Link to Paragraph Eight: http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-tag-1-para-08.html
Three months later she awoke, trapped inside a glass cube. She opened her eyes and the blazing lights surrounding the box caused her to slam them tightly shut again, then she spent ten minutes gradually opening and closing them, trying to adjust. Finally, just as she was able to open them fully, the lights went out. Oh yes, she reminded herself, fallen Avenging Angels might be utterly diabolical, but they’d still managed to learn a thing or two from these humans when it came to torturing their own kind for fun. Damn the wretched CIA! Damn them all! And of course, she had, time and again in another life. Cheap tricks like this weren’t ever going to get her to... She stopped. Instinctively she knew that three months had passed in the blink of one of these rather impressive eye things that her form now mimicked, but she suddenly realised that she couldn’t remember a thing about any of it. Not one second. She shuddered as she started to feel an unfamiliar feeling. She was scared! This was the first period of time in millennia which she couldn’t account for every single microsecond of. She tried to trawl back through her memories but there was nothing for her to remember at all. The alley, the beating, the circle of vengeful thugs, that face... her face... and those all-too familiar hooves, beating, pounding and then... the lights, this box and... and... As if tuned to her very thoughts, the lights blazed on again, and an infinite number of reflections of that hated face on top of that wretched body stared back at her. Just for a second before she had to clamp her eyes shut again, she noticed the chain that stretched up from the top of the box into the inky darkness far above her. Aha! The old man was slipping! He was obviously getting far too afraid to trust to his own powers of concentration to keep her dangling here. Or was that what he wanted her to think? She of all creatures knew very well the awful power that giving just the faintest glimmer of hope could bring over a victim. She paused, trying to think of a way out. In the stillness, beyond the buzz of the arc lights, on the tip of her senses, she thought that she heard the slightest hint of a jazz band playing somewhere just beyond the edges of her perception. “Great!” she thought, “As if I haven’t been punished enough...” But then an idea came to her and she only hoped that the lungs of this long-suffering body were up to what she needed them to do. She tried to remember. Would three months off the fags be enough to clear them? She sang out a perfect top “C” for as loud and as long as she could. Around her the glass box shattered into atoms and she plummeted at the speed of light a million miles back down to Earth, hitting the Nevada desert like an A-Bomb test just five seconds later.
To be continued...?
Link to Paragraph Ten: http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.com/2012/01/blog-tag-1-para-10.html
Max dreamt. He was suspended high above the ground in a glass box. He had no idea how long he’d been hanging there but it had been a while, his throat was sore, his back was aching. Two, maybe three months? Anyway, what did it matter this was somebody else’s reality, only a dream to him, but he knew that with the coming of the autumn storms the Band would be on the move again. Time for once was short. By late October sharp and perfectly fashioned tunes of experience would blow into the cities, towns and villages everywhere even the tiny settlements in the borderlands. Nowhere can escape the music and nowhere ever has. Not that he’d been to Nowhere for a while, although he thought he was about due another visit. Things happen in Nowhere; a cat gets run over by a truck, a young woman loses her engagement ring, cancer is diagnosed, a father slaps a child in anger, prayers go unanswered, the leaves fall and rot in gardens and graveyards and both big and small tunes play for suspecting and unsuspecting alike. Yes, the Band would be on the move again, forever and ever, Amen and the Band moves to so many tunes - Wagner, Berry, Godric, Chopin, Zappa, even Miller, tunes composed from strength and direction, places past, souls taken, nefarious needs, those lost things, a lot of hunger… and of course who and what are caught in the music as they play on - and on - and on. Damn this dream! It was making his mind all fuzzy, images popped into his head out of nowhere, words and thoughts losing their sense and meaning and with the Band there’s no choice at all. Both the innocent and the old must listen, young and male, good and black, white and guilty, the bad and female. It’s all musical chance when the Band comes to town and sometimes the bad things catch into the Slip and listen, resting for a while. They have a drink or two, find love, feed, take whatever they need; a cat gets run over by a truck, a young woman loses her engagement ring, cancer is diagnosed, a father slaps a child in anger, prayers go unanswered… and then the Slip catches them up and they are on and away again, (wake up) blowing away, the notes still echoing, (wake up) to the next place. If only it were all a dream and listen - the wind is howling, and beneath the wind that song… Riders on the Storm? (WAKE UP!). Max awoke, the taste of sand in his mouth and the scorch of sun on his skin. That bloody Mourning woman again. Max picked up his sunglasses and donned his snap brim fedora, well if it was good enough for Indiana Jones it was good enough for him. Better be quick and step into the Slip, the music was growing louder. It was time to shift.
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