Night on a Bare Conurbation, Chapter Four

Petunia, and Plunder Dacks, were backstage at the club each pre-programming one of the former’s somewhat clapped-out vocalist and dancer androids.

“Load song number six,” she commanded.

And Dacks screamed: “Yoopy yoo!”

“Yes, they find it quite difficult and may explode,” Petunia acknowledged. “But Whispering Your Love feels like the one, snigglybobbles. Like it did the other night.”

“Then Petunia, we’ll just have to hope we make it out in one piece,” commented Dacks, while obediently doing as he was told.

“If we do, then tomorrow we’ll go to the galactimarket for some seasonal essentials,” she promised. “And they are essential, which is why people call them that.”

Suddenly all was commotion as three Mini-Flash boys burst in. “You’ve got to get away!” cried Flashslip to the startled ones. “It’s Schiss-Zazz – he’s coming!”

“Schiss-Zazz is here?” breathed Petunia, ashen. She’d been so busy preparing for her show that she hadn’t caught any of the emergency bulletins, but if she had she’d have been halfway home to Bominabus to barricade herself in her bedroom.

As for Petunia’s question, this the ceiling answered by caving in.

Schiss-Zazz had been biding his time on the roof, but with his cover blown he took immediate steps. Now amid a hail of skylight and window-frame the fearsome-fleshed entirety of him was in the dressing-room, wrist-shears singing open and shut as he sighted his peachy prey.

The airspace surrounding Schiss-Zazz’s head began to populate with little bobbing satin love-hearts edged in knicker-elastic lace. He pricked one and it popped like a bubble, scattering the scene with scent. In short order Schiss-Zazz savaged the rest of the cloud, but by the time he was done, a desperate quintet was already scarpering down the corridor.

Petunia’s perfume-projection power might have been modest, but it had bought the boys the precious seconds they needed to unfreeze.

She also knew where was a ventilation-shaft sufficiently wide to admit them in single-file, but not so Schiss-Zazz. Reaching it first Flashslip threw back the grille and clambered inside on all fours. Next was Flashsatsumas, who with a little difficulty managed to squeeze his numerous pneumatobladders in after his friend. Dacks’s rubber pants caused comparable problems, and Petunia so struggled that Flashbee began to fear she’d based this escape-plan on their figures rather than hers. All the same, under these circumstances he still felt he’d better go last. As soon as everyone else was finally through, Flashbee followed suit, so speedily he almost bumped his nose on Petunia’s Four Heroes emblem.

So far so good. Unfortunately though, it was a failing of this galaxy and so many others that ventilation-shafts were seldom built to bear the weight of five fleeing youngsters.

Palms and knees pressing all at once on nothing, shouts and gasps, and parachuting inside-out skirts and underskirts were the sum of the next few seconds. Then however were soft landings as an abrupt course-change ended on seat-cushions. These were part of the club’s private theatre, which wasn’t in use tonight. For the company it seemed an apt venue indeed, since everyone had a sneaking suspicion this might be curtains.

Flashbee had alighted upside-down and right in front of Petunia, after all that. Correcting himself he called out: “Where’s Flashslip?”

That one was wont to involuntarily de-synch during moments of panic. On Flashbee’s cue, every last little bit of him dropped in from above.

Flashsatsumas made up his mind. He knelt upright on his cinema-seat and tossed back his purple hair.

“Someone, quick,” announced the Mini-Flash tremulously. “Help me out of my containment-suit.”

“Does absolutely everyone around here have to get naked?” Petunia cried.

“Without the suit to restrict me I can overcome Schiss-Zazz with one giant unchecked blast,” Flashsatsumas explained. “It’s him or us, and I’m the only one able to stop him for good.”

“Flashsatsumas, no!” yelled Flashbee. “You know your body can’t handle it!”

“We don’t have any choice,” was all Flashsatsumas would say.

“You’d do that for me?” breathed Petunia. “Even though you’re Alliance?”

“For you,” Flashsatsumas told her shyly, “or for anyone. We Mini-Flashes don’t have to join Joe to do the right thing. The Flash Club’s been doing the right thing for centuries.”

Dacks scrambled over rows of seat-backs so he was behind him. “How do I work these clasps?” he asked.

“Move the slidey things,” instructed Flashsatsumas.

Several seconds elapsed in struggle. “I am moving them,” Dacks protested.

“Then you can’t be moving them right!” Flashsatsumas exclaimed.

“Let me!” Flashslip put in.

“I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself!” flung Dacks, in tones that suggested the fall had lodged his rubber pants in an irretrievable predicament.

By now Petunia and the other two Mini-Flashes had made their hurried way over. Sometimes taking it in turns and sometimes striving together they knocked and manhandled and wrenched the fasteners and shook poor Flashsatsumas until his teeth rattled in his head, but all to no avail.

“Those look to me like the sort of clasps that can’t be undone,” said Petunia knowledgeably.

The double-doors to the rear of the auditorium, on the other hand, flew apart with a crash. Schiss-Zazz had enjoyed his hunt. Now it was time to pick up where he’d left off on Nereynis.

Yet at the opposite end of the hall, a spotlight was starting to illumine onstage.

That at any rate was the first thought of girl, boy and Mini-Flash alike when they turned their heads in the direction Schiss-Zazz’s gaze was suddenly trained. The lamps however were dull. This resplendence was the homely heat of a lit electric oven through smoky glass, and it radiated from another girl who before the eyes of all and sundry was rising on the boards. Nor was that all that exuded from her. The groundlings, though for some reason they hardly dared breathe, caught their breath regardless as the girl’s silhouette firmed from warm swirling slubber to baked-in moistness and bounce. Maybe it had something to do with the deep glossy chocolate of her hair, pulled up in top to make two little bunches tied with red elastic bands, but so much richer and creamier was the theatre for her that its occupants went weak.

Those same galactic natives had never looked on the like. An Earthling would have been in familiar territory, with the pink-lacquered lips, curly black eyelashes, red-striped tie and short blazer tucked tight about full hips and the roundness of a white blouse. The skirt that cinched this last, though its waistband bore an esoteric embroidered badge, was the one detail six stupefied spectators had at least seen before. Square pleats were a feature of many Mini-Flash tunics, odd as it was to see this on a girl. Stockings however were new, and nobody could fathom out what thin glimmery somethings encased the undulating circumferences of calf and thigh.

“Pay heed, you the one named Schiss-Zazz,” this strange incongruous Earth-schoolgirl said. “Overshadow innocents and find in me the evaporation of your cumulus.”

Schiss-Zazz made for her as one running on air, bare feet barely touching the headrests he traversed, bent on the bosom between whose blouse-swells he meant to bury his blades. But as he reached the front row and launched himself in a last gigantic bound, broaching the proscenium high above, his target moved too. Daintily she skipped the footlights and hopped down into the pit, so she and Schiss-Zazz passed each other on the vertical plane.

Petunia and her boyfriends had the best seats in the house, and as the other girl dropped she twirled in mid-air to put her back to them, skirt-pleats fanning.

If any of the five had thought tonight they’d seen it all, they were wrong.

Now they’d seen it all.

For apparently those glimmering things on her legs went all the way up to her middle, and they were all she wore.

No-one from that galaxy would have believed in those twin taut little hemispheres tucked into shining sheer, unless they’d seen them with their own eyes.

For if it was possible to not wear pants, who knew what forces they were dealing with?

So the counterparts came to rest, Schiss-Zazz at centre-stage in a kneel with outstretched clippers piercing ether, while the schoolgirl faced him from below.

She raised her open palm, and for Schiss-Zazz the universe turned white.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR