* * *
“His name is Livingston Chance and he is—or was—the Captain of the Imperial Magistrate vessel, the Henry Tudor.” Yegor followed Nikolay’s gaze into the room below and continued his introduction. “The Henry Tudor was escorting the Magistrate’s flagship, the English Rose on a planetary assault when—”
“Which planet?” Nikolay tightened his gaze and lifted a hand to pinch at his chin inquisitively.
“Earth,” Yegor flipped open a notebook and dashed a few pages aside. “Earth #746387 to be precise.”
“746387,” Nikolay repeated and then, “Never heard of it. What of the red phone?”
Yegor closed the notebook and swallowed hard. His eyes were suddenly tiny behind his spectacles, and he wished he could shrink completely in his proper black suit. When he offered no reply, the All-Union Army officer in charge of the Ministry turned to his comrade.
“It hasn’t rung yet,” Nikolay finished. “The Imperium does not know Livingston Chance is here. On Earth #413054. They don’t know to look for him.”
The Colonel smiled, and the Minister seemed taken aback by the expression.
“Give me those medical reports, I’m going down there.” Nikolay spun on a military precise heel and looked over the documentation.
Though silent and though truly in charge of this Ministry, Yegor was deliberate in following Nikolay’s lead. He followed obediently and nearly crashed into the Colonel when the officer halted abruptly. Something in the reports had piqued Nikolay’s curiosity.
“Have one of the men secure a bottle of Stolichnaya. I think that will be sufficient.”
Yegor blinked at Nikolay then glanced over his right shoulder to the scene still playing out below. Livingston Chance was unfettered and bored. His embryonic-bath stained boots were kicked up on the shale-black and dull gunmetal table separating him from whatever All-Union Army interrogator was down there with him. Flustered, the patriot tried to continue but was met with much resistance.
“Right. You look like a fan of music. Punk maybe,” Chance’s voice was clear over the theatre’s speakers, his tone well received and understood as he seemed to have fun with the interrogator. “I’m a bit of a musician myself. Rancid Wankstain.” Chance thumbed at himself then took a long drag from his cigarette. “That was my band. ’eard of ‘em?”
“Are you sure, Polkovnik?” Yegor clutched the folder and brought it closer to his chest. “I mean… He’s just so… so English.”
Magenta the Magician
“Dub-Step Nightmare”
by Ed Ainsworth
“Sick baseline, boi,” Brandon said.
The sixteen-year-old thug crouched down next to the leader of their little group. He smiled through gold plated teeth and grabbed the boy around the neck, pulling his hoodie towards him for a hug.
“Dat ain’t da only fing though, is it?” he said. Brandon smiled and dumped a soaking wet bag on the concrete of the vacant basement floor.
“I got it, though,” the kid said.
He emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor. Lumps of gristle and little white chunks of flesh dribbled out, scattering themselves in a loose circle.
“What you even doin’?” Brandon asked.
The older man threw him a glance from over his shoulder and flicked on the rack of spotlights behind him. Brandon covered his eyes and then blinked a few times to get his bearings.
“You axing me? The fing I’m doin’ now, yeah? This fing you don’t get ‘cause you’re so dumb-fuck?”
The old man pushed the kid away, kneeling down on the floor and dipping his fingers into the puddle of blood and gore.
“I don’t gotta explain this to you. It’s old shit, you don’t get old shit. You little bumblefucks don’t even understand rewind, so how you gonna understand this?’
“Fuck dat noise, Man. I’m your boi. You the Man, you tell us.”
Man looked up at his young ward and said nothing. He continued to re-organise the little lumps in front of him, scraping them against the floor. White, chalky outlines scored themselves over the surface.
“I do this fing with magic, right? Dad taught me it when he was on the take. You get these things, they from people’s heads. They’re called Pineal Glands, right? They’re all chalky and shit, and they’re part of this magic fing called Chakras. These things control your sleep.”
The man lifted up one of the off-white pieces of blood-caked, rubbery flesh.
“We gonna make a little sleepy magic, yeah? Gonna make everyone above us go sleep, so we can go in as we like and go on the take ourselves.”
The man continued to draw on the ground, scraping a circle with two crudely drawn leaves branching from it. The white mixed with blood and the dimming light from the rack of lamps behind him, melted into a purplish-pink.
“What da fuck’s goin’ on in here?” Brandon asked. Snow whipped against his back, piling against the grooves in his Hollister shirt, while heat baked the front of his body. Each arm suffered from hot, dry air, autumnal air, and the cool, damp breeze of spring. “I don’t like your shitty vodu magic, man!”
“It’s not vodu! It’s Hindu! ‘Dis what I mean.”
“Whatevs. I don’t like this shit. Let’s just get outta here and do this...”
The kid stopped, as his phone started vibrating in his hand.
“I got bitches to see tonight, you know?”
Rubbing his fingers over the front of the phone, he checked the text.
“This is probably one of them now, axing me for my God Sperm, yeah? Don’t know the number.”
He hits the floor hard, spilling the contents of the blood vessels in his nose. They pooled around his gasping carp face.
“What the fuck?” Man yells. The phone clattered next to him, and he offered it a quick glance. It was an Instagram image showing a slender hand displaying what he recognised as one of the Buddhist Mudra.
The clicking of heels signified her arrival. The gang-plug that fed the lamps sputtered out, leaving Man crouched in silence with only the glow of the Pineal Gland symbol carved into the floor.
The woman in the darkness seemed to float towards him, black-light magenta tattoos glowing against the xenon powered phone screen. They spiralled over her thin body, poking through in spines and weaves where her clothing didn’t cover.
Man was totally and utterly mesmerised by the woman before him.
She was gorgeous; everything the modern world could ever consider beautiful. Clear complexion, thin well-proportioned body, back length hair, managed into a quiff and dyed with rainbow tips, vibrant in the black-light. They flickered like neon-fire. Her clothes hugged her body, and she screamed fashion with every step.
“This is… I don’t even know what it is. It’s gross, is what it is. You need to be left somewhere,” she said, “somewhere you can, like, I don’t know. Something appropriately judgemental. Like a council estate.”
“What…?”
“Yeah, I know right? Total cost.” She paused to fix her immaculate hair. “I have a friend who lives upstairs, yeah? Really nice apartment. She just got new carpets and everything. You really picked the wrong building to try and do this near.”
She pulled open her bag and removed an eyeliner, some lip gloss, and her phone.
“Dis fing I am doing, it’s—”
“Excuse me,” she said. She held up her hand to stop him. “No.”
“No? Woman, you can’t come here and dis me like—”
“Ah, ah. No. Don’t talk like that,” she replaced the lip gloss and eyeliner in her Magenta clutch bag. “Now. Your… friend? Lover?”
“I ain’t no nonce!”
“Yeah. Yet. Your little boy thingy,” she made a vague wave at the child fitting on the floor. “This? He shouldn’t be involved in what you’re doing, you got that right at least. He doesn’t understand old.”
“Suppose you do, do you?” Man asked. He puffed his chest out. “Where I come from, Women
don’t get to do magic, they don’t get to talk to Men, neither. So, you better—”
“Oh, hush up. Where you come from is Hampstead, you little rich boy tit. Your dad never did magic, you read some articles on Wikipedia and thought you were some kind of Aleister Crowley enthusiast.”
Man stood in stunned silence.
“What?” His accent was markedly different now; posh tones leaking through from a privileged upbringing. She could almost see the silver on his tongue.
“How do you know that? Who are you?” Man asked.
“You might have heard of me,” she said. Her smirk barely masked by the darkness and day glow purple lipstick. “I’m Magenta.”
“Oh, fucksticks.”
“Honestly, you think you’re some kind of magic man but you little hipster wizards think it’s all Harry Potter and wands and bits of people’s heads. It really isn’t at all. It’s information.”
She clicked her thumb fingernail against the front of her phone.
“We’re dipped in Wi-Fi all the time, you fucking moron. It isn’t hard to use my phone to check your identity and search history.”
“Yeah, so what? I might not be a magician properly but…” Man stood forwards, balling his fists. Magenta sighed.
“You understand why I do what I do right?” she asked. She looked down at the ground and flicked open her purse.
“I don’t really care,” Man said. “All I know is…you’re a girl and I’m a fully grown man.”
“Yes, yes, but you’re not really answering my question.”
Man charged towards Magenta, who simply stepped to the side. Her heels clicked against the floor, while her attacker stumbled in the gore, landing face first on the ground.
“So often in society, at least our society, everything is surface level. You ever seen a film from Hollywood where objectification of male and female cast members isn’t the primary selling point? Ohh, Jennifer Angelina has her breasts out in that one scene where she comes out of the ocean. BLAH.”
She turned on her heel and threw her clutch bag at her attacker’s head. It bounced off, knocking his face back down into the gore.
“You’ve heard it all before. Strong female figure who talks like a man. Strong female figure who hates men. Strong female figure who dislikes the way society treats women, is super successful despite being a woman and repressed.”
Magenta knelt down on the small of his back and dug her heels into the back of his knees.
“Get off me!” Man yelled.
“I’m explaining here. GOD, nobody respects exposition anymore,” Magenta said. She adjusted her hair again, checking the spiralling tattoos that crawled up her arm in the darkness. They seemed to blossom just before they reached the edges of her short, spangled dress.
“I like being looked after, looking pretty and being stared at by men. I like that because, well, society tells me I should.
“I like it because I have really extreme insecurities about being based in a primarily Caucasian area and being of a half-Asian origin. Why it’s the Indian subcontinent, thanks for asking.”
She dug her heels in a little deeper, leaving Man crying softly into the blood. Little bubbles formed where his gasping mouth gaped at the pool.
“Madge?”
A voice came from the darkness. She sat bolt upright, lifting herself off Man. Her tattoos immediately died down into darkness, as a torch light passed over Man’s body.
“Who the fuck’re you?” Jacob asked.
“Jac? Oh, hey! Thank god you’re here! This guy, he totally, he just dropped all this gross stuff.” She thumbed over her shoulder and stumbled a little for effect “Took my bag as well!”
“Fuckin’…” Jacob kicked Man in the side and picked up Magneta’s bag. He passed it to her and put a hand on her shoulder.
“You all right? This fucker hurt you?”
“No, I’m really, very okay. Yeah? I’m okay. Is there still a party on? I think I… I might need a drink now.”
Jacob nodded and put his foot on Man’s back, keeping him in the gore.
“You go up to Faye’s flat. I’ll make sure that I call the cops and get this rapist fuck arrested for this… whatever the hell this is…”
“He’s got a kid down here with him too,” she said. “He’s all drugged out and weird on the floor. This guy, he said he was going to do magic on me, and he’d done magic with him. Do you think that, you know, magic is…” she lowered her voice, “Magic is sex?”
“Fucksakes! Dirty prick!” Jac kicked the Man again, this time in the groin. “Piece of shit nonce! Go and tell Terry and Greg to come down. We need to keep this shit from going anywhere.”
“Okay!” she said. She clopped towards the exit, falling a little to drag her heel through the circle with wings. “Sorry to ruin your party, Jac.”
“Didn’t ruin it, Madge, just people like this ruin it all. I should be writing instead of dealing with this shit…”
Magenta pushed the door to the basement open, greeting the cool, night air of London. Her tattoos glowed brightly for a moment before she turned and stumbled into the foyer of the block of flats next to her.