Hannah Bronto - Lovers in paradise

In a matter of moments I was in my car, and the car was screeching through the corridors of time, taking me across town toward something that would either irreparably alter my life or end it. After a short trip, the car came to a halt in front of a building I immediately recognized. It was the building Jocelyn lived in.

I left the car in front of the building. For a reason I couldn't quite understand I consciously left my lights off. I really didn't care if it got a ticket. I took the slow stream up to Jocelyn's floor, going over the conversation we were about to have again and again until almost I believed it.

I stepped out on her floor, and I walked down the corridor toward her apartment. Under my clothing, my body was wet with perspiration. The clothing was sticking damply to me.

I really wasn't anticipating anything, but the moment I saw Jocelyn's door I knew something was wrong. Perhaps I had intuitively sensed it while I had been walking down the hallway. Maybe that's why I had been sweating. As my muscles tensed, I could feel my stomach knotting like a gnarled fist.

The door was slightly open. Just a crack, no more than five or six inches, rolled back and away from the jamb. I could see darkness in the deep space, and it spilled out its gloom into the empty hallway at me. I tried to penetrate that darkness by squinting, but the room was pitch black. Holding my breath, I listened, and for a moment I thought I heard something in the room. The sound of a heel scraping across a plasteel floor.

"Jocelyn…" I called out. My voice sounded hollow against the silence. "Jose…"

With the tips of my fingers along the edge of the door, I slid it inward slowly. The rollers creaked noisily, and the ribbon of darkness gradually widened.

Then the darkness was gone, and a flash of daylight illuminated the room in a blinding white explosion. Then came the thunder.

KA-RACK!

Blaster! my brain screamed.

Something exploded near my face, and I felt the searing whistle of the beam scream hotly past my ear. The plasteel door shattered into a fountain of splinters, and the slamming blaster impact rocked the door violently back against my fingers.

I didn't have time to think: I jumped and rolled away from the door. My left shoulder hit the floor, and I winced in pain. I continued to roll until I was on the opposite side of the door. I quickly stood, pressing my back tightly against the safety of the thick wall. My body tensed for the next shot, and in anticipation, I could feel my ears screwing down in order to screen out the concussion.

The impact of the blaster beam had rolled the door all the way shut. In the center of the door, about chest level, was a hole at least six inches across. Splinters of raw, untinted plasteel made the hole look like a bleeding wound.

Tensely I waited until I suddenly realized the second shot was not coming. I cursed myself for having refused the blaster, and then, in the same breath, I saw the wisdom of the decision. I was angry enough to kill someone.

I spun quickly around until I was again in front of the door. A flash of darkness winked at me through the obscenely gaping blaster hole. I grabbed onto the overhead post of the door frame, squeezing tightly for support. Lifting both legs off the ground, I kicked forward with all my strength.

The impact of my lick smashed the door open, ripping it right off its track.

I dropped down on the tips of my toes and leaped for the safety of the wall. Still no second blast rang out.

I looked into Jocelyn's apartment. It was as though someone had strung a curtain of darkness across the doorway. I could see nothing through the shadows. For a split-second I held my breath, and then I plunged into the apartment. With each step I took I expected to feel the fiery sting of the blaster as it burned itself through my flesh.

But it didn't happen that way. Out of the comer of my eye, even through the darkness, I saw a blur of movement. I went to scream, but the end of the blaster came down squarely on the crown of my head. I crumpled and then everything got dark.

I was unconscious before I hit the floor.

Consciousness seemed to come slowly, in bits and pieces, like fragments of a confused puzzle. My head was pressed down against my chest, and for a long time I couldn't understand what I was looking at. I finally realized it was my legs. When I tried to move panic touched me as my limbs failed to respond. I tried again, straining with all my strength, but the most I seemed capable of doing was rolling my head from side to side.

"Ah, he's coming around," a voice said. It was a familiar voice, but for the life of me I couldn't place it. "See, I told you he wasn't dead. All he was was unconscious that's all."

I lifted my splitting head and rocked it back, toward a direction that seemed behind me. Orientation was difficult. The pain of movement was excruciating, and it exploded behind my eyeballs and hammered across the straight ahead. My surroundings were a smear of fuzzy top of my head. With bleary, unfocused eyes I stared colors and irregular and misshapened forms. I squinted into the muddled mass, trying to make sense out of it.

"Mal…" another voice called at me. Through a long and involved mental process I figured out who owned the voice. It was Jocelyn. "Mal…"

Like a slowly resolving camera lens, the world beyond my eyes began to focus. The first thing I was aware of was that I was sitting erect in a chair, with my head tipped down, which explained why I had been looking at my legs. Another revelation filtered down into my consciousness, bringing with it something of a relief and consolation, if that indeed were possible in the kind of circumstance in which I found myself. Thin but incredibly powerful cords of spun plasteel were wound around my lower legs and thighs, and then wrapped around the legs and seat of the chair in which I was sitting. A little higher up, across my arms and chest, were another set of identical cords, wrapped tightly around me, disappearing somewhere behind me. Probably tied to the back of the chair.

At least, I thought, I'm not paralyzed.

Grunting from the effort, I forced my head to move from side to side as I tried to comprehend what else there was outside of my skull. I was in a room, a room that was somehow familiar to me. I could see the walls and part of the ceiling, and what looked like the edge of a dresser or bureau. By moving my head the other way I saw a long low flat blue and lumpy pink thing. It took me a very long time to figure out that the blue thing was a bed, and the pink lumpy thing was a person.

Jocelyn was that person.

"Mal!" she cried. "Are you all right?"

I grunted something. My throat seemed constricted, and my mouth was very dry. "I… y-yes."

The picture beyond my eyes was coming in clearer now, and my memory was returning. So I was not too greatly surprised when I finally realized that Jocelyn was laying on the bed, stark naked, her arms and legs spread-eagled, her hands and feet tied – with the same spun plasteel cords which bound me – to the corners of the bed. There was a pillow under her head, arching her head up so that she was looking at me. Her face was grim with muted fear, her eyes alive and darting, like a caged animal. Her long blonde hair was splayed out across the pillow like a halo. Another pillow was jammed under her naked ass so that her hips were thrust high up, and the sensual invitation of her furry blonde-haired cunt was almost like an offering.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Mal," that other voice said. "For awhile, at least."

I turned my head, finding it less difficult to do so as time went by, and I focused on the source of that voice. He was standing in front of the dresser that was across the room from me. His arms were down, at his sides, and in his right hand he held a very lethal-looking blaster, the twin of the one I had refused at the station. I pried my eyes away from that morbidly fascinating weapon, and forced myself to look him levelly in the eyes. His pale blue eyes were calm behind the rimless lenses of his glasses.