From: rat@taronga.com (Doni Cantu)
Subject: STORY:  The Busting of Avalon Jackson
Date: 12 Jun 92 06:36:34 GMT
Lines: 399



Okay, this is my first post to a.c.c.  Feel free to reply/followup with
whatever I deserve, suggestions, insults, junk email, you know the drill.
Your newsreader tells you my address, 'rat@taronga.com', so I won't bother
mentioning it.

The ChatsuboTM isn't even alluded to in this story, though perhaps it
might have a Houston branch, but I can assure you the characters
constantly think about it [just for you purists out there (: ].

This is a work of fiction.  The only thing you can get me on is the fact
that Chas H Milby Senior High School does indeed exist, though I may have
exaggerated its nice points a bit [blatant sarcasm].  At any rate, this
thing might be first in a series.  Maybe.  Read on, true-beleivers....


===========================[saw here]================================


               |        Neo-Houston Volume I:      |
               |   The Busting of Avalon Jackson   |
               |                                   |
               |           by Doni Cantu           |


     There was a hiss and several crackles of static, and then the PA
monitor up next to the outdated wall clock buzzed to life.
     A decidedly grainy Vice-Principal Sullivan expanded from a single
vertical line, growing to fill the screen's battered steel casing.  Thin
white lines streaked from above his flat-top haircut to the collar of his
Ivy League sweater.  "Teachersss (crrrkk)nd students, I'd like to (snap)ve
your attention for an important announcement," he said.  "(Ssssskrrrq.)
All classrooms please secure you doors.  The neo-dogs are now on campus.
Repeat, please secure all (crk)oors.  You will be informed when (crackk
hmmmmbzzzzzzzzzz) completed.  Thank you."
     There was a phosphor-flash, and Sullivan collapsed to a vertical
line. The single camera lens mounted over the screen glared myopically out
over the class.
     Laika leapt from her seat and was punching in the door codes before
Ms. Wesley could get up.  Ms. Wesley beamed at her favorite student.  Such
an angelic girl.  So helpful.  A model student.  If only every student
could be like her.  Laika jabbed the EXECUTE key.  Her code was accepted
and the door gritted out from its frame, ponderous and decades-outdated
servos grinding the door shut shut.  The heavy thuds of the magnetic bolts
rattled the windows.  Silt and powdered plaster sifted down from the
ceiling.
     Ms. Wesley said, "Why, thank you, Laika."  Laika smiled in return as
she moved to reseat herself.
     "Oh, think nothing of it, Ms. Wesley," she simpered.  She took her
place at the front table, already gossiping with her friends as she called
up a romance novel on the table space in front of her.
     Ms. Wesley began to say something concerning the extra time the class
would be receiving, and that studying would be a good way to utilize it.
     In the back of the class, at the last table, framed by a pair of
particularly well-mammaried twins, Avalon Jackson muttered something
exceedingly vile just loud enough for Laika to hear, but not loud enough
to be carried to the teacher's desk.  Laika glared at him, livid with
anger and contempt.  Avalon pushed his glasses up on his nose with his
middle finger, and grinned to himself when Laika turned away as if she
hadn't seen it.
     The twins, Morgan and Nicole, snickered.  Nils snickered.  The
students at the other tables shifted nervously, chancing snickers
themselvess when Laika and her cronies weren't looking their way.
     Avalon flicked the dark-brown curl on the center of his forehead
once, and yawned.  Pensively he raised his hand.  "Mz. Wes," he called.
"Ma'am, now, I know I might be misinformed (perish the thought), but I
chanced to hear that our fellow teachers are exempt from the searches.
Might I inquire as to the veracity of this rumor?"  Morgan strangled a
laugh by biting her lip.  Nicole giggled.  "I think it's unfair that you
and the other faculty members should be trusted so freely, while we, your
pupils, are treated like the lowly bugs that we be."
     "Jackson, teachers are not 'exempt from the searches'--"
     "Do you mean to tell me that if you were to come under suspicion of
criminal possession you would be placed under the proverbial lock and key?
Hypothetically, of course."
     Laika eyed him warily.  But then, Laika always eyed him warily, if
she had to at all.
    "Jackson."
     "Ma'am."
     "I am feeling rather tired.  Do shut up."
     "Oh, but of /course/, Pamela."  He gave her a saccharine smile.
"'Shut /up/.'  How /forceful/, Pamela dearest.  I do so /love/ it," he
said, steepling his fingers, "when you're forceful."  Ms. Wesley began to
say something, but stopped herself.  She counted to ten mentally, and
pretended to look busy shuffling papers.
     Avalon rocked back in his chair and looked up at the flourescent
track lights.  They flickered.  "School, school, school.  Such fun.  I'm
going to miss it when I'm gone.  Deary my, I don't know what I'll do with
myself.  The monthly random searches, the chunks of concrete falling from
the facade, (and the particularly sheeplike teachers...)"  He sighed
melodramatically, turned and looked out the window.
     The half-inch thick slab of rectangular, one-way mirrored armorglass
extended from floor to ceiling, providing an expansive view of
weather-stained concrete and discolored metal.  It had only a slight
magnifying effect toward the center, as compared to the porthole windows
in the cafeteria.
     Across the courtyard, the English wing seemed to bulge outward in the
center.  Like a week-dead cat, thought Avalon.  Up where the sixth floor
met the roiling, silver-tarnish sky and down at the yellowing grass of the
courtyard, the building receded.  It was like looking out at the world
with a fish's eye, Avalon decided.  How would a fish see things if he
looked out of one of these windows?
     A door across the courtyard opened and issued forth a cannon-toting
blue-uniformed DEA officer, followed by a black and brown neo-dog.  The
'dog lumbered along, two hundred kilograms of chemically indoctrinated
muscle convulsing under its glossy hide.  It swiveled its muzzle from side
to side, testing the air, tasting it.  It yawned once.  The action made it
appear that its head had separated into two pieces, exposing a lolling
pink ribbon of tongue and scores of dagger-teeth that spiked out like
jackstraws.  Big, baseball mitt-sized paws sported four inch claws.
     By now, close on a hundred of the things would be shambling around
the school, filling the narrow corridors with the smell of damp dog fur
and dog breath.
     Nicole squeezed Avalon's arm, leaning close enough for him to smell
her hair.  "Did you dump your, you know, stuff?"
     He turned, spoke in a normal tone of voice, just low enough to be
unintelligable at any other table.  "Ask Ferret.  He's the man.  Ain'tcha,
Ferret?"
     "Betcher ass I am," Nils drawled.  He cracked his knuckles with a
sound like a bundle of dried spaghetti being broken in two.
     "You find anything entertaining to do?"
     "Lockers're ventilated for a reason, I think."  A grating, crunching
sound filled the room as Nils put his fist to his jaw and twisted his
neck.
     "Heard a guy had smoke bombs in his locker once," said Avalon.  "Went
off, security got him, they thought he had a dud bomb in there.  Guy had a
weak build, his jaw broke accidentally on the way to the office."
     Ms. Wesley called up something on the surface of her desk.  She
couldn't mute the sound quickly enough, and the first chord of a tune
played.  Avalon whistled the rest of the tune automatically.  Face
reddening, Ms Wesley didn't look up.  Avalon poked Morgan in a soft spot.
     "Playboy channel theme," he said.
     Inspired, he leaned across the table and pointed at one of Laika's
clique.  "That's the one," he told Nils.  Conversation wavered at the
nearer tables.  "Broadway at Old Galveston, all fishnet and ten square
centimeters of leather.  Never forget a face."
     The girl in question wrinkled her nose at him.  Avalon blew her a
kiss, and Laika and the other girls giggled sympathetically, saying
consoling things.  He was about to mime something explicit when he was
interrupted.
     "Jackson," Ms. Wesley said, taking off her glasses and rubbing her
eyes.  "I understand that corporal punishment can be very painful when
they use full voltage."
     Outside, rust-colored rain began to fall, bloody drops striking the
glass.  "That is exactly the feeling I get, Pammy-baby.  Now, while I do
know some people that are masochistic, I, for one, am not, so I'll just be
quiet now and return to my studies.  A trip to Sullivan's would simply not
do, no ma'am.  Permanent record aside, I understand Messieur Sullivan
indulges in, shall we say, amoral practices, and I--I don't know what you
think of him, or maybe I do, now that I think about it, maybe you like--"
     A muscle ticced in Ms. Wesley's cheek.  "Perhaps you'll be
transferred to another school for the rest of your freshman year."
     "Pamela, I'm mortified that--"
     "After the bit with you refusing to go to the pep rally, you'd best
keep a low profile, lest you find yourself in DOSC."  Avalon spread his
fingers in a gesture of surrender and sat back in his chair.  After
adjusting the way his glasses rested on his nose, he proceeded to stare at
her unblinkingly.  He had to fight to keep from making weird faces as he
stared at her.  She was just so... so... weird face-able.
     Morgan and Nicole leaned against him possessively, Nicole resting her
head on his left shoulder, Morgan on his right, better than ten kilos of
silicon solution squishing against his arms.
     Nils spoke.  "Hey, sofa cushion.  You, the one sandwiched b'tween the
ditzy bimbos.  What'sa matter with you, you trying to 'ffend our
fay-voh-rite lab teacher?  Have you no shame?  I know for a fact that I
speak for th' entire class when I say that you, mister, are the most
despicable, disgusting, pathetic, diseased, obnoxious sacks of lukewarm
pus ever to disgrace this fine inst'tution.  I'll see you hang, do you
hear, hang!  Okay?  Okay?  Do you hear me?"
     Towards the end of his oration, Nils was beginning to break up, but
he kept a relatively straight face.  At least, he did until Nicole and
Morgan shoved away from Avalon and looked at him as if he were something
from the bottom of the sea and made as if they were wiping slime from
whatever parts of themselves had been in contact with him (and, actually,
considering what parts of them had been in contact with Avalon, they
managed to call up either blatant lust and/or angry jealousy in the
eyes of all those watching.)
     "Oh, guh-ross," they chorused.  Avalon stuck out his tongue.
     "Bravo," said Shelly, one of Laika's more flat-chested cohorts.  "If
only this were drama class."  Avalon whispered something confidentially to
Nils.  Nils looked over his shoulder at Shelly, looked back to Avalon,
then pointed at Shelly.  Avalon nodded.  Nils clucked his tongue and shook
his head.
     "Disgusting," Nicole said matter-of-factly.  "I thought the clinics
couldn't do those legally anymore."  Shelly reddened and puffed up and
turned away.  Laika made it plain via facial expressions what she thought
of Avalon Jackson bothering her friends.  Morgan and Nicole commented on
the look in Laika's eyes.
     "Hell," Avalon said, "it's bad enough having the same parents, much
less living in the same house she does."
     "Sufferin' is good for th' soul," offered Nils, but the way Avalon
clenched his fists and locked his eyes on him made him regret the comment.
     Outside, muffled by the heavy door, the padding of giant dog paws was
heard, and the click of shined boot-heels on cracked linoleum tiles.
Someone, doubtless a bored DEA officer, whistled "Pomp and Circumstance."
     "To think," said Avalon, "that a student would be stupid enough to
take drugs, let alone bring them to school.  'Tis a cryin' shame, me
lassies.  It tears me heart in two, it does.  Tears me heart in two."  Ms.
Wesley was looking at him.  He waved at her and bared his teeth in a huge
Cheshire cat grin, and wondered why he wasn't in a concrete-floored cell
by now..
     "No doubt she wants to see you in cuffs, Av," said Nils.  "Cuffed and
shackled and manacled and bound and hogtied and hung up on the flagpole.
Ruth-ruth-RUTHless."
     Morgan, her usually vague expression decidedly troubled, asked Nils,
"How do you know they won't be able to trace you or Av to the, uh, the
ice?"
     "I dumped it.  Gone-gone.  Adios, amoebas.  No fingerprints.  No
tracks.  I could of been a Indian."
     Morgan had to struggle to follow the allusion to Indians.  "And the
kid whose locker it is?" she pressed.
     Nils shrugged.  "Dey gives him duh treatment."  He drew a finger
across his neck.
     Avalon sniffed his shirtsleeves, the hem of his jacket.  "I'm
probably reeking of what we scholars refer to as crystal meth."  He
chuckled.  Nicole rested her head on the table.  Morgan decided to nuzzle
the side of Avalon's neck.
     "Hey, watch it, this is a classroom, for cryin' out loud," Nils
protested.  "Walkin', talkin' Jesus. What do you to see in him anyway?
What's he got that I don't--" Nils stopped.  Nicole and Morgan, twinlike,
were simultaneously studying their hands.  "Okay, okay, stupid question.
     "Do everything together, huh?"
     The corners of Avalon's mouth twitched up in a quirky half-grin.
"Within a few seconds."
     He glanced over at Laika's table.  Prissy, calculating little
harlots, the lot of them.  Each with teeth of such a pearly-white they
could be used, in a pinch, as a credit reference.  If the classroom turned
into a cave, and their table into a seething cauldron, the girls wouldn't
have looked out of place.  Quite the contrary.
     Then he looked at Morgan and Nicole.  They looked back at him with
puppylike fawning expressions.  Maybe not the most ight-bray in the world,
but at least they were cool.  Not a spiteful molecule in their bodies.
Easier on the eyes, too.  Not to mention being a lot... friendlier.
     In the hall, there was a sudden clatter of heels.  A burst of radio
transmission was heard, loud and echoey in the tiled hallway:  "--positive
ID hall six building A--"
     "Well, that was fast," Nicole commented.
     Avalon made as if to stand up, bumping the table, then settled down
just as abruptly.  Ms. Wesley's eyes dared him to do the tiniest thing out
of line.  "Where'd you throw the stuff?" he asked politely, leaning across
the table and rubbing Nils' lapels between his fingertips.  "I sense a
paranoia attack coming on again."
     Nils, seemed to have forgotten which nerve impulses were responsible
for intelligible speech.  "Well, uh, the, well--"
     Avalon let Nils go and rested his forehead on the table top.  It
activated, and began running its standby mode.  He shut it off again.
"Waaait.  It's okay, it's cool."
     The twins were fidgeting nervously.  Nils said, in a weak voice, "I
thought--"
     "Be cool.  Be cool."  Laika and company were studying him, along with
the few other classmembers not distracted by trivia MUDs on their
tabletops. No one asked him who he was talking to.
     Outside, activity increased until it sounded as if a marathon had
been routed past the room.  Avalon began drumming his fingers on the table
and glancing over his shoulder out the window.
     Across the courtyard, he could see the smoky mirrored windows of the
English hall.
     For a fleeting moment, he felt the ID capsule planted just beneath
the skin on the back of his neck tingle.  He'd just been scanned.
     Laika examined her brand-new fingernails.  "My oh, is something the
matter with Mister Jackson today?"  Her crew tittered with glee.  "Maybe
it's just a case of--"
     "Shut UP!!" he said, unnecessarily loudly.
     Ms. Wesley spoke very calmly. "Jackson, that's it--"
     Morgan, scared, tried to say something.  "Avvie--"
     There was a series of beeps as the door's code was punched.  Everyone
began speaking at once.
     Morgan began, "Avalon, they're--" but was cut off by Nils.
     "Oy, this ain't--" Nils began, but someone at another table sang out,
very loudly:
     "Bus-ted--"
     Avalon did his best to remain dignified.  "Maybe I can get their
autographs," he said.
     The oppressive thumps of magnetic bolts disengaging rolled through
the room.  Plaster dust drifted down from over the doorframe.
     Morgan tried to make herself heard over the confusion.  "Avvie, I
won't--"
     "Hey, Jackson, afraid of something?" shouted Shelly.
     Nils:  "Hide!  Jus' don't--"
     Distraught motors jerked into life.  Flourescent light shone in
through the widening space between the door and its frame.
     "It's in here, this is it," someone outside stated.
     "'Heeelp meeeeee'," Avalon said.  "'The Fly', 1956 Universal
Pictures, I think--"
     Nicole: "Hey, that's not cool, don't--"
     "Tsk, tsk, to have it end this way--" said Cori, another of Laika's
party.
     A huge neo-dog squeezed in the doorway silencing the class.  Shedding
fur rubbed off on either side of the doorframe.  A woman lugging a thirty
millimeter rifle followed.  Outside, in the hall, more uniforms oozed into
formation.
     The woman stepped in, almost in slow-motion.  "Excuse me, ma'am," she
said, "but we have come for one Jackson, Avalon Theodore, guilty of
possession of controlled substances on school grounds."  Everyone else was
caught in slow motion as they carefully turned their eyes to the boy at
the back of the room, at the last table, flanked by twins.
     Avalon began to get up, sliding the chair back, pushing up on the
table with white-knuckled hands.  The woman spoke again, hefting enough
firepower to resink the Yamato.
     "Mister Jackson, you are under arrest," she said without inflection,
speaking as if by rote.  She paid no attention to the dust falling onto
the polished bill of her navy-blue kepi.
     "You have been found guilty of the possession of rolled tobacco
cigarettes.  Anything you say can and will be recorded for future
reference. As a minor, you have no right to an attorney and no argument
versus the school board.  Your parents or legal guardian(s) will be
notified of your termination.  If you attempt to resist arrest, I can and
will enact your punishment prematurely."
     Avalon's breath whooshed out of him as if he'd been punched in the
stomach, and he looked releived, scared, confused, and shocked.
"Suh-suh-cigarettes??" he stammered.
     Nils echoed his disbelief, eyes widening.  "Hey--"
     Avalon continued up, forcing himself through thick molasses, Morgan
reaching up to grab him with a slow-motion arm, telling him not to worry,
the cigarettes weren't his, it was a mistake.  Nicole's mouth began to
open wider and wider, and then a high, shrill scream began to sound forth
from inside her.
     "No, no, no," Avalon said contemptuously, shaking his head and
placing the palms of his hands on the table, which lit up with the Milby
logo.  He turned it off absent-mindedly.  One couldn't deny a positive
search, and he was shocked at how quickly things were falling apart.
Actually, he couldn't incriminate himself much more.  "Cigarettes, no.
Ice-meth, sure, but I don't approve of smoking.  Cigarettes, that's
someone else's locker."
     The officer and her back-up squad listened to him without really
hearing him.  "Take him," the woman said in a flat, toneless voice.  Her
back-up didn't move at first.  They took as long as they could to come in
the door.
     He gave Nils a "Fight the good fight" look, the kind those silent
protestors gave each other as they coughed up blood and nerve gas.  Nils
and Morgan and Nicole, they were all of them still kids.  They were
misty-eyed from the shock of it all.
     Nils was silently swearing vengeance on those who'd planted the cigs.
 Nicole and Morgan were, in their dim, fuzzy ways, trying to figure out
why Avalon had never mentioned having cigarettes.
     Avalon's fight-or-flight reflexes took over, opting for a kamikaze
rush at the only door.  He raised his foot until it touched the table top
(which turned on again), then bagan to shift his weight forward and
upward, tendons bunching and preparing for an Olympic-class leap.  First
one hand came up, and the other followed.  Damn, this is what a frame is.
Sucks to be me, he thought, as the muscles in his leg flexed, shoving him
forward.
     Nicole took a deep, ragged breath, but couldn't find the energy to
scream more, and Morgan only brushed his sleeve.  The sudden violence of
his movements set Avalon's glasses askew on the bridge of his nose.  The
yawning bore of the woman's rifle glinted in the lenses for a fraction of
a second.
     Avalon Jackson lunged at the officer, smiling the predatory smile Old
West outlaws must have preferred as they came out, six-guns-a-blazin'.
     Everything slowed to a standstill, crystallizing neatly, frozen.
Reduced to magnetic pulses, everything was chiseled into the lifelike
splendor of 2-D videotape.  The camera mounted over the screen did its job
well.
     The officer bearing the rifle looked on grimly, calculating the range
between Avalon and herself, determining the how many shots at how much
power wouldn't be viewed as excessive, and whether or not the deadbeats at
his table were considered expendable.  Whether or not she was due for a
promotion.  What the score was in the New York Yankees-Tokyo Giants game
she was currently missing because of search duty.  It didn't matter.  This
one wouls be just a bit more memorable than the others, soon as she got
him.
     The neo-dog cocked its head to one side and watched the back of the
room.  Standing there, panting, the only thing that registered on the
'dog's tiny little brain was that someone had been caught and that a) that
someone would come quietly, or  b) that someone would come quietly but
then try to escape, necessitating a few chomps.  It didn't much care which
happened.
     Actually, it would forget soon enough.  At any one time its
chemically indoctrinated memory retained only the happenings of the
previous five minutes.  Work, play, sleep, it ran together.
     Ms. Wesley herself looked on without protest.  As far as she was
concerned, she would just have one less student in her lab class, and
perhaps a small stipend in her next paycheck.  It would be ever so much
less tiring not having to put up with Avalon's antics.  The little
bastard.
     Students remained still as the meter-long barrel of the rifle was
lowered, lowered, moving downward, as a gloved hand reached for the
safety.  There was a hissing whine as the rifle's powerpack was engaged.
The back-up troopers reached for blue-steel burnished .75s.
     Nicole pressed her hands against the sides of her face.  Morgan went
ashen and still, tears spilling down her cheeks.  Only one person relaxed,
the center of an icewater-cold pool of serenity.
     Laika's teeth glistened, sparkling like freshly broken slivers of
glass.
     "Such a shame, dearest brother," she whispered.  "Such a shame."


===========================[saw here]================================

This whole entire thang Copyright (c) 1992 Doni Cantu.  Re-transmission
and distribution, via means electronic or otherwise, is authorized, under
the condition that they will not be used, in part or in whole, for
personal profit.  And, above all, be Excellent to each other.


--
"When they start jumpin' off the paper and start kissin' | rat@taronga.com
ya, it's time to call it quits."  --Tiny Toon Adventures | [sigvirus.shk]