Friday Comes Early to Twinkletown 2
Continued from last week.
I managed to get one of the detachable arms from a booth further in. Far enough to have seen the fight, and with a seller cocky enough (or poor enough, I suppose) to think he could get something good from this customer for his wares. He wasn't nearly as grimy as the other guy, and he didn't make me bend underneath his tarp to try and haggle with him, he came out.
Which was wise, I suppose, as in the sort of mood I was in I was likely to rip down his whole stall and try and feed it to him should the slightest noise sound out of place. That's what two separate incidents of people attempting to beat you with clubs will do to you, I guess.
He stepped out from underneath his tarp, into the light drizzle, and showed me a couple of arms without saying a word. I had to spin a couple of them around, twirling them like I was a teenage cheerleader out of practice with my batons. After the two fights, even with the Teflar(tm) I had ragged edges around my vision, not helped by the drizzle and general gloominess down that alleyway. It was the sort of alleyway you feel the bricks have eyes, and not a single one of them is looking on you with anything like compassion. The best feeling you're going to get from an alleyway like that is that you're part of a science experiment. The worst, that measurements for your casket are being taken.
I gave him a stack of cash in the end, part of which was because I couldn't be bothered going any further down the alley, partly because I liked the permanent smirk on his face due to what looked like a nasty knife scar across one cheek. And, of course, partly because he had the goods. I made sure the stack I was giving him didn't have any of the government marks on it.
It was a fine detachable arm. Like the Teflar(tm), this arm was subtle. Deceptive, even. It looked like a normal enough arm, a little on the scrawny side, truth be told, but then there were days I felt a little on the scrawny side. There was a multi-connector at the base of it, and even, if you unlocked and bent the fingers back, a limited one at the business end of it. Not that I saw it ever being useful, I liked the engineers' style. The fingers, locked into place, looked a little too beaten, at first. But damn, the grip on them... meaty. You put those fingers on someone they would know where you were coming from, and where you were going with whatever point you were making. The elbow made a funny popping noise occasionally, when you flexed the arm, but the guy dug around inside a skin flap on the inside of the elbow and dug out a piece of plastic, snapped it a couple times to show what was making the noise.
"Not structural," were his first words to me. He held up the piece of plastic for me to take a look.
I held my hand up. "It's okay. I can see." I flexed the arm a couple dozen times without the piece of plastic in there and, sure enough, no disconcerting popping noise. Disconcerting because I realized my knees, my real knees, made that same damn noise in the mornings, getting out of bed. I gave the arm back to him, and watched him slip the plastic back into place at the crook of the arm. In contrast to the noise it made once installed, the click into place it made was reassuring and solid. I really liked the engineers that had worked on it.
There were no more incidents as I walked back out of the alleyway, leaving the all seeing brick walls behind, stepping through the remains of the mess I'd made earlier that evening. I made it out of downtown Sunnyvale and back to the outskirts of the tall buildings, down to the flat behind the dingy Appalachian Laundry that I called home. That night, as I propped it up beside the bed and pulled the sheet and duvet up to my chin I couldn't help but think it was something Candy would have liked to have seen.
To be continued again.... ?
disclaimer:
Once again, thanks to Will for this week's issue. It may or may not be continued next week, depending on popular demand and our ability to get Will to write some more of this particular venture.
We here at Sane Magazine hope your holiday shopping has been going well. And we sincerely hope you haven't forgotten our efforts to keep you hip and trendy and literate by offering not just tshirts at CafePress, not just a short story in a very fine collection of short stories, but both! So support your extremely friendly internet-based weekly fictional thing and any family our workers may have by buying lots of both... and we are friendly. Just try us out. Come check us out at the Booklovers' Gourmet in Webster, MA on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 from 5 to 7pm and see if we're really as friendly as we're saying we are. Now, if it's really cold out and you catch us just as we're in through the door we may not seem that friendly, but that may because our mouth has frozen and we're having a hard time speaking, let alone being friendly. We'll see what we can do, no matter the temperature outside.
Good night, and thanks for all the fish.
Discuss this in the forums
Discuss the horoscopes in the forums
Forum hosting provided by forumthing.