HA!!! Another chapter.
This one took a tad longer than usual as I started working on my Lady Heather/ Grissom fic: Whip Smart. Go read it, it's only mildly offensive.
Chapter Notes: Scandal, Humour, Luurve and we visit our favourite psycho.
Credits: The Bible [you gotta love the Book of Revelation], Shakespeare, The Clan of Xymox, and more pop culture references than you can shake a stick at.
As always, thanks to my beautiful, loyal and talented Beta Readers [I've never seen them, but they edit so well I'm honoured to give them bonus points]. And yes, Kate, I removed that semi-colon, you happy? [You were right dammit, but still it hurts].
In perhaps the biggest shock, I am happy with this chapter never thought that would happen. To those of you who read this, I hope you enjoy it and if you feel so inclined please review - or send money.
Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favour; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD), Meditations
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), "On Reading and Writing"
THE APOTHEOSIS OF VAUDEVILLEBy Agatha Babylon.
Here, in this great city of Las Vegas, we live by the maxim that anything goes. We live our lives to their fullest extent, which is as it should be; but these are troubled times, for in there here and now, there is a person whose anything goes too far, even for this city.
And our police watch.
Reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, our valiant police force flail around like an epileptic in a swimming pool, frantically attempting to thrash in a direction, which gives lie to some semblance of order. Indeed, the direction the police have taken exemplifies the bastard child of chaos theory and a perpetual motion machine. Deputy Dawg, where are you in our hour of need?
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the Shakespeare Killer, whom, if given a fiddle, would no doubt lead our city's finest in a rousing square-dance worthy of Oklahoma; as the city burned.
Our mayor, god bless his Shylockian soul, is more concerned with a budget that produced a two hundred dollar deficit, than he is with catching a machiavellian killer who has butchered more citizens than the number of votes the mayor is going to get when he comes up for re-election.
If this were theatre, it would close after the opening night, but theatre this bad makes Tom Green look good. Come back John Wilkes Booth, all is forgiven.
The mayor assures me that he has every available officer on the case, which would be reassuring if he hadn't decimated police numbers by an alarming fifteen percent in their last budget review. The justification? That Las Vegas is safe and that the money can be more effectively spent in other area; like, for example, supporting the city's ailing Dunkin' Donut franchises, which no longer have enough police to support their profits.
I have no idea what constitutes 'more effective', but not only is the mayor sacrificing the safety of his citizens to some grandiose bureaucratic white elephant, but rumour has it that local underworld figures have nominated the mayor as their Person of the Year, as they reap the benefits of dealing with balding, overweight security guards, whose biggest concern is staving off arteriosclerotic shock at the thought of having to lift their lard-filled buttocks from their sinecure of a 'security' position in order to cry 'stop thief' at the rapidly departing figure who has stolen their last bag of Fritos.
And the Killer watches.
Recently, I had the dubious pleasure of meeting with one of the city's top criminalists, Mr Gull Grayson. This scientist, this profiler of bugs and decay, saw fit to tell me, Agatha Babylon, your voice, that the investigation was none of my business. That it was in the best interests of the people of Las Vegas, to shut their doors and hide from the truth. I informed this lab dweller, that you, the people of Las Vegas, have the right to know who is butchering your neighbours, who is defiling the inner sanctums of your domestic bliss and he replied that my sensationalism was not helping matters.
I ask you, dear readers, is the truth sensational?
If not I, then who?
Given that police couldn't find their own way home and the mayor thinks you're safe, who in this darkest hour will keep this city informed? It is I, Agatha Babylon, your source for the truth.
"She said what!" Earl Grey tea geysered from the mouth of the mayor as he narrowly missed giving his secretary an unanticipated and equally unwelcome shower.
"That you were more concerned with your budget and your chances of re-election than the safety of the citizens of Las Vegas."
"….and did she offer anything, which might even remotely be considered as evidence to this effect? I know Babylon is a pernicious little scaremonger and gossip whore, but even by her standards this is going too far."
"Other than your cuts to the police budget?"
"Yes, Yes, other than that. I've already had chapter and verse about that from our beloved Chief of Police; the last thing I need is that bitch channelling Corbin – whom I'm assuming you've called."
"No she didn't" came the reply from the door "But I could hear you frothing at the mouth from my office so decided to pre-empt your sending Mary after me." Calliope grinned evilly, "I take it you've read this morning's paper then?" Not waiting for a response, he continued. "Babylon must really have a stick up her arse over this, what did you say to her this time?"
"I haven't said anything to her, in fact I'm actively avoiding her. The last person to talk to her was you."
"Actually, it wasn't, I got Jim Brass to send one of his CSIs to talk to the woman, unfortunately it sounds like Brass sent Grissom."
"Who or what is a Grissom?"
"Gil Grissom is a CSI shift head and is one of the people heading the scientific side of things with regard to the case."
"You're being less than forthcoming Corbin, what are you trying to not say in so many words?"
Corbin looked pained, "Grissom, whilst brilliant, is not a particularly political creature, and he doesn't suffer fools gladly."
"And this Brass, fed him to the Babylon?"
"Actually, I suggested to Jim that he send Grissom; I didn't actually expect him to do it though."
"Because…..?" The mayor's tone of voice intimating that the reasons his chief of police had for sending this Grissom had better be pretty damn good or he'd be fed to the crocodiles. This didn't phase the chief in the slightest, used, as he was, to his employer's tantrums.
"Call it my twisted sense of humour. Grissom tells it like it is, no embellishments no salacious hints or innuendo and that my dear Waldorf, would have driven Babylon and her poisoned-pen mental. Sure, sending Grissom may not have observed all the political niceties, but no-one can accuse us of putting spin on the information."
"So what you're telling me Corbin, is that you deliberately antagonised a reporter with the facts?"
"Something like that boss."
Astoria chuckled. "Some days, Corbin, I love this job, care for a drink?"
She could have sworn that she heard the sound of ironic applause as she rose that morning. Superstition would have indicated that the monster under the bed was mocking her, but being too old for such foolishness she brushed such naiveties aside and let her rational mind berate her for being a fool. Not a fool for speaking from her heart, but for doing so under the influence; confession may indeed be good for the soul, but a confessional bottle of Californian Red tends to mess with your overall perspective.
Today, in the harsh light of reflection, which, in her recovering state was just a tad too enthusiastic, Rilie had things to do; but first coffee.
Over the steaming mug, she stared meditatively into the fish tank, her black piranha, Aramis, stared back. Rilie was never completely sure what the aggressive little bugger was thinking but assumed that it involved sizing his mistress up as a potential meal. Aramis had it easy she thought, sleep, swim around and occasionally maim anything that had the temerity to enter his bowl. Rilie wished her life was as uncomplicated, but as she didn't live in a bowl it was moot point – and it was unlikely that Aramis would be willing to share.
Rilie, felt a certain envy of her piranha, at the very least she certainly missed maiming people; not in a graphic, physical sense, that left people with their entrails decoratively entwined in the nearest tree, but in the sense of verbally massacring their sad attempts at logic, humour or polite conversation. Her verbal skills had come from her late mother, who had kept clan Andrews in line with a tongue that made razor wire look pathetically ineffective. Rilie sometimes wondered if it wasn't the effect of her mother's tongue that had made her brothers what they were; constantly competing to prove that they were indeed paragons of maleness and as such constantly battling against the verbal castration administered on a daily basis. Then again, her mother was Irish, and came from a long line of women who claimed to have a bit of the ban sidhe residing in the blood; and, after hearing Mrs Andrews dress down her husband on a Friday night when he came home from the pub, there were few people who would challenge her on the point.
While Rilie had inherited her mother's temper, she had, however, also inherited her father's patience, which explained why she normally allowed people enough rope to well and truly hang themselves. Yet for some reason, the rope Greg had given her - in copious amounts, she added mordantly – was being used to hang herself, and while Rilie was not inherently masochistic, the idea of hanging sounded remarkably like a statement of affirmative action even if it did tend towards the slightly melodramatic.
If Rilie had had a magic wand she would have made the events of the previous evening nothing more than a dream. If she hadn't hacked the music school records, if she hadn't had the argument with Cass, if she hadn't got drunk, then none of this would have happened. She sighed mightily, that was an awful lot of 'if' and a whole lot of poor me, and it was that situation that Rilie didn't know how to deal with;
now there were consequences, large Sanders-shaped consequences.
Control was second nature to her, it was the one thing her brothers, bastards all, had taught her.
"Never let your guard down, kid" this from Joe, the oldest. "You let people in and you give them the chance to hurt you, you give up your emotions to someone you become their slave".
Mike, the youngest of her brothers, yet still eight years her senior, had put it more simply, "As soon as you start to care you lose."
What it really came down to though, was control, control of the situation, control of any and all available knowledge and most importantly a rigid control of one's emotions. She loved her family, the whole dysfunctional bunch, but it was no wonder every damn one of her brothers was divorced; they wouldn't know an honest emotion if it robbed them at knifepoint. Now here she was, from a family background more emotionally barren than the Alaskan Tundra, trying to make sense of the fact that a funny looking guy with a smart mouth pushed her buttons.
She wasn't sure what was worse; that she didn't want to admit that Greg got her all hot and bothered, or that she didn't know how; the call was a case in point. After summoning large amounts of Dutch courage unto herself, she had slipped away from the increasingly raucous group of women and decided to tell Greg that she was interested in him. Whether he was interested in her was less important, certainly it would be nice, and she wanted it to be the case, but for her the important issue was one of confronting her emotions, for only through confrontation could she master them and regain control of the situation.
…..And as for that phone call, well Rilie would gladly volunteer for the French Foreign Legion if it would only expunge the memory of making a complete arse out of herself. Hindsight was a wonderful thing most of the time, but in this instance it caused Rilie to regard her actions as only slightly less horrific that a multi-car pile up involving a tanker of water and a truck carrying dehydrated potato flakes. For something that was so meticulously scripted – well five minutes and a glass of red – things had fallen apart rather spectacularly as soon as the answer phone message ended.
Sipping her coffee, she thought about how much easier things had been before Sanders had tried to run her down. Maybe it was a portent of things to come, that her relationship woes should be initiated by a near accident. Actually, her nemesis - thinking of Greg as such conjured a ghost of a smile – was more than an accident, he was a disaster in waiting and for the life of her she couldn't understand how she could be so attracted to someone who routinely displayed all the grace and poise of a jelly in a high wind. Maybe it was that clichéd 'opposites attracting' thing, although all that she could definitely confirm was that Greg was attracted to anything that came in a D-Cup.
To say that Rilie was cynical about men would be to open oneself to accusations of gross understatement; again the source was familial in nature. As she had grown she had seen each of her brothers utilise just about every scam in the known universe in order to gain access to the contents of their latest conquest's panties, and more often than not they succeeded, the Andrews family charm being a not inconsiderable force of nature – at least when away from their mother. For the brothers' Andrews the latest conquest was but an ongoing part of their interminable and often ill-tempered rivalry; the only time it had backfired being when three of her brothers contracted syphilis from the same girl within a two-week period.
Rilie had watched, absorbed every technique her brothers used and decided that men, at least when their genitals were controlling their actions, were not to be trusted. This didn't mean that she lived like a nun, far from it in fact, but, to put it bluntly, she fucked on her terms, no one else's.
That Greg, fixated with her breasts as he was in her opinion, hadn't tried any lines or tactics to get her into bed confused her. She knew he found her attractive – well she was fairly certain he did…..maybe…..well he better dammit, but how was she supposed to deal with him if he resolutely refused to make a fool out of himself; well more of a fool than usual anyway.
"So what do you think I should do Aramis?" The piranha didn't answer, although his increasing agitation indicated that it was feeding time, well it was either that or he was indicating a desperate need to get out of his bowl and head somewhere far far away from the self-pitying creature that wouldn't shut up; piranha were not known for their empathy.
The simple truth of the matter was that Rilie desperately wanted to feel something; and here, with Greg right in front of her, she was just too scared to admit it.
On the other side of town an equally bleary-eyed individual struggled from the debris of his bed and headed for the coffee pot; cat in tow. It hadn't been a particularly restful night for Greg, and an even less restful one for Benzene, who had eventually given up on the bed after being kicked across the room for the fifth or sixth time.
Flicking on the radio, he flopped at the kitchen table and mentally urged the jug to boil faster while Benzene contemplated whether or not clawing the wreck seated at the table was tactically advisable in order to acquire breakfast. The food slave had been acting strangely lately and as such Benzene wasn't prepared to undertake an action, which may have potentially resulted in the non-appearance of breakfast.
As the kettle began its inevitable whistling crescendo, Greg mechanically assembled the plunger and grabbed the coffee from the cupboard, pausing just long enough to deposit Benzene's food in her bowl. Slumping back into his chair, he found himself humming along with the song on the radio. As is often the case, the song on the radio echoed his mood and he silently wondered if some higher power had tuned in to his personal frequency.
They say "trust on
us"
They say " our time will come"
And " your dreams will come alive"
One day, we will find
No way to cross this line
It's where our worlds collide
But which worlds? His? Certainly his life had undergone some serious upheaval in the last six months, but was he on a collision course, and if so, with whom? Rilie? The lab? Or was it that Prof. Mueller had decided to end his existence once and for all? Certainly, Greg knew that he was changing, that he was achieving a degree of maturity that granted him a previously hidden perspective and a perspective that left him knowing that despite the music, that despite everything, in some ways he no longer knew who he was – or at least where he was going.
Maybe Rilie was part of the answer.
This world is not made for you and I
It's build on blood and a million lies
Rilie's call from the night before had only precipitated the inevitable, that he would have to face how he felt about her. At heart, Greg was a romantic, however, at the lab he had hidden behind the mask of a serial flirt letting people believe that he was desperate for the slightest invitation, eventually even that pose had died as he tried to assume a more professional mien. The unfortunate, yet inevitable result of this subterfuge was that Greg had grown unaccustomed to expressing his innermost thoughts to anyone other than Benzene; Benzene, being a cat, would have simply preferred being fed more often.
While Greg didn't doubt how he thought he felt about Rilie – well he was at least prepared to admit that he was interested – he did doubt how he felt about himself. Did he really want to throw himself into the emotional uncertainties of a relationship now that he was getting his life into a semblance of what he considered order?
At the very least, Greg knew that he needed to talk to Rilie; the sooner the better too. Rilie was, Greg had discovered in the past months, a touchy, prideful person when her personal reputation was put at stake, it didn't matter if it was study or personally related, he just knew that she hated looking like a fool and the longer the situation was left unaddressed the worse it became. The irony of it all was that that the standards Rilie interpreted as foolish for herself were several orders of magnitude more stringent that for everyone else, which perhaps, thought Greg, was why she tolerated him.
Taking a fortifying sip of his coffee, Greg first found and then began to search the telephone directory for Rilie's number. Knowing that she lived on the other side of town made the process of winnowing the correct Andrews' out of the list a bit less troublesome but the end result listed five people named R. Andrews that may or may not have been Rilie.
Several calls later and Greg was no closer to finding his target although he had talked to a garrulous Italian Pizzeria owner and a very nice lady who charged by the minute, neither of whom was, or knew of, a Rilie Andrews, although the nice lady said she'd try. It was with the fourth number on his list that Greg was successful with what seemed an interminable period of ringing finally halted by a blunt 'What?' as the phone was answered.
"Rilie?"
"Maybe, who is this?"
"It's Greg."
"Greg?…...Oh Shit!!, Greg…..hi" Greg could almost hear Rilie cringe audibly when she figured out who it was.
"Hi Rilie, I……er…..got your message last night, and I…..um, wanted to talk to you."
"Oh."
In that single syllable, doubt, anticipation and a hint of vulnerability were shouted from the rooftops. Above all, however, was a sense of dread, a fear that having made herself vulnerable she now had to accept whatever consequences may come.
"Don't sound so worried, I'm not upset. Surprised, but not angry or anything, at first I thought it was a joke…..until you started crying that is; then I just felt bad."
"You just had to remind me that I was crying didn't you? It's like it's not bad enough that I call you completely off my head, but then I burst into tears. I swear I'm never going to touch a drop of alcohol again as long as I live."
"So you didn't really mean it then…..that you are interested….."
"No…..I mean yes…..I mean…..um…..that I do…..er…..like you but I…...um…..wasn't quite prepared to announce it quite like….." Rilie's voice trailed of uncomfortably "…..That."
The sound of Greg sweating nervously was clearly audible, his increasingly rapid, shallow breathing telling Rilie that she wasn't the only one right on the edge of bolting like a startled deer.
"I'm interested too…..not that I want to pressure you or anything, but I would like to possibly discuss it a bit…...if that's what you want too."
Greg was fast losing patience with himself; he hadn't been this pathetic since he was fourteen and trying to hide his Playboy collection from his first girlfriend. For her part, Rilie wasn't feeling any more confident.
"Well, how does coffee sound?" This, in stereo, as both parties reached a similar conclusion as to how to best discuss things – although on reflection, coffee may not have been the wisest choice of beverage considering how on edge both parties were likely to be: yet the truly desperate will grasp at any straw that may grant them the chance at redemption.
After viciously suppressing the desire to do a victory dance around the kitchen, Greg remembered to ask Rilie when and where.
"When and where what?" – It sounded like Rilie had been doing a little celebrating of her own as she sounded slightly winded.
"Coffee."
"Oh yes, coffee. Tomorrow morning? Usual time? Anyways, at least before your class with Mueller, you're worse than useless after that."
"Gee thanks."
"Well it's true; the war-frenzy of the Philistines has nothing on you after that class. Short of electro-shock therapy I can't think what Mueller must do to you to put you in that sort of mood and I sure as hell am not drinking coffee with you as some sort of penance."
Caught somewhere between laughter and embarrassment, Greg agreed, "Before class it is, and Rilie, please try and wake up more than ten minutes before we meet, I don't want to spend the first twenty minutes trying to return you to state vaguely resembling consciousness."
"Hey! I'm not that bad!"
"Of course you're not."
"Sarcastic much?"
"Who me?"
"No, my Aunt Martha."
"You calling me Martha?"
"Bye Greg."
"Alright, later."
Cradling the receiver in his hand as the line went dead, Greg was caught between euphoria and terror, and it was only the judiciously applied claws of Benzene that brought him back to reality before his coffee got cold.
There is a subtle majesty about even the humblest church.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, it has been eighteen months since my last confession."
It may be the beauty of stained glass or the respectful silence.
"Speak my son, what brings you to the house of God?"
Or it may be that God is indeed present.
"I have killed Father. I will kill again."
"Seriously now, why are you here?"
"So I looked and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death. I am Death, Father, and I cannot be stopped. I cannot stop myself for I am bound to the wheel."
"Why son? Why have you killed?"
"Because it is written that I must. 'If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
"Lord have mercy, you are he."
"I am legion, and the voices will not let me go. Father, in this time, in this place I bring you a warning, the bitter harvest is sown, and soon I must reap. This must be and it must not."
"Can you not turn yourself in?"
"They will not let me. Be my voice Father, be my voice."
"I'll pray for you son."
The answer was only silence.