The dizzy collection of nerves and membranes in Lincoln's head seemed to
shudder like a bike on a roof rack as an old goods train roared through the night
somewhere outside headed single mindedly for an unknown and perhaps advisably
unconsidered location. She shook her head and drifted out of one uneasy dream into
another. Her mind span and rattled like a haywire washing machine. Hanging on to a
cliff of sanity, fingers scraping the dead, desert rock, she neared the abyss. The warped
affliction called insanity spiraled and curled around her like a drugged swarm of bees;
stinging her consciousness with corrosive flashes of memory and rioting within the
vivid collage of relevant and irrelevant thought which at times blossomed like a rare
and cultivated flower but at others thumped against the walls of her skull like a kicking
baby. Every perception screamed with schismous spite in each innocent brain cell; an
aggravated soul screeching in unbearable plea for freedom. Maybe a few more years in
that home would have cured her. Maybe she'd have got worse. She had learnt to be
patient and bear the pain. Her mind was like a stammering chainsaw; it would spin in
blaring defiance until it calmed itself with exhaustion. Acidic memories bit into her
head. You could buy all the instruments of death, but that which nobody could buy;
those priceless things; the instruments of life; people and circumstance seemed intent
on tearing away from her. It would have been difficult enough fighting this insanity in a
normal world. It would be even easier locked away from the scurge of the earth in an
asylum cell. But here, now, it was far from easy. It was a constant affliction; as if the
innards of her brain were riddled with bruises; begetting a fervent captivity. Her mind
worked like a healthy mind with certain vital parts of it drenched into docility; flooded
like a drain in a flash flood. It felt like the inside of a superglue tube left open too long,
or whatever similar trapped and contorted imagery came into her head. Though she
could use those bog like recesses, it was an effort; like wading through quicksand. It
looks easy enough until you actually start stomping through it and then it's a whole
different ball game.
And as for her surroundings, they didn't help matters. All the covetous social
and political aspirations of her time just made her feel as if perhaps all this was not
quite worthwhile. Human kind had sunk so low that there seemed little point in
carrying on, unless of course you were one of the dismally paltry few who were in any
position to actually change how her hegemonious hometown was run. A sulky corpse
of a country; the plodding beast having been brought to its sunken knees at the whim of
a soul sucking sickness entailing the systematic stagnation of the crippled creature's
very life-force; making it regress into the gutter where it would invariably decay like
the festering skeleton of a savaged animal while the obscene smear of wealth was lifted
reverently by whomever was left unfortunate enough to survive like the cup of christ.
Lincoln reveled in the fact that she was not one of those so called 'survivors'.
Something of her had died long ago, and though it was a horrible thought, occasionally
what was left was glad it had been put out of its misery. It is a bleak state of affairs
when the only escape from purgatory is insanity. What was wealth, anyway? Scraps of
paper adorned with saint like images of the gold hunters who sold to the world the
sword tongued lie of liberal economics. In a confusing formula, freedom at the expense
of regulation had bred captivity. And once you've been infected by that particular
poison, you're left with a choice; do you bow to those that make you beg or wither into
insignificance and death? What if you did neither? What if you did both? It is far
simpler to crawl through the gritty tunnel of life than to squeeze through the scant
opening at the end.
The apparently omnipotent shadow of a colossal gray tower assumed
it's role as the emblem of a constitution shattered by exploitation and
splattered knee high in it's downtrodden children's blood. An ugly imprint
of a moaning gregorian greed and indignation so loud and common it would have
bored Lincoln had it not worried her so much. A space age grim reaper's face
adorning the one dollar bill. The purged populace; dispersed and alone;
reluctant compatriots of a sacrificed Byzantium. But a steadfast if
minor band of tolerant, resilient campaigners proceeded to loiter
aimlessly as if a gaggle of seasoned veterans awaiting their moment to
strike and make a difference; senily unaware of their own advancing
age. An uneasy mosaic of bitter, uncompromising avarice decorated the
graves of it's fallen slaves. A cemetery of suffering prophets and unwilling
martyrs lay; an abundant sacrifice to a narcissistic emperor. An
armada of ever present government agitators played with a jocular
deceit; the lives of their suffering subjects nothing but a new toy which
would amuse them only until they broke. A undefendable ideology which
sprouted like a devilish curse from their power hungry fingertips;
making sacrificial lemmings of their perplexed people; gathered on a
rugged mountain top queuing to die. And atop the precarious peak a
grasping emperor drowsily discarding a sturdy crown of thorns in favor
of a crown of baneful gawking eyes.
Having dropped off again she found herself in that blurred, dozing twilight state
somewhere between sleep and waking. 'This is a strange and mysterious existence.
How did I get here anyway? I don't mean physically; I mean me. When I die, the
material me will no longer be me, so I presume before I was alive, the material me
wasn't me either. There's something more to being alive.... Consciousness doesn't begin
for a few years after birth but already life is present. How can this be? What happens?
A cosmic god creates and animates the body, then the I picks whichever one it likes the
look of and adds the magical ambrosia we call consciousness? But where does the I
come from in the first place? Perhaps that's a meaningless question. Perhaps saying
'where' is too much of a worldly phrase for the I. But in this limited body with it's
limited thoughts, dreams and realizations, what else can we employ but similes? If you
really think about it, this can't be the only life. Being so trapped; isolated; constrained.
It's contrary to the very nature of the I, and we're all aware that nature doesn't let
anything escape it's natural identity. If we rip flowers from the ground, they'll grow
again. If we build streets and highways, weeds push up through cracks in the concrete.
Nothing that lives can escape it's natural essence. The I lives; it breaths life into the
body; so how can the I bear to live in this base material frame forever? Why would it?'
Lincoln momentarily imagined herself in a brighter, more comfortable world. Life
possessed some dynamic vastness which would only reveal itself to humankind amid
the most grisly of darkness or amid the powerful presence of nature itself. "Maybe god
sets this world up as a training ground on which we are to break our limitations; maybe
it's up to us to transcend obscurity and inability. We're making fools of ourselves
fighting to control this world if the true purpose is to grow beyond it. If it's meant for
us to achieve communion with the universe rather than tie a rope to its neck and make
it do tricks then our less human companions on this planet have succeeded far better
than we. We can't expect our creator to work constantly for us, because there's neither
satisfaction or any sense of achievement in having everyone do everything for us. If we
don't walk the path ourselves, how can we ever expect to reach our destination?"
In a sudden, screaming frenzy, the alarm clock began to spasm over the table
top like a headless chicken; squawking all the way as if a deranged crow. Lincoln;
thrown again into an unwanted consciousness, angrily pounded the table with her fist,
striking wood as the clock bounced evasively aside in the darkness. With an enraged
growl, she tried to keep hold of her dazey deliberations as she thumped the table again
and this time struck the glass clock face with the bottom of her outstretched fist and
felt it shatter like a cracking cairn of ice; shrapnel echoing across the room in
destructive grandeur. The first and most imposing thing she felt was the broken glass
digging into her fist like a row of belligerent flame edged swords. Reminded of the
bloodied hands of christ for the moment, she retracted that metaphor in the realization
that she could hardly in truth have been mistaken for the savior of humanity, and
diplomatically decided to remain stone still so as to avoid provoking whatever divinity
had gifted her such pain in the first place into further action while wishing profusely she
had given the clockwork monstrosity a little more leeway.
She gritted her teeth, opened her eyes and was welcomed by a grinning new day
as she flicked on the lamp switch to survey the damage. Her fist rested on the
spluttering clock like a spoon over a broken egg; one rusted copper hand bent upward
in a mute death cry. "Sometimes you just wish you could wake up again and find the
whole thing was just a bad dream." She whimpered at the whole spectacle; which
appeared to her like a lighthouse in an encircling sea of blood. But then a new wave of
fulminating agony rushed through her as it began to act like one; the other clock hand
beginning to tick on regardless of the immovable, though far from impenetrable barrier
her damaged hand represented as if a scowering spotlight. The macabre sensation was
like being struck with a butcher's cleaver which felt as if it grew sharper with every
hacking motion. Pulling her arm back, she growled as if to a disobedient pet and held
her chopped and bedraggled fist in the other hand like a distraught private clinging to
his dead commander's body in the full fury of war. She muttered a choice collection of
unintelligible curses and began the laborious task of plucking every last painful dagger
of glass out of the needless wound as if preparing a Christmas turkey for the oven.
Maybe someone was trying to tell her something. "Oh; the corrosive invention of
machinery. It's an ironic but somehow poetic vicious circle; we create machines to
make our lives easier and they end up destroying us. Unfortunately its not the machine
but its use. No; its not even its use, its it's inventor. Our little creations are ticking
timebombs just waiting here and there like wartime mines we've all forgotten about;
waiting to explode in our faces when we least expect it. Perhaps I simply
unintentionally personify the typical American character trait of carnivorous paranoia,
but I just can't help thinking somebody's got something against me."
She gave the mute alarm clock a furious glare and placed an escapist foot to the
floor before tensing toe to head and collapsing back again, as she winced at the
unwanted sensation of further shapely shards of glass thudding into her foot and thus
adding the most biting of insults to the most ludicrous of injuries. "This isn't my day"
she concluded somewhat belatedly; shaking her head in a combination of attrition and
black humor as she considered the somewhat odious inauspiciousness of today's events
thus far.
"What happened to your hand?" Lincoln frowned her disappointment at the question
she recognized as inevitable, but had held some irrational hope that she may somehow
have avoided. "'Punched a clock." Under the circumstances a murmur would suffice.
"As y' do, yeah."
"Look; the alarm clock went mad, so I hit it, OK?" She couldn't help laughing through
her retort., which to Iron sufficed to indicate that it wasn't serious. "All right, alright."
She tagged along somewhat aimlessly; beginning to see the funny side, as Iron weaved
around a corner as if with some clear but disguised purpose of which; thanks to his
inherent innocence; he was unaware. She liked that old clock really; it was a cheaply
built import; made by a pair of human hands when such notions were economically
viable, although then again it had probably been put together by an underpaid and
overworked third world orphan in a western multinational which somehow managed to
contravene UN human rights legislation not to mention traditional morality. It was a
virtual miracle it still worked after twenty years; not much younger than her; which
could have made its untimely demise a prickly prophesy. Certainly it had until this
morning been in the better shape of the two. However, this sort of pessimism was just
what the mechanics of consumer ideology intended to invoke, so she quickly brushed it
aside.
Bands of disenfranchised citizens galloped from the cleaving glare of the sun in
every imaginable direction like vampires sprinting across solar panels towards
subterranean bunkers of darkness as the sun chased them like a searing strobe. Iron
strode through it all like a suicidal in a napalm storm; he was unmistakingly
appreciative of the fact that such a torrent of unharnessed natural energy was beyond
his and the general public's all too demanding control.
A plush, newly commissioned sports car boasting an exhibitionist turquoise
paint job hurtled around a corner, scraped a stationary goods truck and began to pick
up speed regardless of the meager assortment of slow moving vehicles which dotted
the roadway like oil slicks. The driver, 'Flinch' Bardeya; a short, stocky individual with
a nervous twitch, attempted to tear his share of stolen money from the obligatory swag
bag as his yearning accomplices set upon it like stray dogs on a slab of meat. "Gimmie
my share; I want my share!" Being a driver meant you had to keep an eye on the road,
but in this line of business there was nothing to say you couldn't keep the other one on
your potentially backstabbing colleagues. Abel Alma; nicknamed 'blades' due to his
continuing love affair with a pair of old army bayonets which had taken the place of a
more legitimate lover which he had found far easier to discard; literally spat his retort at
the man behind the wheel; "We do the job, we keep hold of the cash. You get your
f*ckin' share just as soon as you done your job, and that's keepin' an eye on the f*ckin'
road, not quibblin' about your muther f*ckin' salary." Crooked diplomacy hadn't come
far since it's ill conceived birth but had managed to survive despite the demise of other
more conventional brands. Bardeya frowned quietly and made sure he kept his eyes and
ears alert just in case of a whiff of foul play. "I just want my godamned share." 'Genie'
Dukkha was the leader; the brains of an outfit which admittedly could hardly be
mistaken for Mensa. He polished the ghost of a tooth he had lost in a bar scuffle years
ago and pooled all his efforts into at least appearing remarkably relaxed for a man
involved in a high speed getaway. 'Flinch' gazed back at the road continually as his
nickname would suggest with a kiss of the teeth and suddenly realized when he
redirected his gaze that he was headed for a close encounter with a freight truck. This
he narrowly avoided as his glimmering vehicle wrestled itself into an uneasy skid while
maintaining it's ongoing momentum. 'Genie' struggled to appear as comfortable as he
could with this rollercaoster ride, and eventually had to content himself with sitting
back and beginning to turn green.
It was at this point that Lincoln's attention was drawn to the cavalcade of noise,
and being a person of the appropriate expertise, she swiftly recognized the situation. "A
good old fashioned robbery by the look of it." She gave Iron a nudging elbow in the
arm and nodded towards the speeding vehicle. Iron watched the car skim by like an ice
skater fired out of a circus canon then hopped on one foot and broke into a frantic
sprint as the target vehicle swerved between two taxicabs as if winding through
bollards in a road handling test and began to accelerate once more. 'He's crazy.' was
Lincoln's immaculately accurate conclusion. 'That cars' going ten times his speed; he'll
never catch it.' She toyed with the idea of letting him try in vain and fail for a moment,
but then; taken over by more practical considerations; whipped her gun from a salvaged
police holster, took aim in nothing longer than a dead second and sent a bullet into the
front tyre, back tyre, and one into the statue of liberty's face on the number plate for
both good measure and to make a surreal political point.
She lowered her weapon with an almost insulting smirk and just about
restrained herself from feeling gratified at the ensuing devastation as the car spouted
rubbery smoke and screamed into a gargantuan juggernaut just outside the subway
station coupled with a sound like a thump of a gong while Iron screeched to a halt and
wiped all memory of his unproductive pursuit from his mind.
'Genie' was the first gang member out. Shelving the chivalrous notion of the
captain going down with the sinking ship, he abandoned both his accomplices and the
loot, tripped on the first step down to the subway, tumbled down the rest and somehow
managed to pick himself up. Alma paused for a moment. Not the brightest of petty
criminals, he calculated that he had just enough time to pack the money into the bag
before following his boss, but was soon to realize he should have followed his lead
while he had the opportunity. Flinch, on the other hand, was far more constrained.
Before he thought about escaping anywhere, he was confronted with the more
immediate concern of having to free his leg from the wrangling funeral wreath of metal
which had wrapped itself around his ankle like a chain mail rattlesnake. He struggled
with understandable urgency and a sweating brow which furrowed like a newly
ploughed field, but was eventually rewarded with a minor miracle which must have
been awarded from the opposite side of the firmament by the lord almighty as he ripped
his leg away having suffered only superficial damage.
By this time, Alma had gathered the bruised fruits of his labor and sat back for
that vital split second. 'Best to be the last to leave.' He thought to himself; certain that
the injured driver was just about to receive the brunt of his unknown adversary's attack.
Sure enough, the moment his foot touched the concrete, Flinch was unexpectedly
swept off it as Iron flew in with a crunching rugby tackle. Alma grinned like the only
mortician in town at the scene of a nasty car crash; this was his cue.
Under a weeping canopy across the street, Silvanus and Bezaleel sweated like
melting ice lollies in the tropical heat and nudged each other periodically;
accompanying their mute communications with vague hand gestures like a pair of
underused prop hands playing director on some lavish, life like set which even had the
principle players fooled. Silvanus; a plump business executive from San Antonio with a
lumpy chin and a cranky redneck hat drummed a set of porky fingers on an empty
briefcase and pointed his ravenous eyes towards the action. "He's gotta be duckin' a lil
swifter than.... oh hell, that's gotta hurt." Bezaleel was of a heavily contrastable
appearance; a skinny, scruffy street trader whose crumbly shoes seemed to be kept
together with a magical force. He munched a soggy hot dog and observed the farore as
if he were in an open air cinema and voiced his appreciation of his collegue's take on
the whole situation with half a mouth full; shaking his head as Flinch's jerked back at
the request of a second rocket right hand from the lead man. "That's professionalism
right there." He stopped to squirt a psychedelic stream of ketchup onto the remains of
his breaktime snack, which in turn had been the remains of a meat haul cast off by some
overpriced restaurant, and which further along the line had been the remains of a once
living creature, although any animal rights activist would have had trouble convincing
him of the fact baring in mind what an unrecognizable mess the thing had become. "The
guy deserves an Oscar, man. I mean; he's great. Take a punch like that? Beautiful."
Now was the time for Alma; with one of these two crazed assassins
preoccupied; to leap out of the dismantled mesh which had once been his fallen
comrade's coveted car to face Lincoln, who gave him time to draw his much loved
bayonets before she conceded a cautious step back. Meanwhile, Flinch's reply to Iron's
assault was a beast like roar followed by a close range swing of the fist which the
stranger avoided before placing an uppercut into the gangster's chin which seemed to
the ungrateful recipient to wedge both sets of teeth into the opposite set of gums.
Flinch had had enough; he hadn't asked for this trouble, and now wished he'd avoided
this particular job altogether. He drew a lovingly polished handgun and sneered his lack
of gratitude, but was swiftly dealt with as Iron plucked the weapon from his jittery
trigger finger, attained a makeshift grip on his hair; or lack of; and sent him face first
into a brick wall with an arm movement akin to that normally used to draw curtains.
Oblivious to the commotion above ground, below it Genie completed his
journey down the steps to the kiosk level and took a fearful look around. Finding his
surroundings completely deserted save a stalwart row of turnstiles and an electronic
token machine on the wall which repeated a pedantic announcement of its already
interminable presence in a tedious computerized tone, he stopped to catch breath like a
marathon runner having just traversed the finishing tape. He wished he'd had listened to
his girlfriend about those fitness classes, although then again the upshot of his only mild
obesity had motivated her to trade him in for a more athletic model, which suited him
just fine since her endless, brain busting criticism had driven him close to clinical
depression. In fact, it was her nagging that had turned him to crime; how else could he
afford to give her all she demanded; despite the fact that she was never satisfied?
Consequently he had realized he loved the crime much more than the girl. Perhaps that
machine reminded him of her, and he was in no sort of mood to tolerate this bleeping
atrocity, and silenced the thing with a blast of an unnecessarily powerful machine gun.
Another blast directed at the turnstile itself blew enough of the barrier away for him to
squeeze through into the hazy network of passages and walkways each leading to a
sacturous platform; any of which would suffice to get him out of this particular
warzone. But his hopes were suddenly dashed as Iron; leaping some fifteen feet down
from the subway entrance's surrounding wall, landed with a gush of air and a vicious
thump, having cut out the stairs altogether. Genie swore at himself; it was that damned
woman again; even her memory got him into trouble.
Above ground, Alma motioned at his unarmed enemy with a woeful smile;
"You shoot at my car, huh? How 'bout you shoot at me?" For the moment, the fact that
the car wasn't strictly his didn't really bother him, especially when he considered to
himself that perhaps if she had no gripes about shooting at his car she wouldn't think
too hard before apportioning the same treatment to him and was left to pray his clumsy
bluff didn't get called. Lincoln slotted her berretta back into its holster, intertwined her
fingers and stretched them out; "Nah; that just wouldn't be fair."
"Fair?" Alma scrambled to salvage the meaning of that word from the misty fissure of
his memory, then gave up and gleefully accepted the task ahead. But Lincoln preferred
to know who she was fighting and; more importantly; why. After all, one day she may
come across someone who's aims and motives matched her own, even if their methods
were less than subtle, and in such a case, getting into an unwanted brawl with them
probably wouldn't be a constructive use of what little time she had left on this planet.
Still, she had a sneaking suspicion this particular character's motives were less than
noble. "What use have you guys got with money? It's not worth anything unless you're
a paid up consumer duped into believing we still live in the last millennium, and you lot
don't look like you're satisfied with designer suits and French cuisine." It seemed a
hasty contradiction that there could be such a thing as a 'paid up consumer' when
money really did no longer exist outside the game they were all paying up for, but in
actuality 'the game' was all there was. Volscenzi enjoyed it; he thrilled in it. In reality,
there was no reason why he needed moneyed subjects at all; or subjects of any kind. He
just liked to tower over people; to dominate them and to fool them. To say that he
could have made just as much money scrapping the whole City State idea and turning
his enterprise wholeheartedly to the gene machine would be accurate in that neither
could make money since it no longer existed in the 'real' world, but out of the latter the
autocrat would derive no pleasure. Though her by now almost forgotten remark was
merely incidental and partook of curiosity rather than genuine interest, Alma saw it as
an excuse to spout some much unneeded bragging; "Old US legal tender. Outside they
still use it; for convenience and where there ain't no computers anymore." Lincoln had
heard stories of decrepit nations turning to reactionary counter measures designed to
undo the computer revolution, but was soon to be assured that Alma's sentiments
hardly pertained to the notion of reconstructing a more stable society; "It'll buy us
weapons; ammunition.; even mercenaries. Who knows? The US government's so
desperate they might even let us do business with them direct."
"And what do you do once you've got the guns? Buy tanks? Planes? I can't see you
staging a revolution; I'd guess you like the freedom you get from such lawlessness.
Waging a miniature war spurred by the power struggle rather than by astute ideology.
It's no escape. The more you barricade yourself, the less chance you have of getting
out." Alma was not impressed. He had never applauded constructive criticism, and to
him if anyone disagreed it was simply because they were too ignorant to understand,
and like your normal everyday hoodlum he was always keen to destroy whatever
reminded him most of himself in a vain attempt to prove he was different. Stupidity was
one such familiar quality, and he quickly seized what he thought was the perfect
moment to attack. Lincoln leant back and raised a pair of open hands; twiddling the
fingers in an attempt to confuse her armed adversary. This, to Alma, was a sign of
indecision, and he responded with an fuming slash. Lincoln simply lifted an arm;
knowing from the moment he had divulged its direction that his strike would sneak past
her face like a prowling stoat. Not to be intimidated, Alma struck again, but this time
Lincoln went for a more direct approach as she moved to the side and swang a handful
of middle knuckles from behind her head and into his nose like a claymore. By this he
was tentatively surprised, and dropped one bayonet as he jumped back with a
concealing hand flying upwards to mop the blood from his nostrils.
By now, a small crowd had gathered; mostly disinterested shoppers astonished
that violence was indeed a pastime popular in actuality as well as celluloid
entertainment, however much the government hid it from them. Alma took an
ambitious lunge as he hurled his remaining weapon in a quarter circle with a vast and
ambiguous circumference. But Lincoln's deadly accuracy was to be his downfall yet
again. She ducked under the soaring blade, span round with a flat armed thump at his
stomach, altered her stance and sliced his leading leg away with an unpredictable
sweep. She stepped back as the robber dropped into a twisting fall; his knee bending
with a miserable crack. To make matters worse, he had dropped his last bayonet, and
now had to fight his writhing torment as well as a proven opponent unarmed. He rose,
staggered like a lame drunkard and collapsed into a fragile telephone box; glass and
shoddy plastic exploding around him as he moaned like something out of an Edvard
Munch painting in dysfunctional despair.
The nearby groan of scraping subway train carriages echoed in his ears like flaky
chunks of wax moved around by an amateur audiologist as Iron watched the fleeing
ring leader; who trotted onto the platform and unleashed a lethal entourage of machine
gun fire into the steps just below his oncoming aggressor's feet. Fire sparked around in
front of him as if he was being lowered into a crackling stove as he took one pace back
then hurled himself forward over the length of the remaining steps with the aid of a
stair rail. Knowing the length of time a New York subway train allows its passengers to
board, he picked up the pace, and with a flying leap managed to bundle the stricken
perpetrator onto the platform floor as the doors slammed like the gates of a moving
alcatraz just seconds after opening; granting any bold travelers the usual dwarfish
moment to get into a sardine can carriage as if badly treated workmen had sabotaged
the thing just before receiving their redundancy by tricking its mechanics into thinking
nobody was ever meant to use the subway system at all. Back on his feet with a speed
inspired more by terror than agility, Genie prepared to shower his adversary with
another cuspidal cascade of bounding bullets. But again Iron's timing was impeccable
as a combination of metal, plastic and glass howled through the air like screaming souls
returning to haunt earth when told by God's most famous outcast that it was either Hell
or bust. But the target was never in any danger; nestled between two age old
newspaper stands. "Sh*t!" Genie voiced appropriate appraisal of his performance
before the train roared into a tunnel; his only source of salvation dashed. Iron flitted
around bursts of gunfire as if he was some kind of immortal with a confusing
proficiency which may well have caused his assailant to believe that he was. Knocking
the shuddering bank robber out cold was not a problem; a simple thrust of an open
palm to the bridge of the nose would suffice; and did. Iron breathed deeply and enjoyed
the resulting silence for the moment as if he had been granted release from the cruel,
cruel outside world that had made him the way he was; of which he was thankful, but
also made him feel the way he often felt, which was periodically unbearable. But a
moment of cool contemplation doesn't serve to signify that the same glorious mental
vision is being enjoyed by anyone else.
Meanwhile, Lincoln hopped backwards as if riding a bicycle in reverse to
accommodate for the bullet her desperate enemy plugged aimlessly into the feeble
pavement with a newly revealed chrome silver magnum. She took the opportunity to
move dangerously close to her opponent then swept her left leg up, knocked the gun
out of his hand, span in a full circle and lashed her opposite heel into his jaw. Alma spat
a tooth in disgust as he dropped onto one hand; beseeching the heavens to grant him an
undeserved shot at redemption. At this point though, one gift was indeed bestowed
upon him as the grounded Flinch seized the moment to get back onto weeping legs
which felt like bandy stilts. The perfect distraction provided to enable Alma to recover
the more efficient of his arsenal of weapons. Aware if he took too long he might topple
in a catastrophic catalepsy, Flinch sped onward with a series of flaming hooks, jabs and
uppercuts; all of which Lincoln managed to stifle as she raised both hands behind her
head, pulled her elbows in front of her face and leant forward. Back stepping
unknowingly, she decided that redirecting his own energy against him was the most
frugal policy, and dived down into an obscure stoop as if evading an American football
challenge and allowed Flinch's searching arm to collide with the jagged remains of the
telephone booth which his colleague had so thoughtfully broken into a thousand jarring
pieces earlier with a bloodcurdling scrape and tuneful tinkle of glass. But the maneuver
was not meant solely as a defensive measure. Lincoln whirled around full circle and
drew her berretta as she went; well aware that her remaining opponent was by now
similarly armed and dangerous in terms of unpredictability rather than talent. But the
stand off was interrupted rudely by Flinch; who with his last conscious breath for this
dark day at least; tugged at his tormentor's ankle with a determined hand; causing her
to step sideways to regain balance; the uneasy shooter releasing a mistaken round as
she was forced to transfer weight. Immediately she had shut her eyes sensing some
peculiar presentiment. At least she had been saved the specific agony of witnessing her
unintentional sin first hand, or else her eyes would forever have felt as sullied as her
mind.
Inappropriately a moment later than he might have preferred, Iron arrived at the
scene and pushed as if a butter fingered cook putting a hand into a trifle to search for
his wedding ring, through the crowds; which muttered and slithered around the arena
like a band of satanic cheerleaders. Lincoln paused. The sprawled thief's tremolo
tantrum had been reduced to nothing with too much efficiency for comfort. She felt a
vague air of inauspicious silence and looked back at Alma's still figure with gloomy
trepidation. Iron stepped forward and helped her to her feet, very much aware that her
pale and puzzled expression signified that this was an unintended finale to what would
otherwise have been a forgettable confrontation. Lincoln's thoughts had been
substituted from a simple lack of respect for her fallen enemy to a bitter hatred of
herself. Despite the fact that she already knew the answer to it, she couldn't avoid
asking herself the question she'd hoped she'd never had to. But if there was a chance all
this was mere illusion.... Iron nodded in an uncharacteristic manner like a world
renowned comedian having signed up to front the launch of a generous though solemn
documentary channel and led her away from the happily entertained band of morbid
spectators behind. To kill a person can be more detrimental to your life than the
victim's; afterall, he would not have known about it. This was one particular lesson
Lincoln was reluctantly about to learn.
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