Biohell (4 page)

“Just as long as you don’t do
what you did last year.”

“What was that?” Franco frowned.

“You started a brawl.”

“I did?”

“With seven drunk Justice SIMs.”

“Ahhh.
That
brawl.”

“Franco, a human can’t take on
one
Justice SIM, never mind seven!”

“I was only fuckin’ wit’ them.”

“They have no sense of humour,
Franco.”

“Yeah, I seem to recollect.”

“Pure smashed the place up, they
did.”

“I remember!”

“You should, mate. They used
your
head.”

The Quantum Carnival was a
straight seven day run of parties and street-celebrations, fireworks and dancing
and opulence, where nobody worked and the entire
planet
shut down for an
annual orgiastic cacophony of
pleasure
and
pain
and
fun
and
depravity.
Everybody enjoyed TQC. Everybody joined in. After all, it
would be rude not to.

Franco took another quarter-pint
sip of Greene King, and realised his glass was empty. Jed poured him another.

“Hey up, look what the dog’s
dragged in.”

Franco slow-spun on his bar
stool, only half interested—he was in the mood for a serious drinking session,
and it took a lot to distract him from that. However, the vision that met him
quite literally
poleaxed
him. His jaw dropped. It actually
dropped.

“Wow,” he said.

Jed leant forward over the bar.
He grinned, as he hissed, “Out of your league, buddy. By a billion parsecs.”

Franco nodded aimlessly. Jed was
right.

She was beautiful. Stunning.
Perfection. A creature of gorgeousness carved from a block of gorgeousness.
Petite and modest in stance, yet subtly athletic, Franco watched with a hint of
escaped drool as she closed the door behind her, a precise movement, and her
gaze swept the bar. She had green eyes, he saw that immediately. Long black hair.
A beautifully deep brown complexion. And the most incredibly well-shaped and
well-formed perfectly perfected
bosom
Franco had ever laid eyes upon.
And he’d laid eyes on a few. After all, as Franco always said,
nothing’s
nice as tits.

She walked across the room.

Franco’s eyes followed her, beer
glass touching his lips but no beer entering his mouth. It was too full of
saliva. Brimming, to a point of embarrassing overflow.

And then, the incredible
happened.

The woman, the vision of
loveliness, the human goddess, altered her course of direction, moved
economically to the bar, and hopped up on a stool beside Franco. Franco eyed
her smart carbonised bamboo suit and even smarter briefcase. He smiled
gormlessly, uneasy, as ever around women he wasn’t paying for.

“Hello,” said the beauty.

Franco nearly dropped his beer. “Hullo,”
he managed, then turned and fidgeted with a beer mat.
Shit
screamed his
brain.
She’s here, she came over and moved to the bar and sat next to me and
said bloody hello to me so now so listen be calm boy-o you’ve got to act calm
and not mess this up and just be real cool and show you’re just not some
low-down space-bum dirty no-good burned out ex-squaddie with a love of robot
prostitutes and horseradish... show her you’re a cool and gathered and hip and
sophisticated kind of motherfucker dude. Right dude?

“Right dude,” said Franco,
unintentionally aloud. His jaw flapped like a guppy fish at feeding time.

“Pardon?” said the stunningly
stunning creature, tilting to observe the little ginger squaddie.

“Argh,” said Franco, and spat a
mouthful of beer down her cream silk&satin digitally enhanced blouse.

The woman stared coolly at the
regurgitated beer.

“Sorry,” said Franco, taking a
napkin offered by a skull-grinning Jed and patting frantically at the beer
stain
until hot shit, he realised he was patting all over her bouncing
breasts and oh my God of Gods he
was
actually bloody mauling her tits
and groping her and abusing her in public!

Franco whirled about, face a
platter of crimson shame, and fixed his eyes stoically on the back of the bar.
He ground his teeth. Grunted a deep and disturbing grunt.

The woman plucked the napkin from
Franco’s shaking fingers and continued to pat at her stained blouse; she seemed
unperturbed. “It’s OK,” she said, smiling with neat little teeth. Franco
glanced at her. “Don’t worry about it. Second hand beer?” She laughed like a
tinkle of wind-chimes. “Absolutely
no problem.”

‘“S very kind of you,” mumbled
Franco, staring dejectedly into his murky pint.

“Hey, actually, wait a minute;
you’re Franco... aren’t you? Franco Haggis?”

Adrenalin soared through his
veins. Joy stampeded his mind into slurry. Hope clattered across the dusty
plains of a wooden subconscious. Was this, perhaps, some ex-girlfriend he didn’t
remember come to re-engage his services as an amorous suitor? Or perhaps an
admiring fan, high on the lust of seeing his picture in a newspaper some years
earlier and intent on hunting him down and ravishing his weak and vulnerable
rugged exterior? Or maybe
maybe
she was a long-lost childhood sweetheart
returned to reclaim what was rightfully hers and sweep him away in a flurry of
wealth and fast cars, penthouse suites and skiing with royalty?

“That’s me,” swaggered Franco. “Franco
by name and, um, Franco by...
nature?”
He faltered. That had sounded
better
in his head. Damn that dirty beer!

“My name is Melanie. Mel.”
Melanie held out her hand.

Franco shook it. She had tiny
intricate paintings on each elegant finger nail; entire scenes that wouldn’t
have been out of place in a gallery of fine art.
Class.

Franco beamed, feeling an
incredible urge to nod and drool. “Hi again,” he said, oozing sophistication.
He leant back on the bar, an action he thought
damn it he KNEW
made him
look totally über-
cool
and
available
and goddammit a downright
hunky horny
stud-muffin.
It didn’t help when his elbow connected with a
slice of stray gherkin and his upper torso slid two feet across the bar making
Franco recline like a heroin-chic model on a first-day porn-shoot.

“I’m employed by the Quad-Gal
External Revenue,” Mel said, the smile still on her face but now,
now
Franco
noticed a dark gleam in her eyes and something shrunk and
died
in his
breast as realisation kicked him. “I’m here to talk to you about your tax
returns.”

Franco shuffled upright, still
beaming an optimistic smile as he peeled the gherkin slice from his elbow with
as much panache as he could muster. He muttered through clenched teeth, “But...
I haven’t made any tax returns.”

Melanie reached over, and shook
his hand. “Exactly,” she said.

~ * ~

“You’ll
have to excuse the place. It’s a bit of a dump.”

Franco forged ahead, into his apartment
as Mel negotiated the final staircase (numbering 68 out of 69), red in the face
and wheezing like an asthmatic donkey.

Franco’s eyes cast manically
across the nightmare shit-hole he inhabited. It was, perhaps, worse than a
dump. At least in a dump scavengers took the rotting food. This, however, was
the place he called home.

It had seemed a good idea.

“I’ll need to see your paperwork,”
Mel had said, back at the bar.

“Hey, come back to my place,”
swaggered Franco, ever the optimist. “I have all my documentation in my
wardrobe. I can show it you. All of it. I can. In triplicate.” Only... only
now
his home was one step away from fumigation and Franco hadn’t really thought
through this attempted seduction with clarity.

Ten seconds,
screamed Franco’s brain.
You’ve
ten seconds to clean, tidy, mop, brush, vacuum, and generally turn a sloth-pit
for sloth-slobs into a pristine bachelor pad worthy of any dream-girl’s amorous
lust. Yeah, I can DO THIS!

“Sorry about the lifts,” called
back Franco, and taking a deep breath he dived on in like a blind, confused
lesbian in a fish market. He leapt, scooping a plate of mangled week-old
spaghetti in one hand and three pairs of rigid y-fronts in the other, landed on
an old skateboard with three wheels, careered across the apartment, squeaking,
as one outstretched sandaled foot hooked a crotchless PVC gimp-suit (used, don’t
ask) and the other strained to keep a wobbling half-drunk Franco upright. Three
wheels jarred against the rim of the kitchen portal, Franco frisbeed the
spaghetti mess into the sink, shot-putted the boxers into the overflowing
laundry basket and stuffed the squeaking squealing PVC gimp-suit into the
washing machine. With a stamp he flipped the skateboard into one hairy hand and
whirled, skimming it sideways into the living room where it connected with the
contents of the coffee table and efficiently blitzkrieged the surface of
fifteen fungus-filled coffee cups, a pirated SONY Playstation 1000 Platinum
with half its optic-wiring hanging free, and a pair of plastic devil’s horns,
in red. There was a clatter and crash of smashing cups. The table was clear.
The skateboard landed neatly on three wheels and squeaked into a corner.

Franco put his hands on his hips
and grinned. He nodded to himself in appreciation. “Looking good, looking fine.
Hey hey, they don’t call me Franco ‘Efficient House Husband’ Haggis for
nothing!”

Melanie the tax inspector arrived
at the door. She looked fit to be sick. She was pale and red-faced at the same
time, and her knees wobbled beneath her finely-tailored bamboo-strand suit. It
was only
then
Franco noticed her rather smart briefcase was in fact a
rather smart
SIM-skin
briefcase.
SIM-skin!
Triple-class.

“Sixty-nine floors, and no lift?”
panted Mel, attempting to regain her lungs. “Are you
insane?”

“Keeps me fit.” Franco puffed out
his chest. “I’m a very fit bloke, I am. Not many men get to my age and can do
the things I can do.” His voice dropped to a conspiratory level. “It has been
said in some circles,” he paused, for effect, “that I’m a
sexual athlete.”
He
beamed again, stepping back, as one sandal nudged a vomit-stained cardigan
under a cupboard.

Mel wheezed, leaning against the
wall. “What was that squeaking sound? Like... rubber, or something?”

“Mice.”

“And the crash of crockery?”

“Neighbours. Would you like to
sit down?”

Franco hurried to the sagging,
split, bulbous example of his colourless stain-riddled settee. He grabbed the
three porn mags
(“Inside This Month’s Issue We’ve As Much Praxda Pussy And
Alien Ass As You Can Pan-Handle!”)
and stuffed them down a crevice filled
with old crisp packets. Franco sat down, back erect, hands on his knees like a
naughty schoolboy. Mel stared at him, long and hard, suspicion gleaming in her
eyes, then hobbled to the settee and took a seat at the opposite sagging end.

Franco’s eyes scanned his
apartment in horror. It was the first time he’d ever truly
looked
around.
And he’d never realised he lived in such a
dump.

Mel clicked open her SIM-skin
briefcase. Shuffled through a ream of metal documents. Then looked sideways at
Franco. He beamed amiably at her.

“By my calculations, you owe
rather a lot of money.”

Franco frowned. “But... I’ve been
off the grid for a
long time
now.”