From: bm5024@albnyvms.bitnet (ben)
Subject: backfire
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 93 00:29:26 GMT

I've always liked a sort of timeless quality to prologues, so this bit isn't
straight out cyberpunk.  For those of you not interested in 'gothicpunk', this
part is fairly light on that subject also, but the actual body of the story is
heavy into both cyber and gothicpunk.  All constructive comments are welcome.
                                           ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

   Yom desh bom, der ritt                         may the days be aimless.
      de gitt der gue.   	ben miller	   let the seasons drift.
    Om desh, dee bom desh,    (518)442-6007      do not advance the action
   de umn bork! bork! bork!		   	    according to a plan.
      -the swedish chef		                        -white noise


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BackFire
Chapter 0
	"What the hell kinda..." doesn't seem like a very eloquent way of
shuffling off, but it was all Phillip had time for.  The small bump in
the road turned into a nice three second ride as the limo hurtled end
over end, flattening the wall of a decrepit tenement, creating new and
interesting methods of urban renewal.  Spinster looked on from a small
nook about a half block further in the territory, knowing that
something like this was for eyes older and duller than hers.  Knowing
that Harley wouldn't hesitate to empty them lights behind those eyes
into a nice puddle by a sewer.  Harley was forgiving that way.
	The limo eventually came to a rest about forty feet from where the
roadway had been ripped up to plant Casey's "gifts" to the Duke.
Sorry, re: the Duke, now the former Duke.  The limo landed, spinning
slightly, waiting for its death throes to end and the tank to finally
rupture.  One of the rear four doors creaked open, a small red
streaked hand seen straining at the splintered faux wood paneling
casing the inside of the plastasteel door, a smaller hand next to that doing
the same.  Casey, a diminutive person in her own right waltzed up to
the shattered vehicle, thinking about the waste of a good half kilo of
her own recipe, thinking about how only two and a half kees would
have close enough of an effect to this shit so that Brews couldn't
complain either way, but no, well fuck him too.  Casey popped out her
claws from her on hand, and ripped the door from it's hinges with
her off hand.  A bloody mass of a head could be seen crouched behind
two children, nearly twins in age and form, dark straight hair short on
the boy, longer on the girl with a curious gray shock matted to her
temple with blood.  A small shimmering passed between the children,
emanating from the bloody heap slouched on the seat, weaving a quick
dance toward Casey, dodging a swipe of the claws, splintering her skull
and boiling her brain.  The shimmer coalesced inside her body, waiting
until it could fully solidify and burst open Casey's shell, long dead by
this time.
	The children started dragging their father's muted form from the
compartment, stopping as they saw four people saunter towards them,
pipes and knives held in hands, fang and claw bared.  Alex and Lucy
dropped their father's corpse, now dead long enough to start cooling,
and started running up the heap of debris left where a wall was but
four minutes before.  They scrambled together, pulling each other up,
through the hole, into the unlit tenement.  The moon clouded over
again, and the mists and fogs common to the area swept in yet again,
uncaring to the fear and urine exuded by the children.  "Jhonnies,
round back,"  two of the four people broke off from the group and
loped to the rear of the building, entering through the conventional
door.
	Alex had found a desk on the second, knocked over by some long past
fight, maybe no different than today's.  A heap of shit adorned one of
the strewn drawers, a gift from one of this grateful building's occupants.
Alex, still small at the no longer tender age of 10, a runt if the
question need be asked, crawled into a pocket formed between the
overturned furniture and the wall, his sister secreted in a similar place
with a better smell across the room.  The walls had long since been
tagged, and destroyed, but still small shards of plaster and sheetrock
clung to the studs, their artwork displayed proudly to all who flee
here.  The sound of boots, definitely worn, most likely stolen clicked on
the stairs.  The sound of rats, most likely scared, definitely hungry
scampered towards Alex, sensing not only the stench of his soiled
clothes, but also the hostility of the boots.  In Lambeth, most would
not be adverse to finding a meal in a rat, and the living, on some
level, knew this.  The rats scratched and clawed over Alex's hunched
form, already cramping in the legs and back, bowels and stomach twisting,
trying to empty what had already been flushed out, throat thankfully
clamped too tightly to speak, whine or even scream.  The pair of boots
appeared in Lucy's limited line of sight, and a small whimpering moan,
much like that of the bull on a slaughtering block, started wrenching
it's way from her throat.  The boots turned, plodded slowly toward
Lucy's chamber, stepping on and through dung heaps scattered around
the floor, wading through the pools of moonlight that managed to find
a way through the mist and the shredded cage.  Lucy's heart pounded,
thudding low in her stomach, forcing her stomach low, spilling it's
contents on the tips of the boots staring right into her life.  A hand
reached down, lifting the small girl to eye level with perhaps the
ugliest man she would ever lay her little hazel eyes upon.  A curl of
hair drifted towards those eyes, a stream of blood from a tear on her
forehead drifted down her cheek.  Her eyes darted from the pockmarked fac
of the man towards the far corner of the room, towards her
savior Alex, towards her brother.  She saw the corner fly towards her,
realizing just before impact with the brick wall that sealed the building
that she was flying.  A small thud could be heard following the crack
of a skull as her form slumped over the cubbyhole Alex had chosen to
flee to.  The blood started to drip on his head.  A spark kicked into
Alex's eye, the other one having swelled shut after smashing into the
security glass of the limo.  His nose pointed towards the right, blood
welling behind the brake, starting to drip back towards his lungs,
slushing there with the blood already collected from the puncture a
pencil had caused as the car hurtled.  Alex looked at the pencil, no,
pen, and noticed that it was blue, but my father didn't like blue pens,
only black ones.  A small snap could be heard coursing through his
head, coming from his head.
	The Jhonnies, as they were affectionately know among the Primyrs and
whores of Lambeth had worked their way up to the second floor in
time to see the small female form crumple on a demolished desk.
Satil, who acted as second to Casey was sitting back smoking a nic,
pulling a small purple foil package from a pocket.  All three watched
as Pauley had his kicks.
	A small hiss could be heard coming from somewhere in the floor,
maybe even in the room below Alex.  The shelter was ripped down,
shattered by a greenish hand, a claw that reached for Alex's small,
slightly pudgy face.  Alex ran, a streak of moonlight beckoned him
forward, through the legs of the booted man, towards the lack of a
second floor window, towards the hole that stretched from floor to
ceiling and up.  A gash in the side of a useless building, a cairn for his
sister.  The snap from above grew louder in my head, threatening my
footing through the dung.  The gash didn't seem quite as wide up
close, but it would be enough, as the hissing grew louder.  The
Jhonnies stood, pulling small firearms and aimed through the remnants
of a wall at a screaming boy.  The staccato of bullets swept through
the room, missing by inches as Alex tripped, sliding through the dung
and rats into the crack, sparks glinting through his opened eye, fire
coursing through the snap opening above him. "But of course you can,"
and patterns flowed through me.
	Spinster walked over to the man's body, looking over the gash on the
gently sloping forehead, the odd angles of the long, well proportioned,
remaining leg.  The other was still somewhere in the car I suppose.
But, what now, the bloody bastard is just a bit too heavy for me, but if
those two piss-ass kids could do it, then so can I.  And so a 12 year old
blond girl with oil, grease and dirt for makeup began dragging a corpse
back towards home.  The massive flaming pyre from where the tenement was
lit her path back to the coven.
	The papers the next day called it yet another random arsonist
burning down sections of a nearly forgotten neighborhood.  The rubble
was being left as a message by the government, to show that if they
(those who had the misfortune of living in Lambeth) wanted to do this to
their own neighborhood, nobody would help them.  That made the fourteenth
page of the Times, bottom right corner.