It seems that some young girls were implicated, shall we say, with some crimes going about the neighborhood. Mil was a mite worried and was quite upset about it on the second floor bathroom at skolliwol. I assured Mil all was well since we were always dressed up cool-like, not our regular platties, when we did the ultra-violence. We also had our litsos painted up, orange cheeks and blue or green lips and such, so no lewdies can pin us, I tells her. And besides that, Lucy and the other soomkas can vouch for us. I then gathered my droogs to telltale about my run-in with the glorious Alex himself.
My cheenas did much ooohing and ahhing, as we had been reading the gazettas and keeping up with the holonews. We gobbled up the headlines about Alex's capture, imprisonment, 'therapy', then release followed by restoration. He was famous. He was nadsat Jesus, for Bog's sake, and I had been chosen by the One himself!
One thing did trouble my mozg, though, was what happened after we had gotten our frustrations with one another over with. "Anni-girl," he said as I was getting dressed. "You remind me of me just a few short years ago." It was jarring, like, hearing him talk straight and not nadsat. I brightened at the compliment, but he came close to me with more to say. "The world is brutal and stupid, all the more reason to take and enjoy what you can, when you can. But…," he paused, and suddenly to me he looked much more starry than 19 years. "There's good things, too. My ma and da, good old Ludwig Van, beautiful paintings at the Gallery, maybe someday, a vheena and kids of my own."
"What's this you say, Alex? You tired of getting your own back on the deds? No more fun and ultra-violence?"
"Never that, darling," he smiled. "Just watch yourself, right? And don't take cal for granted, wot?" He patted me hard like on the face, like an old comrade. "There's a good gehl. Now get the fook out me flat, I gotta get back to rabbiting for the State, don't you know."
Is this what growing up is? Rabbiting for your betters and playing nicey-nice? Well, you can have it. I don't want to even pretend as Alex does now, though I don't blame him. Viddy what-all the state and old geezers had done to him.
Things became harder for us nadsat after the latest round of hi-jinks, as a lot of parents stopped letting their sprogs out after dark and the millicents were beefed up with more patrols and more ultra-violence on their part. Local curfews were being kicked around as options in town council. How is one enterprising girl such as yours truly to get her rocks off with all this going on, I ask?
I had been practicing with my weapon I braided into my luscious glory, tolchocking myself quite a bit in the process, but I soon could wield my own hair like some Eastern weapon in a kung-fu film. My P and M worried about me going out, as I was often out after dark, but I told them I was either helping the old geezer across the street for a bit of cutter here and there, or goofing with my droogs—er—friends at the shops. Sometimes I did pop over to the starry veck's flat and make some chai or tidy up, but I didn't stay for long, not that the old ded really noticed.
I was becoming more daring, my friends, as I wanted more, more, more. I feared not any chelloveck, nor any cheena, and it got round to other bandas of girls. One such group called themselves the South Bend Girls, and they were a few years older than us. They had some run-ins with the veck droogs, which we usually steered clear of unless they had done something to some cheenas we knew. They were led by a devotchka named Mary and were a rather nasty sort.
They dressed all in black wth showy flowing capes and other such nonsense, and they tried to jump us one night as we were on our way to the Duke of New York club made famous by Alex and his droogs. The four of them wielded chains and knives and such, and I had my umbrella and weaponized luscious glory as usual, with Shiv on knives, Mil with a cricket bat and Lori with her weighted cane. We went to work with the old ultraviolence, as we had had some milk-plus laced with vellocet beforehand. We were holding our own pretty horrorshow when things went a bit…sideways.
Sirens sounded in the distance and we were all without cover, but we were so bent on the proceedings we kept at each other until we heard the shouted commands from the millicent to cease and desist, which we didn't do, of course. Immediately we all broke and ran, and the police split up to chase us. I was fast, O my brothers and sisters, being the sleek cheena I was, and outpaced most of my pursuers. I slipped into an abandoned, run-down building to catch me breath. I found a gigantic, open room with great bolshy boxes and containers, dark and cool.
I slid gainst a wall, slowing my panting and gulping, and slooshied intently. Sure enough my ears picked up the zvook of footsteps and voices outside. "We know you're in there, girl!" bleated the voice of a millicent, all confident and sly. "Come on out now, hands up. Don't make this worse on yourself."
"Sod off, bratchnies!" I cried despite myself.
"You have to the count of three to give yourself up, bitch!" came the voice again. I laughed at his attempt at a such an old, tired insult, with no clever at all. He counted to three, and then something tumbled through one of the big glass windows of the metso. It gave off smoke, then sparks, then something in one of the boxes caught fire. I only belatedly noticed some of the containers read FLAMMABLE before a bolshy noise blotted out everything in the world and I was lifted, with some force, right off my sabogs and thrown across that whole wide space to the wall beyond. I felt heat, heat, fire in my extremities, and horrid pain aplenty, and I tried to move.
More explosions went off, but I couldn't move, dear friends, your humble narrator was quite unable to do anything more but listen to the noise and feel more pain. Pain, pain, piling on top of itself until my mozg could take no more, then after there was nothing but cold blackness. My mind fell away and folded on itself, with the occasional echo of lewdies talking breaking the fog in me gulliver.