Read Online Doctor Who: Rags by Mick Lewis - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mick Lewis
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Doctor Who (Fictitious character), Punk rock musicians, Social conflict
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feel the emotion emanating from the people around her; its intensity scared her.
She had once seen a film called The Wild Bunch. At the climax, the four surviving outlaws walked down the main street of a Mexican town side by side, towards their own extinction. It had moved her in a way she had never been able to understand. Until now. Here was the same stroll towards doom, she sensed; the four musicians moving to take up their places with an inevitable finality that punched her soul. What was she talking about? No one was going to die here. There would be no repetition of the other day. They were merely going to play some...
... Songs?
‘Scum, scum, scum; the singer spat into the microphone as the tramp-hatted guitarist struck up chords Jo could almost smell, they were so rotten. A spotlight winked on like a crimson, evil 57
eye, and the band exploded into action.
‘Scum we are, and scum we’ll stay,’ the garish singer growled and swore, and if it was a song, it was the vilest Jo had ever heard. ‘Scum, scum, scum, the scum of the earth.’ The bass player moved towards the crowd which stood paralysed in front of the band, and Jo saw Sin, the attractive Chinese girl, standing next to Nick and gazing at the band with a kind of rapt horror.
The bass player, a mummer-punk troll with hair sticking up into the evening air like black straw poking out of a scarecrow’s head, stepped on top of a rock for better elevation and bullied his instrument, the sunglasses that he and his three fellow band members were still wearing throwing off red glare from the spotlight. The notes rumbled into the night like dinosaurs venting their spleen. Sin was directly below him as he stood on the rock, the electric lead trailing back to the generator behind him. Jo sensed what was coming and moved forward, although the action was futile, separated as she was from the girl by the heaving crowd.
‘And we shall inherit,’ barked the singer, and the bass player smiled, and spewed a green waterfall of puke down into Sin’s upturned face.
The crowd went mad.
Join the Unwashed. Join the Unforgiving.
They were preaching to the converted.
The band was in full fury; Sin was staggering back, her hands clawing at her face. She opened her mouth to scream and it was clogged. She couldn’t see. But she could hear. The ecstasy of the crowd, an ecstasy of horror and revulsion and delight, and she empathised with those feelings because they were her own too.
The man had sicked up on her, and the stinking slime was still all over her, and yet she was consumed with excitement as she mopped at herself. As Nick helped her, his face torn with disgust, she could only feel the pride, the honour of being chosen. It was a kind of madness, she knew that. Yet no one else had been singled out. She was grinning through the bile.
58
They had come for her, and she was going to leave this banality Its hind - this sickening boredom that was her life.
So she grinned at Nick and at the mummers from hell as they pounced and prowled around their grassy stage, and then she began to dance, the ecstasy pulling at her as if she were on strings, and she was laughing, laughing...
The bald man blocked Edward’s way.
‘Excuse me...’ the aristocrat offered feebly. The man stared, a wax statue, eyes barely blinking. He reminded Edward of something: a grotesque character from a comic he’d read as a child. Grimly... Grimly Fiendish, that was it. The bald man in the long shiny mac looked just like Grimly Fiendish.
The band had begun to play, a fearsome din that convinced Edward he and his friends might just possibly have taken the wrong path out on the moor and ended up in some parallel hell.
The bald man bowed mockingly, stepped aside and ushered Edward and Penelope inside the pub. As they squeezed past him, Edward glanced at his face. The whites of the man’s eyes were invisible, squeezed out by black gobstopper pupils.
Inside the pub, the
She had once seen a film called The Wild Bunch. At the climax, the four surviving outlaws walked down the main street of a Mexican town side by side, towards their own extinction. It had moved her in a way she had never been able to understand. Until now. Here was the same stroll towards doom, she sensed; the four musicians moving to take up their places with an inevitable finality that punched her soul. What was she talking about? No one was going to die here. There would be no repetition of the other day. They were merely going to play some...
... Songs?
‘Scum, scum, scum; the singer spat into the microphone as the tramp-hatted guitarist struck up chords Jo could almost smell, they were so rotten. A spotlight winked on like a crimson, evil 57
eye, and the band exploded into action.
‘Scum we are, and scum we’ll stay,’ the garish singer growled and swore, and if it was a song, it was the vilest Jo had ever heard. ‘Scum, scum, scum, the scum of the earth.’ The bass player moved towards the crowd which stood paralysed in front of the band, and Jo saw Sin, the attractive Chinese girl, standing next to Nick and gazing at the band with a kind of rapt horror.
The bass player, a mummer-punk troll with hair sticking up into the evening air like black straw poking out of a scarecrow’s head, stepped on top of a rock for better elevation and bullied his instrument, the sunglasses that he and his three fellow band members were still wearing throwing off red glare from the spotlight. The notes rumbled into the night like dinosaurs venting their spleen. Sin was directly below him as he stood on the rock, the electric lead trailing back to the generator behind him. Jo sensed what was coming and moved forward, although the action was futile, separated as she was from the girl by the heaving crowd.
‘And we shall inherit,’ barked the singer, and the bass player smiled, and spewed a green waterfall of puke down into Sin’s upturned face.
The crowd went mad.
Join the Unwashed. Join the Unforgiving.
They were preaching to the converted.
The band was in full fury; Sin was staggering back, her hands clawing at her face. She opened her mouth to scream and it was clogged. She couldn’t see. But she could hear. The ecstasy of the crowd, an ecstasy of horror and revulsion and delight, and she empathised with those feelings because they were her own too.
The man had sicked up on her, and the stinking slime was still all over her, and yet she was consumed with excitement as she mopped at herself. As Nick helped her, his face torn with disgust, she could only feel the pride, the honour of being chosen. It was a kind of madness, she knew that. Yet no one else had been singled out. She was grinning through the bile.
58
They had come for her, and she was going to leave this banality Its hind - this sickening boredom that was her life.
So she grinned at Nick and at the mummers from hell as they pounced and prowled around their grassy stage, and then she began to dance, the ecstasy pulling at her as if she were on strings, and she was laughing, laughing...
The bald man blocked Edward’s way.
‘Excuse me...’ the aristocrat offered feebly. The man stared, a wax statue, eyes barely blinking. He reminded Edward of something: a grotesque character from a comic he’d read as a child. Grimly... Grimly Fiendish, that was it. The bald man in the long shiny mac looked just like Grimly Fiendish.
The band had begun to play, a fearsome din that convinced Edward he and his friends might just possibly have taken the wrong path out on the moor and ended up in some parallel hell.
The bald man bowed mockingly, stepped aside and ushered Edward and Penelope inside the pub. As they squeezed past him, Edward glanced at his face. The whites of the man’s eyes were invisible, squeezed out by black gobstopper pupils.
Inside the pub, the
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