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>> [ THE PUSSYCAT PYRE
] Hertzan
Chimera Part One: Arraz Woman Score
a treble twenty, treble twenty, treble twenty; couple of times. Finish off on
a fat double. Fucking nine dart game every time she stepped up to the ockey. Never
won any trophies, mind. Below her to enter competitions, she proclaimed. And
everyone in The Pussycat Pyre on darts night, where she was a bright, sparkly
sorta regular, was astonished that she could be so good with what amounted to
bright red plastic children's toy darts. Actually, Arraz Woman had
'performance anxiety'. Not the usual sort of performance anxiety, nothing
sexual there. Nothing purely analyzable, you understand. Just something quite
spectacularly wrong would happen when the need to do her best in front of a
living audience that reared its ugly head. I
suppose it could be traced back to when Arraz Woman was a young girl, like
all B-movie Fire Starters. She was, at that time, pre-pubescent. She was, as
her mam called her, a late starter. She had a lot of friends but chose to
hang around solitary in St Thomas' Church graveyard after school playing her
perfect game on a centuries old oak whose roots were fertilised by the
rotting corpses of eternity. Sometimes gas would leak out where an Arra
penetrated the bark. Smelled of victory, as they say on the napalm beach. Then
one day, treble twenty, treble nineteen, double eight finish. The blood
started to flow. She was sixteen years old by then. She still visited the
Arra-bludgeoned tree of her childhood after sixth form college where she was
doing A-levels that would get her onto the respected Fountains Institute
Biotechnology degree course. Then the floods came. It was a twitching feeling
at first, like when you catch your finger on a new sheet of paper or certain
varieties of grass. A small rip. No sound. It was like her urinating parts
had decided to vomit opting for the long-haul bile find. Arraz
Woman raced through her provincial town with gouts of blood spuming from
under her blood-darkened dress. Through the estate they hunted her, the
dreaded children with looks and laughs and nursery rhymes for insults. She
worked hard to keep her footing as she crossed the pedestrianized concourse
of the shopping precinct, screaming for her mam. A sixteen year old girl
fleeing her own insistent maturity. But
she could stop the flow. She had to will the deluge to end or her life would
surely follow it down the drain into the blackness of the gutter. She turned
icy cold long before she made it to the back door of their terraced house of
pain. When she entered, her mam was stood there, white as a sheet. Arraz
Woman ejaculated a black discharge all over the kitchen floor that spat up
her mam's 16 denier American Tans. Felt like hot treacle on her shins. Arraz
Woman felt much better for the exhumation and BANG if in that very instant,
she didn't feel a whole lot more of a woman. Soon
after this vile episode and much to the relief of her mam, she became known
as the village bike. I don't mean she grew handle bars and rusty old bike
chains, gears and wheels like the faked-up ectoplasmic parlor tricks of the
Edwardian era. This is a northern phrase which means she became an active little
slut around the estate. Never took precautions. Never got pregnant. Never
fell ill. She was a truly blessed little slattern. But then one day, she was
surprised to hear a gang of local lads talking about her in slutly tones, why
this hadn't dawned on her long before, nobody could understand. She was a
slut, the village bike. Nothing more, nothing less. Her application for the
Fountains Institute degree course fell through; so neglected were her studies
in pursuit of the pleasures of the ever-unfolding flesh. She woke up to
reality with a bump, as they sometimes say round here. You
should have seen the mess. Bawdy bits of boys scattered all around her in the
steaming mid-Spring chill. Mothers from far and wide arriving to scream Holy
Hell at Arraz Woman for something they believed she had done. Couldn't prove
a thing as all witnesses to her spectacular immolation of steel saws and
teeth extractors, rusty old bone crushers and rotten wire garrotters within a
twenty foot radius had perished in the molten vengeance of Arraz Woman. She
walked away with a fully satisfied sensation of spent lust the likes of which
she had never experienced with any of those growing men. Well,
her pub mates, who were real keen that she should help their flagging
fortunes, got her real drunk one evening, carted her along to the All England
Ladies Team Darts Finals this year held at the Doncaster Convention Centre
just outside of town, knowing that even tipsy, Arraz Woman would be more of
an asset than a liability. Little did they know about Arraz Woman's
performance anxiety. It
was a hushed stage as the announcer invited the next couple up to the ockey
on the last day of November. Her
pub mates cheering her on, Arraz Woman took up a tipsy position behind the first
thrower, a miss Doreen Gladthorp from Wenslydale (where they made Wallace
& Gromit cheese). She Arra'd away. Treble twenty, treble twenty, twenty.
One hundred and fooooortyyyyyyy! the announcer rang out. Next up Arraz Woman. In
her own mind, Arraz Woman was well aware of her dartly competence. She had a
long history stretching back a lifetime of nine dart games. Her aim was true,
her hand steady as a rock. You should see her solid repertoire of
not-a-fear-in-the-world party tricks she had up her sleeve. The ladies of The
Pussycat Pyre cheered her on. Arraz Woman approached the ockey like it was
the cliff edge. Her nasal breathing was audible in the hushed auditorium. Her
lips were dry old parchment - she drew her tongue across them. Oiled
sandpaper. She turned to see her pub mates smiling, encouraging faces. Arraz
Woman knew she had to 'break her duck', if I may use a cricket term. In her
head, she heard the drum roll that accompanied the Revolutionary
Guillotinings of 19th century France. She placed the edge of her right foot
against the ockey. Took aim with her red plastic toy darts. Some
smart aleck in the audience made a comment about her choice of Arra'ing
equipment. Come on Janice, her pub mates cheered her on. The mob became
restless. Sweat poured down Arraz Woman's forehead. Her supporting leg
started to tremble. Her breathing asthmatic now, huge grasping lungfuls each
and every breath. She looked like she had hypothermia. An ambient light of
purest ochre had begun to glow inside her darts top. You would think it was a
trick of the lighting. She launched her first Arra. The
Arra leapt out of her hand like a pigeon fanciers prize bird. Took to the
air, seemed to hang for a millennia in the clouds then came down outside the
board. Where it stayed. Didn't even have the common decency to leap out onto
the floor. Just stayed there outside the darting circle on show for all the
world to see. Arraz Woman imagined the entire planet tuning into her
diabolical display and then the jeering started. Any professional would just
get on with planting the other two darts in the treble twenty and that would
be it. Arraz Woman spun round in a riotous fit of anger. Stop!
she cried in shrieking falsetto. It
was on the news for weeks. The razing of Doncaster. Fourteen square miles of
obliterated urban reclaim. Cinders where tower blocks and factories used to
be. Babies cribs like blackened sketches mid street. Incinerated pedestrians
frozen in the shopping mall on the outskirts of town near to the Doncaster
Convention Centre. Eye witnesses said it was like a huge ball of living flame
just appeared out of nowhere and carved all reality to dust. At its
epicentre, found sobbing into her lap, the only survivor of the All England
Ladies Team Darts Finals. Arraz
Woman never threw another dart. |
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