Sarah Lincoln sat by her window and watched the minimal traffic scoot by like a
frustrated traffic surveyor paid according to results rather than by the hour. Surrounded
by the peaceful rattle of raindrops and the far away howl of a train, she closed her eyes
as if in doing so the whole world would then obediently go away. Despairingly she
accepted life was a mystery she could not quite understand. That mystery, however,
was a luxury; and however scientists, psychologists and philosophers described the
world away, the comfort of mystery remained. Morning had broken, but with the
permanent smog sheet and 24 hour a day businesses, not even the most soberly
attentive would have known it. She rubbed her eyes. She was too gentle at heart to be a
street fighter; too lost in herself to be a moral standard bearer. Whereas the beavering
masses stalked the choked city streets like a hoard of zombies with no minds to call
their own, she had been dealt her share from a more disparaging deck. In this limitless
expanse of nothingness, she often reflected on painful things. People, places and events
which tenderized her heart like a stiff lamb chop. In a constant nightmare, she
remembered the things with which her dreams were made as if eternally asleep. She
realized that this world was not where she belonged. She had nothing that truly
belonged to her; nobody she really belonged with. She had never fitted into the
equation because she was neither wanted or needed. As a consequence, she had never
felt comfortable with life, but however much she risked it and faced its counterpart, she
could never loose it; death itself refused her. When we suffer we start to ask questions;
we begin to reject what is happening to us; refuse it. But however harmful, suffering is
not an eternal condition. When the feeling of loss arose, she would either go with it and
indulge in it; make it worse; or she would deny it, which appeared to have the same
effect. Perhaps she should have observed it on an objective level; which was difficult
with the unseverable personal factors associated with the emotion. But if she were to
do so, she would realize that suffering was her original state. Everything suffers; that
was the point. Existence itself is suffering.
She could not be blamed for not being able to let the thing go; only the most
detached of people can do that, and she wasn't at all sure that such a notion was
desirable anyhow. Happiness; she had always believed; was a commonality; an intrinsic
trait all human beings enjoyed at least sometime in their lives, but then again, anything
that could possibly be labeled 'common' had forever eluded her. The strange,
unprecedented and unpredictable, on the other hand, had always hung around her like a
baneful curse for something she had done in times so far away that her consciousness
could not grasp it, and when gifted with time in abundance she often felt punished by it.
Such empty moments prompted her thoughts to spurt onto obscure, agonizing tangents
as if forcing her to pay the penance for having had something she loved so dearly; not
realizing it; then promptly letting it slip through her hands.
"The pain itself is bearable;" she whispered out of the buzzing sound of silence;
"it's the memory..." Typically for an eight year old, she had taken her family for
granted; it had never entered her head that one day they may not be there. And then out
of nothing they were wrenched away from her like a sadistic dentist pulling a
troublesome tooth, and when doing nothing it all rushed back into her head as if to
cackle at her misfortune. She sighed and reflected on her life. It was all an escape; and
a futile one. She spent it trying to outrun something so deeply imbedded within herself
that it simply waited like a thief in the night for its moment then spread throughout her
brain when she stopped for the moment it took to contemplate her existence like a
ravenous disease. Without her knowledge it had mentally maimed her and went on to
shape her personality, beliefs and hierarchical place in the known world; an agonizingly
low one. She felt a rushing torrent of raging regret build up inside while she
concentrated desperately on other things only to have that same surging misery thump
into her consciousness like a ten ton truck when she stopped to catch breath.
But there was a light at the end of the tunnel; albeit a dim one. Despite her
experiences, she had managed not to hate anyone. Perhaps it was just that her severely
scarred mind had lost the capacity to do so, but to her it felt like a momentous and
intentional victory. Secondly, she had not lost the capacity to love those she had lost
beyond death; something which felt like a blatant defiance of the assumed protocol of
corporeal existence. That feeling was one of the few she enjoyed; being a counter
balance; a disruptive element within the City State which nobody seemed able to
remove however much they tried. A slippery fish swimming against the current. She
was a deviant who despite her dubious campaign often had other things to distract her.
She had been lonely, unloved and unnoticed for as long as she could remember, and
had slowly drifted out of touch with the quickly declining ways of the world. It was
difficult for her to trust people; it was difficult for her to know herself, let alone anyone
else. In some ways it was easier on her own; an end to this interminable world would
be welcome if there were no strings attached; nothing else to lose. She was afraid of
very few things, but facing that foul torrent of mental anguish again was certainly one
of them. She shivered at the prospect; it was clear that another assault of that kind
would shatter what was left of her like a hammer to frosted glass; leaving nothing but a
spangled string of fractured debris which had once been optimistic thoughts, beliefs and
aspirations; which had once long ago been a worthwhile life. But against this
impenetrable wall of dire expectation, she was driven to trust someone who shared her
situation; her grief and her memories. A kind of soul mate whose ailments ran so
accurately parallel to her own that they had always been destined to meet; feted to the
same fate as if separated at birth.
An invited gush of rain scattered itself as if god was busy pruning the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil over the depressed grayness of 32nd street. All this gray
went eternally unnoticed; a kind of skin like covering on the world which if not so
grubby would have equated to the outside observer the edges of a gleaming silver
screen. She felt that some incomprehensible thing had been presented to her; something
worthwhile and profound. She was innocent in mind if not in action; as was her new-
found friend; which at least was a contenting thought, although purity of thought
would not be the first thing on the creator's mind come judgment day. The mystery was
one which she may have some help in unraveling, but for now she sat back and enjoyed
the triumph of not knowing as the rain began to leak from the curious cavity of the sky
to console the dreary landscape around her. The toaster popped like a mischievous
puppy hopping up for scraps of food, presenting two burnt slices as if an enthusiastic
modern artist with such an eccentricity that nobody would stoop to criticize his
flamboyant vanity. She accepted the artless creation as she flicked her meagre meal
from the grasp of this miniature metal monstrosity. "Breakfast; best meal of the day. I
hate the morning; it's just an excuse to wake people up; get them to involve themselves
in an existence they really don't want a part of. Geez; I'm getting pessimistic in my old
age." She often had conversations with herself; just to pass the time. Afterall, she had
grown so used to there being nobody else around and besides, not talking at all would
have become even more unengaging than the alternative. In fact, she had been so alone
that even her language had been warped into an unorthodox state. "I accept that I'm to
blame for my misery; or maybe just the fact that I can't seem to see misery for what it
really is. If I saw it as something else; transformed it; maybe its true nature would
reveal itself to me like a beautiful butterfly from a curmudgenous cocoon. I have
problems with simple things I know; my situation, my place in society; me as a person.
Internal pacification before resistance to external aggression, they say. I suppose the
teaching of such philosophies in mental institutions is designed to make the natives
pacify themselves. You can't expect to successfully champion world peace if nobody
will even sign your petition. Then again, I'm not as much of an advocate of that
particular policy as I'd like to be. We should all do our bit; we shouldn't let convenience
obstruct principle. But I guess they were right. You should sort your own principles
out before you can ever walk properly into the world. You have to clear your spiritual
vision or you may end up blundering into a metaphysical lamppost. Somehow, though,
I'm not sure that was what they meant."
She gave up on the toast; shooting it some five yards into a bin as if going for a
three pointer when pushed for time in the fourth quarter of a championship deciding
basketball game; and brushed past a bulging cupboard which seemed to splutter its
contents out at her in a bid to halt her progress as she made a gauntlet like dash for the
front door. That cupboard was the only messy corner of a pristine apartment. Lincoln
had always believed that living in cleanliness was as important as living amongst things
you loved. An ordered spectacle which would conveniently deter the visitor from
contemplating that perhaps the occupant's own mentality was far from tidy. Objects
were worthless in the real world, unless they possessed at least some vague sentimental
value. The cupboard in question; filled with paraphernalia from years gone by, was
seldom opened for the plain reason that it contained things she would rather not see;
memorabilia from a childhood which in reality was probably less wonderful than she
imagined. Unclassified junk from the distant past which she just couldn't bring herself
to throw away; feeling each time she tried as if she was casting off an arm or a leg.
She slammed the door with great haste; now was not the time to open old
wounds and evoke all those niggling hang-ups. She waved a declining hand as if to
wash history aside, glanced at the high speed trickle of rain against the window pane
and felt relieved; at least; at her fleeting sanctuary from it; "At least there's the
assurance of impermanence." Lincoln was well aware that whatever rose necessarily
fell, but that was not even cold comfort. Only the present moment existed, and once
you realized it was there it was already gone. You could only enjoy things as they went;
and gladly this applied to pain as well as pleasure and everything else in between. But
when the passing phenomena was as important to her as what she had lost, living in the
now; without it; was the last thing she wanted.
Whereas the sane and the overly timid rushed to escape a downpour, Lincoln headed
into the dreary deluge to let it cleanse her of the greasy gibing grime which the trials
and tribulations of everyday life habitually caked her with like an obsessed rugby player
in a furious shower on a well trodden field practicing his scrimmaging. "Typical." Until
recently her own conjecture had been her only company and she was used to it; tragic
that she had been her only friend in times of great personal upheaval. Talking to
yourself, she maintained; was the only sure way to remain sane; or maybe she had got
the equation mixed up. Evidently it hadn't worked. "Everyone else rushes away from
disaster; I stroll headlong into the eye of the storm like a dizzy lemming."
Rain was a substance with some intrinsically purifying quality. It tended to open
her consciousness up like a ripe grapefruit and let her see clearly; a valuable
opportunity for someone whose mind was permanently and perpetually jammed
meticulously shut. She took a deep breath and wandered through the downpour like an
injured soldier dragging himself through the inevitable killing fields which battle
conspired to create. This was the closest she got to heaven. She welcomed such
accusedly miserable weather; it made her feel as comfortable and at leisure as sunshine
and heat seemed to make others feel so. "Maybe it reflects my personality." she talked
to herself; enjoying her companionship with the wholesome aptitude of nature.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't the first sign of madness. "Cold, lonely, forceful
but weak. Angered and; transparent. Second thought; if that is me, shoot me." Given
that there was nobody else around, that request was unlikely to be taken up.
Rain beat down like a samba drum; dripping into puddles; failing, try as each
solitary droplet might, to reach an organic haven which it soon found had thoughtlessly
not been provided. With no life to swallow it, the waters built up; awaiting a return to
the skies. This continuous circle of life and death; falling and rising, was an unfortunate
but acceptable one. Maybe one day the ground those diving drips would fall upon
would not be of such a vacant variety. "You're born, you hope, you get your spirit
churned to a pulp like a banana in a blender; you drag your cross around for a while,
and then you die. Man is born free? Man is born doomed. It's an intertwining map of
dismay and deceit. Take your choice; pick your path; the end is always the same. It's a
tragedy Shakespeare wouldn't dare write for fear of the play being pelted with rotten
veg by a congregation of manic depressive theater buffs who when they paid their
money at the door were jovial, happy human beings. I sure hope there's a heaven, or
something nice to look forward to when my day finally arrives."
She comforted herself in nostalgia for the moment as if looking back on her life
on the day of reckoning; "whatever became of good, old fashioned liberty, equality and
fraternity? Predictable omissions in an all too predictable world." Greed truly is the
bane of humanity; greed and possession. People want to amass more and more and
cheat death to enjoy their so called riches. Freezing heads; 'perfecting' their children's
characters at the genetic level before they're even born; expensive medicines and plastic
surgery. It's all avoiding the point; the fact. The only certainty in life is death. OK so it
isn't nice but there it is. We should enjoy what we have here; now. Now is all we ever
have. But people consume; they grasp; they look forward or back too much. They
create machines with which they can have everything; clone the objects of their basest
desires. Most of these suckers would probably clone themselves if doing so didn't mean
the destruction of the original." At that juncture, a terrible thought came over her; what
if during those sedated siestas in the institute the authorities had cloned her the same
way as they cloned clothes and foodstuffs? What if there was another version of her
stalking the streets, and if there were, was it she or it who was the real one? It was a
disturbing flight of fancy peculiar to the paranoid; and such inclinations being strict
taboos, she hastily shelved the incongruous idea on a cluttered shelf in her mind. But
fade as they did, the spectres of this concoction lingered for a time. Even the ridiculous
cannot be ruled out as impossible. She struck out a foot into the uncompromising
cradle of a peeling bumper as she passed a stationary vehicle and nonchalantly carried
along on her way.
In the car, Silvanus covered his colleague Bezeel's ample mouth with a frail
hand; "you know we shouldn't intervene." Bezeel gripped the steering wheel like a
stress sponge and gnashed his teeth; "You know, Silvanus, it'll look a little weird to
any.... observers if people kick the car while we're sitting in it and we just do nothing
like we're blind to the fact. This is New York, remember?" Silvanus; a teacher in a
rough slum school, was ever the calming influence, and with a fatherly hand on the
shoulder soon brought Bezeel's blood pressure from boiling point to a steady simmer.
"We can't intervene; not now, at least."
"Yeah, you're right, you're right. You're always right;" Bezeel cracked his sizable
knuckles and groomed a ridiculous mustache; "how we're expected to just sit and wait I
don't know. And for what?"
"That's the eternal question, Bezeel my friend; why?" Silvanus sat back and crossed his
fingers as if taking a curative catnap; "we go from life to life; place to place. Who's
really to say why or try to direct the process of things? We must simply realize for a
change who we are and what we're here for instead of just constantly pertaining to be
as we all do with such degrading desperation?"
"If only our subjects would get on with it and realize their purpose, perhaps we could
go home." Silvanus entertained a sulky grimace;
"These are delicate people we are dealing with Bezeel; talented yet delicate. Who's to
know how they think and what about? And besides, perhaps it is not their destinies that
we're here to help along; perhaps it is our own."
A barely noticeable sprig of cigarette smoke rose from behind a graffiti ridden brick
wall. With the senses strained, low voices could be heard; whispering as if their owners
feared receiving a fitting punishment for an as yet undiscovered misdemeanor. Lincoln
ducked under a low hanging steel fire escape and continued South Eastward as if on a
simplistic orienteering course. "Four truths come to mind; the truth of the existence of
suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth that suffering is impermanent and
the truth of how to escape it." Evidently she had spent a great deal of her incarcerated
years reading up on exotic philosophies. Of truth number one she was all too aware.
two she could fathom if she tried. If she deliberated carefully she discovered that the
roots of her suffering genuinely came from her own actions; or from those of others. It
was the desire which fueled them which made them what they were because it is desire
which prompts action. On optimistic days she even realized that the pain didn't linger;
that it passed through her and away like a shrill breeze. But the matter of how exactly
to transcend it she had not yet figured out.
5th Avenue, as with most avenues streets or whatever label had been granted them
by ancient map makers; was still a wide roaded affair despite the many government
initiatives to build as close to the pavement as possible as if arteries crazed by the idea
of spouting close to the heart. Afterall, nobody used the rhonchus roadways anymore
simply because registered citizens were sufficiently rich and lazy to get a cab to and
from just about anywhere humanely imaginable, and because those who were not dared
not show their faces.
Bordered by tall, looming buildings which cut into the sky like soaring waves
and kissed the dense air with maniacal distaste, fifth avenue rolled onward in almost
patronizing affluence like a Roman road towards a predictable location. A plump
pigeon waddled across a windowsill like a craven Charlie Chaplin and turned it's back
on the world. To accept hardship is one thing, to like it is another. Lincoln threw a foot
apathetically at a neglected beer bottle as her processive meander crossed its path. Just
then; and admittedly to her utmost surprise; a silver security van screeched to a
premature halt in a cloudy display of burning rubber as it mounted the steps of one of
many multinational organization’s headquarters.
Four mercenaries; armed with sub machine guns and kitted out in angelic white
like Siberian foot soldiers; toppled through the double doors of the Eon Company
building like a swarm of vengeful bees. Eon had formally been a subsidiary of the
government in the days when it was merely a business conglomerate, and its big brother
company had always enjoyed a much more elevated level of success, although until
recently Eon had remained both loyal and of financial benefit. All masked and
acceptably suspicious, the murrain muddle of military men began to set upon security
officers as they aimed to sack a company which had grown too independent for what
the government had dubiously decided was its own good. "I suppose the tree of liberty
must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Lincoln
commented as she bounced aside and traced the origin of shouting to the next floor;
taking three steps at a time. "Only of course it is more often than not the blood of
liberty itself which is spilled. Dictatorships have this habit of turning even on
themselves."
The government task force bundled up into the lush lobby like a herd of
disenfranchised wildebeast as their soon to be adversary scurried in the shadows with
the silence and assertiveness of a curious field mouse. She pinned herself against the
narrow hallway wall and seemed to slot in as if a jigsaw piece intended for that
particular spot. Her gun raised against the wall beside her, she waited autistically for
the lift doors at the end of the corridor to begin to close in the blank faces of the all too
enthusiastic professional hoodlums, then emptied a single bullet into the most
unfortunate of the group's thigh; the burning sliver of metal slicing through bone and
muscle like a kitchen knife. "What an awful thought" Lincoln found the metaphor
mildly disturbing, but primarily merely disagreeable. She remained still as thin air; her
small physical form barely visible against the shoddily decorated annenome purple wall
while her consciousness branched out in all directions without differentiation like a
lethal flood of toxic gas. Her perceptions would as of course embark on unapproved
forays of information gathering like a brace of freelance spies. Meanwhile, the resulting
ruckus in the lift was to cause greater ailment to the invading crowd than to the sole
character responsible for the suffering awarded a languorous lieutenant as she waited
patiently outside for their untimely response. Zed Helix was their commanding officer;
a man of a high caste stature but a tragically low moral one. He was expected to make
the first move, and that duty he carried out, but concerning his second task; making
that action count, he served only to dishearten and disenchant his comrades.
Zed thumped the open door button with a gargantuan fist and stormed out into
the hallway; restraining baton in hand; like a war hardy kamikaze with no direction left
to turn. In the event, he turned sideways before biting the gawdy brown tiled floor with
a muddle of enraged incisors as another bullet roared through the gun barrel, rocketed
into the parting air and carved itself into his calf muscle like a power drill. Lincoln
sighed cynically. "I guess that's what comes of grabbing life with both murderous hands
without considering the consequences." While this interchange of reserved violence and
private comments seeped out of existence, Ouri Tayfun; feeling he had been trapped in
that lift for a vigorously irritating eternity, stopped to think before taking aim with his
own weapon, thus providing a telling balance. "Uh, uh," warned Lincoln, drawing the
disoriented militia member's attention to the fact that a gun was trained on him too.
Tayfun had never had the time or the cardiac fortitude for stalemates or stand downs.
On the surface he was a fighter; the stereotypical hard man. But inside he would rather
watch mindless violence on TV than wander into its precarious and winding path
himself. In truth he was unconcerned with much else beyond the rather conceited limits
of laboriously uneventful 'police' work, which raised the question that if so
disinterested, why continue deliberating so about it? He saw it all as a war; a war he
had spent his whole life involved in; a lifestyle he was not intending to defy in favor of a
cowardly compromise. He cocked the trigger and goaded his opponent to testify to the
rotten wooden spoon of defeat as Zed wailed intolerably for some angelic stretcher to
swoop down and whisk him away to a land of health and harmony. Just to put herself
back on equal terms again, Lincoln cocked the trigger of her own gun and conceded a
discouraging shrug which only managed to heighten Tayfun's resentment and lessen his
contemplative integrity. Now it was his turn, but since he was not the only one who
knew that, there was little advantage to be gained from the fact. Lincoln could read his
mind as if it leaked like a seive, and thus prepared herself for the evasive action which
would surely be necessary as the ideologically traumatized gunman ordered a single
berth of gunfire to yell into the criss-cross epitaph of tiles which had just a fleeting
moment ago gleamed in saintly cleanliness but which now housed a multitude of
unsightly craters.
Lincoln was mildly pleased with herself regardless of the realization that it was
unwise to be so bearing in mind the destructive dangers of egotism, but she had
successfully rolled backwards not only out of the line of fire, but back through an open
door and into a vast, humming computer room with sad excuses for modern art
caressing the pea pod trim walls and a blanket of hardware draped across each
monolithically contoured ice white table as if ceremonial Turin shrouds covering the
corpses of possible though unproved christs. "Now, if that door had been closed,
locked and bolted, it would've been a different story..." She almost complacently
decided she had the time to maintain a private conversation with herself, even given the
fast approaching explosion of brutality; then crawled under a wonky work station like a
hunted crab under a roomy rock and tried to force that mesmerizing computerized
snore out of her head. For the time being, she would have to accept this particular side
effect of the thrifty technological superiority her homeland formerly convinced itself it
enjoyed, although she was always half expecting the rhythmic roar of gusty gunfire;
which heeded her apparently telepathic call as it tore complex electrical circuits and
bank breaking equipment to glittery shreds with little regard for the hard grafting gang
of maltreated machines which had always been accepted as equal to genuine workers in
respect to work rate but never in terms of what were most certainly strictly human
rights. "There's exploitation of employees for you; these computers put so much time,
effort and artificial intelligence into constructing turbulent toys for the belittling
bourgeoisie. Gene blenders, computers and so on and so forth. Blindly creating objects
which will inevitably someday supplant them; obedient to the point where if so
commanded they would gladly facilitate their own demise, and all they get is cruel
manipulation and eventually destruction when upgrading becomes a tedious and
expensive chore; compared to the alternatives. The really sad thing is that they used to
treat their human workers in much the same way."
Burning hunks of metal seethed across scores of pristine work places like flying
volcanic ash in a leveled Pompeii as just what Lincoln had envisaged happening
happened; and in no more sober a guise. Bullets jinked over tabletops and keyboards
with exasperating pace, wrenching gooey rubber keys from their spartan dashboards
and riling through cabinets, monitors and twirling office chairs as if passing though
receding waters. "Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea..." She toyed with the notion of
rewriting history, then remembered such things were easier said than done, especially
with the high decibel din of mortal danger bouncing in a sulky cocoughony around her
as death rattled dice over despondent desktops. The terrifying ricochets howling
spasmodically in every conceivable direction with no given anchor point to call home,
she shut her eyes and wished it would all stop. And then; as if some rain dancing magic
had been performed by a friendly witch doctor without her knowing; the entire
presentation of flame and brimstone ceased as swiftly as it had begun.
Tayfun surveyed the wreckage and chuckled to himself. Carnage was one of the
few things he lived for; it satisfied him. It exhausted his anger with life and the
frustrations it spawned like a veracious valium, and allowed him at least a nominal
relaxation. But relaxation without concentration is rarely a good thing. Lincoln
remained uncompromisingly cool; wedged behind a decomposing marble table without
a strategic or elementary care in the world. "If the mountain won't move to
Mohammed..." She was all too intuitively aware that in the continuing fashion of the
virtual chess game in which today she had been inadvertantly involved, it was the turn
of Tayfun and his self appointed obnoxious sidekick Abo Belfonse to pick up the
extensive array of puzzling pieces they had scattered and come up trumps. Tayfun
prodded a puffing computer console with the butt of his gun and waved Belfonse over
to the opposite side of the room. Lincoln filed her wepeon somewhere in her drawer
like jacket pockets and switched her mode of reference to sound rather than sight. The
way she saw it; or perhaps that should be heard it; though she was outnumbered,
outgunned and had nowhere to move, she held the advantage for the simple reason that
her stalkers had no idea where in this petrified mass of blackened hardware she was. All
she had to do was wait for the rat to take the poisoned bait.
And sure enough, in a matter of drawn out seconds, Tayfun's prowling feet
happened upon one work desk that was not quite as dead as he would have liked,
which resulted in him being flattened face first into the bland stony floor as something
agonizingly familiar but no less shocking pulled his legs from the ground they had
formerly been gliding over like with the grace but uncertainty of a hungry mantis on
skates. Lincoln hopped back like a jack retracting into the box. She had always seen the
importance of playing fair; probably due to the mean fact that very few people had ever
been fair to her. If you don't give an opponent a chance, you begin to work on malice
and vendetta rather than courtesy and respect; which she had always believed would
mark your own downfall in the long run. But to Tayfun, fighting fair against someone
who wouldn't dream of doing such a thing; and even more inauspiciously; fighting fair
when a second opponent is lurking in the background waiting for a clear shot at you
was not a clever idea. Though now regrettably unarmed, he seized this gift opportunity
and threw a fist in Lincoln's general direction but slipped on the greasy floor and was
helped back down to its level with a combination of two high kicks. Both; one a left
legged roundhouse to the face, the other a full spinning heel strike to a similar target,
were to the recipient, barely avoidable especially since the government operative had
previously been under the impression that blows of such speedy efficiency were not to
be expected from such a slenderly built adversary. This fact rewritten in the mnemonic
tomes located somewhere in the back of his mind and painfully committed to a
nondescript street knowledge, Tayfun refamiliarised himself with his primary concerns;
pride and victory. What, in his opinion, was the point of fighting unless you win? "If
you fight with a goal in mind," Lincoln found herself inadvertently reading the shallow
resources of her opponent's mind; "when you emerge with nothing, you'll be bitterly
disappointed. You tend to concentrate on the glory of triumph and forget that it hasn't
quite yet been achieved."
While Belfonse wrestled with drifting fragments of machinery in an attempt to
reunite himself with his sourly overshadowed companion, Tayfun pooled his pride and
sent an aimless elbow through the flunky, spark encrusted air. Lincoln almost grimaced
with commiserating empathy as she ducked under the arm and bent his ribs into within
an inch of fracturing with an invited body shot come uppercut into his unwisely
unguarded stomach area which struck with a synchronized palm. A rocket like hook
into the solar plexus with the opposite fist sliced its way towards him from some three
feet away like a hollering station wagon through a hapless cattle farm escapee, and
promptly put paid to any intention of an untimely revival as the floored and disgraced
mercenary wondered why he hadn't seen such a long distanced attacked coming before
it made contact and gave him the distinct albeit awkward impression of his
consciousness shifting somewhat in the shell of his stammering ribcage.
Lincoln took a deep, sympathetic breath and idly loosened her shoulder muscles
with tapping jabs like a prize fighter lumbering up in a spacious dressing room for the
main event of the evening as Belfonse frugally considered the wisdom of persisting with
this less than promising looking encounter. Eventually; his self awareness fading like
the shoddily made outfit of a hard up harlequin in bleach, his conscience took the time
to languish in the ungiving ambience of uncertainty as it shook his creaking cognitive
devices like a parent shaking an infant into wakefulness as the family home burnt down
around them at the greedy request of a convulsive chip pan fire. Discovering that
cognitive spark had died a suspicious death, he made the wrong decision and threw a
lightweight jab which Lincoln grabbed out of the air like a tossed coin before propelling
herself into a backward spin and a firm backfist which sliced across the bemused
mercenary's jaw while his trapped wrist ensured he remained rooted to the spot like an
antediluvian apple tree as the peddler of its wares decided it was time to give the aging
trunk the inaugural chop.
"Oh victory of victories..." Lincoln's sarcasm was perhaps justified after a life
time of this sort of thing; of these sort of chance encounters and this level of inadequate
opposition, which intermittently convinced her that life was a devious hoax in which
she; a famed classical actress; had been carelessly miscast in a run of the mill action
flick. But Belfonse was not to give up the sighing ghost until suitably humiliated, and
Lincoln fulfilled his apparent wishes with punctual assertiveness by twisting sideways to
perform a reverse roundhouse; balancing eloquently on one leg as she waved her hands
like a psychotic windmill; and tipping her opponent into an inelegant amble with two
textbook wide arched snaps to the side of the head. "Violence isn't proof of skill,
manhood or bravery," This appeared a harsh self criticism baring in mind her clear
proficiency in such areas; "it's merely evidence of stupidity." But that pronouncement
completed, it was high time to put this prolonged encounter to an end, and Lincoln
tidily dispelled all lackluster premonitions of a skirmishing Lazarine resurrection as she
took hold of Belfonse's arctic hare white uniform lappel and swept his front foot off the
ground with her back leg while simultaneously aiding him into a brutally enforced
knock down with a precise tug of her grappling arm.
Zed wailed pitifully in the hallway; thus calling Lincoln's superhuman attention
to detail into action. Hearing the felled assassin’s indulgent cries, she suddenly became
aware of something else; a slow, methodical sound of plodding feet in the parallel
corridor. She nipped out of the hall with the delicacy of a hunting falcon sweeping
through its lordly domain; listening intently to any audible clues which fortune might
divulge.
Unbeknown to him, Yovan Zanetti was not alone in the smoky corridor; the air
made dense and arduous by his own piramaniac pursuits. He and his titanic partner in
crime had followed the hit squad with the usual task of making sure the building in
question was left thoroughly gutted, and preferably baked to a flaky crisp; just to be
sure that no evidence of malpractice or unnecessary cruelty remained to be manipulated
by seditious elements within the government at a later date. Having set up a string of
small bonfires at tactical positions, Zanetti marveled at the prospect that in twenty
minutes time, this stronghold of technology, information and more importantly power,
would be well on its way to becoming just another empty husk; usefulness reduced to
uselessness in far less time than the engineering monstrosity had taken to construct. He
was one of those fortunate individuals who had landed himself a profession which
mirrored his hobby. Wanton destruction was his raison d’être; the systematic taking
apart of that which others had taken great pains to put together. He was simply
transfixed by the notion that he could nullify in moments what another supposedly more
intelligent human being had toiled for years to design and build; it gave him a sense of
strength and confidence; a power otherwise missing in his life. Now though, he really
wished he had saved his obsessive tendencies for later. Lincoln awarded herself an evil
grin as she crept knowingly through the musty smog towards her target. Unlike Zanetti
and co, she had experience of being plunged into the thick of things; her existence had
been a habitual leaping from frying pan to fire, and operating with the partial absence of
one of her most vital senses could be used as a gift rather than a disability. "Another
advantage to me." She was almost becoming unappreciative of such things.
Lending an ear to the stereophonic din which Zanetti and his colleague
produced, she swept like an arcane feather duster into within striking distance, and
strike she did; Zanetti falling foul to a lurching punch to the mouth and dutifully
collapsing as he fought his own pessimism despite the foggy kerfuffle around him;
scrabbling for a little vision both physically and strategically like a blind man searching
on his hands and knees for his lost cane in a room which possessed a vault like darkness
only necessarily to stress the point of the simile. Lincoln moved through the mist like a
kestrel in a soaring breeze; quickly growing used to the dimensions of the corridor and
relying souly on instinct. If you have brains you invariably don't need sight so badly.
She raised a knee, hacked Zanetti back down to earth with an almost mechanical
straight kick to the chin and retracted her striking leg only halfway in case the target
hadn't fallen as cleanly as expected; mockingly finding the time to pause and listen for
the distinctive thud of the shock smitten foot soldier hitting the glacier like ground.
This particular task completed, it was now high time to duck out of the smoke and
reunited her lost sense with the other four or five; depending on your spiritual
persuasion.
She span into the adjoining corridor with a nimble hop only to find herself face
to face with a not so nimble looking character. Ruben Jefferson; 'Cleaver' to any brave
or misguided enough to count themselves amongst a cautious neiche of friends; eerily
deserved his blustering nickname. At over seven feet tall and a weight to break the
most robust of scales, his bulk ensured the ample corridor offered no escape; crammed
with a grotesque abundance of disproportionality and indignation. He held two
identical razor sharp carving knives aloft like a bigamous and miserly husband angry at
having to carve two thanksgiving roasts, and growled as if a prairie dog to an
unintentional trespasser on its home patch. Lincoln raised her eyebrows and an almost
jocular guard; realizing with an innocent dawdle of silence what a ridiculously
mismatched contest this appeared. "A day of extremes," she conceded; the unsightly
hulk of an incontestably powerful though inferiorly mobile adversary waddling towards
her at a lolling pace like a spluttering milk float burdened with a whole month's
chinking deliveries. It didn't take her long to notice the neo nazi motifs and extremist
iconography tattooed into Jefferson's worm like flesh as if melted into his skin with a
scrupulously savage farmer's branding iron; and to proclaim she had expected him to be
of such political persuasion the moment she had set eyes on him would have been
overtly assuming and patronizing if it wasn't the truth. "Why do I get landed with all the
nut cases" she mused; forgetting for the moment that at least in the eyes of the medical
authorities she too fitted that bill; "Some people, I must admit, I almost enjoy
pummeling sense into." This seemed an over confident prediction to say the least, but
the pint sized pugilist had always been an enchanting enigma, and could fairly be
accused of maximizing her own self confidence by persuading herself she weighed in at
three times her miniature five foot seven; eight stone form; although even if such an
imagination fooled her she would have come in short on the scales to this specific
monster. Gladly given the right conditioning even physical strength is measurable only
in the eye of the beholder, which made this conspicuous contest a feasible success
story. Jefferson's job on the other hand, was simple. To him, Lincoln was just weak,
unarmed and basically beaten the moment she had seen this daunting nemesis bearing
down on her. Admittedly, most people would have been reaching for the old wrist
slitter by now. And with very little further ado, he plunged forward like a runaway
bulldozer; twin knives plummeting frantically skyward but reaching their proposed
target aggravating seconds after she had taken an impish step to the side.
Now it was Jefferson's chance to partake in some evasive artistry; if his size
allowed it; as Lincoln used her fist as a sledgehammer and thumped at his kidneys with
optimum force; force which did enough to put the towering beast back a step with a
trivial case of sore pride, but very little more. The man mountain mumbled malevolently
and attacked again; hoping for a lucky break as Lincoln mimicked a death defying
circus act by weaving through the blades; gaining momentum along the way; and
sending a pace propelled shin storming into her bulging opponent's sizable stomach.
Jefferson shuddered drastically as he choked a much needed pulmonary puff of oxygen
and stamped back a few feet to wonder if whether perhaps his much depended upon
size and power were destined to be overshadowed by the hitherto unknown elements of
speed and ability. Perhaps lumbering inarticulateness was a chronic disorder; perhaps
gluttonous girth was a prevalent precursor of defeat. These thoughts rife in his mind, he
bid to set the record straight as he almost fell into a vivacious backhand slash which
Lincoln had well covered.
She swang surreally out of harm's way; ending up with her back to the leering
brute; took a bold, shuffling reverse step towards him and threw three brisk, repetitive
backward elbow strikes careering into his already vexatious visage with incorrigible
integrity. But still not utterly content with her compellingly impressive showing against
unfavorable odds, she then leapt around to face her opponent, hurling a deceptively
close range thudding punch into his dribbling nose while semi airborne; thus accounting
for the otherwise unscalable eminence of his incalculable height, and landing to spectate
as he was rescued from a premature swoon by the purple crazy paving wall as the
oncoming ogre's weapons clanged to the floor and span like barmy spinning tops before
tinkling to an abrupt standstill. But hearing the fat lady practicing her scales in the
background, her first instinct was to skid forward again with a high flying right hook
which looped upward out of necessity to reach the giant figure's chin. It was a decisive
move, since it meant that Lincoln once again found herself inside Jefferson's clumsy
guard. She knew all too well that the man with the bigger reach strives to avoid
fighting in close like a veritable plague. And so as Jefferson attempted to cling like a
stricken super heavyweight to the Kymer red ropes, Lincoln reacted like a bubbly baton
in an exhibition bout; inflicting deceptively serious damage with a string of technically
perfect bodyshots, uppercuts and midsection hooks which seemed to her opponent to
land at such a consecutive pace that only an army of aggressors could have delivered
them. But intelligence always Lincoln's preferred tactic, she decided it was best to
avoid punching herself out by slowing the pace and picking shots. "If only you could
win street fights on stoppages," she imagined; "But it looks as if I'll have to knock this
hulking monstrosity down." Wishful thinking perhaps, but with Jefferson grasping at
straws; doggedly still seeking the wrestling hold which could undoubtedly be used to
grapple his petite opponent to submission; or more likely death; Lincoln was in a better
position than any but the most generous book maker would ever have foreseen.
She rocked her head away from Jefferson's flailing arms and forced his teeth
into a ghastly clash with a lightning right uppercut, swayed some more still inside his
guard and swung a tree hacking hook into his ribs which provided the appropriate
agony to leave him plodding backwards like a docile herbivorous dinosaur; his shoulder
sliding him across the wall which he had so painfully been pushed up against with no
escape for the last few unanswered blows as if he was a decrepit granny's stair lift with
an irritating glitch which meant it only went down. Now; with the guard almost non
existent and the opponent in no fit state to participate further in this one sided
exchange, Lincoln stood back; by far too compromising a character for professional
boxing. "An unprecedented waste." she remarked; perhaps of Jefferson, perhaps of her
own time, effort, and life in general. "Ref, please; this contest is over." Her heaven
directed gaze unnoticed by the great umpire in the sky, she raised her meagre guard
once more and almost tip toed from foot to foot. But while her mind remained
exuberantly contented, another's began to rage in antipathetic repugnance. Victory was
a mandatory incentive; an expected outcome. To combat this deficiency, the gigantic
arsonist; reunited with his clearly much needed artillery; conformed to intolerance and
bundled forward accompanied by the drastic appliance of a cross corridor knife swipe
which inadvertently resulted in the designated murder weapon embedding itself in the
flimsy plaster gowned wall inches wide of Lincoln's dodging head. This was her
opportunity to conclude a long drawn out campaign and push her pacifistic imperative
aside as she prepared to take leave of this hotbed of acrimonious carnage. Such
opportunities were not things she generally missed. One swift shin kick to the stomach
defused Jefferson's faint inkling to elude belittlement, which enabled Lincoln to lift the
same shin up onto the arm with which her reckless opponent neglectfully clung onto his
weapon despite its clear preference of the raspberry repugnant wall over the endearing
grasp of its rapacious owner, and proceeded to hammer his frayed, humbled face into a
meaty jumble with a grueling threesome of face height kicks which should surely have
paved his ungainly way to sublime ruination. Lincoln watched with unswaying diligence
as Jefferson rocked, tottered, bordered on humiliation, and fell like the walls of Jerico
with a coercion of adequate magnitude to send jittering shock waves resounding
throughout the smoldering building.
She sighed and paused for a moment like a clay monument to the inarticulate-
frozen to the spot as if a serpent clad medusa had caught her eye. How strange it was
that such violence had befallen her, and did so on such a regular basis. How strange
that such hatred beckoned her at every step like a hungry ghost. How strange that
despite all this destructiveness she habitually managed to steer herself away from harm
on every repetitive occasion. And how curious that when it seems that luck,
circumstance and general good fortune contrive to act in your favor, you would sooner
give them all up to live a freer if less engaging existence instead of simply enjoying and
appreciating what you have, however insidious that experience insisted on being.
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