“Well,” I said, putting my arm around Beau, “how do we look?”

 

Alexi had been applying makeup and putting the finishing touches to both of us at the dresser in the bedroom and now we stood before her expectantly like soldiers awaiting inspection. She looked exhausted from her day’s hard work and worry lined her eyes and mouth. Beneath her critical gaze she really made us feel like her children, being a head taller than both of us. She dropped her eyes to Beau’s penis with apprehension and knelt to give him one last check, suppressing the trembling of her fingers and pulling his foreskin down to examine the meatus. Once more he was in nothing but blue ribbons and with his hair in pigtails.

 

“He’ll want you to be naked too,” she said to me and her tongue poked from between her lips in concentration.

 

“Fuck that,” I said, brushing down my black slacks. With the matching blazer, white silk blouse buttoned at the neck and shiny black ballet pumps I felt literally dressed to kill. “If he wants me naked he’ll have to fight me.”

 

She looked up at me briefly and I felt my mask of confidence slip. She put her goggles on and gazed at her work for a long moment, then sighed and sat back on her heels.

 

“This isn’t going to work,” she said, removing the goggles and rubbing her forehead. “It’s too dangerous.” She shook her head. “Why did I let you talk me into this?” She stood, and walked into the living room, running her fingers through her hair. “Why did I let you talk me into this?” she repeated, panic rising in her voice. “Violence is so wrong.”

 

“We need to do this,” I told her, following, and took her hand, “for both of us.” I touched her cheek, then her neck. She took my hand, kissed it, then pressed it into the front of her jeans. I felt the buttons and, behind them, her warmth. “Alexi?”

 

“I know I’m not gonna see you again once you’ve gone and we’ve only got a few minutes.” She began to lead me back to the bedroom.

 

“Lexi, no.” Shocked by her desperation, I tried to pull away.

 

“But I love you, Irma!” she cried, suddenly losing all c0mposure. “I love you, I love you, I love you!”

 

I managed to prize her fingers away and I lifted them to my mouth.

 

“I know, sweet Lexi, I know,” I breathed. “But I can’t love you, not in the way you want me to.” I looked into her open, tear-stained face. “Not in this body.”

 

“Well, like I said, I can make you another one.”

 

“Lexi,” I whispered, kissing her fingers. “That’s not what I meant. I can’t love you as a woman. Look at me, sweetheart.” I raised her small chin gently. “This isn’t who I am anymore. When I discovered what it’s like to be a man, from then on I knew I wanted to be a man. Don’t you see? If you’re right, that our memories define us, then you can make a male body for me and I’ll still be me.”

 

“But what about my body? The file I made of you, I made one of myself. I can update it and make any body you’d like. One of Beau or Mary, anything. Don’t you like my body?”

 

“Yes, but that’s not what matters. The point is, are you happy in it?”

 

“Well, yes, but,” she floundered and began to scratch at her neck. I took her other hand.

 

“I’m sorry I drifted away from you and your parents. I’d put you in danger and I was too young and stupid to deal with my guilt. I’m sorry I wasn’t nice to you when you moved in next door to me. I’ll never forgive myself for that. I was on intent on spending every spare minute online that I didn’t have time to notice you.” I hugged her tightly. I heard her swallow hard and felt her nod against me.

 

“Irma,” came a piping voice from the bedroom, “you look great.”

 

I gently let go of Alexi and stared at Beau, standing there, smiling his childlike smile.

 

“Oh, Beau,” I said, deeply touched. “Thank you.” I kissed his cheek, then turned back to Alexi. “Are you sure he’s, you know,” I said, feeling awkward with him within earshot, “not really a person?”

 

“He has the understanding of a very young child with an equivalent IQ of about seventy,” she said and removed her glasses to wipe her cheeks with a tissue.

 

“He complimented me.”

 

“Because I programmed him to be nice, Irma,” she said in a broken voice and laughed weakly. “He hardly understands what we’re talking about now.”I looked into his eyes searchingly and found nothing but dumb acceptance of everything. “He’s not the Beau you used to know,” continued Alexi sadly. “I was your Beau. So don’t you worry yourself about him.”

 

“It still seems cruel what we’re doing. We might never see him again after tonight. We’re sacrificing him, like a lamb to the slaughter.”

 

“I know there’s a bond between you and I don’t want to see him go either. Afterwards, I can make another, if you’d like.”

 

“But he won’t be the same,” I said, feeling an almost overwhelming sadness which suddenly turned to alarm as there came a loud thumping from the hallway.

 

“I’m coming with you,” Alexi said, panic-stricken, and following Beau and me down the stairs.

 

“No, Alexi,” I said, seeing dark shapes through the windows. “We decided it wouldn’t be safe, didn’t we?” I watched her following me down, limping. “It’s me and Beau he wants, not you.”

 

There was more loud knocking and Alexi went to open the door. Outside stood four men, as tall and sinister as all the client’s men.

 

“It’s time, Dr Skolkova,” said one in dark glasses and a short beard.

 

“She’s not coming,” I said brusquely, ushering Beau before me and following on his heels until I was pulled from behind and embraced by Alexi. Her body was shaking so much she seemed about to collapse.

 

“If something happens to me,” I said quietly into her ear, “you know what to do.” I pulled back and looked into her eyes. “But don’t you dare try to remove that thing yourself while we’re gone. We’ll figure it out. You’re very special to me and I’ll always be with you.”

 

I felt a heavy hand on my neck and was yanked violently away from her. Her fingers hooked around mine briefly before we were finally separated and I watched her shocked face disappear behind the door as it shut in our faces. Beau was already on the back seat of the limo while Bill, wearing his perpetual smile, stood beside the door, waiting. On the opposite pavement I saw the handsome black man nod to me once more and I raised my eyebrows at him, disappointed that he and his colleagues did nothing to help.

 

“I guess the extra muscle’s for me, huh?” I said to Bill and stepped in. He sat beside us while the man in sunglasses, apparently unconcerned that it was already evening and almost completely dark, took the seat immediately in front of us. I gripped Beau’s hand for reassurance.

 

“Are we now going to see Otto and Precious and Rosemary again?” he piped in his child-like voice.

 

The man opposite sniggered.

 

“Yes, Beau, we are,” I said, smiling at him to cover my fear.

 

The journey was so smooth there was almost no sensation of travelling. The estuary slid past on the left, an ominous darkness, while cars passed on the right with hardly a sound. When we turned into the red light district we saw it was a little busier than the night before and it was almost impossible for the vehicle to penetrate the crowds that wandered along the road. We were rocked backwards and forwards as the wheels dropped in and out of the road’s many potholes. I saw in front of the car a woman, clearly stoned, jump onto the bonnet and up to the roof before the driver sounded the alarm and she quickly leaped off and back into the crowd. If we had not been in such an imposing vehicle I doubted the crowd would have allowed us through at all.

 

It wasn’t until we were pulling into the car park that I realised we had reached our destination, such was the thickness of the crowds obscuring the neon sign. We followed Bill out and waited in the combined glow of the green sign and the naked, evil eye of a red bulb above it, while the car was locked, alarmed and rechecked a few times. We were then led, not to the back entrance, but through a dark alley, mostly empty, around to the front of the building where a large crowd was queuing at the entrance. The sign over the door was a larger version of the one at the back, this one in bigger, bloated letters. Beau’s nakedness drew little attention, such was the kind of crowd this establishment drew. The security allowed us straight through until we were stopped behind the door by the man I had seen before with his small, bright scanning device. This time he took longer, scanning both Beau and me from our heads to our feet. His nod of approval was barely perceptible and we were then taken inside. All the while I never weakened my hold on Beau’s hand.

 

Inside, on a huge dance floor, the pile-driving beat of ‘I’m Your Bowling Ball, Baby’, a classic by Jezzibella Trollope, shook my chest and feet. It was hot and dark with minimal pink light contrasting with green and blue furnishings, though there weren’t many of these either. The air was heavy with the smell of sweat and semen rising from a sea of gyrating bodies. To the sides I saw curtained booths beneath red lights. Overhead was a balcony with more revellers, some looking down on the crowd below, some dancing, some fucking, and above that another level. On small hexagonal, glowing stages, bodies were moving to the beat, all gorgeous. I was attracted to one in particular, very young-looking with long, blond, curly hair, completely naked and with a slender but athletic body. He was thrusting his loins into the air and, as he turned to me, the movement of his erect cock was hypnotic. He turned again and kept on fucking the air above the heads of his other spectators while I discovered that my face had become very hot.

 

Around the other side of the bar, the dance floor gave way to a carpeted area with tables and chairs. A video wall displayed the wild sex fantasy of two Grecian hunks screwing in a vat of what might, or might not have been, milk. We were told to sit at a table and the men stepped back to assume their typical standing pose just behind us with their hands clasped in front of their genitals. For a while Beau and I sat watching the crowd and I recognised one face as it turned in our direction. It was the handsome house guard, his well-proportioned body looking fine in a smart, charcoal suit. I watched as he passed, lowering my eyes to admire, through his dark pants, the tightness of his ass.

 

There was a larger stage just a few feet away which, up to now, had been dark but which now exuded a bright green light from the floor and a thick, oozing smoke like bad breath. At the back sat the Uranus chair, or its analogue, while a microphone stand shone like a steel blade at the front. A portly man, perhaps seventy, dressed in a diaphanous white dress that merged with the bulging clouds of gas, and thick, white hair piled up like cotton candy, waddled from the shadows and up to the front, his cigar adding to the already thick smoke. The music continued while he waved angrily at someone through a window in a room just below the first balcony. Eventually the music was faded out and the microphone hummed into life.

 

“Is this thing on, mate?” he said, and spat into the crowd. A whistle more painful than any of those I had heard made by Precious’ chair, told us it was. “Right,” he affirmed, and squinted at a card in his hand. “I can’t facking’ read this,” he commented, and pulled a tiny pair of spectacles from down the front of his dress. “Gentleman, and any ladies who were bonkers enough to come here, His Lordship, Royce Tyranny, begs your indulgence tonight as it is five years to the day that his one and only true love, Jayden Coleville De San Bernadino Goebbels Von Ecce Ecce Ptang, what the fack is this?” He studied both sides of the card and puffed long and hard. “I’m not paid enough to read all this.”

 

“Get on with it!” shouted someone.

 

“Right,” he coughed, “his one and only true love, blah dee blah dee blah, was brutally murdered by one Irma,” he moved his small glasses between his eyes and the paper, “something or other, of St Lucia. Tonight we commemorate this life, cut tragically short, and seek to redress this terrible wrong. The performance will be in two acts. First, His Lordship and generous benefactor to many of you here, will perform a sex show with a new toy he has recently purchased. Following this, the entertainment will conclude with justice for His Lordship’s Romeo being served. Please enjoy yourselves, everyone.” He removed his spectacles and turned a sickly leer on the crowd which drew weak applause. “And if there are any bastards here who, provided they come with a good, stiff, nine inches, are sick enough to find the systematic rape and dismemberment of two robots arousing, I shall be backstage to receive them afterwards. Thank you very much and happy anniversary, Lord Tyranny, you wonderfully nasty, fat queer.” He bowed and retreated, forcing the smoke aside like a tug boat forces its way through turbid waters.

 

The silence was utter until someone, presumably in the room below the balcony, decided it was time for more music and the beat came crashing back in like the resumption of warfare after a nervous ceasefire. I gripped Beau’s hand hard, looked at his faint smile and felt cold and alone.

 

A tall door, which had been heavily guarded, beside the video screen opened and from it emerged slowly two rows of black-suited men carrying a heavy weight on their shoulders. It was Otto on a litter, his blonde and red hair freshly spiked, wearing a long coat with a metallic glint and the infamous boots I remembered, with their red velvet lining styled to look like hanging, bloody skin. Sat in a throne, he was doing a wild hand jive, rocking his body from side to side, shifting his enormous weight and clearly making life hard for his bearers. A spotlight picked him out as he was carried towards the stage while a procession of revellers followed, mostly naked, dancing like the floor was on fire.

 

There followed another litter, but this bore a wheelchair upon which sat Precious with Jay, her Scottie, draped across her lap while the chair drilled and hammered in time to the beat. They passed by us closely, but we were, so far, ignored. One bearded man lead the procession, walking grandly before the litters in a loose, flowery dress and taking puffs from what looked like the spout of a kettle but was probably a big bong as clouds of sweet-smelling smoke were rising from it and the man’s broad nostrils.

 

The crowd was going wild, clapping to the beat and tossing the smaller members into the air, despite the protestations of these unfortunates. As the procession reached the stage, white light and a black, shiny object rose from a trap door beside the mike stand. The shiny object grew into a flat, upright board shaped like an upside down ‘Y’. The litters reached the stage and Otto strode up to the microphone while Precious was sat in the Uranus chair.

 

At that moment the men surrounding us seized Beau, then me, and we were walked roughly up to the side of the stage. Otto, glittering in his coat of silvery sequins, leered at Beau and held out his hand. Naked under the harsh lights, my darling was pushed in Otto’s direction to the centre of the stage, accompanied by a mighty cheer from the crowd. Otto pulled Beau to him, tongued his ear, took the microphone and belched into it while an unseen band began to play.

 

“In the canyons of your mind,” he warbled, “I will wander through your brain.” Beau was smiling at this while Otto rocked him back and forth. “Through the cavities of your behind, my dear,” the gangster romanced with his tall body bent over his prize, “I’m in love with you again!” And he kissed Beau on the lips. It was like watching a greedy dragon serenading its victim before having it for breakfast.

 

When this disgusting display had reached its end, Otto lead Beau, with Beau smiling all the way, the few steps over to the board. The three extremities of it were adorned with silvery hoops. I saw they were manacles and, as Beau was pressed, uncomplaining, face first in the board and his legs parted wide, I realised that he was to receive Otto in the anus just like before.

 

“No!” I screamed and took a running step forward before being hauled back to the side. Large, heavy, sweaty hands pulled my arms up to my shoulder blades and, crying out in pain and alarm, I was lifted until only my toes touched the floor.

 

Otto unzipped his stripey pants and pulled out his already hard, but average, member. The crowd were hooting and stamping like a herd of wild beasts. A funky beat started to play as I watched with impotent fury while the distance between Otto’s cock and Beau’s buttocks slowly closed. Otto walked forwards while grinding his hips to the music and licking his lips salaciously while Beau’s smiling face was turned to me. As he was entered he closed his eyes, opened his mouth and a little frown appeared in his pale forehead which deepened as he was penetrated continually, violently by Otto. The crowd screamed the two syllables of, “Otto!” with each of their lordship's thrusts. In just a few moments distress and pain were visible all over Beau’s sweet face and he began to struggle and pull on the manacles. Otto threw his head back and laughed while Beau pleaded to be released. I could not even struggle myself now, so firmly and painfully was I held from behind. I tried to keep eye contact with Beau but his pitiful look of incomprehension hurt me more than the men holding me. Feeling like a traitor, I looked away and there, at the back of the stage, was Precious, a wire up her left nostril, staring not at the spectacle, but at me. Through the inscrutable mask of her dead face I perceived her malice. I felt myself drawn forward, as if on a swiftly moving walkway, towards the chair and into the woman’s black eyes.

 

The noise of the crowd and the horrid scene vanished to be replaced by the interior of a old house, familiar to me in some of its furnishings and ambience. The light fittings were filthier than I remembered and the drapes were layered with cobwebs at the tops. The wooden floor had not been polished and was dented and smeared with grease, drooping wallpaper partially covered two of the walls and the brickwork in the other two walls was merely covered, again partially, by chipped plaster. A wooden, portable screen with five painted panels stood beside the door, its faded elegance telling of times voguish, now long gone.

 

It was the house of Jayden where Beau, Mary and myself had finally confronted him and Royce. The room was a bedroom, smaller than the one where I had bathed and been bedded in contrasting ways by Rosie and Jayden, and this had, opposite the bed, an elegant chaise-longue with embroidered seat. I was sat on the edge of the bed. I felt bigger and looked down to see my old avatar, the body I had loved so much. I said a prayer of thanks to Alexi for anticipating this situation.

 

In the chaise sat a wild-haired woman in a tight, mauve latex jumpsuit from which her curves longed to burst, especially through the revealing oval hole in the suit’s chest. Black stiletto lace up boots and black gloves with spikes at the knuckles completed the outfit. Her face, though young, slender and beautiful, with black lipstick and thick mascara, bore an expression cruel and hard. Despite the dramatic difference in her appearance, I knew this was Precious, or Madame Prence as she preferred here.

 

Next to her sat her black dog, but Jay’s cute proportions had elongated into those of a Giant Schnauzer with intimidating jaws. I lifted my left hand to tap myself out but, before I had the chance to raise my finger even to chest level, the dog was upon me, pushing me over with his front paws, onto my back. Pain tore through me as teeth clamped in the centre of my face, ripping my nose from me. The dog licked the wound a few times, then I was left to hold my face in shock. The dog padded back to his mistress where he sat back down, chewing and swallowing, looking pleased with himself. Madame Prence patted his head and ran her fingers over the chain to the dog’s diamond-studded collar.

 

The bleeding from my face seemed to stop quickly, though my indigo, silk shirt was now speckled with dark, almost black, patches. I found a handkerchief in my pocket, no doubt thoughtfully placed there by Alexi, and wiped by face until I felt a little more decent. The pain throbbed but the wound was healing quickly. I gently probed it and found there wasn’t even the trace of a hole.

 

“My,” I said, raising a brow at my tormentor, and trying to sound sly, though it just sounded like I had a bad cold, “that’s quite a makeover you’ve had, Precious. What happened to the stunted parsnip we all used to know and love?”

 

She crossed her legs so that a sharp, steel-tipped toe was aimed straight at my eye. Her avatar looked fit and able to execute a kick as fast as a whip. She was angry with my remark, told me to shut up and that neither Rosie nor Jesus were around to help me now. She could still only talk like an old short wave radio being tuned, but somehow I caught the sense of what she was saying. She told me of how I had tossed her contemptuously into the blazing house five years ago and she spoke her brother’s grief at losing his one and only true love at my hands. I wondered if I should point out that the virus had come from Rosie, but seeing as both she and her brother seemed to have a blind spot over the domineering mother, I decided this would only anger her further.

 

The light in the room dimmed slightly as a draft blew in from an open window across the guttering candles, causing their flames to blow horizontally for a moment. In the high temperature I was glad of the breeze. In the sky I saw the huge, gibbous, green bulge of Uranus which was throwing, through the glass, jade squares onto the walls. When the candle light returned I could see outside the columns of the house’s front portico. The light still flickered wildly and I felt the presence of Alexi within me, or hoped I did. I noticed then the rope hanging from the ceiling near the door, possibly for ringing a bell in the servants quarters, its end dangling to about two feet above the cushioned back of the chaise. The dominatrix followed my eye, nodded and told me that one tug on the rope would tighten the wire in Alexi's neck enough to neatly sever her head from her body. She told me that, despite Alexi’s genius, my friend and I were soon destined for nothing but pain and death.

 

She stood, trod catlike over to a white dresser with a prettily carved frame for its mirror and picked up a box beside the lipstick and compact. It was a long, slender box, about fifteen inches long. From it she pulled something painted in stripes of shiny black and bright yellow. It looked like a giant wasp but was a set of male genitals, somehow alive yet independent of a body. She proudly told me, in cachinnating barks and yodels, that it was one she had customised herself. She pointed to me and ordered me to undress while Jayden stood and took a step forward to enforce this with a low growl. Prence watched me through her lashes while she held the balls in one hand, cruelly squeezing them tight, and wrapped her other hand around the base of the cock. Her fingers seemed unable to reach all the way around and she looked down at it for a moment.

 

I turned as if to comply with her order, then suddenly swung my arm towards her face, striking her hard, causing her to topple over and leave the genitals in mid-air. They fell on Jay’s huge snout while I made a run for the door. I had just opened it and was about to dash across the familiar landing towards the stairs when I was stopped and felled by a razor-sharp stab in the buttocks. I turned to see Jay, with the cock and balls still balancing on his face and his teeth in my ass.

 

“Get it the fuck off me!” I screamed, incapacitated by pain.

 

Madame Prence produced a sound that, though so unlike a human voice, could not be mistaken for anything but laughter. She patted the dog and persuaded it to finally release me, pulled down my pants, patted my ass, then yanked me hard by the ankles back into the room. Again she commanded me to remove all my clothes and told me to get on the bed and lie on my front. Before taking off my shoes I wondered if kicking the dog would help, but I decided I would more than likely just end up with my foot inside its slavering jaws. Naked, I lay on my front and wondered if Alexi had thought of a plan for this and forgotten to mention it to me.

 

Like the rest of the room the bedspread had not seen any kind of cleaning product for an embarrassing length of time, but my dislike for the housekeeper’s lack of cleanliness was driven from my mind by the groping of latex gloved fingers at my rectum. One finger in particular seemed determined to demonstrate its hardness. It ran clockwise around my rim and worked in and out for a few moments. There was a pause while I heard the slithering of latex on skin, then felt a warm droplet on my thigh, presumably some precum. My buttocks were parted by the tips of forefinger and thumb and then I felt the end of something fat and stiff driven into my hole. Save the minimal precum there was no lubricant and I screamed out in pain and fear.

 

Madame Prence mercilessly drove the cock deep into me, ploughing me wide and pushing it up to the balls. She let it rest there for a moment and, it may have been my imagination, but something about the scrotum struck me as odd. I felt like there were three gonads resting against my buttocks, but such sensations were subjugated to the piercing pain caused by the cock. My arms trembled weakly against the bed while I tried to get out from under this agony. Prence noticed my pathetic attempt at escape and her laugh was like the wauling of cat in a tumble dryer. The entrance to my anus was aflame and the broad tip was so deep it seemed like it was pushing into my intestine. My innards convulsed and, like it had years ago, my stomach brought up a cluster of used condoms that landed beside the pillow, glued together by a thick mucosal fluid.

 

Then I felt the cock harden, pulse and explode inside me. Its ejaculate was hard and spherical and a screech of terror was torn from me. My whole body became a pulsing boil of agony, writhing on the bed. I lost control of each bodily function, voided myself in every possible way simultaneously and collapsed inwardly. My entire body seemed to become malleable, even liquid, and reshaped itself. My screams reached higher until I no longer recognised the voice of my avatar.

 

Finally, I was able to open my eyes. The nauseating pain and pulsations had passed to be replaced by the odd sensation of being inside a new body. I looked down and wondered if I had completely lost my mind. The skin was as dark and the genitals were male, but the size was woefully wrong. Finding I was able to stand up I inspected myself and found my avatar had shrunk to that of a baby, just a few days old. My body was pudgy with fat, my legs were bowed and I struggled to focus my eyes beyond a few feet. However, I could see well enough to tell that Madame Prence, towering above me, was quaking with laughter, amused at the sight of her handiwork while Jay barked approvingly.

 

Furious and indignant I shook my tiny fist at them and jumped from the bed. I landed on soft feet and weak legs but, fuelled by anger, I was able to run to the door which had been left ajar. I was ready for Jay when his huge, black snout bore down upon me and, mustering all the strength in my tiny body, I hit his wet nose as hard as I could with my fat, balled fist. I kicked the screen, ran through the door and heard the wooden panels crash against the wall while Jay whimpered in surprise and dismay. I heard Madame Prence chuckle in Morse code, apparently unconcerned by my escape from the room.

 

The wide landing was as I remembered it, with oil paintings of nude boys on the walls, but these were hard to discern now with my hazy vision and also as the only light here was from a triple candelabra. This stood on a small, round table beside the stairs and threw a forest of shadows through the balcony rails to the doors on the far side. As fast as my tiny legs could carry me, I ran to these doors and, on the way, passed close to the top stair. I felt a pain in my left foot and heard a clatter as something began its loud tumble down the stairs. I dashed through an open door and found myself, once again, in the bedroom in which I been accommodated on my previous visit. The four poster bed and free standing bath were still here and everything was nice and clean, though it now appeared far bigger than before due to my pathetically diminished height. I heard foot and pawsteps behind me and, seeing nowhere obvious to hide, peered around the door.

 

As Madame Prence and her dog appeared on the landing I hoped it would not be immediately apparent to them which room I had chosen, seeing as there were several neighboring doorways. The two dark shapes paused and their noses twitched.

 

Prence wrinkled her face and made a sound, very much like a long drawn out, “Pew!” Maybe the object I had upset was a bed pan but, whatever it was, my lack of a nose at that precise moment was clearly fortunate. The dog was already edging his way to the stairs and she soon followed him down, chattering to him in her unique tongue all the way. I breathed a sigh and thought of the rope in the room I had just left. Should I try to cut or burn it with something, or would that activate the wire in Alexi just as effectively as pulling it? I scratched at the flat space above my mouth and realised that something needed to be done about that, and quickly. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to stop what was happening to Beau, but I had to try.

 

I tiptoed out and regarded the other doors, listening to both Prence and Jay bark at each other downstairs. I tried one door after the other, grateful my light body wasn’t making the floorboards creak, but in the dim light I bumbled into another table and candelabra, though this wasn’t lit. I hastily grabbed the table leg to prevent further noise and then heard a growl. Through the balcony rails I could see the black silhouette of a face with floppy ears. My tiny heart leaped and began beating like the wings of a hummingbird. I ran to the next room, skidded, fell on one knee and, just as I heard Jay panting up behind me, I propelled myself through the door, threw all my weight against it on the other side and, mercifully, heard it click shut. The floor was tiled. I had found a bathroom. The only light here was the sickly green luminescence from outside. I felt claws at my toes and stepped away from the door as Jay was pressing his nose and paws through a gap at the bottom, growling and whining in frustration.

 

I turned and bumped into something beside the toilet. I lifted the brush from its holder, gripped it with both hands and swiped it from side to side. It was light and soft at the end, not quite what I wanted, so I toddled towards the window, hoping the extra light there might reveal something useful. At the bath I reached up to the rim and tried to pull myself over, but the surface was too slippery and my arms were too weak for my stocky body, and all I could see was the end of a loofah and a rubber duck. Realising I was temporarily safe but trapped, I sat looking at the door and saw it shake while the snuffling continued from the other side. I lifted my gaze and scrutinised the shadows in the shower, and shapes I couldn’t make out, they were so far above me. The room was small, or it would have been had I a regular-sized avatar. I looked up high to the mirror above the wash basin and the glass shelf between them. From there came a glint of metal. I saw what it was immediately and I longed for it, but it was like hopelessly longing for a diamond at the top of a mighty cliff with no means to climb. I stood at the base of the basin and scrabbled impotently at the smooth, ceramic edifice which loomed out from the wall and over me to eclipse my view of the shelf. I had to reach that razor. If not, I would destroy this stupid avatar in the process and damn the consequences.

 

The mother of invention, in this case, being desperation, I took the loo brush and propped it in the corner between the bath and the wall with the bristled end up. It slid down so I dragged a mat over and propped the brush handle against it. It stayed put, long enough at least for me to walk up it and get my hands over the bath’s rim. I pulled myself up and stood balancing on the rim. The basin was a long way away, but between it and me a towel hanging from a rail at the same level as the shelf. The towel was unsecured so I would have to grip both the part of it hanging against the wall and the part, an inch further out, hanging away from the wall. My hands and arms would probably not be strong enough, but I decided it was worth a try.

 

I pulled myself up to the soft material and dug all my fingers and toes into it. I was able to hang on while I swung back and forth sickeningly. My weight pulled me down and my fingers and toes were hurting already under the strain. I raised a hand and foot, pulled myself up and began the climb, finding that, moving sideways was easier than moving up, so I headed for the basin and decided that I could take a rest in that before making the final climb up to the shelf. Even this was exhausting and, by the time I was able to plant my foot inside the bowl, I was ready to collapse. I nearly tipped backwards into the air, but I pulled hard on the towel, saving myself from falling but, instead, causing the towel to fall from the rail and plunge down to the floor below.

 

“Fuck it!” I exclaimed, sounding like an angry squirrel, and the scrabbling under the door intensified.

 

I rested in the basin for a few moments while looking up through the glass shelf to my prize. It was in a glass, also home to a toothbrush and toothpaste. A thought struck me and I stepped up carefully to the rim of the basin, planting my feet right on the edge. I was facing the wall and trying to balance, wobbling considerably, and I had to make many attempts before I was able to stand up straight. Trying to ensure I didn’t wobble backwards I groped upwards with my tiny, thick fingers until I just found the edge of the shelf. I held onto it tightly with my little hands and onto the rim of the basin with my toes, panting and sweating, hoping I wouldn’t slip on the smooth surfaces. I started to wonder what I was even trying to attempt and became amazed at my own recklessness. I looked up at the objects on the shelf and inched my fingers along, but they were far from the glass. Braced between the two hard edges I slowly made my way over to the glass, my feet slipping twice, my toes gripping the rim and my heels raised high, sweat dripping from my forehead. When I came to the glass I gave it a nudge, but I had pushed it further away from the edge until it was against the mirror. I cursed again, then I realised that, if I continued to nudge it, I’d be able to push it from the shelf and onto the floor.

 

I heard the steps of hard, stiletto booted feet behind me, not through the door to the landing, but in a room adjoining the bathroom. I moved as fast as I could, tapping the beaker continually until it fell from the shelf, plummeted past me and crashed on the floor. I felt like dancing with joy and I slipped and fell forwards into the basin.

 

A door handle turned and I realised there must be two doors to the room, one of which I hadn’t noticed. Silhouetted against the green light from a window in the next room and filling the doorway, the shapely outline of Prence appeared with her hair like the uprooted, twisted roots of a gnarled tree. As the basin was bathed in the green light of Uranus she saw me immediately and grabbed hold of me with her thumb at my chest and her fingers digging into my back. In the eldritch light I saw her black lips stretch into a big grin revealing a row of green teeth like tombstones. I was raised to her mouth, was given a big kiss on the top of my bald head and cuddled in gloved hands. She pinched my cheeks, kissed me again, and this time I was ready. I opened my mouth and bit down as hard as I could. And so, to my dismay, her face received nothing more than the gentle nip of my gums. Somehow, in all the excitement, I had not noticed by lack of teeth. I fought and struggled in her arms, wriggling like an uncooperative cat. Then, in my terror, I voided my bladder, slipped against the latex and fell through what seemed like miles of air onto Prence’s boot and thus my fall was cushioned, albeit slightly.

 

My hands and chest hurt from the blow, but I was able to pick myself up quickly. With staggering gait I ran over to the broken beaker and its scattered contents, finding that, luckily, the razor was already open so I didn’t have to struggle to prize it out of its ivory handle. I turned, holding the handle firmly with both hands, like a knight with his sabre about to do battle with a hideous monster. Prence had been wiping her tight outfit down, her face screwed up at the smell of my urine, but now she reached down, her hand descending upon me as if from Heaven and, with one swipe of my razor, I sliced her glove open at the index finger. A red jet spouted from it and I realised I had cut deep. Her outcries were like the whistling and puffing of a steam train at high speed.

 

With my blade held high I ran through the open door into the adjoining room, a bedroom much like the others, but even darker as some of the blinds were down. I heard growls and pawsteps rapidly approach from the landing and readied myself for combat. I was unable to see the monster above me but I could hear and smell it, so I cut left and right through the blackness, hoping the keen edge would find its mark somewhere sensitive. All the while I was running away from the bathroom, through the room and edging my way back onto the landing. I swished the blade one way and received a brush with the monster’s nose, then swished another and a fang was drawn across the soft skin of my head like a plough tearing through earth. I felt a hotness there and guessed that I had been cut. I stabbed forward with my razor and felt it strike something. The monster whimpered a little so, using all my strength, I sliced the air where I had just struck. I heard a wet slurping sound followed by a deafening howl. I knew I had found my target so I sliced again and was rewarded with a spray of warm gore across my entire body. By its panicky breathing I could tell the monster was scared.

 

Something told me my luck at fighting in the dark couldn’t last so I turned and ran towards the light from the candelabra. Over my shoulder I saw the dog follow but uncertainly, shaking his head violently from side to side as he approached the light. I turned and stood my ground, prepared for the next round. The monster seemed a little disinclined to continue, but Prence had followed him through and was coming up behind him, clapping her hands and encouraging him. He bounded forward and I was given an insight into the dentistry of the German Schnauzer. His maw seemed to reach back and back, to a distance longer than my body and his foul breath was enough to stun me. He was wary now of my blade and edged around me, so I lunged. He stepped back while Prence angrily chattered at him. He lunged at me and my razor swiftly swished from side to side before his snout, a bright blur of red-edged silver in the darkness.

 

Madame Prence then noticed that the flow of blood from her hand had not abated. To me it now looked like a red waterfall. She returned to the bathroom while urging her pet on with avian screeches and bovine bellows. I took no notice as I continued to prosecute my war on the coal-black, hairy beast. I was becoming more skilled with the blade and was now able to execute quick thrusts without risk of the razor, a big weapon for someone my size, flying from my hands. It was a big weapon for someone my size. Again Jay lunged with his mouth open and saliva rained down over me, his jaws snapping shut less than an inch from where my nose should have been. When he tried that again, I knew I’d be ready. He pressed forward and, with my razor drawn back far across my excuse for a shoulder, I backed across the landing in the direction of the seedy bedroom in which I had received Prence's virus.

 

My vision was suddenly obscured by something in my eyes and I was foolish enough to take my hand from my weapon for a moment to feel myself. My hand came away red and I realised the cut to my forehead had been serious. Taking advantage of my surprise, Jay lunged again but I ducked and stepped forward until I was beneath the monster’s furry throat. I seized hold of the blade with both hands and drew it in a wide arc through the air above me, through the fur and, without even slowing, into the flesh as I was half-drowned in a haemal spray.

 

My distress at hearing the poor creature’s howls was sweetened with a sense of smug triumph. The spray from the dog’s haemorrhaging throat was like that of a garden sprinkler and in just a few moments the walls and floor of the landing were bathed in blood. I could not bear the noise he was making and so brought the razor down again on his throat, this time like an axe. The dog’s huge body thumped to the floor and, after pulling the razor from his flesh, I drove it in again hard with my foot against the blunt edge, until the skin was shredded and further arteries were severed.

 

There was a scream from behind me and I turned to see Prence, standing in the bedroom, horror-stricken. She was crying and her blubs sounded like the idling engine of an old car while the dog’s breathing was now very faint. I lifted my dripping sword and prepared for another onslaught, but she could manage nothing but a serious of feeble grasps at the air in my direction while she edged around the scene of horror, unable to take her eyes from the carnage. Assuming she posed no immediate risk, I wasted no time. I ran over to the dog’s belly and cut into it deeply. It was like tearing through a thick carpet with a knife, but I hacked and hacked until finally the dog’s guts rivered out onto the floor. I retched but nothing came. Not finding the object I was after, I cut again, further up towards the dog’s ribs, causing more giblets to spill around my feet. Again I couldn’t see it, so I knelt down and reached inside, pressing my face against the bloody fur. My hands groped in the soft, warm insides until they bumped against something hard which I pulled out. I clamped the dark lump of skin and cartilage to my face and, although it was far too big, stretching from above the bridge of my nose to my top lip, and although it obscured by vision at the sides, it stuck.

Madame Prence let out a wail and began to run back to the seedy bedroom. I picked up my trusty razor and slipped and skidded in pools of blood, almost bringing the razor down upon myself. Holding the weapon’s sharp edge away from me, I picked myself up and followed the woman, with an inkling of what she now intended to do. Dripping in blood, I ran to the door just in time to see her with her hand at the rope. She looked at me over her shoulder with an evil grin, laughed and pulled the rope down hard.

 

“No!” I screamed, gazing up into the hole through the ceiling through which the rope passed, then wailed, “Alexi!”

 

For a brief second I wondered how deeply my blade would reach if I sunk it into the bitch’s latex covered leg, then realised that there was nothing more I could do here. Before Prence was able to reach down and tear my nose from me, I dropped the razor, tapped the left side of my oversized nose with my tiny index finger and immediately wished I hadn’t.

 

Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2015