Chapter 26 The Big Bad Love Machine.

172.

By the fluorescent overhead light suspended over the medicine cabinet, Lady Rothschild was performing a touch of back alley surgery on herself, amputating the hoover from her head with a hand saw.

She’d laid some newspaper on the floorboards to catch the plastic dust as it showered down, so she could easily cram everything into the toilet when she was done.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Robert, his voice muffled from behind the door.

‘Fuck off Robert.’ She said back as the hand saw bit into the shaft and began to rip it open.

‘Are you cutting off the hoover?’ Lady didn’t say anything. ‘Are you angry at me?’

‘Robert, I swear to god, if I hear another word, I’m going to write about you in a bad light.’

Robert shut up.

The knife dug deeper, ripping more and more. Some of the shavings drifted onto her nose and she blew them off with a puff, that made her hair twitch.

This was ri-god-damn-diciulous. How the fuck could the doctor’s do this to me? How? God, I’m gunna wring them for every penny they have, every fucking penny, I’ll make them homeless! She deserves to be homeless, and every day I’ll drive by the cardboard box she lives in and I’ll steal her pennies she got from begging and I’LL INSULT HER! I’ll call her a BIG NOSE! How’s your BIG NOSE, BIG NOSE! I’ll fuck her husband. I’ll fuck her entire family if its legal. I’m gunna wring them for every fucking penny, every fucking penny and I’m giving none of it to charity.

Suddenly the hoover head drooped now hanging from a hinge of plastic. The lady grabbed it and pulled like she was trying to rip Robert’s cock off. The hinge extended like chewing gum, but didn’t snap off, so she shifted the handsaw and continued slicing, when- SNAP- it came off with a jolt.

‘HA HA!’ she yelled, and couldn’t stop smiling. ‘IN YOUR FACE!’

‘You go girl!’

‘Shut the fuck up Robert!’

‘Sorry.’

She dropped the hoover head onto the newspapers that had been freckled with shavings, picked everything up and dumped it into the toilet bowl, dropped the lid and flushed. She walked over to the sink and threw water in her face, washing the skin, when the toilet began to croak.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ she muttered to herself, as she strutted over to the toilet and threw up the lid. All the newspaper had vanished, but the hoover itself was too massive to fit down the toilets throat. 

She wanted to cry.

She pulled it dripping out of the toilet bowl by two fingers- ‘gross, gross, gross.’ And she dumped it in the bin. She then pushed her diseased hand under the tap and cleansed it, purging it of any invisible parasites that may have been there. She was there for at least ten minutes, rinsing her hand with soap, until she’d worked up a thick lather.

She was panting, heavily, but eventually she managed to calm down.

173.

Lady Rothschild went down the stair case in nothing but panties and a baggy shirt.

She saw Robert reading news articles.

‘I hate you, Robert.’ She said as she opened the fridge.

‘Don’t be a meany.’ He said.

‘Don’t be a meany,’ she mimicked.

She looked in the fridge, there was bacon, cheese, mushrooms, sandwich food.

‘Why are you so angry?’

‘Why are you so angry, he says.’ She said. ‘Why are you so fucking angry, he says.’ She bent down low and pulled open the drawer in the bottom of the fridge.

‘I don’t have to put up with this.’ He shuts his laptop and leaves the room.

She was rummaging through the bottom drawer, removing the bag of kale, pushing the broccoli aside, to reveal a severed human face at the bottom.

A heart beat of silence. It was a face on a plate, layered in cling film.

She got up and repeatedly kicked the wall. ‘Of course there’s a FUCKING FACE IN THE FRIDGE!’

She slammed the fridge shut, sat down at the table, got up from the table and opened the fridge. She reached down took the face out, and put it on the table. Someone had written in sharpie on the rim of the plate, spare face.

She peeled the clingfilm off, and lifted the face up to eyelevel and flipped it round. There was no muscle on the other side, it was all rubber.

‘Synthetic skin.’ She said to herself. And she laughed, so hard she cried.

174.

‘Do you have anything you want to tell me.’ She said.

Robert was in his office, clickety clacking on his keyboard.

‘Nope.’ He said.

‘Is that so? You don’t have any big secrets you think I should know about.’

‘Nope.’

Lady thought about what she said: ‘I mean… do you have any big secrets… that you think I think I want to know about? Wait… do you have any secrets I want to know about..? yeah, that’s what I meant to say.’

Robert leaned back from his machine.

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to say: I have a synthetic face that I have chilling in the bottom of my fridge.’

‘But I don’t have a synthetic face chilling in the bottom of my fridge.’

‘Oh yeah!’ she reached into her pocket, fished out the face, and slapped it on the table. ‘Then what’s that, huh?’

Robert looked at it for a long time, his gaze fastened to the mask on the table.

He looked at Lady Rothschild.

‘That’s a slice of cheese.’ He said, calmly.

‘BULLSHIT!’ she screamed. ‘I’M NOT AN IDIOT, YOU CAN’T GASLIGHT ME, THAT’S A HUMAN FACE!’

‘I still think it’s a slice of cheese.’ He said. ‘And you’re not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you got the two things confused.’

‘If I took off your face right now, what would I see?’

Robert rubbed his eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Blood maybe, bit of skull perhaps.’

‘You’re lying.’ She said.

‘You failed biology didn’t you?’

‘That’s not the point, the point is-‘ she pointed at the mask on the table, ‘that’s a human face, your face, your spare face, Robert.’

‘Look, how about you get out my office and leave me to do some work, hmm?’

There was quiet, while they looked at each other.

‘Fine.’ She said. ‘Hands in the air, I surrender, it’s a slice of cheese.’

‘It is a slice of cheese.’

‘But it isn’t!’

175.

‘You know you can tell me anything right?’ Lady Rothschild said, lying in bed, as Robert walked into the room. ‘Like, if you have a secret, I’m not gunna judge you or anything.’

Robert smiled his idiot smile.  

‘I don’t have a secret.’ He said as he climbed into bed.

‘You know I don’t think you’ve ever used the bathroom, John had to take shits every three hours but you never do.’

‘Good night, could you turn out the light?’

‘Are you going to sleep or are you pretending to go to sleep.’

‘I’m just going to recharge my batteries that’s all, could you turn out the light?’

Lady Rothschild said nothing, she just reached for the bed lamp and switched it off.

Very soon Robert began to snore, the rhythm was repetitive, as if someone had recorded twenty seconds of somebody snoring and played it on repeat.

Robert woke up being handcuffed to the beds. They were the fuzzy pink hand cuffs that he liked to use during sexy time, but now wasn’t sexy time, it was three AM.  

Lady was running round the bed trying to grab his ankle.

‘Hey what the fuck!’ he tried to kick her missed, and she snapped a third hand cuff round his ankle.

‘It’s for your own good!’ she screamed.

‘You’re crazy!’

She tried to grab the final limb and failed, he was fully awake now and was playing hard to get. His heel smacked into her nose, there was a snapping sound and she sneezed blood.

‘Fuck!’ she said, stepping back, hand over her broken nose.

 ‘That’s what you get, you fucking bitch, that’s what you fucking get!’

She pulled out a knife, and said simply: ‘Give me your foot.’

‘Are you going to stab me?’ he asked.

‘You know: I just might do that if you don’t give me your foot right now.’

There was a three second gap before he gave the lady his foot and she tied the last limb to the last bed post.

‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ she was panting, exhausted, but grinning Cheshire-cat style, her nose blood leaking into her teeth.

‘What are you gunna do?’ he asked.

She climbed onto the bed and she straddled him, her ass settled on his crotch.

She pressed the blade’s edge into his forehead.

‘Admit you’re a robot.’ She said.

‘What?’ he gasped.

‘I figured it out.’ She said, tapping her temple. ‘That’s why you’re the best fuck I’ve ever had, you’re literally a sex machine. That’s why you never sleep, that’s why there was TWO OF YOU! Robert as in robot. That’s why you used me as a hoover, it was a fucking metaphor.’

‘What?’

‘You used me as a hoover, it was a metaphor for the new human condition in this robot, robot world, ADMIT IT WAS A CLEVER METAPHOR!’

‘It was a clever metaphor and I’m so sorry!’

‘Now admit you’re a robot.’

‘I… I, but no I’m not a robot, you know why? Because I’ve just pissed myself with fear, can a robot do that!’

Now that he’d mentioned it, Lady could sense the sticky, stinky bladder juice soaking through four layers of clothing pajamas and underwear, she could feel the pee licking her butt.

She rolled her ass and there was a squelch.

For a second she looked confused, then she didn’t.

She smiled.

‘It’s fake piss.’ She said.

‘What!’

‘Fake piss, very clever.’

‘Why would a robot have fake piss.’

‘Oh I don’t know, maybe for situations exactly like this, you need to prove your human very quickly so of course you have fake piss, you fucking robot.’

‘I’m not a ROBOT!’

‘ADMIT YOU’RE A ROBOT!’

‘I’M NOT A ROBOT!’

‘If you don’t confess I’m gunna start cutting, and I really don’t want to do that, Robert, you have such a pretty face.’

‘You’ve lost your mind!’

‘Yeah, maybe I’ve lost my mind or maybe I’m more sane than I’ve ever been in my entire life, Robert, we’re about to find out aren’t we!’

‘Fuck off, I’m a human being!’

‘Five.’

‘Fuck off.’ He flailed in bed, trying to throw her off by thrusting his hips.

‘Four.’

‘Please, please I want to keep my face!’

‘Three.’

‘I’M A ROBOT! Beep boop, beep boop, I’m a computer machine!

‘Say it like you mean it- two.’

‘No, I confessed, I fucking confessed!’

‘One.’ 

‘ALEXA CALL THE POLICE!’

The little voice activated robot on his bedside table activated. ‘Calling the police.’ It said.

‘Alexa, hang up while I cut this fucker’s face off.’

‘Hanging up.’ Said the little bot.

Then the screaming started, as she began to cut his face off.

‘I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!’ Robert screamed.

‘It’s fake blood.’

‘Noooooooooooooooooooooo!’

This continued for quite some time.

Eventually she was finished, she was panting very hard, and smiling.

Robert had stopped moving.

‘Now lets see who you really are.’ She unmasked the robot to reveal, a second mask made of muscle and tendons, bits of bone sticking out where she botched the cutting. In one hand was the dripping meat mask that used to be Robert’s face. She looked down for a very long time. She turned the head  from side to side, looking for just a flash of metal, the titanium skull she’d been expecting. ‘I… I don’t understand.’

Then she heard the police sirens.

Robert had been screaming pretty loud.

Probably woke up the neighbors.

‘I don’t understand.’ She repeated.

176.

Lady Rothschild was currently being handcuffed and forced out the house.

‘BUT I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!’ she screamed.

‘You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.’ Said the two six-foot hulking mother fuckers in uniform, that had lifted her off her feet and brought her outside the house.

‘I’m innocent I’m innocent, it was just a stupid machine!’

She looked behind her, she saw one of the upper curtains twitch.

There was Robert looking at her, as if to say: One of us was a robot, the other was a human, obviously. It seemed quite neutral about the death of its better half.  

‘There it is! It’s Robert, there’s the robot right there! In the window.’

‘Robots, sure, whatever you say, you crazy bitch.’ They lowered her head into the car.

‘No no no no no no no!’ They slammed the door on her.

The car drove down the street on its way to the police station. Robert watched them leave. The human corpse still leaking on the bed.

***

Chapter 27