The War on Drugs: In Sickness and in Health: Chapter One

Chapter One

November 10th, 8:25 AM

She heard... pounding.  She smelled a faint, mildewy smell.  She felt cold metal through her white latex gloves.  And everything she saw-- yellow walls, chairs and tables, a man in black behind a towering lectern, human faces-- was in a haze.

"Blue Lynx," a voice intoned.  "You are charged with four counts of murder in the second degree.  What say you to these charges?"

She tried to respond, but her mouth had been sealed shut.  Duct tape.

"You have nothing to say?"

"MMMMPH," she replied, trying to find the outlines of her surroundings.  It was a courtroom.  There were men, definitely large men, holding her arms to her sides.  She recognized the metal feeling on her wrists: she had been handcuffed.  She was standing a few yards away from a judge's bench.  She could see the wavy contours of the judge, but not his face, which was covered in shadows.  He was wearing an old-fashioned white wig, and the pounding sound was coming from his gavel, slamming again and again into the surface of the lectern.  BAM.  BAM.  BAM.  Each BAM seem to loosen her grip on reality.  The walls tilted, the floor shook, the face of the judge seemed to expand and contract.

She needed to say something in her defense.  She howled against the tape:

"MMMMMM!"

The judge shook his head and continued.  "We'd like to call to the stand our only witness.  Blue Lynx's partner, Margot."

A woman in black leather and bleached blonde hair emerged from a dark corner of the room.  It was Sunny, the insane woman from the factory.  She held in her hand a long, heavy looking chain.  At the other end of the chain, connected by large metal brace secured around her neck, was Margot, dressed in a tight orange jumpsuit.  A prisoner's outfit.

"Come on, sweetie," Sunny said, yanking the chain, forcing Margot toward the judge.  "Take a seat."  She pushed Margot down into a folding chair behind the judge's bench.  Margot looked ahead into the courtroom, an expression of pure desperation on her face.

BAM.  BAM.  BAM.

"Margot.  Where were you on the night of the 27th?"

Margot's voice came out in abrupt squeaks.  "I... Was... In... A... Factory."

"With the Blue Lynx?"

"Yes," Margot sighed.  "With the... Blue Lynx."

"You're her partner, then?"

"Yes."

"So who is the Blue Lynx, really?  What is her real name?"

Margot gulped.  "Erin Steele."

The room shifted again.  The judge, the bench, Margot and Sunny blurred together.  The floor seemed to drop from under her, but the hands on her arms gripped her more tightly than ever.  The gavel pounded its steady, menacing rhythm.  And from the massive, blurred shadow facing her, there was a voice, a bizarre hybrid of male and female, calling out in loud, unmistakable tones.

"TAKE OFF HER MASK."

Suddenly, hands.  On her arms, on her legs, on her chest, on her butt.  Hands holding her in place, hands preventing even the slightest movement.  Hands wrapping around her every muscle.  Hands around her throat.  Hands on her face.  Fingers prying beneath the fabric of her blue mask.  Fingers peeling the mask off of her face, hands lifting the mask in the air, hands on the back of her head and her chin forcing her to look straight.

"MMMPH!" she said.  "MMMPH!"

"So it is true," the voice said.  The shadow in front of her churned.  A block of something seemed to push out from the massive cloud, eventually began taking shape, finally settling as a face, a face she had seen before, a clean-shaven male face with cold dead eyes and slicked-back hair.

Hammerson's face.

"Erin Steele, for your crimes as the Blue Lynx, you are sentenced to life... in the stocks."

The gavel pounded.  The cloud dissolved.  And then, there were more hands.  Hands lifting her up overhead.  Hands carrying her out of the dark, blurry courtroom and into blinding sunlight.  Hands holding her up by her ankles, thighs, butt, back, upper body.  Hands bringing her down, hands undoing her cuffs, hands bending her over, hands placing her wrists in wooden semi-circles, hands placing her neck in a larger semi-circle inbetween.  Hands clapping a wooden board over her neck and wrists.

She was on a wooden platform in the middle of a town square.  She looked out and saw very little: the bright sun whited out her surroundings, made her feel like she was trapped in a void.  She could feel the heat on her maskless face.  Her boots were firmly on the ground, but her body was bent over into the stocks, pushing her butt into the open air  She shook her hands in their wooden restraints, tried to roll her neck around.  She couldn't break free.

And then, more hands.  Hands on either side of her backside.  Hands shifting her lower body this way and that.  Fingers tracing devious paths up her thighs and around the seams of her spandex costume.  Hands that had voices.  Familiar voices.

"Say the second time's  charm," Jackson said from behind her, as Clayton chuckled.

She felt her costume pulled from her skin, heard it rip and tear, felt fingers on her skin, heard cackling laughter, felt the sun beating down on her naked back, on her naked legs, felt her legs being kicked apart.

She looked ahead.  Everything was white.  She screamed.

"MMMMMPH!"

And then she woke up.

On to Chapter Two