Free Bang by Charles Kennedy Scott

What there
was of her was still on a ten-second cycle, a sort of click or tick that struck
every ten seconds in her brain, which was fading, and would fade, but for now
horribly repeated the drip that had set it. She could detect an emotion in her
too, distinct from the others, which she determined was fury. Fury was good,
she further decided, on the road to recovery. And the object of her fury was
Officer Gentle. There were others, but right at this moment it was Gentle. But
she didn’t fully register the pinch because she wasn’t fully back yet. She
hadn’t resumed speech, for instance, so she couldn’t say anything.
    ‘A man came back in. Your man.’
    ‘Yes, so he did,’ taunted the other officer, ‘the man
came back, back into Authority Welcome. Your man.’
    ‘Wanted to pay your bail.’
    ‘The man came back. Your man. You have a friend.’
    ‘We invited him in, made him comfortable, asked to him
wait around a while. What, an hour or so? Not long. We gave him a number off a
paper roll of other numbers to look at while he waited.’
    ‘Two days, we made him wait, looking at his number.’
    ‘Yes, it was more like two days, but one can’t rush
these things. Whilst we searched for you. High and low we looked. All the
kitchens and bedrooms and saunas and enhancement parlours. But could we find
you? Not a bit of it. We called the holiday companies, both of them. They’d
taken no booking. We visited the schools, disguised as pupils, lest you’d taken
up a job teaching maths or core geography. But no, no sign. We traipsed through
all the officers’ records beginning C in case you’d changed your name and
joined the force. Zero luck. Then what happens? We find you arm in arm with a
man in skin-tight underwear and belt of wrenches and pipe parts. And what do we
find you wearing? Is it a chair-covering, or something? Did you make it
yourself, during your sojourn? You did some sewing? Sewing does wonders for
you, you certainly look refreshed, doesn’t she?’
    ‘Refreshed isn’t the word for it. I take a look at her
and I think vivacity . This is a girl going places. This is a player.
This is someone . This, this is …’
    ‘A prisoner.’
    ‘That’s the word.’
    ‘A murderer.’
    ‘That too.’
    ‘A traffic offences offender.’
    ‘She’ll take everything coming her way.’
    ‘She’s going down.’
    ‘Deep down.’
    ‘Forever and forever.’
    ‘And then some.’
    ‘A worse fate even than the electric animals.’
    ‘The artery insects?’
    ‘Worse.’
    ‘So much worse.’
    ‘She cannot imagine.’
    ‘She doesn’t need to imagine, she will experience .’
    ‘To the elevator?’
    ‘I want to press the button. Not you. You did it last
time.’
    ‘Don’t make a mistake. You won’t press the up button, will you, in error?’
    ‘Not me. Not the up button. I won’t even look
at the up button.’
    Outside the closed doors of the lift, the subordinate
officer did indeed not look at the up button. Nor did he look at the down button. Which perhaps explained why, when his hand shot out, it hit the up button. And the carriage immediately arrived opened its doors with a swift
hiss, like a mouth.
    ‘Look what you did, you idiot.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I should have looked, I know I should
have.’
    ‘Oh get in, let’s make the best of a bad situation.
Come on, prisoner, you too. What’s this, a gift? You have an admirer, prisoner.
Look, your very own rocking horse. Sit on it. Take a weight off. We’ll rock
you. Go on, on you get, you mad bint.’ As the lift began its assent, Delilah
was hoisted onto the rocking horse, and rocked, and over-rocked, and sent
crashing back and forth by the two accompanying men. ‘Where are we going?’ she
heard a small voice in her head ask. She made then a mental assumption: ‘I’m
back.’ But rather than let on, she observed from the other side of the shutters
of madness the current situation. ‘Maybe this isn’t to be such a bad day as the
last few,’