Saturday, January 22, 2005
Water Balloons
What's this?
Sanctiblogger catches a rush of movement out of the corner of his left eye and then someone is shouting out of a deep yellow madness. He turns in his seat to look, but sees only a pistol waving about in the air. He ducks without thinking, and sees on his plasma screen a clean-cut Concerned College Conservative with a light saber, mouthing the words "For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny--prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder--violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat." Then comes a series of thwoop-thwoop implosions like disappearing water balloons as heavenly reinforcements flood into the bus to take out the threat. They are, Sanctiblogger notes from the red and white feathers in their berets, members of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. They scuffle. They skirmish. They exchange fisticuffs. They have words. They grunt in pain.
Then the gun goes off and there is a vvvvoom sound and one of the Fusiliers stands with his arm cut off at the bicep and spouting blood and the dirty shabby angel driver is slumped over the wheel with a red spot on his back beneath his right wing. The bus speeds up, and is suddenly buffeted by aeolian winds. The Fusiliers' hair stands on end, and they short out like--well, like fuses.
Sanctiblogger looks down and sees a red diagonal line stretching slowly but inexorably across the screen, where the only post-human presences he can see still on the bus are his own, hunched desperately over his laptop, and the shapelier one of the young woman in the sports bra, who stares straight into the camera with her eyes humorously crossed and the word DOG written in red Magic Marker across her bangless forehead.
