Search Results for 'lady'

“Can’t you use one of these neat rockets of designer? We’re in 2222 for fuck’s sake!”, asked a lean green-faced lady, with her cheeks decorated with cucumber slices, who was lying next to Sanso in the pneumatic rotating bed of the R&R B&B.
“Can’t discuss business with you honey, sorry” he snapped, while looking for his pants and gilded codpiece in the mess of the room.

“And I thought of us as partners in crime…” she shrugged. Nonplussed, and quite naked apart from the cucumber covered parts, she lit a swigarette and switched the holographic display on.

“…when launching a rocket to orbit, a “dogleg” is a guided, powered turn during ascent phase that causes a rocket’s flight path to deviate from a “straight” path. A dogleg is necessary if the desired launch azimuth, to reach a desired orbital inclination, would take the ground track over land (or over a populated area, e.g. Russia usually does launch over land, but over unpopulated areas), or if the rocket is trying to reach an orbital plane that does not reach the latitude of the launch site. Doglegs are undesirable due to extra onboard fuel required, causing heavier load, and a reduction of vehicle performance.”

Sanso turned his head towards the display and raised an eyebrow. “Hell if I understood what it means, but that certainly explains a few things”.

Geoffroy didn’t realize at first. Then something struck him. That people didn’t pay attention to him was of course a bit curious. Then evidences of something witchy became bright as day, such as the fact that he had no consistency and could walk though stone walls, or that he could see things as soon as he thought about them.
All of that was disorienting, even for an acrobat used to twists and turns, and he had to reign himself back from jumping from here to there, in all matters of attention that he would like.
For one, he would have loved to drag his companions out of their own slumber, but they seemed under a powerful spell.
Some sudden doubt crept along, that he was all but dead — seeing his body lying on the floor was a shock. But then he realized he was still breathing and smiling too. And all the things he could witness with the three transvestites was surprising enough for him to know it could not just be a product of his fertile mind… Or was it? He dismissed the thought before it could take hold.

He heard the strange lady talk about ferrets, and became curious. She had a not quite French accent when she’d briefly talked to him, but now, he could almost see her thoughts, without a filter, and they looked dazzling with tinges of the most marvelous green.
He wondered if she was talking about the Imperial Russian Ballet troupe who was invited by the Queen for the avant-première of tonight’s show.
And sure enough, as soon as the though happened long enough in his head, the scenery whirled around and he popped right in front of the dancers …

“Rise and shine bitches!” The voice of Linda Paul through the ezapper was unmistakable.
“Tonight you’ll be judged on your in character performance, so better prepare your false tits and butts, corsets and wigs, because tonight’s gonna be a kiki party’s_Have_a_Kiki ! Chop chop those pork chops”

Reggie was looking around for signs of Ced’ and Amar, only to realise Amar was the only one there sleeping, rolled in his choirboy robe like a big sausage. The thought had him starve for crispy chicken sausages, eggs and bacon. His stomach grumbled in a loud and imperative gargle.
“Where’s Ced’?” That binge on the wine was no fuckin’ good idea, they should have listened to that smart-ass Lady Prissy of Sadie. What a bitch that one, always being right and spot-on. Someone should tell her how annoying that was. And that head-splitting headache…
He woke up Amar who rolled aside moaning to leave him alone.
“Ceeeeeed’!” he yelled, “Cedriiiiiic!” again so loudly that the resounding sound in the chapel almost deafened him. Then remembering Cedric would sometimes only answer to his queen name “Consuelaaaaaaaa!”

“No need to alert the whole neighbourhood” Sadie appeared, calm and prim as a rose. “He’s sleeping outside in the gardens. Go get him, so we can get back to business, I got a tracking device with the current location of the ferrets. We’ll split in teams of two: one to retrieve the ferrets on one side, and the other to get our night’s gowns. Let’s have a draw in ten, so we can eat and get moving.”

The e-zapper’s signal was dropping until it was gone, while there were eerie hoots and echoes in the tunnels.
Sadie’s report to Linda Paul would wait till a few hours. The broadcast wouldn’t start until the afternoon anyway, so they had time to relax. The carriage wasn’t so comfortable, but the blue lights provided a smooth reassurance, and the zebras were now trotting at a regular pace.

Sadie looked with fondness at the boys in drags. A fondness which even surprised her. They were starting to reveal more of their true self as they were lulled to sleep in the carriage. How funny she thought, how a few drags and accessories can both hide and reveal parts of your personality.
Cedric, was a white guy from uptown actually quite challenged to grow a real beard, and he was playing that sassy bearded lady queen Consuela.
Amar the second-generation North African guy was raised in the suburbs before he chose to become the shiny Terry Bubble, while Reginald from the same neighbourhood was playing Maurana the big burly black queen,…

The more Sadie spent time with them, the more which labels they chose to be called with started to become inconsequential.
She was actually more and more confident they would do a great job at blending by simply hiding in broad daylight. Their eccentricities would be a rousing success at the royal fête, they just had to hone their alibis a bit, and align on their story. As soon as they would be in Versailles, with the Russians from the competing cable network in toe, they had to be at the top of their games.

The verdict was definitive. The competition had been fierce and now only the best of the best would go to the final and mysterious mission.

Terry Bubble couldn’t believe her ears and fanned her glistening face with her powdered hands batting her eyelashes to contain the swelling tears when she heard Linda Paul say in her snarkily uppity voice : “Uhuh, that dress, oh that dress sweetie, that was an offense to good sense, but you did lipsynch to perfection with this pouty mouth of yours… Terry Bee, you stay with me.”
Then, turning to the other competitor, the gorgeous Tina Turnover look-alike in her glittery purple dress, a.k.a. Shantay Mûre. “Shantay, you go away.”

Terry bowed to the jury, firstly Linda Paul herself, of course, then the sultry sulky Sadie Merrie, and finally took an extra second for Lady Gugu, who she was sure tipped the balance in her favor. She never was a big fan of the ageing star, well-known for her antics and poultry dresses, but there was no denying she earned being the sensation she was all over China —or that he was, there were lingering suspicions about this, which of course didn’t matter in the drag race.
It had to be thanks to her ; maybe she was fond of sardines. Otherwise, how could self-doubt-ridden Terry Bubbly, like her friends barely over their teens, could hope to compete with the other seasoned divas, like Pseu Flay with her lion-mane wig à la Cher, who were nonetheless one by one eliminated by a strange turn of events.

The selection had gone flawlessly. Linda Paul was boucing with effervescence and delight.
“Dearies, dearies, you have been competing fearlessly against one another, now is time to be a team. Or find a time in which to be…”

The three queens looked stymied. They were not used to share the limelight and shine in pairs, much less in a trio.
“Terry, Consuela, Maurana, you will be our three Muskqueerteers, fearlessly donning on wigs and shiny attires on a mission to retrieve a precious item for me.”

The screen shined brightly to reveal a glittery pyramid, announced by the anchor’s male voice “The Queen’s Ferrets au Rochet!”

“But of course, I cannot send you back without a chaperon. Fear not, fate has decided for us, that among the jury, it will be…”

Terry hoped for Lady Gugu, she already looked like Elton Jaune in a wig, and would do great with Louis XIII, or Richeliou for that matter.

“… Sadie Merrie!”

“Oh good grief…” Terry’s shiny Elton Jaune in her thoughts suddenly was transphormed (as if they all had been into a huge deFørmiñG mirror) into that of Milady of Merry.

In Ed Steam’s old office, Lord Lemon was like in a mausoleum full of ghosts.
Mostly computer illiterate, he favoured greatly goose feather and dark Chinese ink soft purr on the paper over the annoying clickety racket of the keyboards. So he wasn’t exactly feeling at home in Ed’s old shoes.

The team’s greeting party had been cordial, but he didn’t feel an overwhelming welcome either, not that he expected it. It was Ed’s team after all, he was the Rooster of the chicks of roast, whatever they liked to call themselves. He was not found of monikers and preferred to be addressed simply as Sir.

The call he received on the morning was perplexing him. They’d found an auditor dead with a Surge Corp. business card in his jacket in the streets of a Spanish city, he couldn’t really remember which, the accent on the phone was as dreadful as that of a Chinese civet, but… What was that about already? He’d thought his memory was improving, getting back on the field, but there were relapses again, he had to concentrate. Afternoon Scrabble games were not that bad after all.

He’d perfected a neat technique to remember things, placing vivid images in memory palaces constructed in his mind were he could retrieve them later, but the thing was that his memory palaces sorely lacked a cleaning lady, and images sometimes blurred together or went missing, fading away. He sighed.

His gaze on the phone brought him back to his stream of thought. This would have been stored on the Suspicious Clues Palace, in Ed’s corner. His mind raced back in the atrium of his palace where he could see the various corners, and he went back into the Alley of Dark Secrets, then turned to the Corner of Lonely Puzzle Pieces. There were actually a lot of them, but the topmost one was vivid enough. It was a red blood hearing-aid spewing out a mean Larsen and bathing in paella. For “auditor murdered in Spain” obviously. He turned down mentally the volume of the hearing-piece. This was not a very elegant image, but he was in a hurry, and crude preposterous images always were remembered better he’d found out. The lewdest even more so. Which was why his Palace of Past Precious Moments was starting to look like a brothel he was loath to admit.

He was starting to wonder if Ed’s demise was not some sort of inside job. Circumstances were not really orthodox, but nothing was in their line of duty, so he had to look for something else. He’d already started to make an inventory of the storage room, just before the break-in, but computer handicapped as he was, between paper and memory palaces, he couldn’t figure it anymore and had to start it over with some help from Cornella.
At least, he’d sent Hyphen and Dash to discreetly investigate on the break-in and now, he will probably send them to investigate on… he faced a blank. All he could remember now was he was having the meanest craving for mussels and prawns.

You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure…
Josephinella, the train station cleaning lady, was on night duty. And she was tired of waiting for that damned train with that irritating French accent in her ears, her lungs filled with the engines’ fine coal dust and her nostrils irritated by the pigeons’ smell.
But tonight was going to be her night, she would get drunk on fresh air, her hair whipping her face, bugs biting her eyes, while she would sing elated woohoos launched at full speed on the last commuter train left unattended by drunk Freddie. That was such a beautiful plan.

“ Another Dreamliner scare… and a train crash coming your way!”
“Sounds like a transportation surge to me!” Björk replied on the internal chatting system to her African Twa colleague Kiki Razwa. Björk was not her real name though —it was just a moniker given to her because she liked eccentric costumes. Her real name was Mæja Valbjörnsdóttir,… so ‘Björk’ was better for everyone in that international team, she’d tried to convince herself.
“Doesn’t internal policy says two makes a clue, three makes a surge ?”
“Oh, who cares… For me it smells dreamception transportation surge.”
“Better that than this Mercury retrograde crap, at least that’s more fun to hunt.” Kiki’s reply came up on the screen.
Björk had come to realize that she would probably have to cover for Mari Fe who was elsewhere but at her post. The last surge being in Europe, so she was in for a trip at the taxpayers’ expense… Not so bad actually, since nothing ever happened on her faraway island.

Madam Li contemplated the pill-like translucent object glowing bright red which could barely fit in the palm of her delicate hand.
People usually said that you could try and hide your age as well as possible on your face, but that hands didn’t lie. Hers actually were still a young woman’s fine delicate and smooth work-of-art.
The snow had stopped immediately, leaving the weather in the Pudding area as it used to be: a pale mist of polluted fog, thus returning Shanghai to its normal weather patterns. The rote was there in her hand, full of the last surge’s energy, a tempting promise of uncontrollable power, but she had seen far too much power struggle and horrors to be really tempted by it.

Ed’s demise had taken her by surprise. Although she did look young, it was her heart who really betrayed her. She hated people leaving her, and she would have expected Ed to survive her own death. It was the first time she was considering ever so briefly the thought of retiring. Of course, she still would need to find a replacement at her post, but China was full of eager potentials, that wouldn’t take too long.
Putting the rote in the diplomatic case, her gaze trailed on the invitation, still on the table. She wasn’t ashamed to admit her first thought went to the cleaning lady who had been careful to dust all around it, without moving it an inch off the glass table top.
Spain just came as an afterthought, already having lost its appeal as soon as summoned.

Wrapping herself in her white fur coat, she called for a taxi. She would be just in time for the ice festival in Harbin with a warm dog legs’ soup and some yak butter tea.

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd?” a perplexed Lady Appleton turned to her husband (the fifth and last of them) Lord Appleton.
“Yes, I know, dear, it has been all so sudden…”
“What?”
“You mean, Ed’s death, don’t you?”
“Well, of course I do, but that’s not it…” She fidgeted the ornate golden disk at the center of the tall dark mysterious cabinet.
“What it is my dear? We can very well continue with the plan notwithstanding his unexpected demise…”
“Oh sure, that we can, so long as Cornella remains unaware of it… Last time was too close… But anyway, that wasn’t what I meant at all. You see, if Ed was really dead, one would expect he would take no time contacting us. I wonder if he’s stuck in transition, or if the surge’s energy had something to do with this improbable leave of absence…”

The aftershock of the surge at the Three Kings’ Parade started to hit full blast at the portals initial location, thus effectively linking old mummies energy to the bodies there that were hit by Mari Fe, and for he most part still lying unconscious.
The combination of energies started to make them arise and walk like mindless zombies, intoning old guttural sounds in cadence in a language that sounded like Italian poetry.
There you had the Balthazar, Rogelio, Dru and alter-Ed who all woke up at once, and even Sanso who had been hit (while impersonating a Portal Worker) started to feel oddly strange.

Noticing the atypical occurrence, Arona, whom Janet seemed to have had taken a sudden liking to (blame it on her Yankee side), started to look at her brood and rally them for a safe and prompt exit.
“What is it Arona dearie?” Janet didn’t seem worried. She was a Surge Team member after all, and a zombilic epidemic (zombies energy coming from wormholes) wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.
“I fear that although your presence is most delightful, we shall be on our way.” Arona’s old sabulmantium had shown persistent and remarkable hints of dragon energy in this dimension that, although a bit different and looking in her mind’s eye like red flying snakes bearing impossibly long mustache, resonated quite well —not to mention she was eager to part with such bizarre company.
“Alrighty, let’s keep in touch dearie,” Janet added, covering their escape, not without winking at Sanso as he was the last one to leave through the map portal, leaving her to look for her missing flushed friends, Mari Fe and Pearl.
Unbeknownst to everyone, the picture-taking lady had camouflaged herself to look like a red sofa nearby the hot pink leather chaise lounge in the corner of the room, and was documenting silently the promising epic battle of Janet and Riff Raff against the zombies.
And for sure, Janet was still ready to make good use of the pocket-sized forklift to move away all cumbersome bodies,… as there was bound to be casualties.

If there was one thing he’d never liked about the Surge Team, Goat was reminded as soon as he crossed the threshold, that had to be the Management.
Actually, the Management after years of past grandeur had been heftily trimmed down to just one person, an ageless expressionless Sinese-Bulgarian lady with a hairstyle as plain and ubiquitous as a bowl of steamed rice, the epitome of the chtonian tutelary deity, eternal Guardian of all thresholds.
“Good day Antonia.” Goat greeted her, faking the slightest bit of enthusiasm needed to sound polite. Of course, she didn’t answer. Like the Universe, looming and all powerful, all she needed was a request, or better, a long string of numbers from an obscure postal or bookshelf reference.
Chopping official documents, the lonely sound of a stamp etching the worn-out surface of her desk was all that troubled the dusty office reeking of onion.
“There’s been a delivery for me…” He waited patiently, savouring torturing her with his half-finished sentence. He didn’t have to wait for long though. Maybe she was in a good mood.
“Tracking number?” she grumbled without looking at him, fumbling into old logs and piles of carton boxes that may have been there, unclaimed since the time of Baltazar the Great.
“There” he handed her a torn yellow stained bit of paper where the numbers were written down in a ornate penmanship. The Management was a place of few words… and even fewer actions he bitterly thought.
Working her magic, she handed him the package, wrapped in old Sinese papers that smelt of decaying fish. He barely thanked her, without looking into her eyes, for he knew what was there to be read certainly had no lack of unpleasantness for him.