Cobra 1 With Pleasure

 here's where it all began, a throwaway short story which never was intended to be more than that. But I liked the Cobra, and found myself doing a couple more about him - and now he has a backstory and so on. I'll catch up to those I started posting here after DWG, and then go back to the most recent ones. I've tagged all the older ones cobra now.

1 With Pleasure

 

Grey sheets of rain were falling in stair-rods from a sullen grey sky, impacting and bouncing as they hit the dark, uncompromising ground. Streetlights made little impact in the crepuscular gloom, their insufficiency of light struggling through the dim haloes around them. Only the garish neon sign made any impact on the greyness, and its reflection broken into random shapes on the slick pavement might have been a magical sight if only the promise of the lush interior of the club it proclaimed had not been a sham. These places are all much alike; at night, when you can’t see the grime, the neon seems to whisper promises of excitement, colour, a break from the tedium of life. Inside? They stink of stale cigarettes, stale booze, and staler bodies, and the lights are kept low for the privacy of the cockroaches.

I was waiting on top of a building across the street and some way down; and I had a high velocity rifle as my only companion in my long, wet, vigil.

You can say what you like about laser rifles – and a lot of hired guns do, in nauseatingly tedious detail – but you cannot beat a high velocity rifle. It is not subject to diffusion by the rain as a laser weapon must be.

I must admit that doing pro bono work is not my usual thing. Nor indeed vigilante work, as this might be seen to be. However the circumstances were unusual; almost personal.

The man I was waiting for was the most influential controller of the new addiction; the Pleasure Dome. Don't get me wrong; on the whole I have no interest whatsoever in the foolish fits and starts people will get up to in order to bring some kind of excitement into their colourless, humdrum lives; they might as well kill themselves with some kind of addiction as by blowing their brains out. Same result; just as messy for the morgue men to deal with, and their choice. Life’s about choices.  My choice of excitement is to lurk in the shadows of society, defying authority and making a living taking down those who have got in someone's way. Last month I took down one left wing extremist, one right wing extremist and a banker on the take. I couldn't tell you for sure which of the extremists was left wing and which was right; there isn't a whole lot to pick between them when you come down to it. A bullet has no politics, only a target.

My street name is Cobra; and I'm good at what I do and I charge accordingly.

So, you ask, why pro bono work and what was it about?

I have an excellent landlady, who thinks I work in the Parks Department. It explains odd hours and coming back rather the worse for weather. She's under the impression I dig graves, instead of making work for gravediggers. It's a convenient fiction. And as she’s shrewd, I would rather that she thought my diffidence about my job were down to being faintly ashamed of being in manual labour in a field which some people find funny than that she should turn her ex-schoomarm’s brain to figuring out what I really do. I like her, and I don’t want her knowing too much.

My excellent landlady also has a cute niece who lives with her, being an orphan. And last week the kid was snatched and wired up to a Dream Helmet™ and made into an addict of the Pleasure Dome™.  Did I forget the TM that first mention? It's legal enough for adults after all. In the unadulterated form. A connection to the pleasure centre and the ability to slot fantasies into it to play, half hour slots of ecstasy.  They market it “Purchase the Dream Helmet™ and enter the world of the Pleasure Dome™”.  I’m not sure they can trademark Pleasure Dome legally, after all, Coleridge wrote about Kublai Khan decreeing a stately pleasure dome, only his was a building, rather than  a suggestion that the dome involved is the inside of your own cranium, as stimulated by the light half-helmet of plastic and steel you put on.  It connects up to the electronics woven by the nanobots they inject into the skin of the scalp; less intrusive-seeming than a cyberdeck link, but actually more insidious, building a network of pathways to the pleasure centre inside the brain.

Of course the adulterated ones have no time limit and can slot fantasies with darker themes too. These were the ones Takashi Sato was supplying.

And I kind of have a down on people who think it's okay to snatch teenage kids off the street and make them pleasure addicts. I have my code, and in my book, kids are off limits. For anyone.

Yes, the kid is getting treatment, and yes, I have contributed towards it. Don't go thinking I'm soft though. If my landlady gets upset she doesn't cook so well, that's all. And as she gives me a hot evening meal and packs a lunch for me if I give her enough notice, and as even an assassin likes to feed the inner man, this is important.

 

 

So, I was waiting in the rain, for a certain crime lord to turn up to inspect his club. The club where some of the girls were trained with darker fantasies in their Dream Helmets™ to willingly engage with those clients who had the other side of the same fantasies. With the promise of a slot of a good Dream if they did well. And one reason I wanted to take him down here was that the cops would be almost forced to get involved – and would hopefully find all this out. It had not taken me long to find it out, but then I have shadier contacts than the police. I also take short cuts that they are not allowed to take.

I also had a head start because the kid recalled the licence plate of the car that snatched her. Bright girl; and as shamed by what had happened to her as she was desperate for another slot. She was determined to help. That number led me to a man, and he led me further. Were you wondering if I tortured him? Nothing so crude. I gave him nothing but pleasure; the way he gave it to the kid. To get his next slot he was willing to tell me anything. I left him with a reboot box in his hand; if that means he starves rather than give up his buzz, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. People who live by such rapacious rules should not complain when they also die of them.

I was wearing the latest Core-Tech™ full body suit of course, allowing sweat out but no rain in, but it was still pretty miserable. It occurred to me as I waited, that killing one crime boss would ultimately make little difference; there would always be more to take his place. However if I let it be known why he had died, at least the snatching of kids off the street might stop as a form of aggressive salesmanship. My street name is not unknown. My readiness to go to any lengths to fulfil a sanction is also quite legendary. It should be a salutary lesson and a clear reason to make any hard sell crime lord pause.

When Takashi Sato emerged, it was almost an anticlimax.

I had him in my sights, breathed in, released a part of it and held the rest, gently squeezing the rifle's trigger.

The silencer reduced the sound to a genteel ladylike cough; and Sato clutched his chest and went down. A red blossom grew on his shirt front.

Unprofessional to go for a body shot you say, not a double tap to the head? Perhaps; but it was raining. And I had filed a cross on the bullet's nose. He was not going to be getting up again.

The streets below had acquired that brief, sudden silence they always do after any unscheduled disassembly of anyone or anything in the neighbourhood, by any means; it lasts a deceptively long-feeling time, but is, in reality, about half a second. Then someone screams to break the tension, and others start yelling or screaming, and the pounding of footsteps mark those who run towards, or more often, away, from the scene of mayhem.  Someone calls the fuzz, and that shortly adds to the noise and confusion.

I was not about to wait for the sirens.

 

What marks a professional from an amateur is the planning.

And I don’t just mean the planning of the job itself.

I expect you are picturing me with a room full of weapons, which I fondle and nurture with loving assiduous care. You couldn’t be more wrong. I own a couple of hold-out pistols which might be carried by anyone; I also own an Ingram M12, semi-automatic, which is useful in tight places. I use it when travelling; otherwise it lives in my bank vault.  For emergencies I have a little beauty made of ceramics which is undetectable, highly illegal, and breaks down into innocuous looking parts.. I always assume there will be an emergency. Otherwise, I acquire a weapon as needed for each job, and appropriate to the job.

The rifle was one I had purloined for the purpose from a hunting supply store; they would get few enough clues from it, I wear gloves to prepare and load my bullets. It would stay here. Out of sight; I stowed it in a ventilator shaft. They might or might not find it.

 

The other important piece of planning is getting away.  We call it ‘exfiltration’ in the trade. Having killed someone, getting away with an intact skin is really rather important. An idealist might well toss a bomb and think the world well lost for his ideal; but my skin and my freedom are important to me, and any fee also covers my getaway. So, a bit of planning ahead means I walk away and don’t end up on the run. It’s about tying off loose ends, and being tidy.

 

I had my escape route planned. Over the rooftops and down a fire escape to the sleazy hotel room I had hired earlier. The really top feature of this hotel was that the trash chutes led straight to an incinerator. My overcoat went straight down it, and the Core-Tech bodysuit, and on went the costume of an unassuming travelling salesman. No DNA to be found that might lead to me. Even if they found any at my firing point; which was unlikely.

I hadn’t had to lurk there long enough to pee; sometimes a wait is for twelve hours or more, and the bladder must be relieved. I wear a motorman’s friend to avoid leaving anything personal behind, but they can leak. Good habits are worth cultivating.

Indeed, as he had twisted as he fell, figuring out the firing point might take some time. And the delightful acid rain was doing its job for me of expunging evidence of my existence on that roof.

The cleaning bot was already sorting out the wet patch on the floor where I had come in the window that gave to the fire escape. No evidence there. I’d spend a couple of days in this room, the average time, including my arrival the day before, that any travelling salesmen spent in any hotel, then I would check out, with some inanely jocular remark from the concierge, usually of the variety of ‘travelling in ladies’ underwear then, chummer?’ and I would smile a pained smile of one for whom that was funny the first five hundred times.

A busy metro station, an unremarkable bag retrieved from a nice, anonymous left luggage locker, the salesman’s suitcase with clothes left in a waiting room to be taken to lost property – or blown up in a controlled explosion in case it’s a bomb – and then back home. Auntie would commiserate on my overly long hours, which I had prepared her for, feed me a cup of tea and suggest a nice bit of steak with pepper sauce and mushrooms for tea, with green peas, mashed potato, and a side salad, and all real food too, no substitutes.

Oh, yes, a landlady in a million.

 

Covering one's trail can be an expensive business. That's one reason I charge such high fees. Another is to make sure the client really wants the job done. Killing people is easy; bringing them back to life because someone has changed their mind isn't covered in the warranty. And it's why you won't find a hired gun ready to do pro bono work.

Sometimes, though, just sometimes, a point has to be made. And I took on this one with pleasure.

a parody

 ... I guess everyone knows the tune of 'there's a hole in my bucket....'

There's a hole...

There’s a hole in your bridges, Comrade General, Comrade General

There’s a hole in your bridges, Comrade General, a hole!

 

Well fix it, Comrade Jerkoff, Comrade Jerkoff, Comrade Jerkoff,

Well FIX it, Comrade Jerkoff; Comrade Jerkoff – fix it

 

With what shall I fix it?...

 

With stressed concrete...

 

But that comes from the Rodina...

 

Go and get some...

 

But how shall I get there?

 

Well DRIVE there...

 

How will I drive there?...

 

In a truck by the highway....

 

There’s a hole in your bridges, dear General....

Patchwork quilt

 I had a few requests for a photo of the patchwork quilt finished; I just finished the wadding and backing. I like crazy patchwork to use up odd bits, and because a panel can be picked up and put down in waiting rooms and so on, or if I don't feel well enough to do more than a few minutes at a time. No templates, just arrange the pieces until they please. 

next project will be pinks and greens.

... and I'm snuggled under it whilst it chucks it down with rain

sonnet on the dismantling of the soviet symbols on the Ukranian motherland statue.

 The Ukranians decided to raise some figurative fingers at Russia by removing the hammer and sickle from their statue, and it inspired me to write this. I didn't know it was going to be a sonnet when it started out, but it made its choice and shaped itself. 

Sonnet on the Soviet symbols

 

The hammer and the sickle, the symbol of the serf

Who pretend to bring their 'freedoms' to other people's turf

And to spread the worker's hell-hole to bring free people down

To change the happy faces to a universal frown.

 

They spread misery like rubbish, because they cannot bear

To see others who are better off, who laugh out loud, and dare

To enjoy a better lifestyle through their own hard work and toil

So they bring their crushing boot to bear on other people’s soil.

 

The hammer and the sickle, a symbol of the state

It expresses the oppression of a hating, hateful state.

It expresses how the people are hammered into place,

Or scythed off at the knees if they dare discontent’s face.

 

The hammer and the sickle, the goose-stepping  jackboot

Should be consigned to history for freedom to take root.

Story retrieved, and here it is: My Name Is Ace.

My name is Ace.

I didn’t always have a name, so I am glad to have one now.  When I was a kitten, the others called me ‘Runt’ because I was so small.  I called myself ‘Lucky’ because I survived.  Humans called me hard names, and threw things, except the ‘Kind Hands’ who took me, and made me go to sleep with a needle, and when I woke up, they fed me.  My bottom was a bit sore but otherwise nothing seemed different.

The ‘Kind Hands’ humans fed us once a day in the street, when they let me go again, but I didn’t want to stay.  The other cats were big and scary.

I come from a town called Limassol.  It is on an island called Cyprus, where it is always warm or hot, but most of the people there don’t like cats, and sensible cats hide from them, and only talk to humans who come in the big metal birds to visit.

I was nearly a year old, and my life was about to change.

It had been a bad week.  Scraps were few, and in the heat they soon went rotten, and anyone who ate them got a bad tummy.  I caught a bird, but a big Tomcat took it off me, and scratched my eye.  Oh! How it hurt!  I ran away, towards a rubbish tip I knew where there were sometimes scraps.

And when I got there, I recognised a smell!

It was a kitten who smelled of my mother; a little brother of mine!  He looked terrible.  His eye, the one opposite my bad eye, so like a mirror, was swollen and seeping pus.  Yuk, it really smelled bad.  Did I look like that?  I thought.  Actually, yes, I probably did.

This little brother of mine had cuddled up to another kitten who was crying faintly.  Not surprising, for I could see where his tail had been bitten half off, probably by dogs, and it was swollen and definitely the wrong colour for a tail to be, and it was covered in flies. He was about the same age as my brother, half-grown kitten-cats.

There was no food.

There was no water.

There was no shade.

I was too weak to go any further.

I think that was the moment I decided I would adopt both kittens as my brothers and look after them while we all died.  Lucky’s luck has run out, I thought.  I curled around them as best I might, for they were almost as big as me, since I have always been so little.

 

I don’t know how long we lay there, half unconscious in the heat.  But suddenly there were ‘human hands.’ I stiffened; but they were ‘gentle hands’ and they came with a gentle voice.  I heard the gentle-voiced one called Anna.  The next few days are a blur in my memory, but we had food and water and a cool pen, and then we went to sleep with a needle again and when I woke up my eye was no longer throbbing, just a bit sore.  It didn’t smell the same bad smell any more either, but it smelled of place-with-needles smell. I know now this is a Vet smell, but I didn’t know much about vets then.

My brother, who is white with tabby spots like, me [though I have more spots than him] had his bad eye taken out too, and we had whiskery things across the hole, which I know now were stitches.  Our adopted stripy brother’s tail had been taken right off!  And I’m afraid we pointed and giggled.

When we were able to take in what was happening, Anna who found us told us we had names.  Stripy was now called Kelly, my little brother was Piper, and I was Ace.

“You are going to stay with a lady called Cynthia, and then you are going to England,” we were told.

“What’s an England?” squeaked Piper.

“I think it’s a ‘where’ not a ‘what’, I purred at him.  “I think it’s where the big metal birds live, who bring humans with food.”

 

It was quite nice with Cynthia, but we lived in a cage to sleep and had a room to play in.  We had lots of needles, which was not nice, smelly stuff put on our backs where we couldn’t get at it to wash off, and blood taken out of us.  But we got plenty of food and we were safe and Cynthia played with us, though Piper was too scared to play much.

And then Cynthia said,

“You are going to your human Mummy and Daddy, Sarah and Simon.  You will be in a crate for a very long time until you get to them.”

In a crate for a very long time?  What was that for?

We found out when they took us to a place in Cyprus where the metal birds roost.  We were going in a metal bird! We had to be in a plastic crate so the metal bird couldn’t really eat us, but it was so scary when Auntie Cynthia was making cross noises.  We clung together, frightened.

And then I was taken away from my brothers!  I shouted and shouted, and Auntie Cynthia cuddled me, and said I had to go in a separate crate, something about weight. 

I was sure I hadn’t got that fat for just eating every day.

I didn’t like being away from my brothers and I told the humans all about it, but I ran out of breath to shout, and we had to be inside the metal bird, which smelled peculiar. 

It was so very scary.  The bird lifted us up so fast my tummy stayed behind and I had to poop in the crate, and I could smell that my brothers had done so too.  At least we had water and some dried food, but no room for a litter box.  The bird’s tummy rumbled too, all the time, very badly.  I was scared that if it was so hungry it might eat us when we got to England.  I know it’s the only way to go to England, but it’s not pleasant!  However, we were desperate for a home so we had no choice.

When the metal bird landed it didn’t eat us and pretty soon we were smelling vet smells again who poked us about, and they were talking about problems with the paperwork of two other kittens who had travelled with us.  Really, the amount of paper humans seem to find necessary!  They’d do better to use it to wipe their bottoms, since they can’t wash properly.

Eventually [oh, how long it took!] we were put in a car with the other two kittens. It was so cold outside, and I didn’t have my brothers to snuggle up to!  And was it right to be with the other two?”

“Are we going to the right home?” Kelly shouted.

“We have to trust the nice humans!”  I shouted back.  The two female humans had been nice, but we were supposed to have a daddy.

However, we stopped after we’d been driven a while, and another couple of humans came and took our crates, and there was much hugging and kissing.  And it was ever so nice, because in the back of their car was a big, big cage with a litter box and an igloo house and blankets, as well as food and water.  I went and used the litter box right away, I was so pleased!

And we were all together again in there, and we were so relieved we curled up together.  And our new mummy sat in the back and put her hand in to stroke us and talk to us.  Piper was scared, but then he’d had worse from humans than Kelly and I had, he told us he had been booted into the air by a human once.  You can see the shape of the boot on the scar on his chest.  I rewarded our new mummy by climbing onto her lap for a cuddle, before going back to my brothers.   And then we drove through the night, and the car was warm and we slept, exhausted.  It wasn’t very nice going from the car to the house because the cage swung about a bit as they carried it between them, but we came at last into a warm room.  And we were finally properly warm again, and no more travelling.

There were lots of other cats looking at us curiously, but we were used to other cats.  So we curled up and went to sleep.

 

Next day Mummy and Daddy put us in a smaller cage but all together, and we had to travel again, but it was only to a vet.  We found out we needed ear drops, which sounded ominous, which is probably because it was ominous.

I would like to mention that I do not like ear drops, and nor do my brothers. Piper made a fine mess of Daddy’s hands clawing and biting him, but Daddy never stopped being gentle.

It was Kelly who gave us most drama though.

He wriggled clear out of Daddy’s arms, up onto his shoulder and tried to jump!

Silly idiot, how was he supposed to jump without a tail to balance him?  He landed heavily, too shocked to cry, having caught one paw on the way down on a stone step.

“Why do they always do these things at the weekend?” Daddy asked, as Mummy picked up Kelly for a cuddle.

To be fair to Kelly, he was having to put up with a lot of soothing creams and cleaning for his bottom as well as ear drops.  Losing your tail is a dreadful thing, because you don’t know when you are pooping, as well as not being able to jump. He was very brave. And with the cold journey he also got the runs. 

Anyway, off he went to the vet and came back with a pink bandage on his paw.

It took him overnight to get rid of it.

Meanwhile we were getting to know the other cats, who were very friendly, especially Rosie, who cuddled up with us like a mummy-cat.  Mummy Sarah laughed and said we all made a cuddle-puddle.

But I was the first one, when they left the cage door open overnight so we could come and go as we pleased, to find my way upstairs and onto Daddy’s feet.

Kelly was next, and that was when he shed his bandage.   His problem was that he couldn’t get downstairs without it.

Mummy did persevere.

She put it back on him four times.

It only took him six hours to get rid of it the second time, and when he shed it after just ten minutes, Mummy said,

“I give up; he’ll have to limp and let it heal naturally.

It did, and he strengthened it on the big running wheel Mummy and Daddy have for those of us who want to run.

 

We got used to it being colder than we were used to, we could cuddle each other, and Rosie, or curl up with one of our humans.  Not that Piper wanted to trust humans that much.  Kelly and I did. Piper discovered that longhaired Cecil and blind Leo were nice and warm and friendly so he cuddled them instead.

And gradually the winter went away, and we were allowed outside on warm days, in a nice, safe run, where nobody could get at us to hurt us. Piper learned that being stroked was nice, and he had special places where he allowed it.  The Stroking Chair was where he had made friends with Cecil and Leo, and first Daddy, and then Mummy, were allowed to stroke him there.

And when Piper showed mummy his tummy, she found the scar shaped like the welt of a boot, and she cried a lot, and understood why he didn’t much like humans.

Meanwhile, I’m afraid it was I who next provided some drama!  My sewn-up eye got uncomfortable, and then it burst open with horrid smelly stuff.  Mummy said it was probably because there was so much poison from the first wound, that it ate part of my little skull above my nose.  When the vets had sewn that up it made the little diamond shape which made Mummy call me ‘Ace’. 

Nice Dr. Jenny said my eye would be fine, but it should be left open to drain.  Mummy and Daddy bathed it with warm salt water, which wasn’t nice, but I was very, very good about it, and it healed up perfectly.

And we got to summer, and if it wasn’t as warm as Cyprus, we became used to that. The window is open most days through the summer, and we can come in if it rains.

Oh, and I help Mummy to write.  I scramble onto her lap, and one time I managed to pull off five of her keys on her keyboard.  She must have been so pleased, she said “Oh, ACE!” and she picked me up and hugged me.

My little brothers are a year old now, and almost grown up, and Kelly’s bottom only produces little nuts, not sticky goo except on really hot days.  Mummy says it saves a lot of washing!

We have a home and lots of love.  The only bad thing was when our mummy-sister, Rosie, died.  I cuddled her while she was dying.  She needed me, like I needed her when we first came.

But life goes on, and we have a good life and we will live it for ever and ever.

Somewhere a good angel was watching over us on that day when we all cuddled together to die on a rubbish tip.

Please send more angels to Cyprus.

 

Finally got Chauvelin in England published!

 I'd done all the corrections, it took me a while to get the formatting for Kindle done, but now it's finally out after wrestling with the size of the cover despite using their template.  Life's fighting back right now.

Anyway, it's done.and now Firefox did an update and is making me re sign in to everything. It's driving me nuts.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CC9DD42B

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CC9DD42B