AREA 47

SECTION 89:

COURTNEY, Chapter 61

Miss Cornstalk was irretrievably revved up, sleep a mirage over impossibly distant horizons.  She tossed.  She turned.  She counted Courtys.  She put on the light.  She tried to read herself to sleep: THE LITTLE PRINCE.  But all she could think of was The Little Bitch.  The alarm clock laughed at her: Ha-ha, you have 3 hours to sleep, ha-ha, and then you have to be up at work, ha-ha.  She tried to radio herself to sleep.  But a twist of the dial in search of soothing classical or lulling elevator, brought an accidental knob-stop on KHIT, LA’s Top-40 radio station, in all its 95,000 watt glory, broadcasting the tail end of the dreaded COURTY BABY.

Red shut the radio off permanently, grabbing the singing horror with both hands and throwing her Sidekick prize against the wall.  CRASH!

Months of buried frustration and hidden humiliation came to the surface.  Displaced hostility.  Lucy had tried so urgently to fit in and be like the others.  But she HATED being a Sidekick.  It was AWFUL.  Every degrading minute of it.  Every time a guy looked at her, she knew, She Just Knew that he had seen her naked and stripped down In One Of Those HORRIBLE Poses.  Her father was a policeman back in Iowa, and he wasn’t even speaking to her anymore, ever since all the boys at the station ogled the October Sportsman.  All at once it hit her: she hated everything about her life.  Everything!

Oh, Daddy!  Daddy!

Lucy kicked off her sheets, flailed out of bed; a she-devil in a firestorm.

Take This Job And Shove It Where The Sun Don’t Shine!

Lucy was intolerably angry; she jerked open her big suitcase and started THROWING her clothes inside.  Her anguish was excruciating, and she was on the verge of tears.

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Security Guard Molly had to go to the bathroom.  Molly was waiting in the lounge of the dormitory, with an eye on the hallway to Lauren’s room.  She had already worked her full shift without a single pit stop; this was over-time.  No one else was up and around at this late hour.  Darn it!

She streaked to the ladies room, and in a twinkling she had tinkled.  But the old job security paranoia set in.  What if Courty came while I was going?  Ohmygod.

One fast peak into Lauren’s dorm room.  Had to do it.

Oh, good, the light is on.

Molly knocked twice——a courtesy knock completely lacking in courtesy——she opened the door and stuck in her head.

“Is Courty . . . oh, I guess not.  Sorry.  Just looking for Courty.”

She closed the door, hurriedly!  The redhead had given her such a scorching look of savage anger.

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“Courty, Courty, Courty, Courty, Courty, COURTY!” Lucy snarled, and then cut loose with a blood-thirsty SCREAM.  She was so depraved that she started to go through the motions of tearing her hair out . . . she might have actually yanked out fistfuls, but her hands grabbed the icon lopsidedness, and she remembered that SHE WAS WEARING A COURTY-CUT!!  The thought was a blistering agony.

In a senseless frenzy, Lucy ran to her drawer and pulled out her shears.  She RAN to the big mirror.

Lucy wildly hacked away at her hair.  It was passionately intense pre-human revenge.

“YOU BITCH!” Lucy yelled, her hair falling in clumps around her shoulders.

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Molly shook her head in amazement at the behavior of the whacko redhead in Lauren’s room, and walked back toward the lounge.  Then she stopped walking, and pulled her communicator from her belt.  “Unit 5 to Dispatch.  I found Courty.  She’s in the Sidekick Dorm.”

Two women were approaching her, one of them undeniably the Courty phenomenon.  She looked curiously subdued or stoned, and her hair was a little wet, but every sweet, famous inch of her shouted: Courty.

“We’ve been looking ALL OVER for you, Courty!”

Molly quickly confirmed her report, and gave Courty the message from Byron Reed.

“I just want to get my purse,” Courtney said, quietly.  “I want to go home.  I’ve had enough for one night.”

The girl Courty was with gave Courty a comforting hug of reassurance.

Courty looked at the nametag.  “Molly, could you please stay with me, and take me to Byron Reed?  I don’t want to be alone.  Let me just get my purse.  Lauren, I’m fine.”  Lauren and Courty started to walk to Lauren’s dorm room.

Molly recognized Lauren Chase.

“Tread softly around the girl in there,” Molly warned.  “She’s a little excitable.  Oh, Lauren, we have a message for you too.  Roscoe Hedgecoe called.  He says he’ll call back tomorrow between ten and eleven, California time.”

Lauren stopped.  “What did he say?”

“I don’t know, that’s all I have——”

“But there would have been a message.  He would have said something!”

Courty opened the dorm door, and walked over to retrieve her purse.  She felt fragile, so tentative and weak.  There was the redheaded girl in front of the big mirror near the door, giving herself a haircut with a pair of big sharp scissors.  She whirled around wildly the instant Courty opened the door, with the sharp scissors in her hand, holding them inches from Courtney.  Courtney had to walk close by the girl to get her purse on the far bed, so she said, “Hello.”

Courty stopped walking, since the other girl was blocking her way, actually holding the scissors in a menacing way, inches from her breast, looking at her, wide-eyed and furiously angry about something.

“I just want to get my purse,” Courty said.

In a lightning blaze of temporary insanity, Lucy lunged at her and stabbed Courty near her left shoulder with the wicked scissors!  Straight through her bright pink jacket!

Courty gave a little cry of muted pain and astonishment.  It was an awful feeling: she could actually feel the metal scrape the edge of her top rib.

Lucy yanked the scissors out of Courty, getting set to stab again.  Courty’s right hand automatically shot up to hold the wound, and she said, “You hurt me!”  Her eyes were full of the question: WHY?  She didn’t even think to defend herself.

Lucy was choked with horror.  Her burst of hysteria had blinded her, and now she saw herself with the bloody instrument in her hand.  Dark blood was soaking into Courty’s silk jacket.  WHAT HAD SHE DONE??

“Why?!” Courty asked.

Lucy went into shock; a paralyzing dread of remorse.

She had to use both hands just to drop the scissors.  She tried to say something, to beg for forgiveness, but it was hopeless, she couldn’t even speak.  She was ruined.  She was destroyed.  She dropped onto her knees, and clutched Courty’s thighs.  She burst into tears.  And as soon as the tears came, she was able to force a few words from her mouth.  “I’m sorry.”  It was a squeak, a whispered inhale.  “I’m sorry,” she said again, another desperate inhale, looking up with anguished, fearful eyes, almost straight up to Courty’s face.

“Please . . . forgive me.”  The words came out as tortured whispers.  And then the girl was crying almost silently, holding onto Courty’s legs as if for dear life, pleading with her eyes for forgiveness.

Courty was completely blown away by this, but she sincerely said, “I forgive you.”

“What’s the matter?” Lauren asked, coming into the room.

Courty was holding her wound with her right hand, and had her left hand on the crying girl’s head, trying to comfort her.  “There’s been an accident.  I think I need some First Aid.  I seem to be bleeding.”

Molly, the guard, came in right behind Lauren.  “What’s going on here?”

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The doubling cube was displayed prominently on the compass rose of the Risk board.  The 2 was face-up.  Griff had doubled the wager to $100,000 dollars.  A ludicrous sum to gamble on a game for 10-year-olds.  It was about on the level of drag racing for pink slips.

Doubling etiquette held that Reed had to accept the double or immediately forfeit the game and pay the former stake.  Reed accepted.  Additional doubles could only be made by whoever accepted the previous double; no player could double twice consecutively, so now it was up to Byron Reed to bump the bet up further.

Giles Griffin and Timmy Book got into a heated argument about an illegal transfer of armies, during Griffin’s turn.  Griff was having a particularly hot run on the board, and Timmy wanted to move some armies to better defend himself.  While they were having at it, Reed casually reached over and picked up the attack dice.

He bounced them around in his hands, as if he were antsy for his turn to swing around again, and just needed to have his hands doing something.  Reed had to suppress a smile, noticing that Griff openly displayed nervousness: he almost forgot what he was saying to Timmy; then he continued the argument, but he spoke sharper and louder, and he kept glancing at Reed every few seconds.  The man would never make a poker player.  Peach handled it far cooler.

“Let me have the dice,” Griff said.

Reed said, “You know, this die feels different from the others somehow.  I never noticed it before.”  He weighed the different dice in his hands.  “The edges seem sharper, I don’t know, it feels different.  I don’t like it.  Can we not use this one anymore?  Let’s get a replacement.”

Griff said, “I’m sure it’s the same.  Let me feel it.”

Reed didn’t bother with Ms. Mir; he handed the three attack dice directly to the worthy opponent in jeans: Anne.

“Let me feel it!” Griff repeated, holding his hand out for the dice.

But the brunette felt the dice carefully.  She looked up.  She paused to consider the implications of her reaction.  “He’s right.  This one’s different.”  Anne held up the odd one.

“That’s impossible,” Griff snapped.  His hate-ray eyes tried to barbecue the brunette.  “Let me see it.”

But Reed pulled it quickly out of Anne’s hand, and dropped it into an inside coat pocket of his tuxedo.  “Two of us refuse to use it.  So replace it.”

For a solid second Griff stared at Reed.  “We don’t have a spare!” he shouted.  “Let me examine the die.”

“Sure there’s another one,” Reed said.  “Peach was holding a fourth one earlier.  I saw it.  Are you holding one now?”

Two solid seconds of silence.

Slowly Peach broke into a smile.  “Oh!” she said.  “I forgot I was holding it.”  She sort of laughed, and told Griff: “I should have told you, lover; yeah, I have an extra one.  Here!”

Anne frowned, as if she were suddenly suspicious of what was going on.  But she didn’t say anything.  She gave the two dice in her hand to Griff.

Griff silently gave Reed a hard look.

Reed smiled his shark’s teeth, right back, and turned the doubling cube over to 4.

“Wheeeew!” Peach said, at the skyrocketed stake.

“You guys’re fuckin’ over the edge,” Timmy Book said.  “Two hundr’d fuckin’ thousan’ bucks on this shit-ass game?”

“What’s the matter with everybody?” the blonde space shuttle asked.  “Let’s play.”  She bounced her two-stage rockets.  “I want to see what happens.”

But Griff rattled the normalized dice around in his hands, examined the board, and considered whether he wished to play on for $200,000 dollars, write a check for a hundred thou, or simply disallow the double.  Reed had doubled during Griff’s turn, which was a technical violation.

While Griff paused to think about his position, Reed was also contemplating the overview of things.

Anne owned Australia; her strategy was to just GLOB.  She was quietly invulnerable.  Griff was all over North America and Europe, but he didn’t have total control of either of them; he did, however, have the most territories on the board.  Reed had an iron lock on South America, and near-control of Africa; he kept taking it, and then losing back a piece of it.  Book was just about off the board, just a smattering of forces in North America and Asia (which everyone renamed the USSR).  The platinum blonde would be history as soon as it was Reed’s turn; he had his eyes on her three cards, not her milky way.  The bet, of course, was just between Reed and Giles, and they were approximately even.  As Reed’s ace in the hole, he had the “6-die” in his coat pocket: if the going got rough, he could slip it into the play at the proper moment.

Griff turned the doubling cube over to 8, and rolled the dice.  “Eastern Europe attacks Southern Europe.”

Reed picked up the defender’s dice.  “Shit.”

The blonde ICBM MIRVed: “Griff!  Four hundred thousand dollars!  I’m getting shivers!”  Giles Griffin ignored her, intent on the game.  “Byron.  Look.  Feel!  I’ve got goose bumps on my arms.  Here, feel!  Ooooh, Anne, isn’t this . . . exciting?  Four hundred thousand dollars.  Ooh!”  She swooned against Reed, her eyes as large as satellite dishes; she was in awe of these two MEN, and the MONEY, which she equated with masculinity; and she took a deep whiff of Reed’s male scent . . . she nearly fainted.

Reed set her back on her launch pad, and continued the dice defense, but the little swimmers in his balls were now awake.

Perhaps there was a judicious signal, or perhaps Griff’s servants were all fully trained in the amenities of orgies, but a butler entered and bent down low to convey a message into Byron Reed’s ears.

“Byron Reed?  We have located Courty for you, sir.  At present, she is in the Sportsman Infirmary.  She requests that you come to her at once.  She has been injured, and would like for you to take her home, sir.”

“Injured?  What happened?”  Reed rolled dice again, against another round of Griff’s attack.

“An accident,” the butler said.  “A shoulder wound.”

Shoulder wound?  What the hell?  Reed rolled the dice, defending himself again.  “Well, I kind of have a situation here that I can’t just walk away from.”

The spaced-out blonde reentered the Reed’s atmosphere: she cleaved onto his upper arm with her cleavage, and nuzzled against his neck, her chin on his shoulder, smelling Reed’s manly manliness; his English Leather collar sent her straight to giggle-heaven.

By the barest tilt of his head, the Butler aimed his remark to include the succulent blonde.  “I quite understand, sir.”

“Shit,” Reed said, seeing Egypt fall once again to the Huns, and with it, his control of the African continent.

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The resident MD quite cheerily cleaned out Courty’s wound (with a steel-wool brush, it felt like!), stitched her up, bandaged her up, and poked her with a needle (not in that order).  A tetanus shot.  Courtney refused morphine, but accepted a strong dose of Tylenol with Placebo.

Lauren stayed with her, supportive to the max.  Lucy, the wigged out woman who had stabbed her, was just outside in the waiting room, acting anguished, repentant, and incomprehensible.

Courty had no idea why the woman had stabbed her.  She also could not BELIEVE that Reed refused to come to her.

I’m hurt!  I’m in danger!

The butler who had delivered the message had worn a silent smirk on his face.  Courtney could understand music keeping him from her——music was his mistress——but a Parker Brothers boardgame??

The doctor was a crude male bastard right out of a text from a feminist hate manual.  She’s sitting there on the sanitary paper covering the medical table, with stab wounds in her shoulder, her vagina, her anus, her psyche; with her best friend in the room, listening, keeping her company; and the sexist, chauvinist, unprofessional, gluteus-maximus-brain has to go and grab her left tit, lift it to examine the mole, and say, “Hello, Buffy!”

Coldly, Courty pried his fingers off her tit.  She climbed down off the table.  “I need a clean shirt, or something I can wear.”

“But I’m not finished with you,” the doctor said.

“I’m finished with you,” Courty told him.

Courtney was sure that he gave her the ugliest garment within his power to lend.  A gray, baggy, wrinkled hospital gown.  One size fits everyone except Courty.  It was longer than her miniskirt, and so wide——flapping around like a parachute——she could feel wind drag resistance as she walked.  Heavens, she hoped no one interpreted it as a fashion statement!  Courty knew she would never——in 101 years!——wear the jacket and spandex top again, so she left them behind.

Lauren knew the way to Griff’s private apartment.  She led the way.  “Courty, are you Buffy Buns.”

Courty smiled sadly.  There was no question at all to the question.

COURTNEY, Chapter 62
 

Copyright 2005 Area 47