CHAPTER # 8 : Queen Bees Battle !


The lights snapped on in my prison cell with such violence I wet my pants. Not a lot. But a fifty cent sized damp spot appeared on the fabric about fourteen inches down my left pant leg where my penis came to an end. I was horrified to see, sitting on a bench that ran along the far wall, Drew was looking at it too! Her powder blue eyes snapped away and she ran a nervous hand through her mop of bleached blond hair. She was definitely the whitest white girl I had ever met. She was wearing white cotton panties with little pink roses printed on them. Her breasts weren't huge,.... But really nice. I bet they were warm like muffins and safe to snuggle.

She saw me looking at her and she asked "Hey,...you got any cigarettes?" hopefully.

"Sorry", I said swinging my legs off the bench. My head was starting to throb like a Mother, "I don't smoke."

Her mouth tightened into an impression of an anus,... I guess a nicer metaphor would be bee-stung lips, before she looked away, Utterly Miserable. Suddenly I remembered the nightmare of memories that had welled up in the pitched darkness, memories of my arrest in Hollywood, my Trial,... A lynching fueled by Justice Department leaks to the Press about how my Encryption Routines allowed gangs like the Russian Mob and the Chinese Triads to burgle America with impunity. I remembered my last glimpse of Rossana laying apparently dead on the carpet of my hotel room, the drugged horror of my kidnapping, and the terror of the darkness that began in the back of the van... And I covered my face and wept. The trademark of Hell is thatit won't stop when you want it to... I wept with all my might.

"You okay, Mister," Drew asked, my tears making her tears flow too. I'd seen her fight gamely in a Boxing Match just yesterday. She had gone into the ring knowing she was intended to lose. She lost of course, but won a lotta hearts. "You cried all night" She was here all night? Then I remembered. I had come to in a total darkout.

"Yeah,..." I pulled myself together, "Why have they got you?"

"I fucked up, and slapped one of the Bosses,... You saw me Box that canoli?" I nodded, "Well a delegation of Japanese sales reps for the company that has the toilet seat cover concession over at the Coliseum-2000 bought me as a Party Favor from the California Department of Corrections. They bought out the Contract for my whole 18 month stretch, with first refusal for my 24 month Parole." She picked at a pimple I couldn't see but knew was blooming on the side of her mouth. She looked Utterly Bored. She looked over to me with a half stab at a Come Hither look. "Wanna ball?"

"Gotta Mitt?" I was a Safety First Boy Scout kinda guy. She shook her head and slumped, knees wide apart, totally disgusted.

"Drew?" I said. She looked at me. "Your Posture." Her eyes hissed at me, but she waddled her hips back, straightening up. "Drew..." She studiously studied a booger under a fingernail, "Where the fuck are we?"

" The Shoplifter's Holding Tank behind the Manager's Office in the Little Tokyo Mall." I was being held prisoner in a secured room off the vegetable section of a super market? "This whole Mall is a Japanese-and-their-Guests-Only deal the Japs built to service the Managers they brought over here to Baja California to run the Docks they built for Sol City. We're the only Gajaans in the whole fucking place. They got a Japs Only Sears, a Japs only Gap a Japs Only Tower Records, a Japs Only... Everything. It's like one morning Santa Monica woke up and everybody was Japanese,.... Or their fucking Chinese Gangs for Hire! " Drew rolled her eyes. Life Sucked.

Great! I gingerly tested my bandaged foot. Someone had done a good job on the gunshot. Obviously it was cleaned, the bullet removed and a pain killer implanted. I could just about....
CLICK. Both Drew and I comically jumped and stared at the door.

Buxom, black leather motor cycle jumpsuit, black snub nose machine pistol, Bone White Madoka strode in announcing: "New Prizner, nobuh-ee moov or I'rr zoot!" She stood aside as a stark naked five foot two, freckled and baby faced white girl in her mid twenties with huge heaps of strawberry blond hair grimly plodded in , then came to a sudden halt, spotting Drew, face contorting in fury.

Drew came off the bench like a rocket, screeching: "Linda you cu...." But halfway through the word "cunt" Linda's bare white knuckles caught Drew on the jaw, snapping it comically sideways to the right. Madaoka swung the machine pistol around, but I came off the bench too, and fired a field goal kick sideways into Madoka's waist, bowling her into the white tile wall, causing bullets to stitch a path across the wall and ceiling, blowing out the double row of fluorescent tubes. Both girls had their hands buried deep in the hair on either side of their enemy's head, and were yanking lustily, jerking their upper bodies left and right. I, desperate, threw my body onto Madoka as she struggled to regain her balance. Madoka and I pitched into the trash barrel, twisting, me grabbing her shoulders as we fell to the floor, Madoka on top. Madoka had re-established control of her grip on the gun, but as we hit the floor, the barrel, which had been knocked sideways, tipped backwards, balanced on a rim, caught against the wall, driving the upper rim of the barrel square into Madoka's fore head, which split horribly open, skin peeling back from her eyebrows to her hairline like a kicked throw rug, blood gushing as her eyes rolled up into their sockets! I rolled the unconscious girl off only to find myself pinned down by furiously battling Hellcats! .... And saw the door had been knocked shut,...fuck!

Drew had whirled her tormentor about, and drove the palms of her hands into Linda's shoulders, pushing her, face first into the wall. Linda shoved off backwards, blood streaming from her nostrils, and both girls staggered backwards on bare feet, cussing and grimacing. I got to my feet and tested the door. No joy.

"I'll fucking KILL YOU!" Linda screamed and clutched at Drew's slender white neck. Drew competently crossed her arms at her wrists and thrust upwards, knocking Linda's wriggling fingers away, while stepping inward, driving her left knee up between her attacker's thighs, into her exposed crotch. Linda squealed, "no FAIR!" and went into a clinch with Drew. Both girls traded flurries of sincere looking punches to each others naked ribs. I searched the ceiling for the tell-tail dimple of a video-camera, while the two fighting girls, legs tangled, collapsed into a writhing heap on the floor, rolling over and over. Finally I spotted it and waved my arms.

"Hey!" I yelled, "Send somebody before someone gets killed in here!"

Linda had straddled Drew and was extrvagantly throttling her, Drew's head boobbing like it were coming off, her eyes bugged out, naked legs thrashing! I manfully pulled Linda off before she could kill the tossled blond, but Drew sprang instantly to her feet and delivered two mean spirited blows to Linda's eyes before I could let go of her elbows so she could defend herself.

"Help!" I yelled at the spy camera, "Break this up before they kill each other!" I waved my arms some more for effect.

Drew and Linda were engaged in a wild hair pulling match again, their tits flopping wildly, bare feet dancing. Both cute girl's noses were bloody, and Linda's right eye was beginning to swell closed. As unobtrusively as possible I rolled the unconscious Madoka over onto her machine pistol with the tip of my foot while waving some more at the camera for effect. Now the fighting Queen's of B-Movies were gasping for air, flanks wet with sweat. They couldn't last long now! Hurry!

Just then the door burst open and Reiko amd Mari stormed in, Reiko pushing me back to the wall with her machine pistol, Reiko striding over to the heap of sobbing and struggling girls. I can't imagine where they had to come from, because Reiko was wearing a blue denim waist skirt and mini-bra, her hair piled up on her head. She could have been shopping for a picnic at the beach, I guess. But Mari was encased in a shiney black vinel dominatrix outfit that went from neck to crotch, with black vinal knee boots and elbow length gloves!

Suddenly, as Reiko leaned over to shout orders at the girls at her feet, both rolled onto their backs, and, feet together, kicked upward into Reiko's torso, as if on cue! Reiko drooped her gun, staggering backwards. As Mari turned to face them I grabbed her gun and kicked the weapon under Madoka over to Drew, who snatched it up as Mari and I struggled for her gun. A deafening rattle of machine gun fire echoed as Drew emptied her clip into Mari, punching a line of holes in her black vinyl belly and breasts that immediately gushed blood as if fifteen faucets had all been turned on at the same moment. As Mari slumped dead onto the unconscious Madoka, Linda and Reiko became engaged in a For-Real deathfight.

It was a horribly one sided affair as Reiko's attack cut through Linda's defensive boxing stance like a chain saw through a wicker chair. A wheel kick from the left, snapped the baby faced American girl sideways from the waist up, then Reiko dropped into a crouch and did a leg sweep from the right, bowling Linda over! But Drew stumbled over her fallen friend with the trash barrel raised over her head to smash it down on pretty Reiko's skull. Reiko, smirking, stepped into Drew's advance as the trash can fell behind her shoulders, it's lid popping off, spewing garbage, and stamped first on Drew's right, then Drew's left foot.... As Drew dropped, shrieking, to the floor, the asian girl brought her fists together onto both of the blond's temples, concussing her brains.

Reiko stepped back, raising her foot to stamp Linda in the naked belly, but Linda grabbed the Oriental girl's ankle and heaved UP! Reiko dropped onto HER ass, cussing a blue streak, as Drew, on her butt, kicked the falling gang-girl away. Reiko rolled, and sprang to her feet, ready to face the two white girls, just as Linda swung the trash can lid with all her might in a whack to Reiko's skull that crossed her almond eyes, and had her weaving backward mumbling. But to everyone's surprise, Madoka shook her head and sat up, pushing out her feet, just in time for Reiko to topple backward over her legs. As the two gang-girls took a few seconds to sort themselves out, I grabbed Drew and Linda and hopped through the door into the hall, and supporting my weight on their bare shoulders, I kicked backward with my good foot, slamming it shut. The door CLICKed satisfyingly!

We were FREE! Sort of. We stood shivering in the dark hall connecting the stock room with it's shuttered loading bays and the produce department of the supermarket. Beyond translucent strips of plastic hanging like a gate in the door, diminutive shoppers pushed carts full of cereal boxes, six packs of sodas, packages of hot dogs, frozen TV dinners and fresh fruits and vegetables through the aisles as if this WERE in Santa Monica, not the Middle of the desert, and they weren't all orientals, but the standard L.A. Rainbow Mix of housewives, hurrying to get home to their Soap Operas. That split second pause froze time, the two naked girls hugging and bird-peck kissing each other's lips, tears streaming, me hopping fee on one foot wondering why whoever was minding the moniters in the Security Office didn't unlock the door, so two pissed off gang girls could come roaring out to do us in for lumps and a loss of face.

To my utter amazement, Drew smiled apologetically as Linda grabbed a mop and swiped me behind the knees, which buckled my legs. Then Drew slapped her palm on a fire alarm on the wall by the time clock, setting off the alarms. I just sat, back aching horribly, on the linoleum, as they fled into the light beyond. I could see them dissapear, dodging startled women, who seemed both nonplussed and confused. Within moments uniformed Security Guard surrounded me, guns drawn, admonishing me for a whole list of god knows what in Japanese. One used a card to open the holding tank door, and between his legs I could see Reiko and Madoka laying on their backs on the floor, blood running from their chests, pooling on the floor. One guard fetched the machine pistols they had used to kill each other in what was apparently a suiside pact. I guess being called on the carpet and getting a lecture was worse in their eyes then death.

I sat, aching and dejected, alive , but unhappy at being the distraction allowing Drew and what was apparantly a girlfriend make good a get a way. Soon the bored guards were smoking and swapping lies. Probably talking down the dead women. I felt bad about everything just then, but felt much worse when a loading bay opened, and I was loaded into the back seat of a black stretch limosene, for a ride back to Sol City with Blank Frank, my supposed "mission control", sipping a martini, and twisting a wet curl of hair on the back of the head of a youngish boy slut laying with his head in Franks lap. Frank shook his Patrition raiser-cut cranium in disgust. "None of all this was really neccessary" was written in his eyes. At a stop light just before an on ramp to the freeway back to the Beach, he dismissed the boy to sit up front with the driver and turned to deal with me.

"Talk to me, Frank, you could just kill me, but you don't. I'm easy to confuse. I'm nobody... You could tell me ANYTHING, but why.." He shooshed me with a white hand, and concidered the view. Hot and Dry. Checked his Rolex: 9:00 am. It was then I realized Frank wasn't gay in any conventional sense. He mounted Men to demonstrate to them that he was the Man, the one who does the "Mounting". Unmanning a man made him a Man. Inversely, his refusal to sleep with the droves of women who pursued him all the more fiercely because henever moved on the bait they showed him, was his way of "un Womaning" them. Mac was in very real sense...inverted. As Neon had said: "..the guy's a walking fucking upside down Pentagram!"

"You have some secrets left, Mr. Mark." He turned his head to smile for me. He was being Compassionate. He flipped open an old fashioned file, and read scripture: " Only Son of Ted Mark and Elisabeth Page,... smart but stupid, young but on the edge of his own Grave..." How Wise Frank was, with his own Secret Blend of smarmy ad-copy salesman and Old School Tie British MOP at the Club. "What have you and the Negro discussed?"

I smiled back at the husk sipping a drink across from me, and choked down my unholy fear. I answered: "You."


CHAPTER #9 : The Ladies Room/...and all you ever suspected went on there


Frank's lantern jaw dropped. The Girl Guard stopped jabbing my kidneys with her machine pistol. Hey, I was thunderstruck too.... The Television "Wall Screen" over the receptionists's desk was filled with a scene both deceptively normal, yet completely Wrong!

The deck of the yacht, Samurai Nun, Universal Export's seagoing regional office, rocked gently in it's berth in the Arena Marina, the blue Pacific's rocking in the surrounding main deck window. On the screen a scene took place that seemed equal portions :

1.) A girl Visiting her Sick Friend in the Hospital,
2.) Blood Donation for the Red Cross, and
3.) Madame Frankenstein.

Jennifer, stripped to the waist, her white silk blouse down around her waist, her heavy breasts barely restrained by a black lace bra, long athletic legs crossed high, showing a lot of thigh below the black mini-skirt, sat reading a Cosmopolitan while a decorous black girl in a white smock chatted, laughing, tying Jennifer's long, straight brunette hair into Jamaican Rastafarian braids. Jennifer and her hairdresser were placed between two hospital beds. Both of Jennifer's inner arms were linked by vein needles and copious tubing running to her left, to needles placed in Rosanna's right inner-arm, and left inner-thigh. And behind the hospital bed, a heap of electronic equipment was stacked unceremoniously on a folding chair, two hordes of colored cables connected to a skull harness tacked to Rosanna's cranium with scary knitting needle length bone screws. A second set of cables and blood tubes connected Jennifer to a vague female figure in a second hospital bed on Jennifer's right side.

A decadent looking Japanese woman, voluptuous in a black knit wool mini-skirt and long sleeve sweater emerged from the "Manager's Office", her red-rimmed eyes wry with concern. I noticed a tell-tale sniffle. Her name tag read: Kahori. She tapped at a clip-board computer in her fingers, and bumped Frank's shoulder with hers.

"Jennifer's gone to Level Eight."

"Impossible!" Frank hissed.

The screen filled with Cindy Crawford's famous face, CNN logo in the lower right corner of the screen.

"The World was as shocked as Hospital Personnel this morning when and unidentified American woman in her mid twenties entered a Sol California Emergency Clinic today with a desperately injured woman she called Rosanna. Staff has told CNN that she assembled this equipment from the brain surgery after preforming drastic and life saving open chest cavity procedures herself in the emergency room. Now, as you can see behind me, an completely unheralded and unheard of procedure is taking place,... For an explanation, I turn you over to Dr. Yasmine Wu, Chief Medical Officer at this Clinic., Madame Doctor Wu, what can you tell us?" The camera wheeled back to include a medium height, rather obviously muscled woman in her early fifties, scowling through her glasses at a stack of print outs. Without looking up she began to talk, as if to the stethoscope hanging from her neck...

" That woman is cycling blood from the injured woman to the Blank."

" A 'Blank', Madame Dr. Wu?" Cindy chirped.

"Oh, sweet Christ", Frank breathed as Kahori nodded. Blanks, also called "plugs" were vat cultured human bodies grown for replacement organs and body parts. Their cortical brain matter was retarded by chemicals, so that the Supreme Court wouldn't try to extend Civil Rights to them. Here we saw blood flowing from Rosanna to a Blank via Jennifer's blood stream where it was obviously being mingled with the blank's blood, and the mix of original Rosanna blood and modified Blank blood being passed into the blank where it was communicating on a genetic level with every tissue cell in the Blank. How Jessica was managing all this, whether some kind of Super Yoga or Mind Control was involved or not was a mystery. A Mona Lisa smile played on Jennifer's lips. I stopped being so afraid. I stopped thinking just of myself. The same sweet half smile that loosened my emotional chains seemed to infuriate Frank. His face was purple!

"And you see those wires Miss Crawford?" Cindy nodded astutely. "I think our Girlfriend is copying dying woman's brain patterns to the blank. You know what I think. I think if we pop that blank's cranium, we see a newly full grown brain, intact and buzzing... And you know what else I think?" A camera zoomed into the face of the blank, a sleeping, peaceful face. But the albino hair was already blushing reddish, and the lips were swelling to a familiar oh so kissable smirk. "I think our Girlfriend isn't really a people like you and me...."

"She's AWOL.... Out of Fucking Control. She took conscious control of her CPU implants," Frank snapped.

"Level Six." Kahori mouthed. "And she can now apparently direct cellular level enzyme, hormonal, and perhaps even genetic modifications...."

"Level Seven..." Frank cursed softly, "And if your guess is correct,... Level Eight."

Kahori seemed freed herself, seeing the American Girl, giggling and bantering with the black girl. Two reasons God put a sun and moon in the sky over the earth. Silly Chatter as if nothing mattered. It was sunny day, and the cafeteria has shrimp salad tangy with lemon for lunch. Kahori knew she was seeing the end of her Game. Her eyes slid sideways to Frank,.... Frank didn't allow those kind of thoughts to exist in HIS Cosmos. She had noticed that the headset on Rosanna's head wasn't matched by a mate on the Blank. Yet already the REM was flickering it's eyelids. Memories, and even dreams were rising like fish to the surface of a pond in there. Direct Conversation. Level Nine.

Jennifer was sitting on Level Nine, reading about tricks to play on your boyfriend in bed, swapping confidences, and flying like an hawk, high and solitary, in the sky above a crowded and very profane City. An Alien Intelligence, distant but not cold, watching the Earth as Martians might, through great telescopes. Not longing, simply curious. Cirrus at dusk. A girl. Jennifer Nine.

***

The black man Jack Mark called Neon sat sweltering in the front seat of a red 1963 Lotus scanning the parking lot of the Little Tokyo Mall for his two little truants. Squinting from the glare, his new gypsy maned Bride, Salma, panted like a lioness on the African savannah, her blouse tied between her massive, and sweat drenched bosoms. Her skin tight blue jeans breathed better than leather, but oh, this weather!

Both leaned forward in concert as they spotted two naked girls fleeing the hot pursuit of four Mexican and two oriental police. The comedic chase zig zagged between cars pulling out, lanes, and around islands of shopping carts. The blond Drew was screaming "My feet are on fucking fire!" as the chase took them in the general direction of the Lotus. "So run faster!" Linda, the buxom brunette screamed as her hip painfully sideswiped a door handle....."FUCK!"

"The Security Squad called the local Cops on this one!" Neon raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Our Double-Agent pal Frank must be pissing his pants word about the second snatch might get back from those girls to the C.I.A.."

"Yeah," Salma agreed, "If the Feds connect him to the Yasuka Babes, they'll know he was behind the first Opposition grab." She popped open her door the very same moment Neon did, "Poor Jack.... You pin down the heat, I'll fetch our babydolls......"

Drew, gasping for air, daggers of agony stabbing her lungs through her ribs, scrambled onto a furnace hot hood to escaped being grabbed by the two husky Malaysian security guards, and immediately howled in ever higher pitches of shrill pain from the molten hot hood. She felt two strong hands pull her down, as Linda disappeared behind a RV, eluding the four City Cops, who now were peering under car bodies, and waving their stun sticks like flashlights. She tried stamping back on her captor's feet, but the steel toed boots defied her. She was thrown painfully onto the asphalt, wrists already lashed. One woman grappled with her thrashing legs, while the other covered her with a stun stick, laughing at the indignity Drew was experiencing, trading crude remarks with her partner about Drew's gaping sex, as they rolled her onto her belly.

BLAM!

The sound of Neon's shotgun echoed above the roar of traffic, causing everybody to drop their groceries and bags and hit the ground, glancing around, wide-eyed in fear. Both guards had thrown themselves on Drew, fearing she was the target. Drew's eyes bulged, she was being crushed by the well meaning guards! Suddenly the weight lifted. Drew looked up to see a Mexican Amazon Goddess pitch one guard across a Lexis Minivan hood so hard, she rolled onto the roof of the Honda roaster next to it before dropping between two cars. The other Malaysian guard tackled Salma around the waist, carrying them completely over the stunned blond, onto the street. They rolled apart and closed, swinging their fists. Both women shuddered from the impact of the blows they traded, sweating and gasping in the hot sun. Both held back, taking the measure of the other woman.

"Fuck it, she can box!" Salma said to herself, but the other woman read that in her eyes and grinned, before dancing forward with a flurry of meaningless punches at her head that concealed two or three well placed real slugs to her left breast and jaw. These carried the Malaysian woman's full weight, and had Salma dancing back, fists raised in front of her face as she shook her head to clear it. Salma ducked and weaved but the bitch was ahead of her, ducking and weaving like an echo, smirking. Then, boom, boom, boom, Salma was clobbered by a combination. Salma leapt back so she could us a kick but the guard blocked both it and the reverse kick follow up.
"Are you gonna Lick me or keep licking me," The Malaysian Girl taunted. Salma streaked forward, threw herself onto the ground, rolling under the girl's arms, and snapped her calves around the Guard's ankles, bringing her down! OOF!

BOOM! Neon's gun roared again, causing the Malaysian girl to wince just long enough as she got to her feet, that Salma was up first, and land two brutal left and right combinations to her head, then as she fell back against a car, Salma leapt into the air, delivering a knock out heel kick to the center of her forehead. Drew's shout caused her to turn around just in time to take a punch to the mouth! She grappled with the smaller of the two Malaysian guards, cussing, blood running from her lips. And SHIT, the four Mexican Cops were running up to the rescue!

BOOM! Just enough of a distraction that Salma was able to deck the feisty guard with and uppercut, and charge into the oncoming line of female mexican police. All four woman sought to encircle Salma, but Salma moved quickly, using their lack of co-ordination against them, kicking the closest in the belly, throwing one into the other, then, using a judo move, grabbed the fourth by the lapels, twisted around, dropping to a crouch, so the astonished cop flew over her head and into a light post.

The girl she had kicked leapt onto her back, yanking a night-stick backwards, snapping her head back, crushing her throat. The other two women waded in with their fists, actually getting into each other's way as they cruelly pummeled her breast melons and bare wet tummy!
BOOM! This time nobody flinched or looked up!

Salma, grabbing both ends of the night-stick choking her, hoisted her hips up. Lashing out with her feet, she was lucky! Her two attackers went down clutching their necks, gasping. Then Salma was able to drop to her knees, pitching the cop that had been behind her back, into the pile of her fallen comrades. Grabbing Drew by the wet hair on her head, the furious Mexican Amazon dragged her through two rows of cars where Neon pulled up in the Lotus. Drew yowled as she was rudely pushed into the little trunk. Then Neon drove up one aisle and down another before Linda stepped sheepishly out to join her pal in the cramped trunk. Neon lost no time in getting onto the freeway, and heading back to the City on the Coast.

Six hours later both girls stood, showered and bikinied before Neon who waited at his desk for Salma to return to his Inner Office. No one spoke. The air conditioning seemed set to 60 degrees. The muzak was 1980's commercial jingles turned into pop songs, as was the current fashion. It was Heavenly! Salma, showered, but dressed in clean versions of what she had worn before, slipped in.

"We just got the FAX. The Holding Company we sold their contracts to has accepted our settlement offer. Drew and Linda are ours again." Neon blinked and sighed.

"We're sorry, Mr. Grier,...." Linda spoke up. Neon waved the explanation away, then walked to the window, and looked out,.... The pastoral view of wind rustling the wild grasses growing around a mid-evil Moslem border-Temple wasn't real. It was a video loop in a CD Rom. His relief, however was real.

"You could have got killed," He gave them a stern look, "You could have displeased a Customer!", he winked at Salma, "...but the EndUser that hired the Holding Company to buy your Contracts was a Dirty Bird." He pecked at his phone's battery of buttons. "A very Dirty Bird."

"What do we do?" Salma asked.

"With them?" Mr. Grier, in reality, Chief of the Sol City NSA field office, otherwise known as 'Neon' to our Hero, smiled as they tightened their tummies in anticipation. "We put the on Party Duty..." Their grins could have lit up a stadium the size of the Arena. "But we've got to find Mr. Mark. We don't really owe him, he's not one of ours, but his captor, Mr. Frank Bland, is." He looked at the visibly relieved girls, "Any suggestions, Ladies?"

"....well, Mr. Bland", Drew piped up, "Told his Boss Witch Natsuko to get back to the Boat..."

"The Marina!" Salma and Neon said together.

***

I had been taken to Kahori's "office" which Frank referred to as The Ladies Room. I was strapped into a combination Dentists Chair and Gyn Exam Chair that obviously went to prove there was enough demand for torture chairs for them to be specially designed and manufactured. The room was circular, barely large enough to walk around, and rocked with the boat. I had been fed dinner hours ago, and left alone to "Stew in my own juices" as Frank had charmingly put it. I wondered if Rosanna knew how much I wished.... Wished.....

***

Now it was 3:00 am, the hour most people who die in their sleep die. The Low Ebb. But Rosanna awoke, refreshed, without pain. How could this be? She opened her eyes. She was in a Hospital. A woman stood beside her, calm and patient as an angel. In fact, she looked like and angel in a floor length white cotton nightgown. An Angel with Dredlocks! She swung out her legs and sat naked on the bed, and saw a patient with the sheet drawn up over her face. Obviously she had passed away. The Monitor was dark, unplugged. The air cool and sober. But for some reason her Angel put slippers on her bare feet and led her to he side of the other bed, and drew down the sheet. Rosanna lay still and cold as marble, the bullet holes in her chest plugged with cotton. Huge staples clamped the two sides of her ribcage together. Rosanna knelt beside Rosanna, her great huge eyes open wide as she looked up at her Angel. Her eyes asked: "how?"
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