Free The Crime Studio by Steve Aylett

surgical-pink convertible. The back of the car had caught light in a bomb accident and everyone had joined in with wrenches and hammers to make shapes before the metal cooled - the rear wings were now rippled and stretched like a discarded rubber.
    The cops wanted an audience with Bleach because she was responsible for seven important murders but in the four days that the atmosphere remained at 92 they were fully occupied supervising the violence. So what with Bleach’s munitions knowledge and the feeling of invulnerability common to kids newly on the shaft we felt safe and inclined to go for a leisurely cruise in the exaggerated sun. My borrowed AK-47 sub lay in the back and I drove with one arm about Bleach and her S&W 9mm ACP, her Armalite AR-180 semiauto, her SPAS-12 autofeed, her M-79 grenade launcher and her cut-down Remington skeet. She kissed me like a frog and passed a pill that numbed my body and stopped the pain in my chest. We laughed in the knowledge that in the trunk were stowed a Panzerfaust-3, an adjustable dagger set, a Japanese bolus and a three-sectioned staff. Life was strong and durable as the wind whistled through the pin of Bleach’s body-grenade. Parking turbulently on the waterfront, we felt like the perfect antidude couple as we strolled down the boardwalk with a golfbag containing the best of our home-defence artillery. We thought our passion would last forever, like styrofoam. Bleach elaborated on her theory about how Lee Oswald survived and changed his name to Bob Newhart, and we idled at a fish stall for a snack - but we had reckoned without the pathological climate. Instantly belligerent, the fish-seller formed his hand into a claw and expressed indignation at our breathtaking arrogance in requesting food from a guy like him. Rolling up his sleeves, he shrieked about how things were done when he was a boy.
    A disturbance developed during which everyone on the pier pulled out an automatic weapon. Even picturesque passersby walking small chirpy dogs became gun-toting, bellowing maniacs. A silver-haired gran rolled down the hood of a baby carriage revealing a SMAW launcher with a dual function HEDP projectile and nightsighter. Taffy Moodswing, who ran the boat-hire service, ran screaming up the steps with an H&K, rapid-firing before a target had so much as graced his eye. Any sign of mannered deportment went out the window. Even as he was firing a Winchester the fishman yelled that he couldn’t hear himself think. Taffy was slobbering like a primitive, strafing the pier buildings with a fierce and Freudian inaccuracy. Granny launched the SMAW and blew the north end of the boardwalk to matchwood - Bleach and I were behind a lifeboat and dwarfed by the wall of splintering debris.
    The shooting resumed before the smoke had cleared. And when I looked around Bleach had selected the Norinco submachine. She took aim with soulful eyes and wasn’t at all cruel. She’d been shot in the arm once and said it was like having her picture taken by god. Tightening on the squeeze like a Grafenberg manoeuvre - the cords in her arm and shoulder moved like a river and the recoil erased any question from her mind. Linda Hamilton with a touch of Spinoza, a ballistic angel, her beauty at that instant was intravenous.
    Bleach swapped the AK for the Armalite and, aiming, narrowed her eyes. Her nipples were hardened like acorns.
    ‘This’ll hurt.’
    Taffy prancing across the fireline - Bleach let it go. The scene was like a Scorsese movie but without the pretence at moral justification - and the gore looked fake. The fishman yelled from behind rubble. ‘You and the clown better throw down your weapons or any moment now you’ll be zinc-eyed and deceased.’ I couldn’t believe he was acting so superior when all he ever sold were manually-strangled lobsters whose bleak features told a tale of unrelieved despair. I began shooting at him tentatively.
    But I was no good and kept hitting gulls and surfacing anchovies.