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Zedock Heap and the butterfly
She really is impressive. Little killing machine. BUTTERFLY GIRL. She’s killed most of my followers, hacked them up neatly like chopping carrots. A pile of feet, arms and heads. She moves lightning fast, ZOOM CHOP CHOP as though suspended on a wire. I’ve never seen anything like her before. Maybe I should set her on fire. Or whip her up like egg whites. Make a meringue of her.
A bomb has just exploded, my remaining followers blown up, limbs scattered over the walls of my temple. Well, that’s a little embarrassing.
And here she comes, the little butterfly landing in front of me, and alongside her a rather manic looking Detective Waxford aiming a gun above my head. He shoots at the Angel-Eater; the glass shatters and it emerges. Liquorice wings soar across the ceiling and dive towards Boo Boo.
Zoom into her, like a ghost. They merge.
LIGHTNING BOLT
She’s hit.
She’s opening her blades to me. Offering me an ending.
“Now this really has been fun but the game is over,” I look down upon them both.
Detective Waxford moves closer to me. “Zedock Heap. I am arresting you for mass murder, cannibalism and for running an unlicensed cult.”
“You know, I’m very good friends with Queen Victoria.”
“That’s her problem,” and he aims the gun at my head.
“You’re all so entertaining.” And I lift Detective Waxford into the air and fling him across my temple.
“SHHHHHIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!”
He bounces against a pillar and slithers into a crumpled heap on the floor.
The butterfly girl runs her blade through me. It feels like a tiny spider kiss. I grab her by the hair and pull her to me. Pull the blade out. Hold it to her throat.
Detective Waxford, still alive, fires a bullet into my head.
I squeeze the walls of the temple. They’re closing in with my magic. The temple wobbling, the ceiling breaking apart. I fling the butterfly girl across the temple, SMASH HER INTO THE WALL.
And I am laughing. I AM LAUGHING amidst the mountain of body parts and corpses.
“I AM THE MASTER OF YOU ALL.”
A horse whinnies. In rides Mr Loveheart on a gigantic white stallion. Well, there’s an entrance! “COME TO ME, LITTLE PRINCE!”
Loveheart and Zedock
My horse has leapt into the temple. Marvellous entrance, I waggle my sword about. Ooooooh look at the heaps of dead bodies! LOOK AT THE MESS. MARVEL AT THE GOO!
I slice up and few more nutty acolytes. I ride past Detective White and Walnut who are hiding behind a pillar and they wave at me as I gallop past. A foot flies past my head!
TALLY-HO!
Boo Boo is picking herself up off the floor, Waxford lying on the ground surrounded and shooting every which way.
Zedock Heap is sitting upon his throne of skulls waiting for me. I ride up to his bloodied altar and point my sword at him.
“And here we are again, Mr Loveheart.” He opens his hands like a book. Are there magic words written on his hands?
My horse rears and whinnies appropriately. DAZZLE ZAP SEE THE SPARK!
I dismount. I flash a brilliant smile. “You’re about to retire, Zedock. Permanently,” I say, and I slice my sword through air, dismantle molecules.
“COME TO ME,” he grins. “I EAT LITTLE PRINCES.”
And then I see him for what he really is, I see what is underneath his skin. Under the bones of him. I’ve seen it so many times. In so many things. In a world gone quite mad.
And I tell him, “We are the same, Zedock. You and I. We are the underneath. We are the same.” And I am sad because I know I am mad and dangerous. I know how close to him I really am. What would it take to push me over the edge, into him, into his space?
“Come to me, little prince, let me feel your madness,” and he puts his hand over my head and I let him in, I let him understand me.
HE HOLDS ME LIKE A DADDY.
He reads my thoughts, sees my dreams. Sees what I am made of. The underneath and
it is electricity. It makes him shudder, unexpected. It makes him quiver. ELECTRICAL VOLTAGE. He staggers a little under the blast of it, and stares at me dumfounded.
“Now you understand,” I say. I chop his head off. Watch it bounce down the steps. Boing! Bong! Splat!
I can feel history replay itself; clocks move backwards and then jolt forward. Timelines shifts. Butterflies break out of glass frames and whizz into space. The world liquidizes. Evaporates. Becomes air.
There is so much screaming. Blood and body parts. And yet I am elsewhere. I am far away. In the melt of space, on the edges of timelines waiting for the world to re-form, spin again and dissolve in a fraction of a second. Over and over. Round and round. There is no end.