Pongo #45
By brighteyes
- 813 reads
Martaro
What IS that? Fuck it, the studio's just round this corner. I break into a jog.
Miffy
That's it. I'm tired of being chained to this phone. Blawww Blawww. You're lying that he's even contemplating picking up. Holding it too close'll probably give me cancer or frazzle my lobes anyway. I yank on a baggy coat and do it up as I run.
Martaro
Someone's definitely following me. I can hear them. My stride increases, the jog sneaking up to a run. Their pace increases too, softly mimicking my own. The studio is in sight, about a hundred metres down the road, and suddenly all shame slips me and I belt down the street as fast as my legs can carry me. To my horror, the footsteps give up all pretence of not existing and pound the tarmac, getting louder and louder until it seems there are forty shoes drumming on my skull.
I still haven't looked behind me, and concentrate on the bobbing lights of the studio's fire exit for my navigation. My pursuers say nothing, but continue to thunder after me. It is at this point my ear defines two pairs of feet. By now, my lungs, exhausted from years of filming on smoke-rammed sets, begin to rebel. Slow down, they whine. We'll pack up on you. We'll fly out of your ribcage in soggy segments and splat against the kerb. I haven't got the breath to answer them, but as my hand claps onto the door handle and I fumble for my keys, I become sharply aware that my lungs may be removed anyway, as a hand clamps onto mine and I see who has been following me.
"Get your keys out and let's go inside, shall we? says the taller of the two men, his jacket flapping in the night wind. When I hesistate, the other whips out a debt collector knife. My mutinous hands find the keys as easily as a microwave finds water, and we go inside.
Miffy
Which way is it to that fucking studio? Always took taxis before. I should have checked before I left. No, I should have stopped pissing about with trying to call him and got off my rapidly spreading arse to go out and look for him.
I dart down a side street off Polliwen Way, no mean feat when your legs are so mismatched it feels like a three-legged race tied to a basketball star. Lolloping as fast as I can, I feel the tightness in my heart that was not there days ago, but whose recent presence has prompted a montage in my mind of smoking scenes. I have not quit. I have just been keeping the packets piled beneath my bed as a reminder. Running is suddenly so much fucking harder than it ever was. Still I press on. This way looks vaguely familiar.
Why tonight? Why am I running about like a blue-arsed fly tonight? I walked home alone night after night when my body was fully eight years old, tarted up to the nines like a Tokyo frillfest, and never once was I worried? Why have I got the horrible feeling that tonight, a thirty-odd man with all his limbs intact is going to get seriously hurt?
He's probably fine. He's probably fine.
Martaro
"Filth, absolute filth, says the brown-haired man, scrunching his nose as he holds up a pair of Angelica Pearl's crotchless underpants.
"Do I know you? I ask from my position tied into a prop throne from Medieval Muff XII.
"We have a mutual acquaintance, says the lighter of the two, stripping off his sheepskin jacket and looking lovingly at the full blade of his debt collector.
"If you're fans of any of my actors, I can get you their autographs or anything. There's surely no need for this. I am bluffing so tightly my lungs are taking run-ups at my ribs.
"Oh for fuck's sake, says the first man. "Would we really chase you through the streets, tie you up and threaten you with knives to get autographs? That is a pretty fucking huge insult. This is about our friend and what you've done to her.
"Give me a name.
"Come off it."
"A name. Did Saral send you? Are you some of her fisting friends come to take revenge on me for finally telling her where to go and ending that whole wretched mess?
"Saral? Do you mean¦? No. Who the fuck is Saral?
"OK, then who?
"Think.
"I don't know. Just pissing tell me and then we can do business.
"Saren Kenneckie ring a bell?
"Who? No. I told you, I know a Saral, but no Saren.
The taller guy pounces on a publicity shot for Tiny Tease, Miffy's landmark movie, made when she was about twenty-nine.
"Fucking LIES. You FUCKING LIAR FUCKING PERVERT - He dives towards me with the knife.
"That's not your Saren person at all, I protest, trying to level my voice. Let me out, sings my heart as it bangs and bangs against bone. "I don't know who you're looking for, but that's not her.
"Miffy Renee, reads his companion from the caption on the mount card. "Her name's changed, that's all. Remember what Ms Q said! She's going to have changed. We just need to find her.
I decide not to tell them I just came from her place. Whoever these guys are, and whatever their intentions, I don't want them even getting lukewarm on where she is.
"You know this girl?
"Worked with her, yes. She's a good friend. Ba-dunk. Ba-dunk. The debt collector eyes me up.
"Oh, I fucking bet she is, grins one manically. I think it's the sheepskin guy, but they're drifting in and out of focus. Perhaps these bonds are too tight. I've tied enough of them for incompetent dom actors in my time to know that they shouldn't be cutting in this much.
"Take us to her.
"I don't know where she lives. She's very reclusive. Turns up, we do the shoot, she goes home in an unmarked cab. Always travels by cab.
"Funny how we've had reports of her traveling on foot then. Watch your step, you little scrote, or we'll use this - we're going to rescue your little meal ticket any way we deem necessary. You've probably noticed by now that this knife is the same one from the papers.
I nod.
"Where does she live? The brown-haired man, who by no has confirmed himself as the leader of the two, traces the tip of the machete across my throat. I think of the photographs in the paper, of the old woman they attacked. They aren't going to hesitate around a fully-grown man like themselves.
"Who are you? I play for time.
"Us? The brown haired man walks towards me. "We're old school friends of Miss Renee. Only this wasn't your ordinary school. I think it's safe to say we were all fucked over. Only we escaped by expulsion from the program, after years in solitary. We got to grow up, just slightly later than most people, at the age of twenty.
"Why were you expelled?
"For drawing a height chart on the wall, would you believe? says the brunette. "You see, at this school, they didn't want us realising that we were never going to grow up like other children.
"Grays, I murmur.
"Marley actually, but in a way you're right. You see they're all one and the same company. Marley's, Gray's, they're all branches sprouting from the same trunk. People fear one leviathan company, so it appears consumer-friendlier to suggest that even the little man can grab a slice of the pie.
"So you three were ' what ' tests? Miffy was some sort of prototype?
"They fucked me and him over, as I tell you, says the brunette. My bonds ache and the blood swells in my head. "But not as much as her, as Saren. She was kept there like some sick little doll, before eventually being thrown out, after funding was withdrawn, to fend for herself. Fucked over. And people like you have been fucking her over ever since! You made her act in your sick little films, made her into some kind of freakshow so the world's scum can jerk off while she's abused!
"You fuck, splutters the fair man. "You fuck. She was only eight. She's only eight.
"What do you mean? She's thirty-eight this year. She looks young certainly, but it was her choice to go into this industry and she began at twenty-one. Well, I say she looks young present tense¦ I trail off as I think of the hotch-potch ragdoll of body parts I know as my best friend. "She did until they cut her off.
"So you do know her. A softening in the timbre.
"Cut her off? demands one of the pair. I can't say which.
"Yeah - My vision suddenly blacks out and fades into colour again. "My ropes ' too tight.
"What do you mean cut her off?
"Gray's, I muster. "Cut her off. Aging.
"But she had a lifetime of their stuff tattooed into her!
"What? But she worked to pay it.
"She didn't need to. They jammed it into her for good. She should have looked eight on her hundredth birthday.
"It's a trick, shouts the fair half. "Lying again. He probably has her address here somewhere. We have to get her away.
"Look¦for an eight year old¦and you won't find¦Miffy, I pant, as my eyelids tighten. I don't know if they've heard. The knife noses at me like a dog's snout, my head ripe with blood.
"Kill him.
A slice into meat and the patter of feet as they flee.
"NO! Oh God, NO! And there she is in the doorway.
Miffy
I held him in my arms as the blood fell out of him and then I tugged the overcoat across his face like they do on TV. You can't do anything else sometimes.
As I stumble back inside, my mind a chewed-up cassette, I nearly trip on a tiny oblong dropped by the hatstand. The green screen reads "Twenty Missed Calls. A further screen shows, unsurprisingly, my name again and again. My symbol in his phone book is a heart. Blankly I scroll down to the S section. Hers is a frog, maybe even a toad.
I don't smile, because there can be no satisfaction after this. I should have told him. I could duel at dawn with a hundred assailants, thrash them all, pistol whip their bodies and feed the remains to Bengal tigers and there would still be a cannonball of air in my chest. No, not a cannonball. A saline pouch. A single breast implant rising and falling as its contents corrupt and ferment inside me. I should have told him that I loved him, in whatever odd way I could. Screw it, the pouch and the fucking cannonball are both lodged in there. They're in it together. They always have been.
Maybe I should ring the police. Oh fuck, what a mess.
Then a resolution: I will find them, whoever they are. I take an old pair of kiddyheels and bring down the stiletto spike again and again on the electronic heart.