Love Lies Bleeding, Chapter Two

Stars.

Huge swollen globes, far larger and more luminous than stars ought to be.

The night that stretched between their fatted halos wasn’t the darkness of just now. It was like limpid ink. Wooded silver hills of pine rolled beneath, on the periphery of Joe’s vision.

Ah. It was the moment of Nottingham’s creation.

This wasn’t the first time Joe had found his way back, and he ruminated now as on so many prior occasions that if there’d been any sort of grand design, then he’d have done there and then what he’d often told his Mini-Flashes he should have done. That was, pointed to their galaxy far off in the sky, and said something suitably dramatic about destiny one day leading them there.

Prophets, after all, were supposed to know what the future would bring.

Instead, he’d debated computer games with Dylan and indulged Bret, because even then Joe had had some inkling of what the macho facade was for.

Besides, the stars actually did look quite a lot like camera-flashes.

Tonight in particular. They certainly looked nothing like stars.

And much as Joe would always love this old dusty road, he knew deep down he didn’t usually lie prone upon it, and that not so long ago it had been his kitchen floor.

That last thought seemed to do it. It started up something.

Joe didn’t want to leave, but he’d already gathered he wasn’t here to stay.

Not yet. Although, from the feel of the breaths he’d started heaving in to try and enervate himself, our hero suspected it wouldn’t be long.

Because his mid-section now was apparently doing most of his breathing for him.

That couldn’t be good.

Nevertheless, Joe persevered, bidding a reluctant farewell to the past and hauling himself out upon a dim present where everything throbbed and moved at half its proper speed. It went without saying there was little joy on beholding the unlit kitchen vista, its perspectives distorted from Joe’s supine state at the foot of the breakfast bar. Some distance off from him, near the far end of the room, a ponderous blurry tussle was taking place amid the prevailing time-lag. Schiss-Zazz had caught up to Mini-Flash Pseudangelos, who was struggling against his grip, odd as this looked to Joe while motion and noise were reaching him so late. Still, it registered vaguely he could only have been out a handful of seconds at most.

Something then happened which for Joe was as unto frame-by-frame photography.

Mini-Flash Pseudangelos luminesced, but it was a poor showing, merely tinting the kitchen walls with white.

The candy-sticks. Had Pseudangelos been at full strength, Schiss-Zazz would have been no match for her. Tonight however the most she could manage was to shake herself free.

Even so, her turn of speed was the closest to real-time Joe had thus far seen as she bolted, back into the kitchen since Schiss-Zazz had put himself between her and the conservatory. Flinging to the hallway door through which she’d entered, chocolate bunches streaming desperately behind, one fugitive schoolgirl in short skirt and stockings made her slamming exit heedless that she’d reminded both observers she didn’t quite have the hang of the whole uniform yet.

And if ever a glimpse was reason enough for one such as Schiss-Zazz to give chase. Leering in ecstasies he covered the ground and the door banged a last time.

Joe didn’t hesitate. It would have been going too far to say he was swift, for that slow shuddering rise to his feet was no light undertaking, and then there was the matter of what soaked his slashed leather jacket and the rags of vest beneath. Squeezing both arms tightly down on his side was the one way Joe knew to tell himself he was holding everything in. But at long last he was up, though getting there had for most of it felt like more than he could do.

It wasn’t, though.

For to do nothing would have been to accept a world in which there was only Schiss-Zazz and the girl, and that alone was more than Joe could do.

He wasn’t delirious. He knew full well which girl she was.

Neetra for one thing was very strict about always wearing knickers.

When she, and he, and Bret and Dylan had stood where and when he just lately was, they’d all understood it wasn’t only going to be looking at sunsets.

They’d all understood that sooner or later, a time like this might come.

END OF CHAPTER TWO