Chapter 23 The Big Bad Love Machine.

160.

Missy knocked on Suzi’s door.

‘Come in,’ said the machine.

Suzi currently had a charger plugged between her shoulder blades, powering up her batteries.

Missy poked her head through the door.

‘Hey,’ said Missy. ‘I have everything packed.’

‘That’s good.’ Said Suzi.

Missy paused.

‘You can say no to this,’ began Missy.

‘No.’

‘YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY!’

‘I can clearly see a makeup kit in your left hand, so no. I don’t want you to do my make up.’

‘Please?’ Missy begged, knotting her hands together. ‘None of the boys want me to do their make up! You’re the only other woman in the house.’

‘I don’t even have a face.’ Said Suzi. ‘It’s literally just a black screen.’

‘That’s what make-ups for, sweety.’ Missy said in a camp and sassy voice, before she double clicked her fingers like a drag queen.’

Suzi decided she just wasn’t having this conversation anymore and stopped talking.

Missy took that as an order to leave, so she snuck up behind Suzi with lipstick in hand.

She was humming the tune to mission impossible, so she was extra stealthy.

She took off the cap of the lipstick.

She drew it back like an assassin about to stab his enemy in the heart, when Suzi clamped a hand around the little girl’s wrist, and lifted Missy three feet off the ground.

They looked each other, camera to eyeballs. The make up kit fell to the ground spraying its contents everywhere.

Missy slowly, slowly took the bag of googly eyes out her pocket.

Suzi took the bag of googly eyes and threw them across the room, watching them explode against the wall.

Missy looked at the wreckage scattered across the floor. 

Suzi brought Missy to within kissing distance, then whispered: ‘Fuck off.’

The door slammed with Missy on the other side.

Missy rubbed her wrist where Suzi had held her.

Suzi had really hurt her.

Then Donald walked past.

Before he turned the corner: ‘Donald!’ Donald turned around. ‘Want me to do your make up?’ asked Missy.

Silence.

‘Sure.’ He said.

‘YES!’ shouted Missy, fist-pumping the air, she then ran to her bedroom, shouting: ‘I’ll just grab my glue gun.’

161.

John was in his dog cage, eating lasagne out of a dog bowl with a fork, while two dogs were mating in the corner.

It was kind of disgusting, but he couldn’t stop looking.

About five minutes earlier Missy had come to say goodbye to him, that she loved him, but she was going on a boat ride. She’d make sure to send him a post card.

John had prepared for this conversation, how to get a message across without speaking English.

In little pellets of dog food, John had written: “Call the police.”

To which Missy replied: ‘I can’t read upside down, daddy.’ And before John could correct the mistake, Missy was being hurried out the door. ‘Bye dad, love you!’

He was incredibly pissed off with himself. Of course she can’t read upside down, John, you fucking idiot. 

That’s when he saw something whip past the window.

John continued to chew, his jaw moving up and down.

The radio was playing some lullaby music for everybody awake past nine pm.

The thing that had whipped past the window, kind of looked like the tail end of a duvet. Next came a pair of sneakers attached to some human legs. John ate lasagne. He was keen to see what would come next.

Next: a human body fell past the window and hit the dumpster, in a spray of banana peels, and curry.

John took off another bite of lasagne and scooped it into his mouth.

That’s when the monster’s face showed up, outside the window. It had puffer-fish eyelids and a bloody mouth.

‘Holy shit.’ Said John, before looking around, to see if anybody heard him. Nobody had.

‘Dad.’ Said the monster.

‘Bill!’ said John.

Bill opened the window, and crawled into the house, leaving a snail trail of blood on the carpet, walking on hands and knees.

‘Dad.’ Said Bill. ‘I used my blood as lubricant to escape the handcuffs.’

‘Oh wow.’ Said John. ‘Good job, buddy.’

‘We’ve got to escape.’ Said Bill. Bill bumped into the wall. ‘Ouch.’ Said Bill.

‘Bill, are you blind?’ asked John.

‘I can kind of see out of my left eye.’ Said Bill.

‘Shit.’ Said John.

‘Where’s the keys to the dog cage?’ asked Bill.

‘They’re hanging off the coat hook.’ Bill stood up and began patting the walls until he found the coat hooks, where he took the keys, then shuffled to the dog cage, he tried to penetrate the padlock and missed, when John snatched the keys from him and undid the lock.

‘Okay let’s go.’ Said Bill.

John led him back to the window they came from, and together they crawled back out, into the dumpster and from the dumpster to the ground.

Bill tried to go left.

‘No, no, wrong way, they’ve got a watchtower on the front lawn.’

‘Shit, of course.’ Said Bill.

So they went to the back yard with Bill leaning on John’s shoulder.

‘We’re gunna make it.’ Said John. ‘Holy shit, we’re going to make it!’

Then Bill stepped on a landmine.

There was a sound as if God had popped the sun like a pimple between two fingers.

‘I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS.’

John was shellshocked pulling his face out of the mud.

He had a migraine. 

He felt up the side of his face until he felt a shard of shrapnel sticking out his forehead. It was pretty big.

Blood was pouring down his eyeballs and cheek. He looked around.

Bill didn’t have any legs.

Bill was screaming: ‘I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS I CAN’T FEEL I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS.’

That’s when John saw Suzi.

She was stood there in the kitchen window, wearing an apron and rubber gloves while she washed the dishes.

The two of them faced each other.

Suzi picked up a dish towel, dried off the China plate she had been cleaning, slotted it into the dish rack, picked up the shotgun a handful of shotgun shells then began striding towards the door.

There were six locks keeping the door shut, and they all undid themselves automatically in her presence, before the door opened of its own free will.

She had never fired a gun before, so she downloaded an aim bot off the internet, then began striding through the minefield, breaking open the shotgun so she could load it.

They had attempted to hide from her, so she switched to thermal-imaging and the snail-trail of warm blood, glowed like lava.

She traced it to the bushes, where she saw John had gagged his son with one hand to keep from screaming.

Suzi switched off the safety, stepping over a landmine to get a better shooting position.

When John realized what was happening, he threw his son over the fence, then tried to jump the fence.

Suzi shot his shin, there was a spray of blood, a scream, and he fell onto the other side.

She’d been aiming for his spine.

She quickly went back onto the internet, left a review of three stars for the aim bot, then coded her own aim bot, so she wouldn’t miss again.

The people on the street were waking up now, windows were starting to glow as people turned on the lights.

John had landed on a dog kennel, waking up the dog inside, something big with a spiked collar was emerging from the little house.

Bill had been reduced to whimpering on the floor.

‘Come on buddy.’ Said John. ‘We’ve got this.’

John started to pick Bill back up.

Then John heard Suzi. It was the voice he had fallen in love with.

‘I’m sorry John, I’m so sorry.’ She said. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. Come back where I can see you and I’ll give you a blow job!’

‘FUCK OFF SUZI!’ said John, as he picked up his son.

Suzi exploded through the fence.

The dog rushed, a tsunami of muscle, barking up a thunderstorm.

Suzi grabbed it by the neck and kicked its knee cap, so the leg snapped.

The animal was still alive, but whimpering.

He pulled Bill onto his back and began to hobble away.

Suzi aimed between their kidneys, two for the price of one, when the neighbours began pissing on her with a garden hose.

‘KEEP RUNNING!’ the he-neighbour screamed. ‘We’ll take it from here!’

The she-neighbour threw a plate at Suzi’s face. It smashed. Her camera was scratched.

Suzi fired and killed the he-neighbour.

‘You killed him!’ the woman screamed, ‘oh my god, you killed-‘ Suzi had finished reloading, and a semi-second later the woman was no more.

Suzi looked around. Thermal imaging still on she saw a carpet of blood, glowing all the way over to the next fence.

She couldn’t see John and Bill however.

She could hear the neighbours: ‘What the hell was that sound, fireworks?’

‘I think they were gun shots.’

‘Somebody call the police.’

Suzi realized she only had one bullet left. She had overestimated herself. She hadn’t considered the possibility that executing John and Bill would take more than four bullets.

She didn’t have enough ammunition, to kill all the neighbours, and she definitely didn’t have enough ammunition to handle the police. 

The police… 

She walked up to the fence and scanned the new neighbours garden for signs of life.

Bill and John were directly beneath her, in Suzi’s blind spot.

The new neighbour came out of his house.

‘Hey what’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Said Suzi. ‘I think there was gun shots or something.’

The new neighbour saw into the previous yard, the two corpses and the crippled dog. He saw Bill and John cowering beneath the robot. John pressing a finger to his lips, begging him to be quiet.

The new neighbour computed all this information in record time, then said: ‘As you were.’ Before going back into his house.

Suzi went back the way she came, stopping to ruffle the dogs head on her way there.

‘So cute.’ She said.

She entered the hole in the fence, strode through the minefield and re-entered the house.

162.

Bill was loaded onto a gurney as he was being wheeled into the emergency room, while John was giving his report to the police officer, with a piece of shrapnel sticking out his head. They were both outside the operating theatre, where they could see the surgeons crowding around Bill.  

‘You need to call the united states air force.’ Said John. ‘You need to bomb the entire fucking street, I don’t care how many innocents you need to kill to do it, just end Suzi.’

‘Our job, is kind of to save lives actually.’ Said the police officer.

‘I don’t care!’ said John. ‘I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!’

The police officer looked at Bill on the table. He saw the missing legs.

‘And you say a sex doll did this?’

‘No, it was a landmine.’

The policeman wrote down landmine in his notepad.  

‘Yeah.’ Said the police officer. ‘We’ll get a swat team ready, we actually have a new egg head who designs strategies for dealing with AI criminals. So don’t worry sir, we’re gunna take good care of Suzi.’

‘Are you going to kill her?’ he asked.

‘If she was a human being we would need to offer her the chance to surrender, so she can stand trial and junk. But because she’s technically defined as a luxury item… yeah… I think we can kill her for you. Sure.’

‘Thank you.’ Said Bill.

‘Pray don’t mention it.’ 

163.

Bill was beginning to blink his eyes back open.

His dad had fallen asleep in the chair next to him, with a magazine of playboy on his lap.

He looked around the room.

The IV drip feeding painkiller into his veins, the hospital gown he was wearing. He had a finger clip attached taking his pulse and whatever.

He didn’t have any legs, they kind of just disappeared mid-thigh.

I’m just gunna pretend I didn’t see that, thought Bill.

He’d try to think about what missing legs would mean for his future later on, in the mean time he sat up, leaned over and turned up the morphine, then fell back into bed.

‘That’s better.’ He slurred.

He looked at his dad, and Bill shook his leg.

John emerged from his grave-like sleep, he saw his son.

‘Hey dad.’ Said Bill.

‘Hey buddy.’ Said John. ‘Good sleep?’

‘Yeah, I had a good sleep.’

‘You okay?’

‘Um,’ said Bill. ‘I think my legs got blown off. But my everything’s numb, so…’ he shrugged.

‘I’ll buy you some prosthetics, don’t worry too much about it.’

‘Suzi took all our money.’ Said Bill. ‘I don’t think we can pay for this hospital treatment.’

‘No, you see-‘

‘She knows about the offshore accounts and she emptied them too.’

‘Oh.’ Said John. ‘Well, I’ve got some rich friends that can help us out.’

‘She robbed them too.’

‘Oh.’ Said John. There was ten seconds of silence. ‘I’ve been poor for ten seconds and I hate it.’

‘Yeah.’ Said Bill. ‘It sucks.’ He looked at his dad. ‘Thanks for saving my life.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Said John.

‘Dad?’ 

‘Yeah?’

‘I love you dad.’

‘Oh son.’ John put a hand on his oldest child’s shoulder and smiled. ‘I love you too.’

‘Thanks.’ Then Bill put his head on the pillow and fell asleep once more.

John stared at his son, wishing him to become a suitcase full of cash.

***

Chapter 24