Read Online Bang by Charles Kennedy Scott - Free Book Online

was putting it fucking
lightly. She washed her mouth out, metaphorically, felt around her gums for the
closing hole of her now lost tooth, experimentally sucked some air into it,
which hurt dramatically but released some trapped eggshell, and watched the
officer stamp up and down on the lower half of the catsuit, trampling its legs.
Delilah wondered how such people ever got such responsible jobs. Then realised
these were exactly the sort of people that got responsible jobs.
    When the officer had incapacitated catsuit’s top half,
he returned to Delilah and began saying, ‘A man with little confidence tends to
be a keen observer of others. With less chance to speak, he listens. With less
opportunity to perform, he watches. He waits, for tips, tips on confidence and
popularity. And he thinks. Oh how he thinks. The prisoner cannot imagine. What
does he think about, does the prisoner think? Can the prisoner think? Is the
prisoner a thinker? Or does the prisoner claim to be someone who does not
think? Perhaps the prisoner tells its friends that it gave up thinking ten
years ago and no longer thinks. I do not think so. I think the prisoner thinks.
I think the prisoner derives much of its own misfortune from the contents of
its own head, whence its thoughts originate. Ha. I see such statements strike a
chord with the prisoner, for its eyes betray a truth. The prisoner’s eyes are
its enemy. The prisoner’s eyes give everything away. They speak, even when the
mouth is closed. The prisoner did not bemoan the loss of the old warden’s eye.
No, not one bit. I was watching. That’s right, I was watching very carefully.
And what did this important promoted powerful officer see? Every time a drop of
water dropped on its head, the prisoner winced, winced in its eyes. All it was
was a little leak in the ceiling, dropping drips on the ugly prisoner’s head.’
Hey, thought Delilah, I’m not ugly. ‘That ceiling is really put through the
mill with the launderette above it. But an incey-wincey little leak and the
prisoner could not stand it. It drove the prisoner mad. The prisoner would have
said anything to Officer JJ Jeffrey to stop the drips. The drip, drip, drip.
Now, ten or twenty seconds have passed and still no lawyer arrived. Ten or
twenty days instead it’s looking like. This way, prisoner, back to the leaky
ceilinged room. Only it won’t be your head this time.’ And here came the
man-with-no-confidence’s high-pitched laugh, which got Delilah right in her
teeth, even the cracked one that had fallen out and wasn’t there any more. ‘We
know what you like,’ he said, and prodded her where he thought she liked it.
    In Wet Room 102, Officer Gentle aimed the drip system
at a Delilah he’d now attached to the floor, and when he’d done that he left
her there. Then he came back in, kicking his heels together and wiggling his
knees. The reason for his exit and return was not clear. Only that he came back
more determined than ever, and moving oddly. These were, these systems of
nastiness and domination meted out on Delilah, the twistings of an unconfident
mind – exactly the twistings Delilah feared so much. Now she hoped for a
reversion in the officer to his former meeker personage. She held little hope.
Already the drips that drips on her every ten seconds, small as they were,
contacted with such a bang that they sent signals through her whole body
heaving it off the ground. She could not imagine this for another ten minutes,
let alone another ten hours, another ten days. Then the officer left the room
again, having done nothing while in there other than look determined and wiggle
and brush his synthetic yellow boots with a brush that had a bright card
hanging from it saying Happy Birthday, my dearest Gentle .
    When two days later Officer Gentle came back in,
Delilah had gone insane. Thus disproving by own example her previous conviction
that she wouldn’t – and additionally refuting that what she had to worry
about