Flonkerton

I

He was laughing. He was fucking laughing when he squeezed the trigger that sent the bullet whizzing into my shoulderblade. I fell to the floor in the workshop and I could smell my own blood seeping over the grease stained floor, conjuring something entirely more pungent than the sum of the parts. I could hear my former boss walk towards the warehouse door, and I heard him slide the massive corrugated iron door open a crack. And I heard him drag it shut behind him. And the gentle click of the padlock snapping shut. And then I remembered that it was a Friday night. The factory is closed over the weekend, and in three nights I'd probably be dead. Shortly after the boss left I blacked out from the bloody, greasy fumes. This is a story of revenge.

II

When I came to I was not, as I expected, sprawled still over the factory floor, soaked in my own fermenting blood. And I was not, as I had hoped, dead. When I came to, my head was pounding and swimming and churning violently and I could still smell the terrible fumes wafting through the air around me. I tried to cradle my head in my hands, but as I yanked them from my sides I felt the leather straps pull tight. And I felt a strap around my neck too. And around my waist and feet. From what I could notice, I was fastened face-down onto an old iron table with many acid-burns rusted to its surface. I could feel a slow burning rash itching across my stomach and crotch, and I could only grind my teeth so hard and groan and pretend that the pain didn't exist.

And then I jolted at the sound of a loud hacking cough.
"Well shit," the voice said, "none of us expected you to wake up, you were gone so long".
I noticed that his voice didn't sound like my boss's at all. This didn't comfort me one bit. I tried to breathe slowly and breathe deeply. The last thing I wanted to do here was crumble to pieces. So I focused on breathing. And each time I took in a lungful of toxic air my rash rubbed harder against the table and it spread wider and it burned stronger and it yelled for me to respond with agonising screams. And I clenched my teeth and breathed. In. Out. In. Out. And the man was still there, standing silently across the room.
I decided to say something. It was better than knowing he was there waiting for me to break. "Do you... work for... the boss?" I said, timing my words with my breaths.
"What?" he said, taking several paces towards me.
"I said..." I paused, and gasped as I could feel a warm, wet puddle slapping against my heaving stomach, and the pain intensified as I could visualise my own red-raw underbelly writhing and dripping in its own blood. I clenched my teeth harder and groaned. "I said... do you... work for... the boss?"

He cracked a hacking cough into a rusty laugh and took a few more steps closer. I wasn't sure how to interpret the laugh, so I just spat onto the floor. And then he slammed a meaty fist upon my back, which sent a coiling pain piercing through my spine and down over my rash. I screamed and I writhed, but he remained the pressure on my back. And I cried and I could feel the rusted jagged barbs infinitely small cutting, sinking into my skin. And then I heard a loud mechanical whine ringing round the room and the smell of diesel and grease so thick in the air it made me want to puke.

The sound ceased as the stranger redoubled the weight upon my back. Pinned to the table, I could be rid of these leather straps and still be utterly useless. I felt a cold metal cylinder slide smoothly into a point in my upper back. The bullet-hole. The cold spiral rod of a stainless steel drill bit. The hand upon my back was nothing. It was less than nothing; it was a million times further from this room than the sun. The drill, however; it was right inside my brain. It was under my skin, it was anything and everything around me. It slid into my bullet wound like they were made for each other. Fuck. I spat on the floor. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Drills drill things. And I spat again, I felt like I was sweating from the mouth, I felt like I was inhaling many lifetimes of air in each and every breath. I felt like dying, yet I felt so alive, so aware. I couldn't move. I couldn't swallow. I spat on the floor. Drills drill things, and it wound itself around and around and I could feel it reverberating through my whole body and I could feel it digging, digging, deeper, deeper, and the blood welled up in the neat hole and small flakes of my flesh worked their way up the spiral and I couldn't put it from my mind. No amount of clenched teeth or groans or screams could lessen the agony. And my stomach sent its contents streaming up my throat, warm digestive acids burned inside my neck before hitting the floor. When the drill broke through my skin just below my collar bone, that's when I passed out for a second time.

III

When I came to, well, the first thing that I realised was that I was not dead. Again. Fucked my plans up. Then I thought that I was not in the same room that I was when I passed out. But that thought was just an initial reaction. I was facing up now, and I could feel the familiar rust and acid worn iron of the table from earlier. I was facing up; that was probably what threw me off balance. I leaned up and looked around the room. I was no longer tied down. No windows, one door. A few cupboards and shelves. One feeble light. I focussed my energies on the door. I stood up and walked towards it. The door was probably locked. Or I could meet my death on the other side, which I have expressed prior to this as not a negative outcome at all. Or I could find some answers. I would even have some answers if the door was locked. Like I'd know that I was trapped. And that I was a prisoner. And that I would probably die in here. But the door wasn't locked. I walked up to it and grabbed the handle in my palm and pushed. It buckled and bent, and with some bumping and shoving, the jammed door busted out into a hallway. Okay, it might have been locked, but it wasn't now.

I walked out of the room and down the hallway, checking the doors that I passed by as I passed by. Locked, locked, locked, locked. I didn't dare test my luck on a busted door here because I didn't want to tempt death over my newly acquired freedom. Locked, locked, locked. My head was pulsing slightly with a slowly ebbing migraine. The light burned my eyes after those hours of deep dark sleep. My arms and legs felt lead-heavy and my chest felt so stiff from resting on the table so long. Locked. I rubbed my fingers along my chest to feel how bad the rash and cuts were but I was numb and it felt like there was a thick wall of metal or meta-plastic keeping me from feeling anything at all. Unlocked, this one door stood ajar. I tentatively pushed it into the room, which I gathered to be some sort of kitchen/laboratory. On the back of the door were hung a few white coats. I grabbed one and slid it over myself, and buttoned it up mostly around my waist. I walked further into the room, tables and chairs and benches and bottles and jars and liquids and metals and acrid smelling fuels were splayed about the room. I picked up one bottle, a black sludge compound, and that's when I heard a scream ring out from elsewhere in the building.

I paused, bottle in hand, ears tuning to the motion and sounds from outside the room. Footsteps, footsteps, footsteps. I dropped the bottle, which smashed upon the floor, and I made for the nearest door. Get out of the room and away from the hallway. But don't stop listening. I opened the door which exposed a small storage cupboard. With the footsteps drawing closer closer I didn't hesitate to throw myself in there and slide shut the door behind me. I rested on the shelving and saw myself in the reflective surface of the closed door. And I think I am going to be sick.

IV

It could have been the smell of formaldehyde, combined with the small, unventilated space, but I'm quite sure it was the image that evoked the emotional response. That was not me. The sunken cheeks and pasty skin, the glass goggles strapped to my head with black leather, glasses that I'd never worn before. My neck was braced by a series of interconnected brass plate-rings, like an exoskeleton or an armour or a robot machine. I remembered my shoulder and belly and I unbuttoned my coat. More- larger- plates had been strapped to my chest, back and stomach. From what I could see and feel, I had been wrapped mostly in iron plates, with the exception of a brass plug at my collar and a small brass door in my chest. At the sound of the footsteps growing closer, I could only assume whomever was out there had heard the bottle smash. But that was only a distant buzzing in my mind.

As I came confronted with this twisted, inhuman creature before my eyes I staggered back hard against the shelf. The corners would have undoubtedly dug themselves into my ribs but now I was not so sure I had any. I stepped back onto some glass bottles, but instead of the white hot agony of a sliced foot, there was just the grainy crunch of glass underneath a lump of lead.

The formaldehyde, I could smell it off the walls, off the door, ceiling and shelves, writhing its way into my nostrils and settling within a deep discomfort. With the breaking of the glass came an intensifying of the smell. Burning, churning, my head began turning, the migraine resurged and I began to spin with an induced motion sickness. Lurch, heave. Nothing. Throat dry like a rusted skeleton of a ship in the Sahara. God only knows how it could have got there. And God only knows how I came to be here, wherever here was. The lights went out.

The lights went out and for a moment the intense blackness consumed me. The footsteps had stopped and I heard something within the room. An ever so gentle tick, tick, tick of I don't know what. And then a light flared up and I could see two glassy blue irises in the reflection of the door, and my eyes seemed to illuminate of their own accord. And the ticking grew louder and I felt a soft hammering in my chest and I raised a finger (of which my hand was covered over with a leather glove) and gently prised at the little latch on the brass plate on my chest. I got another finger underneath the plate and I was able to pry it open on its spring-held hinges. And there, much like a clock, was a maze of cogs and hammers keeping rhythm to a small motor-engine, which pumped dozens of artery and vein tubes which sent oil coursing throughout my body. Throughout my shell.

Frozen from the shock of what I had become, frozen from the stringy flesh that hung inside me like some useless decoration, to grow dusted and old. Frozen emotionless, my face was just a mask preserved for old time's sake. Formaldehyde, the smell never left me. Formaldehyde and ethanol, amongst other things. A lifetime of stench to keep my face from rotting. Frozen from fear of revulsion, frozen stiff as my face. The door was opened, but not by me.

V

"Why can't you just stay in the one fucking place?" he said.
I recognised the voice as the drill guy.
"What have you done to me?" I asked.
He held out a hand to pull me from the cupboard and back out into the lab.
"What have you done to me?" I repeated.
He turned and walked towards the hallway. I followed. And then I saw his other hand. Or what was meant to be his other hand, except it was lopped off at the wrist, and had since been replaced with a cordless drill mechanism, which I assumed was connected to his nervous system.
"What have you done to me?" I asked again, as I followed close behind.
He paused, then glanced back at me as if telling me not to press the question further. His drill revolved briefly with a low whine, as a warning. I refrained from asking again.

He walked out into the hallway and then further down, away from the room in which I awoke.
"At least talk to me" I said.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"Who are you?" I asked "and where are we going?"
"The less you know, the better, kiddo. You can remember me as the guy who gave you your life back."
He led me into some sort of control room filled with levers and knobs and wheels and buttons. There were numerous control panels spread across the room, and along the walls, as well as a few small mechanic controls on the lowered ceiling. He sat me down in a chair in the centre of the room, and swung the chair facing around towards the windows that stretched across the width of the room, all wide and tall as the control panels would allow. The windows looked out upon the city, at a distance, and I could see through a thinly veiled cloud-mist the acrid black smoke wafting from the factories and sweatshops and polluting out into the air.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"We're flying" he responded. "We're inside the Nocturne VII airship, circling the city."
And indeed, he was correct, as I noticed we were moving around over the city. I leaned forward slightly, to enhance my view, but my head began to spin and I was overwhelmed by this simple fear of heights.

"How long have we been up here?" I asked nervously.
"This is the thirteenth day." He said. "We rescued you from the factory on the Friday night after the cat man left."
"Thirteen days... the cat man... what are you on about?"
He laughed wryly. "So you haven't heard about the corruption of the Magna Carta?"
"Last I heard was that you couldn't trust anybody any more. I heard that some strange evils were about. And I found myself in the boss's office waiting for him to finish his meetings. I wanted to talk about working conditions. I was waiting quite a while, and when he came in, he just watched me all quiet like. He filed away a few papers that were lying on his desk and he asked if I've been sticking my nose in places where it ought not be stuck. And I said "no, sir." And he asked me to stay late, and I said "yes, sir." And then he shot me."
"He's not just a factory manager any more. He organised the suspension of the Magna Carta, and has since corrupted the city of its politics. He's got the whole fuckin' city sliding in his palm. They call him the Cheshire Cat now."

VI

The Magna Carta. In this city, in this world, it is the law. Without it we are lawless. This is a story of revenge. I knew what must be done before the words left his mouth. Kill the Cheshire Cat. Kill the Cheshire Cat and restore lawfulness to the city, restore the Magna Carta to its rightful place in our society. I need not sleep, nor so much as rest until the deed is done. All that is required is the diesel fuel to the reservoir in my shoulder. I sat in the control room as the drill guy told me all I needed to know. And then he flicked a lever which opened a hatch beneath my chair. I found myself upturned and soaring down several thousand metres of cold, polluted air, the city looming ever closer with no signs of slowing.

A heavy sickening crunch. I slammed into the road, hard. My face landed several metres away and I lay twisted and scratched and covered in the cracked and broken asphalt of the road. The words reverberated in my head, the last thing drill guy said before he flicked the lever.
"This, my friend, is to show you that you can not die."
I clicked my wrists the right way around and pushed myself up off the ground. I snapped my kneecaps back into place. I slipped my face back on and pulled the hairline back over my fibreglass skull. One hell of a migraine.

I took one step. Two step. Three steps to shake off the disorientation. And then I saw the people in their homes all peering out their windows at me, some of which were probably on their phones to the police. It didn't take long at all before the sirens were within earshot. I transformed my staggered walk into a fuel-pumping sprint and left with little more than a whiff of burned fuel and scattered asphalt trailing into anywhere.

I made my way back to the factory, my run, run, running making more noise than I'd have liked. Clank, creak, squeak, rattle. So I slowed to a soft jog when I felt I had distanced myself enough. In the quiet of the night it did not take long at all to cross the city to the factory. No moon tonight, that made my going easier, with only the weak gas burning street lamps lighting my path down the roads and streets and avenues. I slipped into the factory through the back, after cutting a hole in the fence between it and the automotive shop. I went in through the fire escape, in through the long hallway that was seldom used. It was darkness and cold grey walls and clammy stale humidity in the air from the cooling of the factory machines in the night time. It was complete quiet and stillness. It was the weak red glow of the lights that ran along the hallway, the phantom power that kicked in after hours. I walked down the hallway hearing little more than the squeak of a wayward mouse outside my own rattling, echoing motions.

VII

I came out of the hallway onto the factory floor and I could smell it across the room. The blood and grease from a few weeks passed. The vile, churning smell that tastes so terrible I have nightmares. The formaldehyde on my face and the diesel pumping through my veins is nothing. A distant irritation compared to the immediate repulsion towards my abhorrent past still festering on the floor. I fell to my knees, the dizzy sickness consuming me. Lurch, heave. Nothing. I gurgled machine lubricant in my mouth and swallowed. And then I heard a soft clicking as that of a lock opening. The dragging of the large corrugated iron door pulled open a sliver. I got to my feet as the door was pulled shut by none other than the Cheshire Cat himself, my old boss, my old friend. He turned around and saw me, unsure of who me was. So he raised his pistol. Probably the same one he shot me with.
And he said "You have no business here. Leave."
And I stepped forward and threw a knife at him. Missed.
"Fuck off back home, asshole" he said, and fired his gun.
It pinged off my chest harmlessly. I laughed and stepped closer still. I was going to scare him shitless, then take off his head. But then he pulled from his jacket a second pistol, which I now know to be loaded with the impact explosive bullets. He fired again, the bullet propelled into the diesel tank behind me. In the mass of flames and smoke I took my eyes off the Cheshire Cat for one moment. And then he was nowhere to be seen.

Rumble. Hiss. Clog, clog, clog, clog, whine. That's the sound of the machines starting up. Next thing I know there's nothing but the flames and crunching metal and the pump pump pumping of machines like a regular freak show. And then I find my arms locked behind my back. I didn't see, nor hear the others arrive, only the wretched grinding and whirring of the machines. The one named Mince with his red-streaked mohawk and vice grip hand-claws held me in my place. The Cheshire Cat's laughter echoed throughout the room. And that's the difference between him and me: fear. I gurgled motor fluids in my mouth and breathed deeply through my nose. In. Out. In. Out. I spat on the floor. The Cheshire Cat clamoured back from the darkness suited up in a three metre tall brass armour machine. He must have acquaintances in the army.

At this sight I wrenched my fists around to loosen them. He's going to kill me. He's going to kill me if I don't run now. I ripped my arms free and pushed mohawk guy to the ground. I stepped on his chest as I made haste distancing myself from the Cheshire Cat. I heard a sickening crunch but I held no notice nor sympathy for him. And then, as I stood on the far side of the factory floor, the Cheshire Cat ambling along quite slowly, his robot's foot came down square upon Mr. Mohawk on the floor. Crushed flat beneath 10 tonnes of hardened steel. And then I felt a bludgeoning fist rammed into my face.

VIII

I stumbled backwards and tripped to the ground, my face skewed and slightly obscuring my vision. The thug-hire of the Cheshire Cat here held me to the floor with his heavy foot. I could barely see how big he was, but he was too weighted to simply throw or writhe free, yet I tried regardless. All the while the slow stomping and loud hissing of the Cheshire Cat's mech-suit trudged closer. Step. Step. Step. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a small grinding saw. Its motor fit neatly in my palm as the blade whirred viciously underhand. The heat and the smell, and the pressure on my cogs and chambers under the beefy foot was overwhelming me. I held the blade to his ankle and cut into the flesh with ease. He groaned and hollered and in my extreme discomfort I heard a gurgling what the fuck, man! and I pushed the grinder deeper. Bone, chop chop chop. What the fuck. Little blades taking away slivers of bone until he was left with a stump. What the fuck, whirring machines, releasing the pressure on my chest. I wore his blood and I threw his foot to the ground and I turned off the grinder and I smiled.

Step. Step. Step. The Cheshire Cat's giant iron claw picked me up with ease. I spat on the floor and took deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. He squeezed. I turned the grinder back on. He squeezed harder. He was laughing. He was fucking laughing and my insides were bending and twisting, and I cut into his machine's wiring upon the wrist, killing his claw. He flung me several meters across the room. Into the fire. I rolled my battered body away from the flames. Step. Step. Step. Slow and heavy, he turned around. I rifled through my pockets, emptying everything on the floor. Grenades, knives, bullets and the sort. Through the formaldehyde and smoke burning acrid fumes, I could smell something else, like a putrid plastic burn and choke. I spat on the floor and clutched the item I feared could explode from the heat of the fire, the gyroscopic bomb, a little wheel machine with a motor on one side and a small explosive on the other. As the cat drew closer I aligned the wheel with the machine. The melted plastic of the outer casing was of little concern to the bomb. I just knelt on the factory floor, willing the wheel to roll fast and straight. Step. Step. Step.

IX

I coughed at more gurgling oil in my throat. I spat on the floor and breathed deeply. Step step step, closer closer closer, one clutching claw longing my neck in its grip. One deadly claw at the guise of the bastard cat. What the fuck, another thug-hire of Mr. Cheshire shot me across the room with a ping ping ping oh so harmless. I pulled the start-cord that roared the gyro-motor to life. I held the motor in my left hand, the explosive in my right. Step. Step. Step. Release. It ran smoothly across the factory floor and skimmed the foot of the mech-suit. No dice. The wheel skivvied off to the side and smacked into an engine machine, close enough to push the machine armour to the floor with the force of the explosion. Singed hair and crumpled suit, the Cheshire Cat pulled himself from the machine and raised his gun. Shoot to kill. And the roaring of the machines and crackling of the fire seemed like a muted nothing in the distance. There was just the tick tick ticking of my inner self and the thump thump thumping of my pumping motor-heart, and the click cocking of the Cheshire Cat's gun so loud and distinct as if he were right in my ear. I could hear my uneven breaths and I could smell the formaldehyde of my face, and I could hear the hammering metals as he pulled the trigger. And again. And again. And again. I spat on the floor and ran. The bullets hit the wall behind me and burst into fire and rubble.

Click. Click click click. I ran at the Cheshire Cat. He with the overconfidence and blinding arrogance. He with the sneering lip and wrinkled brow. He with the empty gun. I spat in his face. And I punched hard in the guts. And with the harmless ping ping pinging of his hired goons on my bulletproof back I wrenched the gun from his hand. And I took the extra bullets from his pockets and I inserted them into the gun, click click click, and I kicked his sorry self to his knees. And I shot him in the fucking face. I left the headless Cheshire Cat to his business and I never set foot in that factory again.

Outside, in the cool night breeze, I breathed deep. In. Out. In. Out. This is a story of revenge. And they thanked me for my deeds, a thanks I needed not nor wanted not. They said "Thank you for your sins, Alice" to which I said no more.