She reappeared in a different, much darker and dingier alley, if that were actually possible. This time it was raining and the rain was forming into puddles on the uneven paving slabs beneath her feet, their surfaces dancing and distorting from the raindrops that glistened and glinted in the one beam of weak light that obliterated her view of anything beyond it, plunging it into a great, unknowable blackness. “Odd”, she thought. She hadn’t expected that, and, if there was one thing Tamara really didn’t like, apart from the scumbags she dealt with every day, it was unexpected things happening. She closed her eyes and tried to move again, but when she opened them she was still in the same, stinking alley. “Very odd”, she thought again, “Still, never mind. Different alley, same old sh...” She looked down again at her feet, encased inside the kind of footwear she really wouldn’t ever choose to be seen dead in, assuming, of course, that she could have actually died, and then at her ridiculously soft hands as she stretched them out in front of her. “Never mind” she thought, “Soon change that” and she blinked a slow, deliberate blink, but nothing happened. She looked at her hands. They were the same as they’d been just a second ago. “That’s not right” she found herself saying out loud, but the voice seemed husky and weak to her, not the kind of voice she usually preferred to have at all. “Who’s that? Who’s there?” a voice shot out of the darkness, responding to her cry. She quickly tried to duck back into the shadows and, as she did so, caught sight of her latest reflection in one of the muddy pools of water, and found an all-too familiar face staring back at her. “Oh no, no, no, no NO!” she bellowed angrily, “Don’t you dare try that one on me!” just as the first blow hit her clean across the back of the head, and a voice whispered in the darkness “You didn’t really think you were going to get away, did you?” before shouting out to draw the attention of the baying mob that she could hear approaching. Various blurred images of faces and fists swam across her vision as she fought to remain conscious, knowing that the crowd that had found her were never likely to show any mercy to the person that they thought they had caught. Just as the merciful oblivion started to swallow her up she thought she heard a familiar sounding voice saying, in a slightly mocking way, “Well, if we are going to have our little chat, Miss Mourning, I’d prefer to have you completely under my control when we do...”
To be continued...?
Incidentally, there used to be another version of the Paragraph Game we used to play where the next person in the chain only saw the very last line of the previous contribution and, as the saying goes, much hilarity ensued. I've not, however managed to find a way of making that work yet so that the text remains set in stone whilst obscured so that no cheating might occur... So there's still much to think about again...
Link to Paragraph Eight: http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-tag-1-para-08.html
Incidentally, there used to be another version of the Paragraph Game we used to play where the next person in the chain only saw the very last line of the previous contribution and, as the saying goes, much hilarity ensued. I've not, however managed to find a way of making that work yet so that the text remains set in stone whilst obscured so that no cheating might occur... So there's still much to think about again...
Link to Paragraph Eight: http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-tag-1-para-08.html
Tamara Mourning stared down at the white, open-toed, high-heeled shoes that encased her dainty, painted toes. She loved the dress, adored the hair, and there was no doubt that this was a great body; if a little overly feminine. The shoes though… Her feet were killing her, and she longed for a pair of boots, a good pair of kicking boots with a long steel-bladed knife nestling deep inside them somewhere. In normal circumstance this would not have been a problem. She’d simply have stepped into the Slip for a moment and made the shift. In normal circumstances she could have any type of footwear she chose; body too. She thought back to the ship and Max; remembering his face when she’d burst through the door, slightly dishevelled and a little unkempt but apart from that his exact double. It was a game they’d been playing for years, centuries even. The aim was to catch the other unawares, get them to react in some way: “Max! Whatever you do, you’ve got to get off this ship!” she’d said. He hadn’t though, he didn’t need to. Instead he’d spat at her like he always did and then flew off in a huff. What was it? Surely he didn’t think that she had any part in that silly, chain-smoking girl’s death? He should know her better than that by now. Armageddon… yes; but a pointless killing here, a little murder there – well, like these damned shoes, it wasn’t really her style. No, that had all been down to Frankie, it was just his style. For a crooner, he never really had much imagination; and as for that violin player boyfriend of his… well. How they had ever been tolerated in the Band was beyond her, they were strictly second rate. Tin Pan Alley hound-dog players, not even good for the borderlands. Now Max – well, Max was altogether a different proposition. He could play the blood from your veins, the sweat from your pores and the sex from the more intimate parts of your body. When Max played everyone listened. Max played and everything was possible. God, she needed to lose these shoes, and this body wasn’t right for whatever beating she knew was coming. Conversation? She didn’t think so. Frankie didn’t do conversation. Frankie really only spoke with his fists and prick – and then in grunts - the rest was just empty words. They were all around her now; Frankie and his band of filthy, sycophantic tulpa-forms. They’d made a circle and were closing in. She who would be the One shivered; just how had he taken the Slip from her? Tamara strained her pearl-buttoned ears. Damn these shoes, damn Frankie, but most of all damn that damn, damned Max. Far in the distance the drumming of hooves… and they were getting louder by the moment.
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