Tuesday, January 17, 2012

A Hard Day's Night

He sat facing the wall in a blank empty white room, his chair turned against hers, eyes peeled wide at a screen. Her perfume was of dried orange peels soaked in vanilla essence. The sickly sweet smell invaded his nostrils. His ears were gently tortured by the rustle of her clothes. Net result: he retained nothing. Or next to nothing:
Step 1 Press O five O four Five hem
Step 2 ...
3 Thoughts on how if they survived what ever they were going to be made to go through, he might find true love -assorted feelings on abject nature of current existence, reality shows, never remembering how he got there and the fine bust line of the game show hostess and cut red and blue wire
4 Cut green and red wire.
Step 5 And Welcome home you happy couple.
It would turn out to be farce executed to perfection.

The lights turned bright yellow and hot. He blinked thrice. The cameras whirred and zoomed and panned and trolleyed. He was facing her. That’s one way to look at it. He was staring at her large invitingly exposed cleavage, coiled and wound and caged within a dark green brassiere whatever. Her face was the not disappointing Caucasian blandness of white skin and blond hair, whose features were sexily masked by large over sized sunglasses.He took deep breaths to look calm and collected. He conjured a dull uninterested sneer to convey to the larger audience how his life could go ahead unfazed by such brazen sexiness. Should he pause to register what she thought of him? That would break his heart surely. He looked cool and ignored her, slyly letting his eyes roll , every twenty fifth second, over that copious vastness within the green stretched cloth.

When he tuned back in, they were in the white room on their knees. On the wall facing them, was a large black hole and she on all fours trying to peer through it. She had this beautiful accent which sounded so right.

She was asking him looking up at him, bent over that hole.“Do you want to go in first?”
“Aren’t we supposed to make conversation for the first five minutes?” he asked eyebrows knit to show  confusion. The rules changed so fast that he could make them up as he went and all would be Calvin Ball. “Of course” she rolled her eyes and feigned disappointment.

“I am He”, he told her helpfully. “I have eliminated five unbelievers in games of might, wit and random suggestion”
“Hi!” she drawled, her upper lip and bosom beaded with little droplets of sweat from the heat of the lights. He blond curls covered and uncovered her ears. “I am Lana Marn. I am a blacksmith. I run a charity organization called Bang’d and Nail’d.”

With puns like that, she had to be a call girl-a high class one, or a porn star. He played cool. “And what do you do in the evenings?” the laughter track in his head, the audience and the gentle hostess tittering in unison. “The five minutes are up love”, she winked. “We have thirty minutes to save our hides. You go in first?” “After you”, he said, ever the gentleman. Lana crawled into the hole and He followed her, safely behind that tightly draped behind that looked like a challenge to his male virility. A voice in pre recorded tones of robotic precision said “you have twenty nine minutes to diffuse the bomb. Good luck. Click”

This must be the final round. The do or die or was it do and die?, He wondered. The subtleties evaded him. The objective was clear. They had to diffuse the bomb in thirty, twenty nine, twenty eight minutes through a five step procedure, which the wall had briefed him on in accentuated exhilaration conditions. He had to remember the guide and follow it step by step to safety. Television ratings do well with a death on air.

The end of that singularly well crafted hole was a stainless steel floor that curved around them- just enough space to accommodate their crawling bulks. Lana stretched her legs lay down on her back, facing him up from below, green largeness first.

"Look", she said, her pretty face pouting red lips to show concern."We should call the number for help. Do you remember the number?"

“Ah Step One…Zero Five Zero Four…”
The dialing panel appeared magically in green fluorescence on the steel curvature above her. He heard the camera, enclosed cleverly to cover all directions, zooming in, straining , giving those tantalizing assets of hers the stardom they deserved. She looked at him admiringly- like such intelligence deserved a favor returned. He knew that look. She took one gently filed index finger and nail and punched the numbers. “Hey wait”, she said. “It’s asking for a five digit number and you gave me four” It was a delicious little whine- confused, funny, sexy.
“Hem” He muttered. That was amplified- laughter track inserted. Somewhere.
“Uh?”
“Five”
“Okay” she nodded, her chin moving up and down. “Yeah! That was right you were boy!” she said. “Now to look into the plumbin’” she whispered in fake huskiness
He knew those lines by heart. Bang’d and Nail’d indeed.
“What seems to be the problem ma’am?”
“You know... it keeps gettin’ very wet at the drains”
“Oh well ma’am you need a new shaft and maybe some drillin’”
“I was thinkin’ more about somethin’ to do with the pumpin’”
He can’t get a line wrong. Else boom.
“That’s hard work ma’am”
“Why don’t you go down and take a look?”
“I’ll be darned ma’am it sure is wet down here”
“Well you ain’t licked are you?”
“A screw there, some hammerin and some nailin here and we should be alright ma’am” (applause)
Credit worthy applause that was. He had played it well. They had filled in ten minutes of solid air time. He had taken his time and seen it through.

Lights off. Steps 3 and 4. The air around them cooled. It was cold, the touch of stainless steel against skin. Two little panels opened gleaming eerie orange light into their faces- one from over her face and another just behind her head-on the steel floor. Each had a set of three wires-red, green and blue- thin plastic wires that looked so small to terrify him.

Her face was  heart wrenching childlike concentration- on a figure modeled sculpted and refined for child bearing.
“So I’ll cut the ones on top and where’s the other?”
“Behind you”
“You get them…Thiger!”
Fine. He stammered here. The obvious did that to him. If they had scripted everything so far, then they got him where it hurt.

He crawled over her and eased himself into that soft, welcoming flesh that softened just a bit like a pliable pillow and warmed him. This was monstrous. He cursed and he shivered and grew. He had no clue which panel went first. Blue and green and then red and blue, seemed a good possibility. His mind clogged as blood drained and rushed to the one part of his body he did not need to preserve his life at that moment. He tried to think of ridiculously boring entities- differential calculus- but that reminded him of his lady maths teacher. World War Two helped until she heaved below him and the thought dissipated. He surrendered to his worse nature.

The mechanical voice reminded him that they had ten more minutes to doomsday. That was unhelpful, because the fright strengthened the hardness.
“Cut the crap and cut the wires you fuckin idiot” Lana shouted, the sweetness drained out of that husky voice. “And tell me which ones to cut on mine”
That cursed laughter track. Close ups of his face and hers.

“You cut the green and red” he said, shuffling, slowly moving, thrusting slyly despite himself, facing death.
The orange glow above her face deepened and there emerged a Goddess, descending from it slowly, like She was suspended through thin steel wires. The Goddess announced that He had passed the test, grasped his hand gently and lifted him up and above- floating up through dark skies, milky ways, star bursts and tremors. Below him the explosion filled everything with fire and brimstone and tore her flesh apart.

He woke up. His head protested wanting more sleep. His eyes focused. The strange taste in his mouth turned to sawdust. He thought he was alone in some darkness of the middle of the night saved from a nightmare. He was wrong. Soft feminine voices on his left , tender gentle touches to the left, right and centre that went “There, there, there…” He slipped back into the loving embrace of those heavenly virgins and slept.

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