Fiftyleven Colours Relating To Dusk... OF THE UNIVERSE
About the author:
A.M. Walsh is a TV viewer, mother of four precocious, but imaginary children, based in Southern California. Since she was in diapers, she envisioned rising to fame by co-opting a fan base built by someone else's work, but put those glorious imaginings away to cultivate a working relationship with ethics. Ten seconds ago, she finally put on her big girl panties, and wrote this masterpiece.
A.M. Walsh is currently working on milking this teat until it is a dry husk of its former self. And a novel about PUPPIES with a sexy twist.
For Tobes
The Bitch Who Made Me Write This
Acknowledgments:
I'd like to thank E. L. "James" for inventing porn and BDSM and teaching the lower beings what truly great writing is.
Author's note:
All editing efforts were harshly rebuked because my spelling and punctuation errors are creative!
I had such fun writing about Florida! Someday, I'm going to go there and see if it's as snowy as they say!
Chapter One
I snarl and hiss, ripping out chunks of my glimmering hair, staring in wild rage at my gigantic sparkling eyes and flawless skin. Why am I cursed with beauty, only adorably offset by my terribly endearing occasional tendency to stumble and end the life of innocent bystanders?
If only I could murder Blonde instead. Blonde Breastigan is my live-in life partner, who I am definitely not sapphically drawn to, but who I like to verbally caress in loving, graphic detail at every opportunity. She's on a ventilator and it makes me stomp my dainty feet with adorable rage at her deathwatch that now I have to take her place, painfully schmoozing with the extravagantly rich trillionaire Overlord of Dusk, Incorporated instead of studying for my Doctoral Degree in Girlish studies and Book-Knowing.
Blonde wheezes faintly from a pile of soiled newspapers in the corner. "Vag, I'm so totally sorry. I'm just, like, college newspapers are super demanding and stuff. If I perish, please," she chokes, "please remember me." She hands me an eight-track recorder and several cartridges as I gaze into her breathtakingly gorgeous orbs of forest green, set in a pale face glistening with dew and small flecks of delicate mucus. Why is she so resplendent?
I punch her lovingly in the throat and she falls with gazelle-like floatiness back to her pile of filth. "Only because of my abiding and completely platonic adoration for you, do I suffer meeting the richest man in Snowy Florida."
Gathering my rucksack and snowshoes, I set out for the icy tundra of this state I know so well, rhapsodizing absently on how Blonde and I could survive this frozen wasteland with no more than a sleeping bag and our body heat. Oh, the windy rapture! I am using Blonde's deluxe Sno-Cat instead of my tired, half-starved sled dogs, though my whip does still hang from my rucksack as I speed to Mr. Dusk's distant Miami fortress.
It's all stone and flaming torches, the light clanking of chains and faint screams from within darkly exciting to my pure, virgin ears. As I approach the enormous, creaking drawbridge, a rake-thin woman, arms shackled to a post greets me. "How can I serve you?" she croaks with a jaunty rattle of her facial piercings.
"My name is Vagina Ironclad. I'll be interviewing Mr. Lutheran Dusk for Blonde Breastigan's very important college newspaper article that he would be so angry to reschedule as I'm sure he's been looking forward to it all day with absolutely nothing better to do."
"Yes. The Master is expecting you." She jerked her head to the side with a pained mew.
As I cross the drawbridge, the plaintive screams from within growing louder, another emaciated shadow greets me. I glance at her leather corset and fishnet body suit, riddled with cigar burns and patches of oozing skin. To think all I wore was my Aspiring Book-Knower souvenir hoodie! These city folk! So glamorous!
She gets on all fours and gestures for me to sit. I do, idly riding on her back as she crawls up several flights of glass strewn steps to the inner keep, cursing that my book-knowing and enigmatic aura of mysteriousness means I just don't fit in anywhere!
She stops with an exhausted grunt and I thank her as another gaunt spectre greets me, this one blindfolded, groping her way to my cursed shining waterfall of hair. "Mistress," she whispers. "Please wait here."
She blindly prods me to the edge of the tall tower and I clutch my virginity at the vast view of Florida now before me. The snowy mountains and colorful canyons giving way to the Empire State Building in the distance. Jeepers!
I pull off my rucksack and grope inside, trying to find Blonde's eight-track recorder among my many classic novels from literature, my abacus, and my adorable pet sidekicks! Mystical Empress, a winsome and frolicky pink beaver that loves to indulge in adorable mimicry and an extremely loud and grumbly tea cup pig that I call Innermost Self. Oh, the adventures we have!
I sigh, realizing this day won't be an adventure and slap them into silence, what with me being forced to interact with humans other than my dearest, darlingest Blonde. I think of all my 22 years up till now, staring through the gates of the anti-technology senior living community I called home. How could I do this? Actually talk! Wow, Jeepers, and Criminy!
Another pockmarked wraith approaches and I punch myself in the face, thinking Lutheran Dusk will surely be expecting someone urbane and sophisticated like these women... like he... must be... Woe! I punch myself a few more times when an ornate, bejeweled, golden door opens.
A small, ginger haired man, all in green with a jaunty cap steps out, clutching a nearly empty flask. Oh, deary me! He's as mysterious and intimidating as I thought!
But the man turns back in. "Ah, faith and begorra, me fine sir Dusk! Would ye be wantin' a game of horseshoes this Saturday eve?"
I decide I don't care about Dusk's answer as I'd much rather stare in self-hating envy at the wraiths that are marching in with a canopied sedan chair to escort him out as he winks and makes kissing noises in my general direction.
"The Master will see you now," Wraith Number Two whimpers, picking tiny bits of glass from her hands. I snarl lightly at her and pick up my rucksack, then stumble to the door on my preciously clumsy feet, elbowing her in the chest and right over the edge of the tower. Drat! Not only have I innocently snuffed out a life... again... I'm now prostrate on the floor, nose to a sinfully, decadently, well-polished shoe.
"Yes. That's just how I like them."
I give two quick jabs to my eye before I feel worthy enough to look up. Jiminy Cricket - he's young!
"Miss Breastigan," he drawls in a long drawling drawl as I pick my pathetic self up. "I'm Lutheran Dusk. Would you care to have a seat?" He gestures with impossibly long fingers, so long, they brush against the walls as he extends them, to a metal bench with tiny spikes all along the edges.
He's so much younger than I ever dreamed in my dreamiest dreams, like somewhere between fourteen and forty-six, and he is the most hot, handsome, hunky, heavenly, delectable, delicious, super dishy man I ever did see! I wanted to throw myself off the tower! I settle for adorably tripping backward into the hollowed eyed spectre from the gate, sending her careening over the edge. He's tall, ducking slightly to avoid the ceiling as I follow him into his deep, secret world, dressed in a shiny black suit of pleather that zips up to his neck. I let out several whistles and a thin line of drool before I'm able to speak.
"Hedddhhhh aajjlks," I try as he shakes my hand, his long fingers wrapping three times around it as I dissolve into mad giggles for just a moment before I collect myself. "Miss Breastigan is on deathwatch. I am her independent, feminist, cripplingly shy shut-in friend."
"And they call you?" He looks confused, amused, and apathetic all at once. Oh, the mystery of him!
"Vagina Ironclad. I take Girlish Studies and Book-Knowing with my sugar lum... er... um... with Blonde at Daytona Mountain University."
"Well, well," he drawls smirkingly, templing his long fingers under his chin. "Have a seat?" He gestures again to the spike-studded bench, but pouts as I opt for a butter soft leather chair so buttery I sink halfway into it with a decadent splat as I stare around his quarters. Dark and damp and so cavernous, every noise seems to echo - especially my pounding heart! With a long desk that could fit my entire team of sled dogs. The Mona Lisa, Whistler's Mother, and other assorted masterpieces are scattered... around the room.
"Dogs Playing Poker," I mumble knowingly, spying a favorite. "The green table is green like money," I murmur with ponderous ennui. "And dogs don't even need money. Irony."
"You are unexpectedly wise, Miss Ironclad," he whispers with his breath as I giggle wildly.
The rest of his quarters are covered in spiked implements, coils of rope, thin, sharp-edged straps of leather and a large iron maiden that must be incredibly valuable. I decide he's just like me. He loves the classical things! I pull out my eight-track and knock over several vases as he smirks and chuckles with haunting, intent eyes that haunt me with their intensity.
"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Oopsie. Darn!" I stammer as his eyes dance like broken demons only I can heal with my bland innocence. "News," I murmur thoughtfully.
"Yes. Important."
I pull out Blonde's list, spattered so beautifully with specks of blood from her coughing fits. "Question?"
"Answer."
"Probing journalism?"
"Business. Industry. Power. Riding crops."
"Excuse me?"
"Nothing." He smiles with the warmth of a sunny place in the tropics - Seattle, maybe. I find myself grinning back. We laugh for some reason, obviously simpatico.
"How such... power?" I inquire probingly.
"I have a calculated system of punishment and reward that I inflict on my underlings without boundaries or mercy. Also money appears. Because." His eyes turn cold, cold like ice or a sno-cone if they made gray flavored ones. "You cannot begin to comprehend my control!" he growls.
My stomach begins roiling with hot stabs of heat as I wonder how this man sneering, glaring, and growling at me would have any effect on me whatsoever. Baffling!
"Without me, the entire state of Florida would perish and its people would suffer icy death."
I decide I am angry! "YOU just want to CONTROL everything!"
His eyes narrow and his hand hovers over a red button on his desk. "No, not yet," he whispers with the dark promise of a Gothic castle on a stormy moor in North Dakota. "Miss Ironclad, I am the sole Overlord of all this land, the ice fishing industry alone depends on my largesse and the peasants' lean-tos would collapse and crush their bones should I ever stop doing whatever it is I do."
I drop my anger because I am not only a wildly temperamental independent woman, but a sophisticated smarty pants who knows I simply must get this super important college newspaper interview done for my beloved Blonde. No matter how this smirkingly rich, darkly attractive man antagonizing me inexplicably affects me!
"Yeah. Far out," I try, deciding to impress him with the bitchin slang I sometimes heard from the outside world while lounging near the fence of my senior living community that cut me off from technology and popular entertainment and fashion. "So how do you chill out or hang or something. Dig?"
"Chill? Hang? Dig?" He is confoundingly amused by how modern I am, being pretty much my age. I internally drool again about how dreamy he is, like every issue of Tiger Beat spawned a living being or whatever. "Well, to chill, like you whippersnappers say, I do daring, adventurous, expensive things - like sailing and flying - things you could only dream of!"
I decide I'm uncomfortable and focus on Blonde's list again. "You invest in things that get built," I say, so very specifically. "Why?"
"I played with blocks as a child."
"I feel your heart in that answer," I sigh.
He smirks beautifully some more. "You cannot begin to know me. I am private and too deep for anyone to possibly understand. I shouldn't be answering your surprisingly insightful questions, damn your bland innocence and biting wit!"
Angry again! "Then why is this scene even happening?"
"Because Miss Breastigan wouldn't quit bothering me and my minions."
I sigh, my anger floating away as I think of Blonde and how persistent and brilliant and voluptuous she is. "You do food business things, too? Why?"
"Because people are starving. I may be able to feed an entire country for a year. But why do that when I can profit off people who actually do things?"
"That's so totally generous, how you almost do stuff," I murmur, staring at a pile of money burning with a warm glow in the fireplace. "What is the clichéd saying that guides your life?"
" Hitler once said 'By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.' For example, the most terrible book ever written can become the most popular... if only enough people browbeat the world into reading it. Anyway, I plan to take control of all these peasants because I am entitled to."
The money burning in the fireplace crackles with sexy menace as we gaze at each other. I am so arousedly fearful of this paragon! But I must finish this for the sake of my cherished Blonde. I glance at her list again. "As all adopted people are different from us, how does it make you in particular a freak?"
"I don't know."
How interesting he is! "At what age were you taken in by loving parents?" Oh, dear! I hope this question isn't somehow offensive!
"Look it up!" He says angrily, offended as I feared!
Of course, I would have taken two seconds to ask Blonde something about her questions if I'd known he'd be so dreamy.
"You're too busy to have kids or a wife or anything."
"How dare you make a statement instead of a question!"
"Oh. I mean... Are you too busy to have kids or a wife or anything?"
"Don't need or want them. I have a mommy and daddy and a bubby and sissie and that's all I need! So don't you get any ideas about healing my soul and changing my mind."
No! Never! "Do you like boys, Mr. Dusk?" I punch myself lightly in the teeth for not having even looked at these questions. Darn my winsomely mischievous Blonde!
"No, Vagina," he says with cool, heated anger.
"I'm sorry. These are all Blonde's fault." He said my name. He actually said it. I decide to muster up the first of many blushes and giggle and toy with my hair.
"So you didn't even prepare a little for this extremely important interview with..." He gestured down his tall, pleather-encased body with his foot-long fingers. "Well, me?"
I stammer and blush even more if possible. "I don't even work on the paper. Blonde's just my life-partner."
A knock on the door heralds in Wraith Number Three, staggering in with her blindfold. "Master Dusk, please look kindly on my interruption..."
"Silence, Gladys!" he barks. "I am not finished with this one. Whatever it is can wait."
She cowers, whimpering as she backs through the doorway.
"Proceed, Miss Ironclad."
I find myself mourning for five seconds ago, when he caressed my first name. Vagina. "But aren't you an all-powerful overlord with better things to do?"
"I've decided that you're utterly fascinating. For some reason. Tell me everything."
I flush, of course. It's what I do. "I'm horribly boring."
"Yes, go on," he said, his eyes gleaming with abject fascination.
"I'd like to think that my lack of personal traits helps everyone decide I'm just like them."
"Intriguing."
"I have no plans for the future or dreams."
"With that kind of gumption, I simply must hire you to work under me," he murmurs, licking his lips several times.
"I am unworthy."
"Yes. That's just what I like about you."
I wrench my gaze away from his dark intensity and clutch my virginity with both hands. "I must go!"
"Very well, then. Fare thee well, Miss Ironclad. I shall most likely stalk you later."
Surely, he wouldn't. Every man who's ever met me has, but, as I said, I am cripplingly shy and unworthy of breathing. I gather my rucksack. "Goodbye, Mr. Dusk."
He pulls open the bejeweled door. "Please try not to kill any more of my underlings."
I think of pulling out my Mystical Empress to glower at him for pointing out my endearing klutziness, but I just got ready to go. "I won't. Thank you," I say instead with precocious snappiness.
He follows me out and I am blandly mystified when he gently inserts a beeping, red microchip just under my jaw line. "Mind the snow drifts."
Four new gaunt specters are waiting to escort me out, but he waves them away with his impossibly long fingers and places a strong hand on my buttocks as he escorts me out himself with cool, burning eyes.
I scurry down the steps and toward the outer keep of his fortress, staring at him in awkward, girlish worship as we move to the drawbridge.
"Vagina," he gasps, shoving me at the drawbridge.
"Lutheran," I pant, then hurry away in mortification! I said his NAME!