Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.4)

4.4 Ponder-osa

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I retired to my dressing room. Time for some serious pondering. What was going on here?

I watched a replay of my bronco-riding exploits on the monitor. That was me all right. But I’d seen video footage of myself fighting off Kate, too. And that had been me as well.

My consciousness hadn’t shifted back and forth between me and somebody else. It had shifted between two different versions of me. Which was slightly more plausible. Still totally freaking insane, of course. But less totally freaking insane than swapping minds with somebody else. This wasn’t Freaky Friday.

Clones.

Clones made sense.

Again, not a lot of sense. But more than the alternative explanations.

I’d seen that the Good Stuff people had clones of me running around. Somehow my consciousness must have shifted over to a clone and then shifted back when the clone died.

Or… or maybe this rodeo version of me was a clone. And the consciousness of the real version of me had shifted into this clone version when I died from the bomb blast.

But how did that work? There was nothing special about a clone. Just because my counterpart and myself had the same DNA, that didn’t mean we had any other connection. A clone is just an identical twin. When identical twins die, their consciousness doesn’t zoom into the other one.

At least, not as far as I was aware.

And I’m sure if that was happening, I’d have heard about it by now.

I sighed. I didn’t seem to be getting far. I watched yet another replay of myself falling off the horse. Nice view of your butt there, Kit. No doubt why they were replaying it a dozen times. The Wittgenstein derriere has long been renowned as ratings gold.

I snapped back to focus.

Okay. There had been two versions of me running about. One had died, and her memories of the past few days had switched to the other one. I could live with that for now. It was certainly better than the alternative of being blown to bits. Explanations could be sorted out later.

There were still a couple of questions to sort out.

Firstly, were there any more of ‘me’ out there? If this version of me died, would my memories zoom to another body? Or would I just die? I’d prefer the former. It would certainly allow for some crazy-brave action heroine antics.

But probably not something worth risking. I’d feel like a right fool if I died and didn’t come back to life in a spare body.

Secondly, and more importantly, where was Orlando really being kept? Bruce had led me into the bomb trap on the pretence of it being an Orlando rescue. But if he wasn’t being kept at Good Stuff headquarters, where was he being kept?

Only one way to find out. I had to contact sinister1 again.

(to be continued)

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.3)

4.3 Luke Who's Talking

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


“I feel better than I thought I would,” I said to Luke. This wasn’t a lie.

“That’s great,” said Luke. He turned and beamed at the camera. “Let’s check the clock.” An excitable pause as the audience cheered the digital numbers on the clock around. “14.4 seconds!” said Luke, when the digits stopped. He turned back to me. “That puts you in the lead, Kitty. How do you feel about that?”

Luke’s post-ride interviews could use some work. Or, at the very least, some variation in the questions he was asking. He’d been given the job as a result of his experience in the film Eight Seconds (and its lesser-known sequel, Another Eight Seconds). I assumed he’d had some training in interviewing techniques since then. But, if so, it hadn’t taken.

“I feel very happy,” I said. “My charity will be very pleased.”

“Ha ha ha,” laughed Luke, for no apparent reason. “Thanks, Kitty.” He turned back to camera two. “After the break, we’ll see how Mos Def fares when he… rides the bucking bronco!”

More cheering, outro music and then, “Clear!”

Okay. Time to get out of here and try and work out what the heck was going on.

But before I left I thought maybe I should probe Luke a little. He was, after all, another leftie. I may have done some kind of transcendental consciousness shift thing, but that didn’t resolve my left-handed problems.

At least, I think it didn’t. It was a very confusing situation. I didn’t like being this confused. It upset the whole vibe of my day.

I began to probe. “So,” I said. “Do you know what happens after this?”

“After this?” he said. “After the show?” He looked me up and down, an unwelcome leer over his face. Wrong kind of probing, Luke.

“What’s sinister1 got planned for us?” I said.

He looked at me, baffled. “Sinister1?” he said.

“Aren’t you a member?” I said. I waved my left hand vaguely.

Luke waved back. “Not really sure what you’re getting at, there, Kit,” he said.

I sighed. Either he was telling the truth, and I was coming across as a crazy woman. Or he did know what I was getting at, and was blocking me out.

I had no qualms about Luke Perry thinking of me as a madwoman. More powerful people had thought things far worse. But if he did know something about the southpaw society, I needed to get him onside and try to unravel what was going on.

I still had Akira and Orlando to rescue. And I wasn’t going to get very far without some further information.

I leaned in to Luke. “It’s okay,” I whispered. I looked suspiciously from side to side. “Sinister1 has recruited me. I’m in on it.”

Another blank look. I didn’t think he was acting. I’ve seen Luke act, and this level of believability seemed beyond him. “The Sinister One has recruited you?” he said.

Was that a tinge of recognition in the question? Maybe I was onto something here.

I nodded.

“The Sinister One?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“Kitty,” said Luke. “Aaron Spelling is dead.”

Okay. So maybe I wasn’t onto something.

(to be continued)

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.2)

4.2 Travel

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I was part of a charity celebrity rodeo. It would have been a simple enough deduction. But what made it even easier was the fact that I remembered agreeing to do it. Training for it. Signing detailed legal waivers regarding it.

And I’d done all of that only a couple of days ago.

What I couldn’t remember was how I’d segued into the massage room with Akira. His massage rooms were halfway across the country. There must have been some kind of plane trip to get there and back.

But I couldn’t remember any of it.

I cast my mind back. What could I remember?

I could remember training for the rodeo.

No. Specifics, Kitty. Specifics!

I remember taking my turn in the clown outfits. Trying to distract a bull that had just thrown Masi Oka. I remember running around with the experienced clown trainer.

And then, bang, the massage table.

So, apparently a rather large gap in the ol’ memory there.

What then? The battle-suited attack, the vampire attack, the society of southpaws, the break-in to Good Stuff headquarters, the bomb.

And then, bang, back to the rodeo.

And judging by the frenzied audience applause and the red light on the camera, we were shooting the show. So there’d been some kind of time gap there.

I did some subtraction in my head. The time I was away from the rodeo corresponded almost precisely to the time between the massage and the bomb exploding.

It was as if I’d been teleported elsewhere for the last few days before being teleported back here.

Except that wasn’t quite right. Because I’d returned atop the bucking bronco. The show’s producers wouldn’t have let the bronco do its thing without some damn fool clinging on for dear life. Where were the ratings in that?

Which meant that I must have been on it, even while I was seemingly in a building being blown apart by a bomb.

Or, perhaps, it wasn’t me on top of the horse. Maybe they’d sent out some other, not particularly bright celebrity and we’d switched places when I returned.

Except that I’m sure if I’d switched places with another celebrity in front of the audience, there might be a reaction other than the excited screaming and applause. Perhaps some kind of shocked gasp.

And Luke Perry, who was now almost upon me, would probably have something other than a goofy grin all over his face.

Where did that leave me? I’d clearly been here when my turn on the bronco had started. And yet, my memory told me I’d actually been in a room being blown apart by a bomb. I knew which location I preferred. But just wanting it didn’t make it so.

Two possibilities. Either the last few days had all been a very elaborate hallucination. In which case, I needed to seek medical assistance straight away. Or my consciousness had travelled elsewhere in that time.

But, if so, how? And why?

“Kitty Wittgenstein,” said the grinning and applauding Luke Perry. “How do you feel?”

And I couldn’t help but notice that Luke was holding out the microphone with his left hand.

(to be continued)

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (4.1)

CHAPTER FOUR

In which Kitty hangs on tight, clowns begin to make sense and ill is spoken of the dead

4.1 Rodeo Ga Ga

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Four posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I had to say, the afterlife wasn’t what I thought it would be.

Not that I’d thought there was an afterlife. But if my entire atheistic worldview had been proven wrong, I could take some consolation from the fact that all the world’s religions had got it wrong, too.

Well, perhaps not all the world’s religions. Maybe there was some obscure religion somewhere that was founded on the notion of an afterlife in the form of a rodeo. But if so, I hadn’t heard of it.

And yet, here I was, atop a bucking bronco, hanging on for dear, uh, life (?) with the arm that I’d only just had blown off.

Maybe this was hell? That would certainly explain the smell.

The horse beneath me spun around in a frenzy. I clung to him.

There was some kind of clock counting the seconds I’d been on. It was now up to twelve.

The horse bucked some more. This time I only just managed to hang onto the reins. But I was dangling perilously. Another decent buck would finish me off. I just had to hope the horse didn’t realise that.

I tried to straighten up.

But just as I’d almost regained equilibrium, the horse bucked the other way. Almost flung me off. I had my arms wrapped around its neck. But it was now only a matter of time.

The horse seemed to know that. For, one almighty spin later, I was thrown clear.

I landed hard in the dust. Not as hard as I’d landed a few minutes ago when the bomb had blown me across the hall. But hard enough.

I seemed to have lost a battle of wits with a horse.

Bound to happen some day, I suppose.

From nowhere, rodeo clowns came running in to distract the horse.

Clowns.

I’d been seeing clowns back when I was alive, too. Back there they hadn’t made sense. Here, they didn’t make a lot more sense. But at least they seemed to have a role.

What was odd was the fact that the clowns seemed to be the cast of Party of Five. There was Scott Wolf, clad in giant shoes, running around like a loon. And there was Lacey Chabert, beneath a frizzy orange wig, wielding a lasso. All the others were there too, doing their clown bit to calm the horse down.

Still, the clowns were here. And they made sense.

Despite the oddness of who was beneath the clown costumes, things were starting to fall into place. Or, at least, I thought they did.

I knew where I was. What was going on.

I didn’t understand what had gone on with the bomb explosion. Or Bruce’s betrayal. Or, for that matter, how my body seemed to be perfectly reconstructed. I felt for my neck. No vampire scar there either.

So none of that made sense to me yet.

But I knew why I was in the rodeo. I knew it wasn’t the afterlife.

And I knew why Luke Perry was striding across the dust to interview me.

(to be continued)

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws - Chapter Three Summary

Chapter Three of Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws

In which Kitty watches an instant replay, a request for a pistachio proves useful and things get very, very bad

1. Necks, Please
2. But Where's The Butler
3. Transition Vamp
4. Good Stuff
5. The Worst Break-In Ever
6. A Much Better Break-In
7. Prowlin' Around
8. Go Wes, Young Man
9. The Modified Virus
10. The Death Of Kitty Wittgenstein
    

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (3.10)

3.10 The Death Of Kitty Wittgenstein

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Three posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I couldn’t believe it. I guess I should have paid more attention to the fact that Bruce was left-handed. I’d been aware of it, obviously, but I hadn’t seriously considered that he would betray me and align with sinister1. He and I had been friends forever.

The timer read 1:12, 1:11, 1:10.

But I didn’t buy it.

Bruce and I had long ago discussed why movies and television shows always showed bombs with accurate timers on them. Surely, if you wanted to blow somebody up, the best way to do it would be without a timer at all. Or, if you had to have a timer, make it lie. Set it off thirty seconds early. It would certainly surprise the heroes of the story who invariably stopped it with only a handful of seconds remaining.

I had thought all this in a split-second.

There was no time to debate whether or not Bruce had a choice, or ‘had’ to do this. I had to close the door and get out of here.

But Bruce had read my mind.

“And, no, Kitty, the timer is not accurate.”

The bomb blew.

The force threw me back down the hall. I hit a wall and collapsed.

Memories from that point on were kind of haphazard.

I remember looking down at my stomach, which had an enormous hole blasted in the middle of it.

I remember going to put pressure on it, try and stem the bleeding and then realising that I seemed to be missing a left arm with which to do so.

I remember far too much blood.

I remember not being able to feel my legs.

Between all these memories, I drifted in and out of the blackness. Pain would overwhelm me. Then another flicker of consciousness.

My final memory was of the battle-suited lefthanders storming down the hall. Fighting off vampires, werewolves and… clowns?

While the assorted monsters were held at bay, a pair of lefthanders looked over me.

“Just relax, Kitty,” one said.

I tried to ask why they’d do this to me, but no voice came out. My body was a mess. It had been destroyed by the bomb blast. I didn’t have the energy to tally up the injuries. But I knew they were severe.

“Will she make it?”

A shake of the head. One of them pulled out some kind of device and attached it to my head.

“Just hold on, Kitty,” he said. “Everything will be okay.”

Really? I failed to see how. I also failed to see why these guys had blown me up and now seemed determined to try and save me.

Unless Bruce wasn’t aligned with the left-handers. But why would he align with the other side?

It was getting harder to breathe.

“Hang in there, Kitty,” said the main guy. “Just a few seconds longer.”

I wasn’t sure I could make that. I had no energy. I could feel my life force draining away.

Some kind of electrical surge came through the device he’d attached to my head.

I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do. But it didn’t seem to work.

Because just seconds later, the blackness overwhelmed me.

And I died.

(to be continued?)

Kitty Wittgenstein and the Sinister Society of Southpaws (3.9)

3.9 The Modified Virus

(note: to go to the beginning of the story, go here, to see all Chapter Three posts, go here and to see all Sinister Society of Southpaws posts, go here)


I looked around the tubes. This was horrific. What kind of experiments were going on here? I held my phone up and took a few snaps. I sent them through to Bruce.

“You seeing this?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can you work out what they’re doing?”

“Just checking now.” I’d made my way to the last tube. I tried not to look at the deformed corpse inside. Instead, I picked up the chart in front of it. I scanned the notes. “Oh my god,” I eventually said.

“What is it?” said Bruce.

“This is what sinister1 wanted me to see,” I said. “They’re experimenting on lefthanders.”

“What?” said Bruce.

I read through the chart more carefully. “They’ve kidnapped left-handed people and injected them with a modified version of the lycanthropy virus.”

I read on.

“The people who didn’t transform properly,” I said. “They must have all been left-handed.” During my previous escapades with the lycanthropy virus, there had always been a portion of infected people who, instead of transforming into the appropriate animal, had instead maltransformed in an agonising way. We’d thought it random at the time. But apparently not.

“And these guys are turning it into a weapon?” said Bruce.

“Yes,” I said. According to the notes I was reading, they’d decreased the time from infection to death. It had only taken 94 seconds in the case of the individual in the tube in front of me.

“They’re preparing to wipe out left-handers.”

“Oh my god,” said Bruce. “That’s monstrous.” There was a pause. “Do you want some good news?”

“Please.”

“I think I know where Orlando must be.”

“Then let’s go get him and get out of here.”

As Bruce started giving me directions to Orlando’s prison, I began to work out how I was involved in this. The left-handers who’d been infected with the initial version of the virus had all maltransformed.

All except me. I’d transformed correctly.

Which, presumably, meant I might be somehow also immune to the enhanced version of the virus they’d been working on. Which, if you were trying to wipe out lefthanders, made me a loose end that needed tying up.

An alarm suddenly went off.

“I think they’re onto me,” I said.

“We’re not far away now,” said Bruce. “Down the end of this hall.”

I quickened my pace. Continued to try and work out what was going on.

Kidnapping me to experiment on would probably raise unwelcome questions. Hence, the clones of me. They could experiment on them all they liked.

“Up the stairs,” said Bruce. I followed his directions. Pondered some more.

The clones mustn’t have been working, however. That would explain why they sent Kate after me for my blood. It wasn’t enough to get a sample of my blood by ordinary means. The virus had originally been triggered by adrenaline. Perhaps they’d needed an adrenaline-fuelled blood sample. And nothing produced adrenaline quite like a vampire attack.

It all made sense.

Even the left-handed battle suited people. If they’d discovered that the Good Stuff research was leading to left-handed genocide, then I could see why they’d splinter off. Steal the technology. Try and get my attention.

The alarm continued to sound. I assumed I was going to be confronted by security types any minute now. I just needed to get to Orlando first. Then we could plan a way out of here. One problem at a time.

“Just through the door on your left,” said Bruce.

I still didn’t understand why the lefthanders tried to get my attention by kidnapping Akira. So that bit didn’t quite make sense. But the rest of it was falling into place.

I took a deep breath and opened the door.

Orlando wasn’t inside.

Instead there was a rather large bomb, with a timer counting down.

“I’m so sorry, Kitty,” said Bruce. “I had no choice.”

(to be continued)