Uranus

The loud, cacophonous wheeze recalling that of musical pipes being played badly, accompanied by piano strings being scraped and faulty plumbing burbling that emanated from the wall, told me that that Beau was having some difficulty transferring the Dildo to another site. His unintelligible ranting also suggested that things might have been going a little better for us.

“Mainenan wark, damn ye!” he cursed, fighting with the controls and pacing around the table looking like a constipated owl. “Ye glaikit baaay jobby!” he raved while his thin combover waved pathetically.

His head was a purple berry of rage. Where had my charming Beau, the girlish boy, the elfin sex doll gone? This avatar was repulsive! I wanted whoever had done this to him to pay dearly for this disgusting affront to my friend’s beauty. His apparent enchantment had even proved impervious to an intense hour of incessant Ave Marias by Mary over his polished head, though why she had thought it necessary to pray to herself for intercession I could hardly guess. There were no chairs on board, so Mary and I sat on the floor with our backs to the heaving, fleshy wall. I had felt sea sick for hours, but my avatar had been reluctant to let me vomit. I hoped that Mary’s constant prayers for our deliverance would soon be answered. We had all tried tapping ourselves out again. No dice. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever wake up from this seemingly endless dream.

The television had been displaying nothing but shifting, abstract blocks of color. There was a remote control with which Beau had failed to persuade the screen to show anything that made some kind of sense. The zapper skidded across the floor and hit my foot. Suddenly I voided my stomach after all, and saw, amongst the bile in my lap, a ball of the used condoms from the church.

I don’t recall eating those, I mused.

I looked at the screen and saw that, occasionally the blocks would reconfigure themselves into vaguely discernable shapes: a greenish blue sphere in blackness, pale green clouds, a bubble with lights inside. Not much to make sense of, but each time such an image appeared the terrible noise around us and the sickening movement would cease momentarily. Those would then recommence as the images fractured once more.

Mary’s eternally pristine complexion and calm demeanour gave me the only reason to keep my eyes open. With her legs curled under her and her hands folded in her lap I was amazed at her acceptance of this dire situation. She was so beautiful that, despite my grumbling guts, I had an erection just from looking at her. She smiled over at me, reached out and patted my leg. When I looked down, my pants were clean again.

Beau had lifted the phone in the centre of the table and was now yelling bursts of angry gibberish into it, such as, “Whitisgonnae oan?” and, “Gabtaeme, sameain!”

He slammed down the receiver and fought with the controls even more ferociously. I felt sure he would give his avatar a hernia if he maintained this level of rage for much longer.

Suddenly the noise stopped, there was a thump and the force of gravity decided to stop playing yo yo with my tummy. The television now bore a legend: Parking in Uranus costs $90 per user. I summoned my virtual keyboard and entered my account details into the site.

Beau lifted the receiver once more and bellowed, “Ahgart thes softwaur, ye divit!”

Mary stood and very kindly helped me up.

“Ego admiratio qua nos es?” she said brightly, skipping across the floor, her bare feet flashing under the long robes. “Permissum nos adepto sicco quod animadverto!” she exclaimed and opened the door.

We were confronted by a breathtaking panorama, totally unlike anything I had ever seen. The sky was filled with huge clouds of blue and green, sculpted into beautiful shapes of baroque complexity, sweeping across the sky, racing and tearing at each other, streaming shadows over further layers of ice and gas below. A distant sun, far smaller than the one I was used to, would occasionally flash through a gap in the aerial icebergs. In contrast the landscape at ground level was illuminated in pink and red.

Not more pink, I thought, but at least it wasn’t throbbing.

Gossamery aerial contraptions buzzed through the clouds, some descending to settle on floating landing pads and on the tops of tall, slender buildings, others shooting off into the green with fiery tails streaming behind them. There were towers tall and thin, like tendrils or fine filaments, crystalline growths lacing the air high above and linking one building to another. They shone like emerald chandeliers in the light from the distant sun. The ground level was crawling with life of all imaginable kinds, and some unimaginable. Amongst the myriad variations of the humanoid form I saw feathery winged angels, bat winged devils, multi mouthed faces and multi breasted chests. I saw centipedes of the same size and garish hue as Chinese dragons, dragonflies bearing passengers aloft to the highest reaches of the skyscrapers, swarms of huge butterflies that flew over our heads, some mating in flight and displaying their pleasure in the luminescent glow of their rainbow striped wings.

Weaving a treacherous flight path between the insects I was a astonished to see naked trapeze artists, tumbling from swing to swing. They sang as they flew, duetting in baritone and soprano tones, narrowly missing the insects, linking legs or arms to spin together, then flying apart and catching their swings again with remarkable precision. With other acrobats providing a musical accompaniment on electronic drum pads built into their chests and genitals, the couple swung at each other, smacked together, linked their legs tightly and began screwing with frantic abandon. As their tender love duet reached its climax the juices from their lovemaking rained down upon the throng, though many seemed not to notice. Everyone streamed in and out of buildings, all apparently with an assignation of greater importance than the extraordinary sight just a few feet above their heads.

I saw a black, furry, eight legged creature I took to be a giant spider until I noticed its whiskers, pointed ears and oval pupils. She purred as she ambled past, enjoying the many strokes she received from passers by. I decided it wouldn’t do to visit this site whilst in an illegal state of mind, but then remembered I was.

“Jesus,” I said, before immediately apologising to Mary. “Did you make all of this, Beau?”

“Ochaye,” he replied as we all stepped out onto the glowing pink sidewalk.

Still throbbing pinkly the Dildo had now found a place ideally suited to its environment. Phallic objects abounded, lining the street like bare trees. The doors of all the buildings were wide open to display the merry antics within. Smells with aphrodisiac qualities wafted in clouds from open windows, recalling the stimulating odour I had encountered in The Pink Cushion. I felt strongly aroused and wondered where I should start.

Something shrieked as it passed overhead and my mind flashed back briefly to a moment during our troubled journey here. Images of some growling machine sliding across of the floor of the Dildo and a long silver and black snake rearing before me made me jump with the suddenness of their intensity. I remembered the machine sliding over me, leaving my skin cut to shreds and the snake squirting me with its venom that had turned out to be nothing but water. To save my sanity I had dismissed these as mere hallucinations, but now they returned to fill me with unease. Mary squeezed my hand and I smiled back weakly. She kissed me and the restorative effect was enough to make me forget these visions for the moment.

There was a market opposite from where we stood and Mary seemed eager to investigate. She soon found one run by a make up artist who was offering makeovers at a fairly reasonable price. Beau very kindly offered to pay and so Mary spent a few minutes on a couch while the giant crayfish applied her art to Mary’s face and nails. Beau and I spent a while wondering around while I tried and failed to get some sense out of him. When we looked over at Mary again her face was bathed in an angelic golden glow, her eyes appeared wider, her lips fuller, her nose more slender. It had been more than a mere makeover. She looked like she had undergone plastic surgery. With no bruising or plasters her face had been transformed instantly from beautiful to stunning. Her nails were long and each displayed animated picturesque views of beaches, mountains and tropical landscapes. She hugged Beau in thanks, painting his smooth head with several violet kisses. His avatar was incapable of concealing his embarrassment and his face shone a bright red. He was clearly pleased to have made her happy, even if he considered her to be nothing more than software.

He bashfully tried to disengage himself from her and said, “Ah haetaegang somewhaur.”

It seemed he wanted to leave us for a while. At least, that was my assumption from such incoherent noises. Mary pulled him back, tugging his arm, imploring him to stay with us.

“Adveho nobis,” she cajoled.

“Nae!” he protested.

“Commodo.”

“Laeme aloyn!”

He managed to break from her. The ball of his head flashed in the crowd, then was gone.
“Well,” I said to Mary, putting my arm around her waist, “it’s his site after all.”

Mary regarded me for a minute, then kissed my neck. We decided to explore and, holding hands like lovers of long standing, we also allowed ourselves to get lost amongst the thousands of people, some avatars like mine who were there to enjoy themselves, and some presumably just software, there to provide pleasure for the avatars and their users. Despite the mass of people, no one ever bumped into us or stepped in our way. It seemed that the site’s software could anticipate everyone’s movements and adjusted their steps accordingly, though I never felt I was being forced in a direction I did not wish to take.

There was a flash of metal to the far left of my vision. I turned to see, amongst all the bars and sex shops, that one sold gardening tools. Some people, with their backs turned to the street, were examining some forks and hoes. I shivered and urged Mary to quicken her pace.

We soon came to a wall, beyond which one could only see clouds. Looking over the edge I was horrified to see a gaping emptiness below and my poor stomach lurched. We seemed to be floating in the sky with no mountain, tower or any means of support. Thick clouds of jade spiralled into a gaseous whirlpool miles below and my stomach nearly found another opportunity to empty itself into the void, though apart from a small amount remaining of Beau’s cum, it wouldn’t have had much to hurl down there.

As I turned away from the wall I realised Mary no longer held my hand. I saw that she had found an attraction that was clearly to her liking. On the sidewalk was a neon sign saying ‘Sonic Screw: $20 per minute’.

“Step right up, glug!” cried a huge barracuda in a tuxedo, balanced on his tail and leaning against the sign. “Step right up, glug, glug! This Leviticusly Deuteronymous device gives you the best, gargle, orgasm you never had!”

His voice, which was of gravel, sand and filthy water gurgling at the bottom of a very deep well, came from a speaker at the side of his water mask which he wore around his mouth and gills. A tube linked this to the water tanks strapped to his back.

“It lengthens and it strengthens your orgasm to previously unknown lengths and, glug, strengths! It, glug, fucks you furiously in a fish filled feeding frenzy of flatulent, frenzied, frothing, glug, fornication that’ll fry your physical form! How can you, glug, resist the power of surging, glug, sexual, glug, glug, sensual, glug, glug, glug, subterranean, sub aqueous, glug, glug, glug, gurgle, glug, sound?”

Mary’s hopeful look at me was like that of a young girl, so I allowed the site to charge my account for the cost of twenty minutes and watched as she positioned herself on the metal grid in the ground by the sign. I heard a cough and turned to the barracuda which was pointing at my groin. I wondered what he meant until I realised there was a bulge there which I could not account for. It appeared I had loose change in my pocket. I pulled out some coins for the fish. The coins all bore the same image printed on one side, that of a young, aquiline profile and the words, ‘Tyranny, Bank Of Uranus’. The barracuda regarded me patiently with the huge lenses of his eyes.

“Glug!” it demanded.
I fished for some more change and placed the coins in his outstretched fin. This seem to satisfy him and he flicked a switch behind the sign. Mary jumped up and down impatiently for it to begin.

There was a barely audible hum from below which steadily rose and continued rising. Another tone joined it, also rising, then another and another. The first tone reached a piercing pitch, then travelled out of my hearing range. Mary hitched up her skirts slightly and stood firm with her feet apart. As each tone rose slowly there was a continual impression of something rising and rising endlessly, never reaching its ultimate destination. Mary gasped and spread her feet so far apart her fanny was almost touching the grating. From deep below loudspeakers of amazingly subtle sophistication were generating sound waves too complex for the ear to discern, but to which Mary’s body was clearly responding. She laughed, threw her hair back and began to grind her hips in the air. She fell forwards onto her hands, picked herself up and brought her feet slightly nearer each other, allowing her to squat. With her hands on her knees her body twisted and humped the air.

The sound waves had increased in speed and were now whistling and growling in a thrilling, accelerating crescendo that was doing things to me, though I was standing a few feet from the grating. Deep humming throbbed through my feet and piercing electronic voices sang in my ears. Every hair on my body vibrated, my internal organs shook and my dick tried desperately to stand to attention in my tight pants.

Mary climaxed without even needing to touch herself. Her cream shot down through the grating onto the speakers below.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” she spasmed as if in agony.

She stood, and rubbed her breasts and stomach through her underclothes which were now revealed as her blue robe had come undone. She bit her lower lip and looked at me through half closed eyes. The sound waves had not abated and so she gave herself over to them once more, closing her eyes in expectation of another glorious orgasm. The sound increased its speed and intensity and soon she was shaking and laughing with joy. I noticed the hem of her blue outer robe had risen from her feet again, but this time her hands were behind her head. This posture had the pleasing effect of lifting her boobs and making her erect nipples poke through the white material of her underclothes. People were standing and admiring her, some expressing their admiration by masturbating at her furiously. Her blue robe and the white skirt beneath lifted and billowed about her knees to reveal her pale legs and feet. She was standing on tiptoe and this showed the curves of her legs off to perfection. As the sound waves intensified further her skirts blew up beyond her waist. She screamed like a little girl and thrust her hands down in a vain attempt to hide her hirsute pudenda from the congregation. From the sudden smell of cum that filled my nostrils I guessed that this sight must have been too much for many of her worshippers.

“Ooh, est is non esculentus!” she exclaimed to no one in particular.

She danced from one beautiful, dainty pin to the other while she fought a losing battle with her clothes. Despite her efforts, they flew off and shot high into the air. With her beautiful naked form thus revealed, the congregation multiplied considerably. She held her breasts with one arm, covered her pussy with a hand and blushed, but her embarrassment was quickly dispelled by the magic fingers of the sound waves. It was clear from her rapid and erratic breathing that she was approaching an orgasm of gargantuan proportions. Her whole body twitched and jumped as if electricity was shooting through her. She collapsed onto all fours, her ass facing me. A jet of hot, honey scented love liquid squirted from her rear and smacked me full in the face. This happened four more times leaving my face and shirt drenched. She continued to enjoy the remaining few minutes before my money ran out, moaning and sighing while she lay fondling herself face down on the grating.

When the sound waves faded and died I had to pick her up, so exhausted had she become. Her limbs were as soft and shaky as jelly. Her dark hair was plastered around her cheeks and neck. Her face was a picture of transfigured ecstasy, a look recalling that of martyrs in ancient paintings, transformed by religious awe. Her body lay in my arms, so weak and spent it also brought to my mind images of Jesus, lying in her own arms after the crucifixion. When her wide eyes finally focussed on me her face broke into a smile. She linked her fingers at the back of my head and kissed me tenderly. Holding the kiss, I lifted her and carried her over to a nearby vacant seat outside a café.

Her breathing slowly returned to normal. Her embarrassment also returned and she held her breasts and crossed her legs. My shirt, though wet from her passionate ejaculations, seemed to provide the ideal solution. I bared my chest and six pack stomach to the delight of some passers by and allowed Mary to wear the shirt until we found her robes or something else to cover her with. The soaking garment clung to her breasts and displayed them to the extent that it was hardly worth the bother, but it did reach down to cover her front and back bottoms. She thanked me, kissed me again and now seemed less self conscious. She relaxed again, sprawled in the seat and offered passers by a nice view, though she seemed uninterested in their whistles and open gawping. She was now intent on the café’s drinks menu and apparently expected me to buy her something. She pointed to one item. I said I’d return with her drink and I entered the bar, named ‘Royce’s’ according to the neon sign over the door.

Once inside I was struck by how large it was. The lounge was the size of an aircraft hangar, with a ceiling just as high. Several ovals and squares of light shining from the far wall seemed to indicate further rooms beyond. Pictures of the same face I had seen on the coins, but much larger, with the word ‘Tyranny’ beneath, adorned the walls. Smoke twirled upwards from cigarettes and cigars, many in holders of baroque design, and collected above head level to create an opaque cloud that obscured the artistic lighting. Everything was bathed and softened in a multi hued haze that smelled of powerful narcotics and exotic flowers. People breathed and gasped, making the clouds circulate, creating a unique weather system that made one person hallucinate or another feel joyous, depending on whichever cloud came their way. There were many oversized fronds and petals gently wafting in the billowing, heavy air, some throwing phallic or bestial shadows across walls, some glowing like Beau’s Dildo and occasionally spurting gaseous clouds of their seed into the air, to float amongst the smoke and allow everyone to become just a little more stoned.

As I made my way to one of the many serving counters I passed what I had thought was an orange and pink flower, only to find it was a beautiful woman. She raised a tall fluted blue glass to her burnished copper lips and a pencil thin eyebrow at me. The collar of her dress resembled the petals of a huge rose and the cuffs were like the mouths of orchids. I smiled and nodded, hoping my surprise hadn’t been too obvious.
At the counter I managed to attract the attention of the octopus serving there. I ordered a Fast Boisterous Screw for Mary and a Harvey Buttfucker for myself. As I waited I moved my body in time to the skunge music and I admired my extraordinary surroundings some more. Sat a few feet away was a stick insect thin woman with a bong apparently made from the shell of a giant turtle. A long, thin, glass spout twisted a myriad times around her tall head before entering her mouth. She sucked on it laconically, then blew a thin tendril of smoke from her magenta lips. I caught her gazing at me in the mirror behind the row of bottles. I felt slightly self conscious with no shirt but then, as I had observed, there was no dress code here.

Nearby there was a stage, with an illuminated floor and with two poles stretching up into the clouds. There was a man in a fluorescent, winged jock strap and sharp toed stilletto heel black boots dancing around one of the poles in time to the pounding music. His audience of business men were hooting and slapping the stage. The tops of the dancer’s boots were brimming with paper money. He spun his lithe body around the pole and squeezed it between his thighs so that he hung there for an age, gyrating his hips. He slowly worked his way down and rubbed his crotch against it. When he reached the floor he climaxed, blowing his jock strap high into the air in a geyser of sexual pleasure and showering his audience with jism. One man caught the strap and screamed with joy like a girl, twirling it around his head and spattering people far and wide with the dancer’s cum.

Someone jostled me and I turned back to the octopus to pay for my drinks. A woman was standing next to me on tip toe and leaning across the counter to whisper at the octopus. I accepted my drinks from two of its unoccupied tentacles and looked my neighbor up and down. Her voluptuous form was coated in glitter from head to toe and this was her only clothing. Long, thick, dark hair fell down her back and over her shoulders. On the counter lay two gigantic lumps I had assumed were glitter covered water filled balloons until I realised they were attached to the woman’s chest. The octopus nodded its bulbous head and produced an unlabelled bottle from under the counter. The woman did not pay and accepted the drink from the bartender’s tentacle with a disarming, sweet, broad smile on her glittering Arabian princess features. This she then turned on me for a fleeting moment before she headed for the stage the male dancer was just vacating.

My eyes were helplessly chained to her massive mammaries. They were far larger than her head, in fact, they were the largest breasts I had ever seen, yet they stood as pert and erect as pubescent buds. They floated before her, defying gravity, wobbling only slightly, but still apparently natural in their bouncy softness. I gaped as she jumped with one bound onto the stage. She downed her illicit drink in one, slung the bottle into the clouds, from where it mysteriously failed to return, and began to jiggle her curves around the pole in the most provocative of ways.

A large audience gathered to sling coins and notes about her feet. She hugged the pole, licked it and made love to it, wrapped herself around it and kissed it up and down as if it were a hugely distended cock. She hooked a leg around it and hung almost upside down, waving her hands gracefully like the fluttering wings of a bird. Despite her top heavy form her sense of balance was peerless. She fondled herself in a most sensual way, particularly around her fanny where her coat of glitter was at its thickest. She fingered and frigged herself in time to the music. Everyone in the vicinity was whooping and clapping. With her poised on the brink of orgasm, a software glitch caused one of her movements to repeat many times swiftly in a loop, prolonging the suspense.

As she came, grinding and screaming, something shot from her into the crowd. She was bent over, her head between her knees, her fanny open and shining wetly in the spotlight. Another small round object blasted from her fundament, followed by copious girlcum. Her closest admirers were soon covered in her juices and two proudly held aloft the objects that had propelled from her. With each orgasmic convulsion something bulleted from her to be caught by a lucky fan. One smashed into the bottles behind me, causing the octopus to go into an apoplectic fit of rage as it shook its tentacles at her. I reached over and picked up the missile. It was a spherical, wooden, netsuke carving of a foetus with the words ‘Babies and rabies! xx, Rosie’ engraved on its back.

I was stunned by her ability to control her body whilst in the throws of orgasm. She spun around, firing more carvings all over the lounge, cumming while dancing in a delightful dervish of Dionysian debauchery. With one last twist of her supple body, accompanied by a squirt and a moan, her climax ended, as did those of many in the audience who had been pleasuring themselves unashamedly during the show. She straitened up and smiled to us as if she had done nothing but an innocent gogo dance, waved and soaked up the deafening applause. She collected up the money on the stage, put it into her mouth, swallowed, then nimbly tiptoed around the puddles of cum and leaped onto the floor, just a pace from where I was standing.

My mouth was wide open. Her smile was so broad, her face so beautiful, I was afraid of going blind just from looking at her. Yet I continued staring speechlessly as she grabbed the Harvey Buttfucker from my hand and headed for a door, sucking on the bottle as she walked.

“Thanks, mate,” she said, raising the bottle.

She gasped, wiped her mouth with the back of hand and eructed loudly.

“You enjoy that then?”

Her accent was British and unrefined, Earthy, I decided, and softened with a cute Irish twang.

“Fuck yeah!” I gasped.

She giggled and wiggled her stunning ass at me as she strode ahead, her body several steps behind her nipples. A crowd had been following us with pens and notebooks. They were having to run as many of them were short and Rose’s long legs were carrying her swiftly. Sprinting madly they managed to overtake her and block her way, forcing her to stop. She politely signed her name for all of them and kissed most of them.

“Akira,” she said to one. “You again, eh? How many times do you need my autograph?”

“Thank you, Miss Losie,” said Akira, bowing graciously.

Eventually she was able to pull away from her fans, but some grabbed her again and pleaded with her for more kisses and autographs. One received a punch on the jaw and another a knee to the groin.
When she finally reached the door to the room she had been making for, the human female restroom, she turned to me and said, grinning, “One thing I can’t stand is people who take the piss when I need to have one. ‘Scuse me, love.”

I was left holding the empty bottle and staring at the animated holographic image on the door of a woman squatting and defecating, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Mary standing there in my wet shirt that hardly covered her broad buttocks. She seemed upset about something so I gave her the Fast Frenzied Screw she had asked me for an age ago. She took it but still seemed agitated.

“Beau est sub tentatio!” she said and, though I failed to understand, it was clear she wanted my help with something.

Behind her, from within the thick crowd of Rosie’s fan club, I heard querulous protestations in a high voice.

“Not now! Not now!”

There also came a series of squeaks of an altogether bestial nature from inside the scrum. A face emerged from the crowd, furry, grey, long eared and long toothed. It snickered at Mary and I, then disappeared for a moment. Suddenly a crowd of bipedal rabbit like creatures were filling the floor all around us. They stood on long legs at no taller than five foot including their ears. They had short fur coats, long whiskers and wore bow ties. The startling thing, not to say disturbing thing about them, was their potent sexual attraction. As they rubbed themselves against Mary and I like affectionate cats I found, to my chagrin, that I was becoming aroused. Then an elfin girl appeared, her head and shoulders an island in a sea of these strange animals, apparently attempting, and failing, to fight them off. Then I saw it was Beau, back to his original avatar, looking as sexy as ever, though flustered from fighting with the rabbits.

“Please leave me alone!” he commanded them, but they clung to him still.

“Fucky fucky!” they squeaked needfully. “We fuck bunnies! We fuck you nicely!”

The rabbits each had long, curvaceous legs, their chests and bottoms bulged erotically and their white tails were irresistibly cute. One in particular regarded me with wide, ‘come to bed’ eyes. Something strange seemed to be happening to my libido. I had never been attracted to rabbits before. What the fuck was wrong with me? Mary and I endured this as calmly as we could, but Beau, being no taller than they, was engaged in a losing battle.

Beau’s protestations were nearing fever pitch when suddenly the skunge music was hijacked by a fanfare, followed by a woman’s voice that boomed across the hall.

“Males and females, hermaphrodites and cosmosexuals, ailurophiles, arachnophiles, ichthyophiles and dendrophiles, please all of you give now your best attention to the Supreme Governor of Uranus, fashion guru, cyberstar, intergalactic playboy, immortal haemomaniac love god, the one, the only, Lord Royce Tyranny!”

Some of this announcement had been obscured by the demented squeaking of the fuck bunnies. For this they were quickly reprimanded by the octopus whose tentacles had a remarkably long reach. Mary, Beau and I had looked around for the source of the voice and found a spotlit stage in a far corner of the hall. The announcer stretched out her arm in a welcoming gesture while her white diaphanous dress wafted with the smoke and her vast frothy pile of hair wobbled precariously.

The spotlight moved away to the left and settled on one of the arched openings to the rooms beyond. Figures insectoid in their thinness emerged from the shadows, their bodies stiff as skeletons and straight as poplars. Striped Balaclava helmets obscured their thin features. Their eyes pierced coldly the souls of all whose misfortune it was to be caught in their gaze. With much ostentatation they took the stage and, after lifting the tails of their elaborate long coats, seated themselves, some on the floor, some on steps or stools, around a large jade throne. The men stared into the crowd with an infinite malice. Everyone, including the bunnies, had stopped shouting, dancing and drinking and a fear filled silence had smothered everyone like a blanket of snow.

A lone figure even taller that these appeared in the archway, blinking slightly in the spot light, and following in his acolytes’ footsteps. At last the silence was broken by nervous applause which he acknowledged with a raised thin white hand, curiously elongated by fingernails the length and sharpness of a tiger’s fangs. He was dressed in a shining black leather frock coat with pleated skirt and tight black leather pants. His shoes were outrageously tall and accounted somewhat for his extraordinary height. The tops of them curled back to reveal blood red lining, giving one the impression from a distance that his skin was peeling off. His chest was bare, his cruelly chiselled face was clean shaven and his platinum blond hair was long, brushed back and spiked. A red streak parted the hair from crown to nape.

The fanfare struck up again, this time accompanied by an irresistibly groovy beat, and the tall man broke into a wild dance. His limbs jerked spastically as if being pulled by a petulant puppeteer. His spiky form leaped about the stage while his retinue of humourless mannequins looked on.

I felt a gentle nudge and turned to see Beau looking up at me anxiously from beneath the brim of his straw hat. He wore a white sleeveless shirt and a tie, matching denim hotpants and white, nylon, opaque pantyhose. White high heeled lace up boots completed this rather fetching ensemble that made me want to ravish him there and then. I bent and kissed him passionately, so pleased was I to find him back to his proper shape.

He broke the kiss and shouted, “Listen! This chap’s a right big knob ’round here!”

Suddenly the music stopped, but the man continued to jerk about the stage in silence to music only he could hear.

“So I gathered,” I whispered back to Beau. “So where did Beau McGrumpy go?”

“Mary thought of a new prayer,” he said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, this bloke might be able to help us, you know, get out of here.”

“You think we should talk to him?”

“Mm hm.”
Someone shushed us and we gave our full attention to the stage where the Supreme Governor of Uranus, Lord Royce Tyrrany, had stopped dancing, or whatever it was he had been doing, and was now preparing to make his speech. He grabbed the mike and his long gaze attempted to take in everyone in the hall. When he opened the thin crimson cut of his lips frighteningly sharp gold teeth flashed.

Then he raised both his hands, one of which wore a black, diamond studded glove, and in a refined English accent ordered everyone to, “Dance, you motherfuckers!”

After a suspenseful pause, during which it seemed pretty much anything could happen, the hall erupted with a deafening whoop. The music resumed and everyone seemed to relax. I turned to Mary and Beau who shrugged in unison. We started weaving our way through the gyrating bodies towards the man we hoped could be our salvation, but something told me I was wrong to trust Beau’s instinct in this. I had never observed such a pompous individual as Royce Tyranny.

And those awful shoes!

Irma Cerrutti @ Irma Cerrutti 2010