Automatic Woman Read Online Free Page A

same treatment I was receiving.
    And there we lay, locked like a serpent and mongoose; she tried to squeeze the life out of me, but found me no weak candidate. Not like the poor doctor. I squeezed with all the strength in my arms and legs, but heard no crack over the orchestral consonance, the beautiful and at this time dreadful conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece. We must have spent a minute locked in embrace, though it stretched into an eternity. My thumb found a space on her back, a crack. I changed the strategy of our grapple, for if she’d found a crack in me, I’m sure she would have exploited it all the same. I wedged my hand into her innards and felt all those working parts, all those cogs and belts and pendulums, whirling about and giving life to this aberration. I made a fist, and let my meaty fingers pull apart what they contacted. Belts dislodged, gears flung themselves loose and fell into her inner sanctum. I gripped again and this time pulled from her back a fist full of vital shiny trinkets, all those solid pieces of brass that accounted for her life’s blood.
    The creature’s teeth loosened from my shoulder. She slumped and shuddered, much like the poor dead Doctor had shuddered in his last moment. My eyes had grown accustomed to darkness, and in the haze of what I remember, I swear she gave me an accusatory glare with her one remaining eye. I dripped blood on her face from my wound, and yet, there it was…her eye shown angry and then the light faded, or rather, I passed out.
    So you see officers, it was not I who took the life of poor Dr. Saxon, rather it was his creation. I cannot explain the why, but I have provided the how. Contact my office, the Bow Street Firm. There you’ll find I have an impeccable reputation. You must believe me. I have nothing to hide.

Two
    Jolly Gets a Second Chance
    Blood stains on brick tell a tale as good as any Arthurian jaunt. This stain in particular, vertical, shaped like an oriental fan; it’s no different. The first thing I know is that this splatter came out of some bloke’s mouth. The stain is two meters up the wall and slightly off center of the piss bucket. I imagine the dispute had something to do with waste disposal, a priority to drunk and sober men alike. This assumption may be false, but given the proximity of blood-to-pisser, I’d say it’s a fair starting point.
    The strikee was shoved flush against the wall. That perfect blood fan was not a spray of any distance. That bloke was pressed up, knob in hand, against the wall and given a crushing right haymaker. Blood goes to mouth, mouth goes to holler, blood paints the walls.
    I don’t have to look in the pisser to know there’s probably a tooth bobbing in that filth, maybe more than one.
    Bloody driblets on the floor showed the trajectory of the man. He crawled. A standing man would have left a wider trail. A fighting man would have speckled the floors and walls and chairs and Lord knows what else in a wet struggle. Not this one. First he spit the fan on the wall, then the he dribbled a tight trail to the cell door. He probably mewled for the jailor. He probably begged. By the looks of the congealing pool by the cell door, his wait was long and his release was in the not too distant past. Not a fighter this one. Weakness in men makes my skin crawl. A man who begs and cries is like a dog in
coolot
trousers. My dad used to say that. I get chicken skin up my arms thinking about this bloke begging through a busted gob, wailing away, waiting for an exodus to safer accommodations, which in this place meant another cell; same type of cell, same type of blokes, same type of pissers. That might be a metaphor for life. I don’t know. I’ve never been called a literate man.
    I know about the blood and the man because it is my profession to know. Doctors stop seeing patients. They only see symptoms and remedies. Mashers stop seeing girls; they only see ankles and legs and tits and arses. Thief catchers