Teenage Star Killer: Ri'dempSHen 1

By AMG Moore

It’s 2052, four years since the pandemic. The lottery winners, those who were lucky enough to win vaccination against the viral cancers are, almost without exception, young and fit and strong.
Jim Jones was a winner. Now though, driven toward a better life, he’s just trying to earn enough to pay for his studies. Taking a job as a minicab driver on the coast seems like a great idea. Work's busy, sometimes fun, and not without its perks. And, while it can occasionally be a little dangerous, the coin’s good and the hours suit.

Like most nineteen-year-olds, Jim’s learning that appearances can be, and often are, quite deceptive. His biggest lesson comes one night when he stops, in the middle of nowhere, for a beautiful girl in trouble. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was pressing a big purple button under his taxi’s dash, something he’d repeatedly been warned not to do.
And now, something evil is homing in on the transporter, and on Jim too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Finite Publishing
• Release date: Apr 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476228587

AMG Moore

Born in the UK in 1967, Alexander Moore grew up in Brisbane. An only child, he attended Brisbane Grammar School and then the University of Queensland. After graduating he spent ten years in London, working in the golf industry. Now settled on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with his family, he describes Noosa as the perfect location to both write and raise a family.

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Copyright AMG Moore 2012 ©

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction.

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The author wishes to acknowledge the lyrics of

Lloyd Cole – Perfect Skin

The Doors – Light My Fire & The End

Golden Earring – Twilight Zone

quoted in this eBook.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Bras & Knickers

Chapter 2. Burning Eye

Chapter 3. A Smiling Pax

Chapter 4. No Way to Treat a Virgin

Chapter 5. The Purple Button

Chapter 6. Transformation

Chapter 7. Major Déjà Vu

Chapter 8. Mr Creepy

Chapter 9. The Grid

Chapter 10. The Decoder

Chapter 11. Disposable

Chapter 12. A Bridge to Nowhere

Chapter 13. Inappropriate Urges

Chapter 14. Hotel Magenta

Chapter 15. Two Lost Guardians

Chapter 16. My Goodie Bag

Chapter 17. Evening the Odds

Chapter 18. Celka

Chapter 19. Return to Sunshine

Chapter 20. Spooky Jim

Chapter 21. House Sitting

Sitting up bleary eyed in his extravagant new bed, a dark haired young man wipes a drop of blood from his face and examines it. Before him, a wall of smart glass gradually admits some grimy mid-afternoon sun. The same glass, serving a dual purpose, is being challenged externally by yet another unforgiving king tide. With a narrow band of grainy light peering in above the waves, the rest of the room’s illumination is cleaner and more vibrant, purified and refracted by water ten feet deep. Taking her cue from the intuitive glass, an exceptionally fit young thing enters the room and slips off her electric blue sundress. Then, clearing her throat, she pulls back her shoulders and steps into the trippy light show. Owning centre stage, she’s an artist, her skin her canvas. Casual, semi-casual, or formal today, sir? she asks, rather ambiguously.

The young man, adjusting the tortured bedclothes, looks up but hesitates. Formal, he says eventually, and mischievously, his vision sharpening. A couple more seconds and that same vision is honed, but it’s not directed at the magnificent twenty-something, holding a breakfast tray and standing, naked, at the foot of the bed. Instead it’s fixed on the determined king tide – pummelling another bloated torso into the laminated panel above her.

Placing the tray down beside an attaché case, its latches still discretely dusted with talc, the young woman bounces off into a cavernous walk in robe, unaware or similarly unaffected by the gruesome sight in the water. Dragging the tray closer with his foot, the young man starts on a full English breakfast, single-handed, while picking at a side order of the BBC’s Interactive World Service, thrown up into the air by a clever little device next to him.

Barely half a bacon rasher and a bite of hash brown later a second drop of blood oozes out onto the young man’s olive skin. Pulse soaring, he’s frozen – all except his chocolate eyes, which begin to dart. From the drowning sea they flick to his escape route – there’s nothing there though. Nothing but a dim light at the end of a long straight tunnel bored through the bedrock. Darting again, this time they fix on a rather special key ring on the nightstand – before they leap, like a traceur, to his tethered Kevlar companion. Another jump – this time to a panic button, knocked on the floor during an earlier bout of fun and games – and that’s where they rest, briefly. Then finally, and with more than a hint of trepidation, the eyes complete a round trip – back to the tunnel. Growing overly large, that’s where they clock a hooded figure – now rushing right at them! A moving black hole, the monstrous silhouette is devouring the space and light around it as it hurries forward.

I know you! says the young man, with hash brown and bacon still in his mouth. Sitting motionless, the question is why isn’t he running for his life?

Then, just as the menacing spectre bursts across the threshold, its words roar out like rockets, exploding into the room...

____________

"… THE PURPLE BUTTON!"

Jim Jones wakes with a start and the faintest echo of that fragmented phrase still in his head. Three simple words tally up to one exceptional event. In his whole life, it’s the closest he’s ever come to remembering a dream.

Waking with a fright isn’t unusual, especially when you nod off on the tube. It’s the repetitive clickety-clack, clickety-clack that eventually grinds you down and sends you bye-byes. It’s a fear of missing your stop though, of losing your possessions, and or your life, that snaps most sober people back to reality with a slightly terrified jolt.

Repeating the words ‘purple button’ over and over under his breath, Jim cranes his head forward, mechanically, and uses the back of his hand to wipe some milky drool from the corner of his mouth. Then he looks around, wondering if there’s anyone in the carriage who hasn’t heard his latest musical masterpiece – the infamous Symphony No.1 in D – for Chain Saws.

I love the tube, he says, to no one in particular, as he stretches and glances down at the time, fluorescing through the thin skin on the underside of his left forearm. Jim’s not kidding, he’s serious. He especially loves the Northern Line, describing it fondly as the most fantastically dilapidated piece of crap he’s ever seen in his whole life. It’s thirty-six miles long and has fifty stations. Bored by James Henry Greathead’s innovative tunnelling shield, it’s woven around thirty-thousand miles of sewers, and runs at an average of sixty-feet under England’s only remaining metropolis. Mumbling to himself, almost inaudibly again, he looks like he’s reading from a book.

Jim can rattle off facts and figures about the Northern Line all day long if he wants to, though he isn’t a trainspotter by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t even own an anorak, nor has he any plans to acquire one. It’s just a little trick – a memory thing, and a way of retaining any snippet of information he considers interesting. The London Underground is a bit of a favourite. He can remember, like it was only yesterday, that first thrill of hurtling along, at speed and undetected, beneath utter gridlock on the surface. Back then it felt like he was flying, and it still does, usually.

Other things fascinate Jim too, normal things for a nineteen year old, like cars and football, golf and girls, though not necessarily in that order. He’s also got a thing for architecture, specifically modern architecture. You might even say he covets every piece he sees.

Speaking of eyes, Jim’s friends genuinely believe he has a massive megapixel camera for each of his, and a stonkingly huge chip for a brain too. That could account for knowing so many inconsequential things about the Northern Line, like the fact it opened in 1890 and is the oldest deep level electric railway in the world. And the fact it has over two hundred and fifty miles of track, and now serves almost two billion passengers a year, as it screams along under a swollen, inert city.

Dwelling on such minutia, it isn’t long before his eyelids become rather attached to one another again.

____________

Witnessed only by a waxing moon the young man stands, briefly, on the intimidating marble terrace. Practically invisible, but by no means undetectable, it looks like he’s timed his run to elude the patrols. Having avoided the bulk of the deterrents and defences too, he tiptoes through the final set of security doors. Relieved, he’s not stopping – nor does he even break stride. Approaching the royal bed quickly, and via the only path that doesn’t end with a barbequing, he must be part of the inner circle.

"Perfection." The word somehow escapes his lips, despite strict orders to the contrary. Breathlessly, it hints at his intent though. Perfection. There it is again, quietly repeating the ode.

How beautiful the Queen looks lying there – she’s so very, very beautiful indeed. It’s a unique beauty, paled by description and light years from comparison. To say her hair is long and fair is to wash it with waste and rinse it with effluent. Just to mention how her braided golden waves cascade. Or the way they frame incandescent sapphire eyes, now barred behind long and interlocked lashes, well, it would be a slur! Should you feel compelled to confide how her hair caresses unblemished ceramic skin, and shares a bed with lips screaming to be touched and kissed … Let’s just say it could give no hint as to the life changing nature of the actual sight itself. Sleeping Beauty. As she lies there now, truly, she is Sleeping Beauty. And forbidden fruit! A pearlescent white negligee shimmers as a reminder AND as a warning. Immaculate, it’s also active and, if he is an insider, he must know that. But if he could somehow see past the negligee, and its potentially lethal sting, he’d gaze upon the most gorgeous woman who’s ever lived.

The young man is looking past the deadly garment all right – like it’s not even there. He’s doing something else too. He’s already leaning over it – and the Queen herself! Close enough to stuff his eyes full of the overwhelming sight. Hovering, on stealth mode, just then his determined expression lets slip its confident mask. Deep inside a most dangerous game, it’s apparent he’s reaching the point of no return. Look at him, he’s not sure anymore – not sure if he’s actually going to go through with it. Weighing his insane plan against the alternative, backing out now while he still can, his face spasms as his options alternate and cycle steadily faster. Approaching a decision, the tremors begin to subside. Awaiting the final outcome his twitching mouth is as dry as dust; his lips poised inches from either bliss or tragedy.

Quietly, but quickly, if you’re going to do it – for fuck sake, get on with it! You can almost hear the internal vocalisation and see the cogs turning as thoughts gallop, like stallions, all over his conscience – running wild through his head. Hurry or she might wake up! Lean in… Man, go the forehead... Not the lips. Even the cheek, but for God’s sake NOT the lips! That’s it… Go the forehead… Or the cheek… Anywhere except the lips…!

Possibly at the thought of the Queen waking, another look of absolute pants-wetting fear flashes across the young man’s face. After that, the smart money is on him legging it, but he doesn’t. Instead he lingers. He lingers just long enough for his feet to take hold of the floor, and long enough to become entangled with the Queen’s aura again.

Then it really starts – the little voice in his head, the barking one. Grow a fucking pair! It must have shouted something similar and ferociously too because, all of a sudden, his face changes again. Only a few seconds ago he looked like he’d not just lost his bottle, but smashed it too. Now though, barely an arrhythmic heartbeat later, he’s not only glossing his lips with a recommitted tongue, but his determined expression is also way more intense. First he looked like he was plucking up the nerve to steal a kiss, risking a life sentence in the process. Now, in pursuit of something capital, he’s staring at the Queen’s nightie.

Slipping on some kind of latex glove, one that seems to be lined with uncooked mince, the young man pinches his sticky fingertips together like surgical tweezers. Then he reaches down. The top button unbuttons easily. The second opens more easily than the first. Navigating the third and fourth with the touch of a quantum surgeon, his moves are either well rehearsed, or well practiced. With the mess on the inside of the glove it’s left no trace on the highly charged material, but he pauses as though it had. What’s he thinking? There’s no waiting to find out – none at all. With more deft movements he clasps the top left corner of the nightie and peels it down. He’s, delicate, deliberate, like turning the page of a long lost manuscript. Repeating the procedure on the other side, suddenly Venus is stripped to the waste. Her full ripe symmetrical breasts hang, voluptuously, on either side of her sternum. Don’t be silly, there’s no way he’s going to kiss her there… is he? Then, like there was never any doubt, he dives straight down with his mouth! His lips engulf the Queen’s entire stout cylindrical nipple and he holds it delicately between his teeth as his tongue begins to brush side to side, with relish, over the soft pink lolly. So gentle is the act, while it would probably arouse, it wouldn’t wake a butterfly. If he walks away now, that alone might just save him.

He isn’t walking away though. In for a penny, he looks like he’s here for a pound of flesh, probably two. Still sucking the Queen’s nipple, when he starts to unbutton his pants, it’s not just his penis that’s revealed, it’s his entire agenda as well. Listen, this is where it turns really nasty. If you don’t want a lesson in depravity, skip ahead. If you do, hang around for another ten seconds, you’re about to get one. All you have to do is watch this young man. Study the face of someone possessed either by animal, or demon. Expect something base. Expect debauchery. Expect wicked immorality. Wait for it… Here it comes… Releasing her nipple, he raises his head and curls his top lip to smell the sex, wafting thick like pollen. Now, making eye contact with the young man for the first time, you’re all set to see festering desire manifested… But suddenly, bone jarringly, there’s a scream! It’s a thoroughly terrifying sound, but it’s not the Queen. It’s not even a woman’s voice. It’s a man’s. But the sound is shrill, bordering on castrato, and paralysing. Distinctly a male voice though. And now the sound is filling itself to the brim with insanity as it floods out of the room. Where’s it coming from? Then you realise… It’s the young man’s voice. And it’s kind of screeching and screaming. Soon it’s crying though, and begging… Underscoring every desperate sound with a dreadful plea for help!

You can hear the young man, THE QUEEN! he screams. SHE’S DEAD! And cold! Dead cold! Dead… THE QUEEN IS DEAD!" He screams the same words in different arrangements, over and over, until the secret can never be untold.

In between frantically pounding both his fists into the Queen’s lifeless ribs, and blowing air between her stone cold lips, he’s yelling. Demanding to be heard! He’s telling with absolute conviction of a terrible deed. His words rip and tear through the still night air, informing everyone in the palace, unceremoniously, "THE QUEEN IS DEAD!!!"

____________

"…purple button, purple button, purple button…"

Though still dwelling, Jim’s rapidly losing interest in the words looping upstairs. That’s because doesn’t expect to hear them again, nor anymore like them for that matter, not in a dream anyway. And, after so many years of nothing but silent darkness from his dream centre, this bothersome fragment is about to get buried. In the name of self preservation it’s heading for some disused compartment, way down deep in his archives. Binning the phrase rather than filing it is intended to benefit his couldn’t give a shit attitude toward whatever’s locked away, beyond his reach. That’s essential because his attitude is the reason he’s managed to stay reasonably sane, despite having no way to reconcile his subconscious. It’s also the reason why his pre-snooze train of thought couples, so effortlessly, to his current warm fuzzy feeling of loving the tube, warts and all. Having said that though, there are still times when it gets on his tits. And, as he separates his bleary eyelids now, and stretches yet again, he instantly knows this is one of those times. That’s because, at this very moment, he’s not hurtling along at all. Rather he’s stranded, and miles away from his happy place. And the warm fuzzy feeling, the one he’s misinterpreted as love, is actually the onset of mild heat exhaustion. On top of that, he’s gradually obliterating his precious Saturday morning, confined in a dripping wet seat.

These days everyone who takes the tube expects delays. It’s just the nature of the beast, so to speak. But it’s been getting steadily more beastly for about ten years. A decade that started with England going all slim line, ended with a life or death lottery, it’s been tough going. If the UK was a size fourteen before everything melted, it’s currently a size six – with a size zero waste. Rising sea levels accounted for almost all of Wales, and turned Scotland into a pastiche. Not to mention what it did to counties like Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire too. The flooding seemed to go on forever, real doomsday stuff. Dealing with all the water was a challenge, some people even took to building arks. But no sooner did the water stop rising then we got obliterated by disease. But, while so many things changed, one thing stayed the same. From the beginning of the heatwaves to the end of the pandemic, a river of people wider than the Thames flooded in and swamped London. Home is always home – that is until it’s not there anymore. Well defended, the capital also turned out to be a lot of people’s second choice, refuge, spiritual home… Whatever you want to call it, it filled up fast. Facilitating more and more fish in an ever-shrinking tin, it was widely accepted that London’s long serving Scottish Mayor was getting a cut; no one ever proved it though. The overcrowding seemingly worse all the time, someone needs to tell the fat Scottish fuck – this tin is fit to burst!

Jim, as a tube aficionado, resigns himself to delays. He generally takes them in his stride. Having said that, he expects more problems at one particular station than any other stop on the whole underground. That station is Camden Town. As far as he’s concerned it’s a statistical certainty, the statistics in question derived from being held prisoner there every morning on his way home from work.

From ten at night till seven in the morning, six days a week, Jim packs sushi into bento boxes for a Japanese catering company right in the middle of London’s Square Mile. Wearing the most ridiculous disposable hairnets, and hideous blue latex gloves, he’s only one of many who toil through the night to help the city satisfy its cravings for rice and seafood substitutes. But, as he makes his way home everyday stinking of synthetic fish, he keeps reminding himself – it’s only a means to an end. The coin isn’t that great, and the job itself is as repetitive as all hell, but the music’s pretty good. It gets cranked every time the supervisor bunks off, and he bunks off a lot. The Brazilian fish cutters are a bunch of nutters with knives, but every job has its perks. And if it weren’t for a particularly fit Korean sushi maker, who he occasionally undresses in the staff room, he would’ve given the job the flick months ago, opting for something less smelly and more social instead.

Jim’s final job every morning is disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling the sushi making robots. After that, he doesn’t hang about. Instead he sprints to Moorgate to catch the 7:16 to Edgware, which always arrives on the dot. But he can only hope to get off at his stop, Golders Green, between thirty and forty minutes later, depending on what happens at Camden. Now an extra ten minutes may not seem like very long. In fact it’s not. But, when you’re shattered from working through the night, and you’ve got a connecting bus to catch, then every second can and does feel like an eternity. Miss that bus and you wait another twenty minutes, not something he wants to do. Besides, when it’s blatantly obvious to everyone around you that you smell like you’ve been rolling around with a dead sea monster, and the smell only gets worse the longer you’re forced stew in a poorly ventilated carriage, the movement of time can, occasionally, seem glacial.

Zipping through his tube memories, under the sub heading delays, Jim’s doing so with the same aplomb as someone doing the knowledge – flicking through an A-Z on their insert. So binary is his filing system that, after only a couple of seconds, he’s certain he’s never sat for so long at Hampstead before – or Belsize Park for that matter. But, for some unknown reason, on this particularly muggy December morning, he’s been stuck between those very two stations for what seems like an eon.

To make matters exponentially worse, it’s Jim’s birthday. He turned nineteen over seven hours, and two and a half thousand boxes of sushi ago. He’s already received a couple of bars of Happy Birthday to You, and a few good natured but airborne pieces of sushi to the back of the head. The sly dog’s also jagged a little fun and games with a different sushi maker, while on a toilet break, but none of it is what he has in mind by way of a real celebration.

Resting his elbows on his knees, Jim always leans forward in his seat in a crowded carriage. He does so out of courtesy, to avoid rubbing shoulders and exchanging odours with those passengers on either side of him. As he leans forward this time, however, the sweat funnels down his brow and runs along the bridge of his nose, all the way to the tip. That’s the exact spot it decouples and falls, splashing in a pool between his smart new birthday trainers. The trainers were a present to himself and, as he watches the pool expand steadily out towards them, all he wants to do is get home and exfoliate until he’s raw and odourless, then go party with his friends.

As bored as tired, Jim yawns. He checks the time again with a glance down at the crude numbers on a small section of his multipurpose insert. Still regarded as fashion accessories, or new tattoos – why hadn’t he taken a chance on another designer model? Remembering precisely why, he taps one of his pristine trainers in the creeping saline puddle, impatiently. Then he looks, anxiously, up and down the carriage at the other passengers looking, equally anxiously, back at him.

An only child, Jim’s tall and lean. Years of competitive swimming mean his shoulders are broad and his abs strong – strong enough to deal with the occasional kicking he gets as a by-product of living on the estate where he does. Jim has medium length dark hair, sparkly brown eyes, a thin face and a cheeky smile. His friends tease him that he looks like a skeleton wearing an old Beatles wig, but more and more girls at uni are discovering he has cheekbones, and other features, to die for. He loves cool clothes and, although he can’t really afford it, he invests some coin in his wardrobe and his music collection every payday, with a visit to Camden Market.

Meeting a stranger, they generally notice Jim’s port wine mark before his clothes, or anything else for that matter. Heart shaped, about an inch and a half across, slightly crooked and located in the middle of his left cheek, it’s impossible to miss. Jim’s birthmark is part of him now. And, even though it bleeds when he’s stressed, and it looks like a homemade tattoo, or something you might hastily self inflict to get back at a parent or guardian at other times, he’s not nearly as self conscious about it as he was when puberty first knocked him sideways.

If Jim’s renowned for anything though, it isn’t his clothes, his music, his god-awful snoring, or his bleeding birthmark. It’s his memory. He’s forever making mental notes which, after years of practice, he can recall at will. Ever since he can remember remembering, he’s conditioned himself to respond to the phrase note to self, and the sensation of gouging his left thumbnail into the pad on his left index finger. The process is virtually automatic, and the effect is as reliable as hitting ‘Save.’ As a result, the quality and quantity of information he can regurgitate constantly amazes and dumfounds people. It also makes him a regular ring-in in pub quizzes, and has done so ever since he was first disguised and smuggled into The Mill, his first local, aged just fourteen. To his mates Jim’s a walking talking game of Trivial Pursuit, which sometimes pays out like a fruit machine!

Sixty minutes dribble into ninety much slower than thirty minutes trickled into sixty. To compound the problem the driver plays the same pre-recorded message over and over. Blatantly just to piss-off all his beloved passengers, every twenty minutes on the dot, Celia announces, "The London Underground Customer Charter offers a refund system for an individual journey delayed more than 15 minutes. Claim forms are available at any London Underground station. The refund amount is the standard single fare for the Underground journey you were undertaking. Have a nice day, and thank you for choosing the Tube." Celia is an acronym that stands for Complete Electronic Line Information Announcer, and a generous amount of pain and suffering is guaranteed for anyone unlucky enough to hear her far from dulcet tones.

Strangely though, every time Jim hears the message he feels the urge to smash down a bag of Iron Bru. The strange thing is – Jim doesn’t even like Iron Bru. He wonders if he’s succumbing to yet another subliminal advert, now legislated legal in certain circumstances and boroughs by that bent Scottish arsehole, or if his urge is motivated purely by thirst alone. At that exact point in his recurring train of thought, the driver always interrupts with his own totally incoherent situation report, Sorry-for-the-delay-ladies-and-gentlemen-but-there’s-nothing-to-update. I- still- can’t- speak- to- my- controller- or- get- through- to- anyone- on- the- radio. But- it- shouldn’t- be- much- longer- now. Thanks- again- for- your- patience- and-understanding- in- this- matter.

What a prat, mumbles Jim, squirming more with each irritating interruption. He also notes the driver sounds a little less convincing, and considerably more miserable with each muffled effort on his part.