BABE Of The DAY - LESLIE BIANCHINI...

It's only just turned July and

LESLIE BIANCHINI is digging out

her Christmas decorations.  That's surely

'being prepared'!  Could she have been in

the boy scouts?  (There's a joke in there

 somewhere, but I ain't touchin' it.)

The GOING RATE...

Lee looked at the strange figure in front of him and eyed it up and down in a quizzical sort of way.  He wasn't quite sure if red was really Nick's colour... and as for those horns and the tail, well... but he'd let that lie for the moment.

"How much?" he asked at last.

"Two cents" came the reply.

"Two cents?  Are you kidding me?  It's gotta be worth much more than that.  C'mon!" he bellowed, indignantly.

"That's the going rate for a soul these days" Nick said, dismissively.  "You think you'll get more upstairs?  He pays nothing... figures they all belong to Him anyway."

"But two cents, man.  That ain't worth spit."  He began to wonder if he'd made a mistake getting involved in this deal.

"Take it or leave it" came the reply. "Now, I'm busy... either sign or stop wasting my time.  There's plenty more fish in the sea you know."  He stood up as if to leave, fully aware of the effect it would have.  He'd done it too many times before.

Lee panicked.  This might be the only chance he'd ever get... the only chance for getting his name in lights short of changing his name to 'Exit'.  The only chance of attracting women (men, even... he'd always wanted to try), the high-life he'd always craved, back from he was a little boy that nobody liked because he stank of pee and looked at other boys' 'bits' in the toilet.  His one and only chance of escaping the obscurity which defined his life, slaving away in his little basement room night after night, in that drug-induced haze which freed him from his inhibitions and allowed his imagination free-rein.  A twisted, sick and perverted imagination, true, but it was his ticket out.  Or so he thought. 

He seized the paper in front of him greedily, and scrawled his signature in the space provided.

"We're done" said Nick, as he headed for the door.  "I'll be in touch."

His laughter as he ascended the stairs from the little basement apartment stayed with Lee for the rest of his days.  It haunted his dreams and allowed him no peace for the remainder of his empty, miserable, wasted life.

And short, too. 

The RECYCLER (A CHARACTER PIECE)...

Agnes liked the watch.  It was an expensive one and the woman was dead with no friends or family, so what harm would it do to take it?  She slipped it into the pocket of her uniform and made her way to the hospital canteen.

"After all," she thought, sipping her gin-enhanced tea, "it'll only go to waste.  It's not really stealing, it's... recycling."  She was pleased with this analogy, and a self-satisfied smile spread across her smug face.  "All the work I do, I'm entitled to a few perks."

Agnes was a nasty piece of work.  The kind of person who only 'helped' others so that she could feel superior to them.  "Look at them," she would think, "lying there in their own filth.  I clean them, I fetch and carry for them - they'd be nothing without me."  And thus would she wallow in the misery of others to validate her own existence.  Like a parasite needs its host, Agnes needed the sick and needy.  Her life was nothing without them.  The irony of her needing her patients as much if not more than they needed her was lost on her.  If ever a more selfish, spiteful, sickening and soulless creature strode God's good Earth, their existence was lost to recorded history.

Every act of 'goodness' did not go unannounced.  Every tenuous opportunity to introduce her latest act of 'charity' into a conversation did not go unexploited.  She was her own best public relations officer when it came to relating all her many splendid and 'unselfish efforts' on behalf of the disadvantaged.  It is the nature of vultures to feed off the dead, and Agnes strode the corridors of the dying in much the same way.  She fed off their groans and screams, and drank in their agony.  When they expired, she feasted on the tears and misery of their loved-ones, revelling in the fact that she was in the midst of it all and that it gave purpose to her being.

Like I said... she was a nasty piece of work.

WHERE MORTALS FEAR TO TREAD...

Image copyright MARVEL COMICS

The stranger rode through the gates of the city with a determined frown upon his scarred but not unhandsome features.  His ebony steed trotting proudly under him, his hand resting easily upon the ornately fashioned hilt of the sword which hung by his side, he slowly made his way into the heart of the sprawling township.  He had travelled long and far, but his quest would soon be over he told himself.  Thank the gods!

Directing his mount down the narrow, uneven streets of the crowded marketplace, his dark, smouldering eyes, like fiery embers, stared hard at each trader, obviously in search of someone.  Those that noticed his piercing stare shuddered and quickly averted their eyes, pretending unconvincingly that they were unaware of the stranger's gaze.  "Pity the man he's looking for" they thought, each one relieved that it wasn't him.

The stranger, for his part, as if ignorant of the eyes which fixed on his back as he passed, wound his horse through the swarming populace, until, eventually, his attention was arrested by an elderly, cadaverous individual, who stood stooped over a stall with a variety of menacing-looking instruments displayed upon it.  Congealed blood crusted the instruments, and also stained the stall-holder's threadbare habiliments, and when the stranger noticed this, not for the first time since he had begun his mission, he trembled inwardly.

He dismounted and approached the man, who, regarding the stranger with interest, drew back the flap of the tent behind the stall, entered, and beckoned him to follow.  The stranger cautiously obliged and stepped inside.  He scrutinized the gloomy interior at great length and then studied the stall-holder nervously.

"Are you Korath?" he at last demanded from the man, who, compared to the stranger, seemed almost like a dwarf, though in truth he was of no mean stature.  Sensing hesitation in his voice, the stall-holder allowed a contemptuous sneer to flicker across his vulture-like features.  "And what if I am?" he enquired softly, unintimidated by the other's height.  His sepulchral tone sent an icy chill of fear down the stranger's spine.  "I seek a man named Korath" said the stranger edgily, "and from the description I was given, or rather, extracted......"  Here he faltered, as if from somewhere far away, a long-suppressed, unpleasant memory had suddenly resurfaced in his mind's eye.  Recovering quickly from his momentary pause, however, he went on "......from a whelp now dead, you appear to be he whom I seek!"

As he spoke, a black servant, easily equal to the stranger's great height and almost twice as broad, entered the tent bearing the various strange implements that had been exhibited outside and set them to rest upon a rough-hewn, bloodstained wooden table.  The stall-holder edged his way closer to the bench, trying to conceal his furtive manner with a casual air, but the stranger, with a sudden look of fear and anger, swept the man's legs from under him with a powerful kick.  "Your actions betray your identity!" he thundered.  "I was a fool to come here!"  "Do you truly believe you had a choice in the matter?" the stall-holder cackled, picking himself up from the floor.

The stranger, puzzled by the man's words, momentarily stood undecided in his actions.  The stall-holder, taking advantage of this weakness, shouted a command in a strange tongue to his ebony servant, who instantly moved towards the stranger in an attempt to subdue him.  However, the stranger, now galvanized into frenzied activity, drew his mighty sword from his side and beheaded the servant with one fierce, swift stroke.  The bloodied torso tottered for a moment, and then, like a marionette whose strings had been suddenly severed, fell to the ground, a lifeless husk.

Unnoticed by the stranger, however, the stall-holder had meanwhile crept around behind him, withdrawing something from under one of the folds in his robe as he did so.  There was a sudden flash of movement as a vicious bludgeon cleaved through the air towards the stranger's unprotected head.  The next moment, consciousness was racing abruptly away from him, to be replaced by the fearful, terrifying clutch of an all-enveloping, icy darkness.

******

When the stranger came to, he found himself reclining on several cushions of a luxurious purple velvet, which, though oddly at variance with the other rather spartan trappings, were spread of the floor of the tent.  For a moment he wondered where he was, and then, remembering, a look of dread flashed through his eyes, but disappeared when he realized he was alive and unhurt.  The emaciated visage of the stall-holder appeared before him, nodding benignly.  "Is it done?" the stranger asked, incredulously.  "It is done!" replied the man called Korath.

The stranger rose to his feet and removed six gleaming gold coins from a well-worn leather pouch hanging from his belt and tossed them onto the table.  "One for your services, the other five to replace your slave" he said, nodding in the direction of the corpse, which still lay undisturbed where it had fallen.  "A thousand pardons for my disrespectful behaviour earlier" begged the stranger.  "Some demon must have possessed my senses.  I... I just lost my head".  "As did my servant" said Korath, good-naturedly.

"I trust you won't reveal my cowardice to anyone" continued the stranger, nervously toying with his cloak in an attempt to cover his embarrassment.  "I swear by Krell, old one, that it was totally unlike me.  Usually I'm quite stout-hearted.  A curse on my head if I'm lying to you!"  "Never fear" soothed Korath with a twinkle in his eye.  "Even the bravest of men fear a visit to... the tooth-extractor!"

He chortled inwardly to himself as he handed the stranger his recently removed molar and watched him depart.