~
Tedium
Tia stepped away from the table, her eyes softly closed, head lightly cocked to one side, her lips curled in a relaxed smile. She stretched out her arms, holding the gun in her right hand by the tip of the cooling barrel, between her thumb and forefinger. She raised her head to the delightful sky; the sun bathed her in a kindly glow and the light breeze tickled her gently. She twirled, a soft waltz playing in her mind.
Such blessed relief to have a great and unnecessary weight lifted from her slight shoulders. Michael had become such a bore. If only she’d known how simple it could be. A quick insignificant little pop, a tiny puff of mildly acrid smoke and it was all over and done with.
A woman pushed past her.
She opened her eyes and stared into the vast, crisp clear blue canvas, and giggled. Should she extend her right arm ahead of her or leave them both tucked neatly by her sides? It would have to be ‘neatly by her sides’, it would be a trimmer, sleeker image. And of course she would have to wear black, nothing else would do. She took in a long, deep breath, and bolted into the sky.
As she cleared the atmosphere and shot into space, she turned and looked back on herself, down upon the bright planet beneath her. Tialand was a giant and rather pretty glowing marble. And my, oh my, space was dark, a blackness she had never imagined possible. What was needed to complement her backdrop was a long, elegant silk evening gown with a billowing train to show off her dazzling new collection of twinkling jewellery made of starlight.
She stared at a tall man’s greying nasal hair
She grunted and raced toward the moon. As she glided to the surface, and just a moment before she touched down, she kicked off her heels and watched them as they tumbled away. The dry grey dust tickled the souls of her dainty feet and toes. It felt like a fine powder, and yuck, it was dirty. Unnatural shapes caught her eye. Was that a golden Tialand flag, just ahead of her, suspended above the windless surface? She danced over to the base of an aged, squat lunar module. There was a huge boot print set in the surface. She placed a slim foot into the print. It was massively bigger than her foot. She smiled, shaking her head; did she really expect anything else?
“I know I said to her she said that you said that he said about her …”
She shook her head and darted toward the sun. A gleaming comet idled its way through the back streets of the solar system. It looked like a giant shuttlecock. Well, okay, perhaps it didn’t. She glided by the tail and ran her hand through the tinkling cone of shattered crystals. Man, it was cold.
Nick’s hand lightly brushed her.
She rocketed out of the solar system and slowed to a leisurely float only when she came by a glorious, lazily undulating nebula. Pure and brilliant starlight shone through the giant clouds of intermingling red, green and blue gasses. So, this is what a galactic nursery looked like, stars gently rocking in their rainbow cradles.
Miranda climbed off Craig.
God damn it. She bolted back to the veranda by the mountain range and slammed into the ground, shattering the concrete. She stood over Michael’s dead body, her hands on her hips. There was a generous pool of sticky blood by the head. She straddled the chest and grabbed the ears.
“You couldn’t stop it,” she shouted. “She had no right and you damn well know it, they just gaggle on for years about nothing while that lecherous bastard takes what he wants when he wants and you couldn’t stop it.” The sky darkened, her courtiers fled. “You weren’t there when he climbed off that stinking whore, she might as well have stabbed me in the heart with lightening. You were meant to put an end to it.” Thunder echoed through the mountains, as she banged the head on the concrete, over and over and over. “They all use me, every single one of them. I’m a plain and useless non-entity for their sport. Who cares about little, uneducated Tia? She’s fat, spotty and short sighted.” It was pitch-black as the rain hammered down. “You’re just like them. You used me. I’d made it. On my own. I gave you everything. My thanks were pure. You owe me. You are mine. You hear me. Mine.”
She fell back on her heels, soaked to the skin, and wailed, her head to the sky, eyes tightly shut, arms flailing.
“No,” she screamed. “No.”
Lightning blazed across the rolling, blanket of thick, black cloud. Roaring thunder pounded the air as rain sheeted to the ground. She swallowed, her throat was dry. She forced herself onto her aching feet and looked down upon the dead body, into the lifeless eyes. The rain had turned the blood into what looked like a spilled blackcurrant drink. She snarled, he’d surely be happy she’d done him the favour.
Tia stepped away and shuffled to the edge of the veranda. Her wet and dirty evening dress caught and tore on the broken concrete. Tiny, jagged stones that were once the finest sparkling jewels fell to the floor. She gripped the neck and ripped the dress from her body. She stepped out of the ruins and stood naked before the storm.
The rain lashed the mountains as thunder beat and lightening lit the battered landscape. It wasn’t enough. Gale force winds pulled trees from the ground and sent them tumbling through house roofs. Slim spires crumbled into streets as hail the size of fists plunged from the sky. The squall of the terrified swirled with the grit as the ground trembled. It wasn’t enough. A tidal wave ploughed through Tialand, tearing and engulfing … stop.
Tia’s hair was jet black and cropped into a short bob. She wore a fitted black jacket with red epaulettes, black leather gloves, black jodhpurs and tightly laced, black leather combat boots. Sparkling gold and silver medals adorned her chest. ‘Tialand’ was emblazoned in gold on her left shoulder, a swooping eagle on her right.
The great iron gates to her coliseum swung imperiously open. As the storm raged on, she rode into the arena on her carriage drawn by six sleek and powerful black horses. The great stone edifice was bathed in golden light and ringed with red and black Tialand flags. Brilliant fireworks exploded in a continuous and booming barrage above the coliseum. The three hundred thousand present chanted for all they were worth, ‘Hail, hail, hail.’ Her people were in uniform, saluting her as one.
Her horses slowed to a stop by the dais. As she stepped from the carriage, her courtiers quickly and efficiently fussed over her. She stepped forward and looked over her massed, tiered ranks of neat, worshiping troops; her gaze was solemn and measured, as though she in fact cared for each of them to know, individually, of her warm gratitude and deep admiration of their sacrifice to her just cause. Actually, it was their love and devotion that she liked best. But then, what else were they going to do?
Silver spotlights picked out her slight and solitary form.
“Tialand,” she said, quietly, in almost a whisper, “I have this tiny little itch I need you all to help me scratch.” Her troops cheered with gusto. “I have tried as hard as I might to tear this wretched and foul stink from within the fabric of my over burdened heart.” Her voice quickly rose to a shout as her pulse raced.
“I was not cause of this aching pain. I did not invite it into my being. In fact, I had nothing to do with it whatsoever.” She shook her clenched fist as Tialand roared its indignation right back at her. “Who is to blame for this tortured pain? What dark and seedy corner of my glorious kingdom blackened our soul? It was the stinking city. I hate it,” she yelled, stamping her foot. “I cannot stand it. So damned ignorant and so damned arrogant, so utterly sure they are justified to do whatever the hell they please to whomever they please whenever they please as they please. It makes me sick.”
She stood back, her chest heaving, and took a breath.
“The city -” She pointed outside the coliseum. “- is going to pay.”
Tialand surged to its feet, roaring, ‘Hail, hail, hail’. As the faithful shouted themselves hoarse and saluted her over and over, flights of nimble escort fighters and heavy bombers overflew the coliseum in tight, arrow shaped formations. On the ground, columns of rumbling tanks and armoured vehicles, with Tialand battle flags flying from their turrets, swept into the arena and paraded before her. The growling of airplane engines and heavy ground vehicles combined with the ecstatic delirium of her subjects formed into a grand cacophony, a terrific din that blasted through a thickening haze of acrid exhaust fumes that left a taste of engine oil on the back of the throat. Delicious.
She smiled. This was going to be good.
The sky boiled red. Near constant bursts of lightening blazed from the blanket of rolling cloud and forked to the surface. Tia approached the city from the north, on foot, alone, quietly humming a restful, playful lullaby. With each step she took, the grass about her feet promptly withered and died. As she past trees and hedges, leaves caught fire and bark was soon black. Just behind her, and keeping pace with her, was a wall of torrential hot rain beating the ground.
She sensed her swollen army groups closing in on the city from the east, the south and the west. Any minute now, a ferocious assault would begin. She had just a little job to take care of before allowing her troops to have their fun. As she strolled into the bustling train station near her flat, her hands thrust deep into her pockets as she wistfully hummed, her skin tingled with the exhilaration of anticipation.
A woman pushed past her. She should say something, stand up for herself. What would be the point in making a scene? Her lips curled in a pursed smile.
“Erm, now, let me see, what do I want? Hmm, yes, I’ll have a skinny cappu … mmm.”
The woman span on her heels and dropped her handbag, her face bright purple, her mouth tightly gagged with a stinking, oily rag. Tia stood before her and gently brushed a loose strand of greying hair from her wrinkled forehead. The gag was rather fetching, but she could do much better than that. The woman fell to her knees as a metal clamp riveted to her face.
Tia opened up her form, she needed a good stretch; her muscles had tensed up a little. Screaming played on the air, a daft old bat clutched her clamp, and a slick, black machine gun appeared in her hand. Ooh, it was nice and shiny. Best of all, she knew it would be loud.
Pulling the tiny, little trigger was such a simple act. As the woman’s chest exploded, Tia’s heaved with delight.
She stood on the station roof, feet apart, hands on her hips, and took in the magnificent view. Under blackened, raging skies, wave upon wave of her sleek bombers pounded the city. The eastern, southern and western suburbs were ablaze, an unbroken wall of furious flame. Against the brilliant backdrop of dancing wrath, the jagged skyline of gleaming, phallic skyscrapers remained unmolested. Goody, goody.
There was no particular hurry to get to the centre of the city, no need to be in any kind of rush. There was time enough to take to the air to giggle at the flight of panicked civilians from above, to force them this way and that with the odd barrage of cluster bombs, to strafe them here and there with her screaming fighters, to send buses and lorries careening onto their sides by blowing little kisses at them on the air, to throw dazzling bolts of lightning at the surface from the palms of her hands, and to delight in the glorious, raging fireballs that engulfed the little orderly rows of bricks and mortar.
She glided to the ground and stood in the middle of a road before onrushing traffic. Two long, thin busses bore down on her, their horns screaming. Acrid smoke billowed from the locked wheels as brakes screeched. They came to a stop a good distance ahead of her, the passengers had a chance to flee. She appeared in middle of the shrieking little people as they spewed out into the tarmac. She gave her machine gun a loving stroke and then emptied the magazine into the crowd, shuddering with pleasure as each bullet left the barrel. If there were screams and yelps of animal pain, they were drowned out by her roaring, rattling storm. She grunted and grinned, her teeth grinding. More, she needed more. Her guns became larger and louder.
Silence and stillness appeared to allow a soft moan of ecstasy to slip by her lips. The din returned as she opened up on the remains of the passengers.
She dropped the empty, smoking guns and walked in amongst the dead, kicking arms, legs and heads, and jumping in the pools of sticky blood, like a child would puddles of water.
“Next.”
She bolted toward the skyscrapers and landed in the middle of the Eighth Bridge, which connected the artsy, farty north quarter with the claustrophobia of the high rise business district. From the air, hundreds of men and women were running from the south bank over the bridge. Yet, as she touched down, they all apparently changed their minds and began running back from where they came. Was it something she’d said?
Despite the sudden change in the current, there were still far too many people in her way. The risk was one she could not ignore: what if someone bumped into her and perhaps crumpled her jacket? That would not be at all pleasant or polite.
She glanced at a man in blue overalls. He dropped dead. She turned to a woman who wore her hair in pigtails. She dropped dead. Two nurses and seven men in business suits dropped dead.
Her remaining toys fell at her feet, kissing her boots, begging for pity, crying for mercy, offering money, jewellery. She yawned, then smiled cutely and blew them all a tiny kiss. The gale force wind picked the hysterical crowd up from the concrete and blew them over the bridge. The way was finally clear for her to continue her stroll into the forest of slim glass towers.
It was an annoyance that civvies were still ahead of her, in her way. Dozens of giant snarling, scaly monsters with acidic drool dripping from their six-inch fangs leapt out of her body and raced after the screamers, roaring as they pounced on their free two-legged meals.
In amongst the feast, which was mercifully quietening down, she caught sight of a little thing, crouched, whimpering, in the corner of a green phone box, knees clutched to her chest. How dare a subject of hers cower? It was unbecoming, feeble. She tore the door off the phone box. The dumpy thing badly needed some exercise, and those pale lips and black bags under mud brown eyes could do with some kind summer rays. And could she trowel on anymore make-up? The make-up dissolved, revealing three huge spots on the verge of erupting across her face.
“Name?” she barked.
The girl panted as she stared back at Tia.
“You have one more chance to answer me, little girl.”
“I … I’m … Tia Green.”
She took an involuntary step back, fell off the curb and onto her rear. This was not possible; she was no longer an insignificant, waste of space. ‘Weakness’ had been removed from her vocabulary, only ‘triumph’ remained. She pushed herself onto unsteady feet and stepped out into the middle of the tree-lined street, as sparks of light spat and crackled from her fingers. Hurricane winds began to whip and scream between the towers, quickly stripping swaying trees bare of their leaves and tipping abandoned busses and trams onto their sides.
“I have triumphed,” she screamed.
Every window in every vehicle and building shattered in a lightening wave that pulsed from her heart. As the glass fell with the pouring rain and tinkled on the concrete, she stretched out her arms, raised her face to the black sky, and howled. That Tia Green was dead. She stamped the ground; the earthquake rippled outward, the towers rumbled and shook, their colossal structures soon buckled, and then began to fall, collapsing toward her from all around her, crashing to earth with a thunderous roar. Giant, surging waves of thick, dust, dirt and debris billowed over her, coating her in filth.
As the dust settled, she stood slouched, her arms loose by her sides, her gaze to the ground. A tiny cough escaped her as she raised her head. What was left of the city was becoming visible again. In front of her, to her left, right and behind her, six blocks had been levelled. Despite the deflation following the release, anger and grit still stubbornly clung to her throat. Perhaps there were a couple of last acts to perform. Perhaps then she would be blessed with peace.
Her tanks’ smoking turrets and machine guns were all trained on the office building; her battle hardened troops were poised behind their tracks, their weapons raised, their eyes at their sights. Tia stepped forward into the clear space between the line of uniformed men and the four storey building. With a quick flick of the wrist, the glass façade was ripped cleanly away and tossed aside.
She floated into the reverently silent office and settled before a trembling slug. Sweat ran from Nick’s ridiculously furrowed brow as his jaw quivered. She looked down from his wide, frightened weasel eyes to the wet patch growing generously at his crotch. He was a doleful child that had just been spanked. It was beyond her why she had ever allowed herself to be intimidated by the pathetic, slimy bastard? There was no way she was going to waste even a single one of her precious bullets on him.
Nick’s breathing ceased and he collapsed to the floor.
She sauntered out of the office, whistling gaily.
Tia stood before the yellow metal door to her red bricked residential building. The building itself was bathed in clear light and sat in the middle of her coliseum. Three hundred thousand Tialanders chanted, ‘Off! Off! Off!’ She took a calming breath, then ripped the building from its foundations and tossed it over the coliseum’s walls. All that remained in the centre of the darkened arena beneath the banks of bright stage lights was her bed, and a rather shocked Craig and Miranda beneath some seriously crumpled sheets.
“Well, hello my glowing little pretties,” Tia said demurely, her hands clasped behind her. “How nice it is to see you.” Her people belly laughed as one, as the odd one or two here and there stepped onto the arena floor.
Craig and Miranda rose to their knees, clenching the bed sheets protectively close to their sweaty nakedness, as their heads jerked about them, their faces registering the scope of the ever so slight pickle they were in.
Tia smiled as she strolled toward the bed. “I appear to have interrupted an indiscretion.”
A hundred Tialanders approached the bed from all angles.
“My lovelies please tell me, what am I to do about the principal cause of my aching distress?” She dabbed a single tear with a white silk handkerchief. “Should I forgive and perhaps, with the length and breadth of time, forget?” The handkerchief floated to the dusty floor. “Now, that just wouldn’t be sporting of me, would it?”
Two hundred Tialanders approached the bed.
“Honey, please, I beg you,” Craig said, his hands held in prayer. “I’m so sorry, so very sorry.”
“But of course you are.” She smiled. “And the slut?”
“I wasn’t thinking, Sweetie,” Miranda cried. “I swear I never meant to hurt you, I love you.”
“George, would you put up with any of this from your ‘Sweetie’?”
The yummy actor materialised by her side. “Are you kidding me?” He signed a giggling, star-struck Tialander’s breast. “Not in a million years.”
“Marissa?”
“Throw them to the wolves,” her beautiful assistant spat.
It seemed that tears and baying were all the quivering adulterers had left to offer her, and their remorse was quickly growing wearisome. “My darlings, it really is time for me to say adieu, au revoir and goodbye. My devoted subjects know what I need from them to satisfy my final desire.” She turned, and walked toward the exit, as a thousand Tialanders crowded around the bed.
All too soon the screams were silenced. Pity.
Tia wore a tiny red bikini and a pair of slim black sunglasses. She lazed on a soft lounger beneath a glorious sun by a crystal clear blue sea, sipping an ice-cold Champagne cocktail, as tropical birds sang for her in lush palm trees. She stretched and yawned, and placed the cocktail back on the frosted glass table high up in the snowy mountains, a faint icy wind drifted over her silken skin, as she idly watched skiers rocket down the mountain side. Perhaps she should have a waiter hold her glass, as the ocean’s gentle undulations might cause it to spill. She inhaled the crisp, salty sea air and wondered if the moon’s unfiltered sunlight might make her cocktail glass glitter. But then, the moon was dusty and dirty and a little too quiet for her taste, and besides the service from the help was horrendous. Ah well, it was back to tropical birds, sun, sand and clear blue seas then. No, actually, what she needed was a sports pool.
It was a long, tiled pool with a single lane. The water was clear and dead still. A flat, circular stone appeared between her fingers. It seemed appropriate. She drew her arm back and threw the stone without any particular force or intent. It skimmed across the surface just twice and then sank. Ripples emanated out from each impact to the side of the pool.
Her heart began to beat a little faster as she stood and threw another stone, a little more forcefully. This time, the stone skimmed four times before sinking. The larger ripples hit the side of the pool, and then, headed back in toward the spots the stone had hit.
She threw another ever harder. It skimmed six times before sinking, but she was not interested in the numbers she could create. Her mind followed the ripples as they struck the side of the pool and surged back toward the points of impact. Cold sweat dripped down her back.
She threw a rock into the pool. The wave burst outward, pounded the side of the pool, then headed back toward the centre and engulfed the point of impact.
Pristine peace transformed her for just a moment.
It was bliss.
Then, panic stricken, she fell through the earth.
~
