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Act Five Chapter 45
TheTrap
–‘Quick quick disguise me girls. The punky wig, the hat!’-
Barney narrating
-‘Next stop Riverbank Park. Buses to the center stop here. Passengers for Ragwort Pool, the path across the park is now cleared through the next gate down.’-
This is our stop already. The bus hisses to a halt, next to the dark ruined park. Lucy is worried again, she wants to go into town and pick up Duna and Lila, while I will take the short cut, through the park and across the little river, and be home with Moonbeam in just ten minutes!
Me and Lucy don’t suffer from premonitions, unfortunately. Maybe we are just too newly in love, to worry about falling into a trap. We’d gone all starry eyed and smoochy, giggling under Christy’s sheet in the back of the bus.
Getting bounced together on the long road home.
-‘Thanks for the trip Rainer. Excellent driving.’- says I.
As we slowly follow the group of Clan Sunshiners out of the bus.
Lucy is pinching my arm and pointing.
Two of the Clanners have those gargoyles stuck on their bare backsides. You know, that pull sinister faces as they walk. They’re grimacing and leering up at us, with every step and shuffle. Strings of seed pods clacking.
Our eyes are popping, Lucy lets out a little snort, then we hop down, holding hands, and the door clunks closed behind us.
-‘I’ll just have a quick squirt in here.’- Lucy ducks and squats, under the tangled foliage blocking the park entrance.
-‘Me too. Me too I’m dying for a pee.’– says I, clambering past her into the dark..
The park has been blocked by fallen trees, flooded over and wrecked by the latest storms. But it’s a good place for a piss, though black shadows flicker on the breeze. Seeing a gleam of metal I think of a gun, CLAN Defence have been phoning to inquire for our safety.
-‘Lucy, there’s water here. Lucy?’-
It’s a drinking fountain and it works, spraying my flip flop shoes.
-‘There’s fresh water here Lucy. Lucy?…Lucy where are you? Lucy?’-
First Macker and Maxie are gone. Now Lucy. Thirty seconds out of sight and I’m thinking I’ve lost her forever.
-‘Here Barney, relax I’m over here.’- Comes a loud whisper.
I can see her, she’s just a few meters away. Her skin flickering orange through the leaves, from the only street-lamp. She’s found the perfect seat, on a fallen birch tree, smooth and white with perfect back and foot rests. Stripping off to anoint her angry scratches, she’s rubbing all over with her aloe and calendula cream.
I watch her, open mouthed.
-‘Come over here. I’ll rub your scratches with my magic marigold.’-
-‘Um, hang on a minute.’- I shed my shirt, I’m scratched much worse than her.
Lucy pulls me against her slinky oiled body, and uses herself, to anoint my cuts and bruises.
-‘Oh wow. What are you doing?’-
Pulling me to her throne in the dying tree.
-‘Just, uh, lift a little. Uh..’-
She’s the right height, if I stretch up a bit, for rubbing herself all over me.
We meet in mutual ecstasy mode.
She misses her bus. See if I care, I’m in an anti-hurry, taken in by her oily body.
Moonie will be sleeping anyway, I figure, and Bernie doesn’t want to go out.
Like I’ve been waiting all my life, for Lucy to rub me with her breasts and tummy here tonight.
-‘Stand up on this branch, I’ll do your feet and legs’-
Concealed in the rustling bushes, sliding together, I’m gliding higher and impossibly higher, while all the time she’s chatting and laughing as well.
-‘I love this physical stuff, it wakes my brain…’-
She claims it inspires her, and makes her shudder and tingle.
-‘Fellas have testosterone but I get off on sex. Oh, get the mobile,,’-
She pauses to chat on the phone, confirming her appearance on a Women’s Rescue program later on.
I’m murmuring a melody, happy and bemused.
Looking up at a line of starlings, chortling in the tree above us.
Peering up I can see six of them. Shoving each other off a short roosting branch.
Whistling up like wolves would, to a high half moon with a misty halo.
Lucy says a laughing goodbye to her phone, and we squeeze together with a groan, like the first and last time ever…
As a yellowy shit splashes on my newly bald head.
-‘Ah yuk yuk yuk I’ve been shat on!’–
-‘Te han cagado encima! They shat on you!’-
I’m grabbing leaves to wipe it, while Lucy rocks with mirth, slapping her bare feet on my legs.
-‘Oh oh, so sorry to laugh darling, here let me help. Oh my super hero. You are saving me from that smelly bird shit.’-
-‘A squirt of yellow starling shit.’- says I, as she hands me a tissue.
I wipe my head myself with a grimace, then clap my hands loudly, till they flutter off a few meters.
-‘Beautiful birds but really I…’-
Lucy shushes me with her mouth, black figures are passing in the street.
A line of little puffy clouds are approaching. While we gaze up through the branches, getting sleepy.
The clouds are close to crossing the moon, but somehow they never arrive, somehow evaporating and now vanishing completely.
I’m whistling up at the musical starlings, imitating them copying us.
Getting emotional, impossibly happy and sad.
We are totally transient.
No more than those little disappearing clouds, in our fleeting moments of joy together.
I’m sniffing, my cheeks wet, and kissing Lucy’s face.
And I realize we are doomed.
-‘We’re just little clouds, trying to cross the moon.’- I say, catching my voice.
Grasping tragically at the miracle of life and mortality.
But it comes out just silly. Not profound or earth shaking at all.
-‘Oh my poor baby thinks he’s a little cloud on the moon…’-
Lucy rocks me sarcastically. Biting her bottom lip not to laugh. Then we’re tickling and mock punching. She pulls me to shower under the drinking fountain.
The freezing water whooshes out. She ducks through easily. But I shake and gasp, like a stranded fish, with fleeting joyful moments left to live.
Drying each other as best we can, with my smelly T shirt. Pooh!. We dress in our awful Orca rags.
Of course we don’t have hardly any hair worth combing. Well, I have absolute zero.
Ready to go and now there is no bus, but I’ve found us a park bench under the fallen vegetation, and Doctor Lucy wants to sit on my lap…
-‘Your baby computer, don’t forget it.’–
It’s still hanging in the tree
-‘Good good Barney. It costed me fifty wurts.’-
-‘Can’t cost wurts, they’re just a measure. It’s the relative value, that’s all.’-
-‘Money is a measure also, well kind of…’-
-‘But wurts measure the value we choose for freely distributed goods.’- *********
A gust of wind is rushing in. Chasing its tail through the bushes. Every shadow could be a waiting assassin.
-‘I know that.. But what’s a wart worth in wurts? Tell me that.’-
-‘That’s what Josie always says.’-
There’s a light flashing through the shrubbery, and now a distant hissing of brakes.
It’s the city bus. Lucy swings on her little rucksack, and grabs for the portable, nearly clobbering me on the ear-hole.
Then she’s off, with a hop, rushing and laughing non-stop.
Lucia waddles out, dripping, from the shrubbery, holding up her tattered Orca kilt.
And waves to stop the air-bus, just in time.
***
Smoothing down my awful clothes and blowing kisses at the bus, I head for Ragwort Pool. The new short cut is through the next park gate, just fifty meters down the street.
There are two white vans parked there. One of them fires up and roars after Lucy’s bus, spewing black smoke. Suddenly I’m paranoid, the second is also obsolete diesel, with painted over windows. Pretty unusual, and where do they get the fuel?
In the gate I go, glancing behind me. The raised tarmac path crosses the ex football pitch, now a serious lake, fallen trees are cut and stacked beside it, and a great mound of mud and wreckage is piled beside the stream.
Three black shadows come into the park behind me.
Now where did they spring from?
Then I make out three or four more.
Emerging ahead of me, spreading out to block the dark path.
My heart nearly leaps right out my mouth.
I’ve learned to be streetwise and I know that I’ve been trapped, by people with money and time and resources. Finally I’m being dealt with, properly by professionals.
This path leads to my daughter Moonbeam and our lovely CoOp squat, just a few hundred meters away.
But it might as well be a hundred kilometers.
-‘Excuse me is this dog yours?’- someone shouts.
What dog? There is no dog.
And that drawl is straight out of a deep south cotton-field type racist movie.
I have the cellphone out to throw it away.
I click on Lucy’s name and she connects.
She’s in the bus.
-‘Hey Lucy they’re arresting me in the park. They’re after you too in a white van after the bus.’-
Maybe they have seen the light on the phone.
A whistle blows twice as I speak.
And they all start running towards me.
***********
-‘Not fair not fair not fair.’- Moonbeam screeches.
Throwing her pink, rubber elephant out of the bath.
–‘I want my papa now.’-
Bernie reaches to pick her up, but she squirms away, shrieking.
Why the hell did Barney have to announce his arrival and then not show up.
-‘Don’t worry Moonie he’ll be here soon. Sure that old bus broke down and they have to fix it.’-
And his phone doesn’t work either. Oh sure. But Barney would borrow a phone.
Bernie retrieves the squirty elephant.
-‘Oh watch out Moonbeam. Cutie’s gonna squirt you.’-
-‘I want my papa and I want my mama now!’-
The phone is ringing. That must be Barney at last.
-‘Hi Bernie? This is Phil here from CLAN Defence Coordination. Listen it’s an emergency, we need to evacuate your house. We’re coming right now. Just lock up all the doors and hide upstairs.’-
*****
Lucia narrating
We separated by the park. I was just three minutes on the bus. When Barney rang.
The back was full, we were stuck there in the people and traffic, in the middle of a victorious street fiesta.
A smiley old couple were nodding next to me. The banners outside read Pollard Free Pool.
There was a street party with a stage and a band, food stalls, drink… and lovely clothes. Loads of really lovely clothes, and really, I was unbelievably tatty.
I was in bare feet, still wearing a horrible borrowed mock-seaweed Orca kilt, bits falling off it, in shreds and sopping wet.
Plus a borrowed spoon-bra and knickers, but really filthy and floppy.
People smiled sadly and accepted me, but I had a light scratch right across my face.
And I still had some blood stains, and lines of mud.
Not to mention bodily juices.
I was a mess, and stuck on a bus… When Barney rang.
Okay I was going to stop off at Tina’s, on the way to pick up Duna, so I could shower and borrow clothes. But perhaps I’d get some new clothes here, since the bus was blocked.
And I had to look good anyway for the ‘Rescue’ program, but would my free credit card be valid in Pollard? Of course why not.
In fact I was overjoyed with my friend Barney, he was clever and funny to be with, and so yummy as well, I was feeling well. I was loved and wanted.
Tingling sharp in my body and my head. After so many doubts and double thinks and backing off. He had finally let himself go, you wouldn’t have guessed it.
Lucky my girlfriends had insisted he was crazy over me. I couldn’t wait to tell Duna and Paco, though really they knew already, but still. He would be perfect for them..
Finally I’d buried my own doubts as well, okay I could maybe do more stuff alone, but Barney thrilled and delighted me, and he was great with the kids.
I was smiling to myself in the back of the bus, stretching my tingling body and deep breathing. Feeling young and in love again, and getting in the mood for a party.
Yes why not, I could check the profiles later. I would jump off the stopped bus and get some clothes.
That’s when the cell-phone buzzed. People turned round to look, as the ring-tone was a baby crying, it was him, and I jabbed the green button.
I was grinning stupidly, embarrassed and nodding to the passengers.
When Barney rang.
-‘Hey Lucy they’re arresting me in the park.
They’re after you too in a white van, after the bus.’-
-‘Hello Pardy, hello..Pardy. Hello Pardy..’- I just heard yells.
Turning my head I caught the eye of the driver of the white van,
He was stalled behind the bus.
We both looked quickly away, he was shaved, with headphones.
Not specially suspicious..
But that was a walkie talkie on the dash. And handcuffs!
Shit, mierda, he’d seen me turn to look. He must guess I was alerted.
Yes. He was talking to himself..or into a microphone.
I leaned over. Slid down onto the floor.
And started yelling like a crazy lady.
-‘Help me. Help me please.’- I shouted -‘Help me the army are arresting Pardy Brown in the park. They’re here as well. Listen everybody please. Don’t look now they’re here in a white van behind the bus. Call the Clanners someone please. Call the CLAN Defence. Help me I’m Lucy. I’m Lucy from Women’s Rescue they want to kill me…’-
It was the old nodding lady who believed me first.
She had her mobile out, pressed Pool and asked for CLAN Defence.
The bus driver was on his feet. Peering back at this awful raving woman on the floor.
The yunkers all gawking with open mouths. Some of them smirking.
-‘She’s throwing a wobbly.’-
-‘They’re coming to kill me! Behind the bus.’-
-‘It’s true, there’s a van-load in front as well.’- shouted the driver. He believed me anyway.
-‘This computer. Can you hide it. Somebody. In your clothes. And my mobile.’-
-‘There’s weird fellas getting out behind. They’ve got guns. Look out!’-.
-‘The terrorists are here!’-
-‘Quick quick disguise me girls. The punky wig, the hat!’-
In just a few seconds I was transformed. In a green wig and gorgeous Clan Earth tassels..
-‘Block the door! Block the door!’-
-‘Here they come.’-
Our driver was leaning on the horn.
Ramming into the van in front. A bus driver’s dream come true.
Throwing us back and forth like floppy dolls.
-‘Oh God, we’re all going to die!’-
Ramming the white van forward. Swinging the bus sideways. Right across the road.
Demolishing an ice cream stall, as mothers dragged their kiddies off the street.
I was kneeling on the floor, thinking of wedging myself under the seats.
The yunkers were shouting and pointing out the windows.
The road was blocked. The crowd was five deep on both sides.
A big Yeti fella had grabbed a commando in a bear hug from behind.
And a chaotic struggle began.
And finished in half a minute. The back doors of the van in front were jammed by our ramming, with four Special Forces soldiers inside.
Clan Yeti from Pollard, plus our bus driver, were publicly acclaimed for detaining them. Actually they surrendered, plus there were two arrested, a man from Mossad I think, and a local nazi from the Brother-Hood. The rest escaped.
I was all in one piece, how fine! Crouching on the floor of the bus, but Barney’s mobile was dead.
I was trying to phone Duna, then explaining what happened again. I was shocked, crying and laughing together, if that’s possible.
People outside were realizing we had won and started hopping and cheering. The white van and its prisoners were cordoned off.
I was just shaken, dying for a pee and a hundred per cent filthy. They wanted to interview me for TV.
I felt like a battered parrot, in my borrowed tassels and lime green hair.
-‘This is Doctor Lucia Perez from Women’s Rescue!’– [see glossary. Womens Rescue. P330]
-‘Congratulations Lucy. How did you capture all these Commandos!’-
-‘All these people catched them not me. They try to get me, for showing that they are criminals. That only proves that we were right. Also they are arresting Bar no Pardy Brown in the river park..‘-
In my mind getting arrested meant getting tortured and raped and maybe killed. Disappeared forever, or never ever getting free.
Like millions of people stuck in prisons. I felt like I was born again I was so LUCKY.
Thank you gracias THANK YOU to all those people.
Oh shit, but what about Barney? Maybe he got away?
-‘Those specialists couldn’t even get me. The capitalists’ military institutions are imploding. They are incompetent, because their whole operation is another underfunded, um, demoralized.. disgusting, fiasco…..’-
Then I was kissing the interviewer and my new friends who were cheering like I’d just won the World Cup.
Everyone was understanding now what had just happened.
Those tonto Specials made another balls up. Those idiot boys had let me get away!
***
Barney
Stupidly I thought I might escape. I was in top form, for my age I mean.
I kicked off my useless flip flops and charged sideways into the muddy water.
Flung my mobile phone into the ‘lake’…
I used to play volley in the surf. It was knee deep but it had been a flat hockey pitch.
I scooted along, my arms flailing, and kicking my legs out sideways.
Like a coot in a panic, but too heavy to take off.
I was heading for where the old bridge had been, behind the pile of flotsam.
Two Specials were splashing behind me, the rest ran round the shore.
I would leap over the torrent and out the park gate, dive straight into the little streets of Ragwort, where every door was unlocked to me. We had no crime.
Yes yes, and I was actually pulling away from them!
That’s when those evil bastards opened fire.
They must have had orders to fire at my legs, or I’d be dead already.
One of my pursuers fell first, with a yell, as my left leg got a terrific whack, like an iron bar.
Now normally a cut knee would finish me off for the day, but I was so wound up I just kept right on going.
Up and hopping, out of the water and behind the heap of wreckage.
One soldier was splashing out behind me.
-‘Stop there Maguire, or I shoot.’- came a local voice.
Next I only needed to leap a raging three meter wide river, on one leg, and sprint fifty meters to safety. It was impossible. I would never get away.
Hopping and yelping like a run-over dog..
I saw someone had placed a long, thick, builder’s plank where the span of the old bridge had been.
The torrent gurgling just under it.
I didn’t stop, balancing by pure luck.
And I hopped straight across, into the very dim streetlights of Ragwort.
Gulping air and crying out, I glimpsed my first pursuer’s open mouth.
As he fell sideways into the raging water, clutching the plank.
Then I was out the park gate, lumbering crab-wise on a foot and two hands, over a brand new flood protection dike.
Past a night work crew with an air digger.
-‘Watch out.. they’re.. coming..’- I didn’t stop.
Round the corner and straight in the first door.
A young fella from the volunteer crew was following me.
Scuffing at blood spots with his shoes.
Blundered through into a little kitchen.
Past a yapping terrier, and straight out the back door.
There was no stopping me.
-‘Gotta hide. Help me hide. I’m shot, I’m shot.’-
Half the garden space is common. This lad Patsy had his shoulder under my arm and we staggered rapidly down the middle path between the terraced houses. A glasshouse, a laundry, a workshop, flowers and a natural swimming pool.
Finally it sank in. Like the cartoon coyote who finally notices he’s run off the cliff.
I fell and rolled over in agony, dragging my assistant down with me.
Then I saw a cartoon door right in front of me.
And I pulled myself into a large dog kennel there by the path.
A small collie was backing up, baring it’s teeth in terror.
My new friend Patsy was squeezing in beside us. The stink was terrible.
He said he saw Clanners, running past with guns, he thought I was sobbing.
–‘You’ll be okay Mr. Maguire. I’m calling the doctors now. Just hang on.’-
-‘I’m laughing.’- says I. –‘I’m laughing not crying.’-
Okay we’d been careless, we should’ve phoned for an escort from the bus, but I’d gotten away. What luck. I had escaped, I felt like I’d won the Galactic Cup, with a brilliant fluky goal.
But then I remembered they’d surely got Lucy. Probably they were torturing and raping her right that minute in the van.
And of course it was all my fault and I couldn’t save her.
And then my daughter Moonbeam started wailing in my head.
-‘Oh shit, can I use your phone please, I think they got my friend.’-
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previous episode Serial of The Free Ch 44. The Ultimatum
The Free 