Aurora - Blood Moon Tribute Pt. 05

"Says I can go?" Ally glared, slumping back with her arms crossed.

"Say's you are HIV negative."

"Well bugger me." Ally breathed, "Must be a miracle."

The doctor looked up. "Is that what you think?"

"Well what else could it be?"

The doctor's dark eyes bored into hers. "And this is the truth? You swear it?"

Ally put three fingers to her temple in the girl-scout salute. "Scout's honour."

The doctor banged his desk with both hands, making Ally jump. "By all that is holy!" he beamed, "It IS a miracle!"

"Miracle any of you made it to adulthood." Ally said under her breath. Fun while it lasted, but this little charade had now become tedious. "Doc..." she implored, "Ig-balls..."

"I mean it!" he boomed. "I told you, didn't I? You should throw yourself on the mercy of the lord. I told you to pray. And pray you did. And now look! You are HIV negative! The good lord has saved you, and all because of me." He looked at her smiling from ear to ear. "Which means I am the one who actually saved you, god be praised."

Ally opened her mouth to tell him to stop taking the piss. Okay, so she'd lied about the bum-flu. She was sorry. Now could they just take her back to her friends?

"Blake," the doctor said fervently, "you are living proof of the message. I have seen many a miracle during my time, but none so clear, so... unequivocal. HIV one day, pure the next."

"So can I go?"

"What? Oh, yes, I'm sorry." The doctor fished some paperwork from the pile with shaking hands, then lay it on the desk in front of Ally. He gave her a pen. "Just sign here." he said, tapping a line on the bottom of the page.

"What is it?" Ally asked, squinting at the unintelligible script.

"Your release." the doctor said brightly, and watched Ally dash off the quickest signature since the Big Bang. "Splendid!" he beamed, then looked up over the ex-prisoner's head. "Sadia! Noor!"

Ally looked over her shoulder as two young nurses bustled in, clad in blue scrubs and blue paper bonnets. "Take Miss Ally to the showers, please. I'll be along shortly."

As Ally rose, the doctor picked up the phone. When she looked over her shoulder he waved her away, a great, triumphant smile on his face.

The nurses took one arm each and guided the tiny western girl across the surgery to a large ablution block. Shelves on one wall were stacked floor-to-ceiling- bedpans, bandages, piss-bottles, gloves, masks, face shields and disposable gowns. In the right-hand corner, surrounded by a heavy-duty plastic curtain, a shower unit with 2 shower heads, and a large calibre drain. The older nurse, Noor, nodded at Ally's prison greens. "You take off."

Ally shrugged-off her helpers. "That's okay, I can look after myself. If you wouldn't mind waiting outside."

"You take off!" Noor glared, tugging the front of her shirt.

"No!" Ally scowled, "You take off! Go on, fuck off! If you wanna see me starkers, you gotta be one of my crew!"

The 2 nurses conversed in a decidedly unfriendly tone, then Sadia, the younger, reefed down her pants.

"For fuck's sake!" Ally railed, then checked herself. Here she was, on the brink of release. If the local slags demanded a parting display, well, a little humiliation was small price to pay. Biting back her embarrassment, she kicked free of her baggy pants and dis-masted her threadbare knickers, then shrugged her shirt off and handed it over.

While Sadia turned to a small metal trolley, Noor ran the shower, neither of the women the slightest bit interested in what she was made of. Sadia stepped up to her with a brand-new disposable razor, and instructions, in a language Ally still didn't understand.

"She say, all body hair!" Noor explained, then nodded in the direction of Ally's scant thatch. "Include your Satan's goatee."

"My WHAT?" Ally grimaced.

"Your pubic hair." a voice said and Ally jumped. The doctor was standing behind her, holding a two-litre bottle full of evil green liquid, with a four-inch rubber teat screwed on the top.

"What the..." Ally blustered, "call your dogs off, Q-ball! And while you're at it, tell 'em I don't need their advice on pussy-coiffure!"

"Relax." the doctor said, looking from one nurse to the other. "They are just helping you prepare."

"Prepare? For what? For getting the fuck out of here? Tell 'em I can do it myself, thanks all the same!"

Ally heard voices outside and another tall, dark and menacing male stuck his head through the curtain. In the blink of an eye, the doctor's demeanour switched from casual authority to shoulders-stooped servility. The new arrival looked Ally up and down with hungry eyes as she stood all in her goosebumps, naked and shivering, trying to cover herself. "Oh for fuck's sake!" she fumed, "anyone else want a look?"

"We must hurry!" the doctor told Ally, thrusting the bottle into Noor's hands, "The brigadier is on his way down!"

"What the fuck does he want?"

As the doctor stood back smirking, cold hard reality hit Ally like a wrecking ball. "Look!" She beathed, "Am I getting out of here or not?"

"Getting out?" the doctor frowned, to the sound of a commotion outside. Low male voices, a flurry of activity, the sound of combat boots scuffing the floor. The doctor raised his hands, "Forgive me, Blake, my English, please. When I said, 'released', you thought I meant 'set free'. Is that correct?"

"Well didn't you?" Ally demanded through clenched teeth, "Because that's what I understood."

"Forgive me, Blake, my mistake. I actually meant..." the three locals conferred again and the doctor, now seriously embarrassed, said, "I meant I am turning you over. To the commandant."

"To who?"

"The commandant. Of the prison. He will take care of you until the day of your trial. Any service you do for him may come off your sentence."

"Service?"

The doctor nodded. "For the commandant."

Noor, the nurse, pushed Ally in the direction of a white plastic shower chair. "We must hurry." she said. "Enema first, then you shave. All body hair below the neck. That Satan's Goatee must go."

"Fuckin' enema?" Ally cried, fending her off. "What fuckin' enema?"

The doctor offered a lopsided smile- this was always a hard one to sell. "The commandant likes, how do you say? To enter through the back door."

"You fucking what?" Ally squeaked, hackles rising. "He wants to fuck me up the ass? Is that what you're saying?"

The curtain suffered a near death traverse of its overhead track. Two uniformed officers stood looking at the scene while the doctor bowed, fawning and scraping. The ensuing conversation was brief and unfriendly, and mostly one way.

"Hurry!" the doctor urged as the men stood watching. "The enema."

"NO!" Ally roared, her voice echoing through the hospital. "NO! You tell that motherfucker... he brings his pencil dick anywhere near me. I'll shit all over it and write 'FUCK YOU' all over the wall."

The goons parted as another figure arrived, just one more tall, swarthy joker in this cavalcade of clowns. The troopers stood to attention, looking at the floor, while the doctor kowtowed, clearly subservient, grinning and obsequious. Like every other officer in this land, the new arrival, all in his shirtsleeves, with the cuffs rolled up and his collar unbuttoned, had a cigarette clamped between his teeth. He looked the shivering Westerner up and down with an approving eye. Just how he liked them, not much bigger than an adolescent, with the tits of an overfed boy. "Doctor!" he said gruffly, "Is this my Friday surprise?"

Ally cocked her head, frowning. "What did he say?"

"Every Friday," the doctor cut in, "we give the brigadier-"

"Is this the one?" the brigadier demanded, shutting him down.

"Sir," the doctor replied in the local tongue, head bobbing, "there was a slight delay in her transfer. Ten minutes, I promise, she'll be ready."

More uniformed thugs turned up to watch the entertainment- the brigadier's entourage and a few hangers-on. He loved showing his men, how he could just take his pick, cast his pearls as he wished among the swine.

"Hurry," the doctor urged, "you must prepare."

"The fuck I will!" Ally growled. "If he so much as lays a finger on me."

"Then what?" the brigadier leered in excellent English.

"You'll find out."

"Listen," the brigadier said reasonably, "just calm down. I am actually here to try and make your life better. To offer you relief from your present predicament."

"You're letting me go?"

The brigadier lay a hand over his heart. "Oh, Miss Alana, if only. If only I had the means. If only I had the authority. I would do that, I would, in a heartbeat."

"But you're not?"

"Sadly, no."

"So what then?" Ally snorted, "Aside from the obvious?"

"It's simple. Why live here in squalor when you can dwell in my quarters instead? As my personal aid?"

Those who could understand English translated for those who couldn't and a chorus of suppressed guffaws worked through the crowd.

"Please me sufficiently," the brigadier went on, "and I will make sure, personally, when your case comes to trial, your sentence will be lenient."

Ally jerked her head at the enema. "And all I gotta do is let you fuck me up the ass?"

The brigadier shrugged. "Any way you prefer."

"Oh is that right?" Ally smiled. "Well, let me tell you. Better men than you have tried and all of them left with a ball-ache. It ain't gonna happen. No fuckin' way. I'll just go back to my cell if it's all the same to you."

"Once again," the brigadier said, "I must decline."

"Is that so."

The brigadier hefted a shoulder. "Protocol, I'm afraid. Once you've been moved you can't be unmoved."

"Right. Of course not. Your tiny little brains couldn't cope with it. Well let me tell you, Ali Baba. You can shove your protocol fair up your cloaca. I'd sooner fuck a dog than a deadshit like you."

The doctor almost swooned and the nurses turned away, preferring not to witness the inevitable bloodshed. Unperturbed, the brigadier stood grinning, smoke curling out of his nose, and looked around at his minions once more. "Hear that, boys?" he said, reverting to his native language. "This little white cunt likes to fuck dogs." He turned on the doctor who was busy staving off a brain haemorrhage. "Have her shaved. Every last hair but her head and her eyebrows. Then send her down to the pool."

"The pool, Brigadier?"

"The Blood Moon pool."

"Are you sure?"

"Unless you've got a better idea. They're fifty short on showgirls right now, and they've already taken most of my dancing boys. She's STD-free?"

"Brigadier," the doctor pleaded, "that's just what I wanted to tell you. About this girl. I believe it's a miracle."

"The only miracle is that she hasn't been put to death." The brigadier switched to English. "Slut!" he sneered, looking the small, trembling female up and down. "Look at you! Standing naked before so many men. Harlot! If you were my daughter I would kill you."

Ally curled her lip in a last great show of defiance. "If I were your daughter I'd kill myself."

The brigadier turned. "Get rid of this trash."

Ally grabbed the nearest thing to hand- a piss bottle as it happened, off the stainless steel trolley- and took a mighty swing. A galaxy lit up in her skull and just as quickly went black, and Ally crumpled to the floor in an ugly heap. The brigadier turned, catching the prison guard about to strike another blow. "That's okay, Saif," he said, nudging Ally with his toe, "I think she got the message. Good shot, by the way, right in the temple."

The doctor looked at Ally, lying there in the shower, blood blossoming from her nose. And he'd so wanted to tell the brigadier how he, the good doctor, had led this little lost lamb to the path of salvation. But she had to spoil it all. The brigadier took a drag of his cigarette then spat a fragment of tobacco on Ally's back. "Just like a dog."

"Takes one to fuck one." a trooper said and everyone froze. The brigadier cracked a grin and the crowd erupted with laughter.

The moment of levity was fleeting and the brigadier's expression hardened. "Now clean her up and get her shaved. Send her down to the pool. Let the cannibals have some fun with her." He looked around. "You!" he barked, pointing at a trooper, "And you! Get down to juvenile and find me a boy. As young as you can. With smooth skin and wide eyes, a country lad if you can find one. Ten minutes! Up in my quarters. Off you go!"

Dipping their heads, the two goons turned on their heels and set off at a jog. The brigadier looked at his watch with a forlorn shake of the head. "Almost ten o'clock on a Friday night, and here I am, still waiting for my surprise. What's this cursed place coming to?"

************************************************************************************************************

Caddy sat cross-legged in the soft embrace of a silk-upholstered armchair, freshly-showered and radiant. The front of her bathrobe fell open, revealing a traffic-stopping cleavage- firm, defined and utterly natural. She shucked her hem up to within a millimeter of Nirvana, attracting frequent, sneaky glances from several hopeful admirers. Jet-lagged and three parts sozzled, she wore a slightly vacant smile of pie-eyed benevolence.

Bouncing up and down on the sofa beside her, Tanya was play-fighting Maya, for possession of Hayley, who sat beaming with delight at her role in the contest; first prize. To their left, perched on the edge of a second plush armchair, sat the old man, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, staring sightlessly at a camera on the coffee table in front of him.

"Shoosh you three!" Caddy admonished, peering at the 70-inch flatscreen holding court before them. Kevin the IT guru had called for a meeting- via heavily encrypted audio-visual- with the gang of five, and a few as yet unspecified others. The agendum; the fate of the 2 missing pilots. And new developments.

Watson cleared his throat and shot Caddy a glance. "Are you sure these things are on?" he asked, nodding at his camera, one of three carefully arranged to stitch multiple frames into a single image.

Caddy adjusted her hem, either deliberately or not giving the old man a morale-boosting flash. "Stop stressing, Damo. I've already checked. We're 'go' for the moon."

"Stop stressing?" Maya piped up, coming upright beside Hayley. "It's Beck and Ally, Mum."

"What I mean, Darling, is it's all under control."

Tanya quietened them down. "Shoosh you lot! Look! Something's happening."

Pixels rippled across the broad expanse of flatscreen, struggling to manifest something coherent. Roger Bragg's face materialised briefly, like some random freeze-frame, his face a mask of intense concentration. Caddy pointed. "Is that Roger?"

"Hmph," Tanya grunted, "so that's what he looks like." She scanned the audience. "That IS Roger, isn't it? That guy I married?"

"He looks bloody awful." Caddy replied.

"Cheers, Big Ears," Tanya said, "I'll make sure to tell him."

"He's got food poisoning, apparently." Maya said. "Probably dysentery."

Caddy arched her eyebrows. "That's still a thing?"

"Trust me." Maya said, "I'm almost a doctor."

Bragg's troubled face disappeared to be replaced by a grinning Cheshire cat. CGI. Borrowed from a movie. "Well, who have we got here?" it asked, smiling with wall-to-wall teeth, a sparkle in its slit-pupiled emerald eyes.

Tanya leaned forward, squinting at the screen. "Is that you, Kev?"

"Hello Tan. Can you see me?"

"Don't look now, mate," Tanya said dryly, "but you've turned into a cat."

"Me?" Kev chimed, "How?"

Tanya rolled her eyes. "And now he's a comedian."

"Who called the comedian a cat?" Caddy said. "Who called the cat a comedian?"

"What happened to Roger?" Tanya asked, craning her neck. "He was there just a minute ago."

"Don't worry," the cat said, "he'll be back." His body dematerialised and the head spun upside-down, before rotating upright and regaining its bulk. As if by Cheshire cat-magic, the TV-screen separated into four, equal quadrants and the living room cameras lit up with little annunciators. "Are you doing that, Kev?" Tanya asked, "Or should we ring the exorcist?"

The split-image performed some more visual gymnastics, then Roger Bragg appeared in the upper-right corner. Apparently live this time, or at least not frozen, his tousled dark hair greying at the temples, his face gaunt, cheeks hollowed, several days growth on his jaw. Seeing his family on his own display, his face lit up with a huge, white grin, classic Bragg. His mouth began moving and a few seconds later, a voice in Caddy's living room said, "Well there's a sight for sore eyes."

Everyone waved. Tanya leant into the table-mounted camera, her worried face filling the lower left quadrant. "Jesus Christ, Rodge," she frowned, "You look like shit."

Bragg ducked his head, trying to see past her. "Good to see you guys." he hailed. "Is that Caddy I can see?"

Caddy waved. "Hi Rodge, how's India?"

"Well that's not very nice." Bragg said. "It's been a tough couple of weeks you know."

"I'm just worried about you, idiot." Tanya said. "How are you, Darling? How are your guts?"

"What?" Bragg frowned. "Oh, filthy dirty and swarming with Indians."

Brows knitted, Hayley looked at Maya. "His guts are filthy dirty?"

"It's just a metaphor." Maya sagely explained.

"We're all doing it tough." Tanya said as Maya patted Hayley's thigh. "How do you think Damon feels?"

"Apart from puking all day and shitting through the eye of a needle?" Bragg grunted. "Never been better."

The Cheshire cat did some loop the loops and Bragg's image froze. "Hang on gang," the cat said, "hang on. Looks like the synch's out of whack. Wait a sec. Here's Vicky."

Watson's heart skipped a beat at the image on the TV. Bragg's gorgeous young PA, the old man's one-time lover- had been stranded in London for much of the outbreak and they hadn't set eyes on each other in months. After their first, fiery liaison, under sail on the good ship Aurora, and a few brief trysts in between, they'd more or less drifted apart. The tyranny of distance, and Vicky's decreasing interest in the coarser sex. Not that she considered herself the slightest bit gay, though that would be nice. It was just that ruggedly-handsome older men, say in their 50s and 60s, with their very own yachts, and sweet little twenty-something female partners to share, were few and far between. She waved, and a few seconds later her sweet voice said, "I can see Damon."

"Macca!" Tanya cried, "Baby! Can you see me?"

"You're not looking too bad for a doddering old reprobate." Vicky smiled.

Tanya reared back in surprise. "What did she just call me?"

"If you'll all hold on," the Cheshire cat pleaded, "I'll just fix the synch. The audio and visual are running on separate encryptions."

Maya snorted with mirth. "A doddering old reprobate, Aunty Tan."

"Well done, Sweetheart." Watson told Vicky. "You just gave Tanya a stroke."

"Oh yes, I can see you too. Is that Maggie sitting beside you? Helloooo Maggie."

Maya blew a volley of air-kisses. "G'day Macca! How's Granma?"

"I gave her a stroke?"

"Everyone!" the cat implored. "Just stop! Just give the system time to catch up!" The cat spun and whirled, disappeared in a puff of smoke here, reappeared there, upside-down, just ears and eyes showing at the top of the upper left frame. There was a moment's nervous silence, Bragg in Goa, Vicky in London, Watson, Tanya, Caddy, Maya and Hayley in Sydney, Australia, each feasting their eyes on long-lost others. The Cheshire Cat, in another dimension, out in space, spanning several continents, winked and grinned and cavorted in cat-gymnastics. The screen went blank then suddenly lit up. "Roger?" the cat said.

There was a second's hesitation then Bragg waved. "De ja vu!" he grinned, his voice and vision now contemporaneous. "I could have sworn I was just talking to you all a second ago. Damo! How's it going, teacher?"