanned twiglet. All I was there for as I was carving through the perspiring polyphonic pandemonium, head down, orange crush skinny bottle in one hand, large happy pappy in the other; moving with a purpose, but not knowing where I was going until I got there. The beats as focused in my head as ratchet hammering on a tip of an inter-continental weapon of mass snuffing.

And then she stopped me dead on. I gave her a down and up. She just pulled my hand to her mouth and took a lungful of the Pappy, as bold as you like.

Just like that.

Audacious I thought, not a twig at all this one.

I gave her a sniff and this red eyed dame smelt caked with Frenesí. She sniffed back, hard, grunting and I knew she can tell that tonight we’d be enjoying a heady mix of the finest brews our friends in the labs from the East could produce. I necked the last of the OC Skinny, throwing it to the dirt when done, she took my hand free now and led me on.

She led me on all right.

Outside the multi-sexual cubes she kissed me hard and deep, her tongue seeking out a micro cap of Losers Friend that may be stashed in one of my gnashers, which there weren’t. I ain’t no memory-jacker or organ-legger. No Sir, I don’t want to harm no one. Not unless they ask nicely.

I don’t take no offence, ‘Can’t be too careful these days,’ that what I say to her, she nods and smiles

We crash into a cube, door slam shut and she’s on me. Pulling up her pussy pelmet I spin her round and lift her onto the top of the can in one of my mightiest manoeuvres ever. I drive my hand up her tiny pitch black T and get a soft-core preview of the hard stuff that’s in store.

The pounding beats they pipe through to the cube dwellers resonate with the tiny dark slate and shiny chrome filled space; the distorted throbbing sounds are like music under the waves; no not music, like a destroyer frantically dropping depth charges, one after another and here we are in our tiny sub getting blown around and I’m lovin’ it.

She grabs a clump of my hair at the back of my head like I’m some naughty puppy and pulls my mouth to hers. She’s kissing me with violent chemical passion. Back and forth, this side and then that, my hands reach for the panties her mother laid out for her and I’m pulling them down when I hear ‘crack’.

It’s barely audible or maybe I didn’t hear it all, maybe I just felt the sharp pain on my tongue and imagined the sound. Easy to get befuddled what with the party treats and XXX all going on at the same time.

The pain is excruciating. My face is numb in seconds and an icy paralysis races over my entire body. I grab at her in a futile attempt to not fall on the piss drenched floor. She glares back, not with lust anymore but with disinterest, ‘Wha?’ I try to say but I barely get the ‘W..’ out when the rush of nausea hits me full on and I’m gone.

My brain flip and spins out, not all joyous like when the Delirium takes you in her warm embrace and shows you the sound and feel of colour all night long. No, this was more like your legs being chopped away and you feel yourself start to fall from inside, except you don’t hit you just keep falling, but you know, you know that any second now…

There were two or three of them. Can’t be certain. They pulled me out of the cube. No one stopped them, but then why would they? Everyone is busy with their own needs. I’m just a chem’d up skitt monkey to them, probably O.D. on some big bad bad; pay him no more attention they’d say to one another, if he can’t take his dose that’s his problem.

I’m screaming by the time they drag me out to the alley, or at least I think I’m screaming. So hard to tell, maybe I was grinning and dribbling like a placenta stained ginger abortion dodger that’s sucking on a needle full of liquid Euphoria both thoughtlessly discarded in the biochemical waste bin of a back street foetus scrapper.

Lying there looking up at the orange sky I imagine I’m floating through the toxic haze and dense light pollution. Pushing all the way up to those lovely twinkly stars they taught us about in school. ‘cept I don’t get there.

Beyond the tight grip of neon belt is just red hot searing agony; a million little ants are digging around in my skull, picking out bits of brain. Digging deeper and deeper until they hit a switch buried deep that turns me o…

...

...

…Scared to move.

Scared to move because when I do I know there’s going to be a lot of pain.

They say it’ll pass.

They say I’m on the mend, mostly on the mend that is.

The Doctor who sat on my head and talked at me whilst never looking at me said I was a victim.

“A victim?” I said all croaky like.

“We see a lot of this these days,” he said, “A lot of you young ‘uns getting spiked, spun over and sliced up by the boot boys of the illegal biochemists.”

He leaned toward me and gently touched the large swathe of bandages that I imagined were helping to stop my brain getting squished on my pillow when I turn in the night.

“Have you heard of a chemical that can let you experience other peoples memories?” The Doctor asked.

I’m not sure if this is a trap, so I stay silent. He takes that as a no and continues to do his best to dumb down what’s happened to me enough for me to comprehend it all.

“This drug you see, well it’s incredibly dangerous and can cause severe cerebral damage.”

“But what’s that got to do with me?” I ask all indignant and not wanting to be busted for summut I ain’t never done.

“They cut your head open and took pieces of your brain out to use as part of the mix for NZZINER-10.”

“What?” I say, “They sliced bits of my noggin’ out for some twigs party treat Neexeral?”

“It’s called NZZINER-10. Although a lot of you young ‘uns know it as Rapeture or R’pture.”

“But that’s from our friends in the labs from the East,” I say forgetting to pretend I don’t know nuffink.

“It is,” The Doctor says, “Labs in the East of the City.”