I’m part of a small gang of four people, two women and two men.
The leader is an African-American woman, with a body of hard steel muscles, a large gun and even larger attitude. The guys were both bags of pure beef, scarred and battle ready. The last member was a small woman with more explosives attached to her then a Chinese new year.
We were all in a sort of apocalyptic near future, full of crumbling buildings, scared people and dark and scary nooks and crannies. So stereotypical, it was almost embarrassing.
We’re moving about through all this rubble and I’m thinking someone should seriously just clean up for the hell of it! The stones are sore underfoot and my hands are hot and sweaty from carrying my god damn huge gun. I know I will have blisters later.
It seems our little gang is wanted by the leading mob of the area. I haven’t a clue why. We have to make it to the safe point. I haven’t a clue where that is. I stick close to the group simply because if I got lost I’d probably not even know it!
We spend our time running from crumbling wall to crumbling wall. Occasionally one of us would take down a bad guy or two. These guys were easy to spot by their trench coats, large detective style hats and larger still Tommy guns. Really it was like a big ass neon sign over their heads saying, “SHOOT ME! SHOOT ME!”
Some of the gun fights were really scary, not all of the bad guys shot wildly the way bad guys tend to do. Sometimes we were fighting for our lives, belly crawling over glass and old shoes, hiding behind pitifully ruined walls or pretending to be statues as bad guys crept by, not paying enough attention to the surrounding décor.
Finally we got cornered in a large, crumbling building of red brick. The bad guys were swarming about and any time we engaged in a battle, but never otherwise, large chunks of masonry would fall to the floor in a very satisfying special effects sort of way.
We fought until more than half of the large house was destroyed. We were victorious if only just!
We crawled onto the last part of the roof that was still standing and looked around us. All about us was red sand and deserted buildings, and very un-uplifting sights.
“We have to do something about this!” declared our leader. The three of us looked at her. We liked that she lead. She was decisive and it gave us someone to blame when things went bad which was very bonding for us as a group.
“We need to make our world a better place!” she said. “And I know just how to do it!”
Cut to a large dressing room and the four of us are getting up as clowns. We go into a machine that automatically paints our faces for us. The problem being that the machine is malfunctioning, so instead of the classic red nose and big smile, we ended up with grimaces and smeared make up that make our faces look like they were falling off or twisted in horror. All in colours that might once have been white and red but looked now more like fungus and dead.
The guys looked like walking zombies and the women like pitiful drowned corpses.
Much like most clowns do anyway.
There were kids outside waiting for our performance. We strapped on our heavy artillery as people often do when handling small, demanding kids, and prepared to go out onto the stage.
One of the guy clowns called out that we needed to have prizes for any kids that won! (I wondered if this meant any kids that survived?)
The clown went to a box and upended it on an old four poster bed that was conveniently there. It was old, dirty and mildewed which made it the most ravishing piece of furniture in the room.
Inside the box was a bunch of hand sized round brushes made of rough hair and probably used to brush down a horse or wooly mammoth. The wood was lovely and smooth though, and held right it would add a wallop to any punch.
I chose two that I felt were the best of the bunch, the kids would be thrilled.
We went out on stage.