Agent Jonny Constant: Part II

Agent Jonny Constant
Part II: To Listen To Me Whine
By Eddie G.

The young Mutant girl navigated through the dismal alleyways flawlessly, deliberately making several wrong turns in the process to confuse anyone who might have been following. From the way she moved, one could see how easily fragile life was in these parts. One wrong turn, one tiny slip of footing would possibly mean a slow, painful and sometimes comically embarrassing death. And that was if you were lucky.

A brick wall loomed ominously ahead as she neared the end of her perilous run, threatening to impede her progress. But she merely responded by quickening her pace. It was only until she almost looked as if she had planned to charge down the wall when she leapt effortless and rebounded off the side to clear the menacing obstacle. A Kayelian Chomp-Chomp Hibiscus made a grab at her ankles with its tentacles as she landed, but the Mutant was much too agile for it.

Upon reaching a derelict building, she paused to catch her breath, leaning forward against her own knees. Under her arms, the package nestled, completely oblivious of the journey that nearly claimed its bearer’s life. The unassuming paper bag had made stealing it look as though it was an end that could never possibly justify its precarious means. Drawing herself to full height once more, she proceeded to knock on a rickety door.

“Do you have the time?” came a voice from inside.

“To listen to me whine?” the girl replied, quoting the lyrics of an ancient folk song (i.e. the kind of songs that people play and sing when they’ve nothing really better to do) to complete the code. The door squeaked open momentarily for her to pass through before it was closed and bolted securely.

As she walked in, se was greeted by a sea of Mutant faces, most of which belonged to people much older than she was. Many of them had already reached Terminal, some of whom were living testimonies of a doctrine that theorized that Evolution did indeed have a sense of humour. Hurriedly, she brushed aside the possibility that the she could very well end up looking like some of them one day, or worse.

The interior of the room was far less inviting that it was on the outside. It said quite a lot about the general living mannerism of Mutants. “Nonchalance” wouldn’t exactly be the word to describe it, mostly because it was reserved primarily for the Miscellanea. Unlike the latter, many Mutants believed that their lives were in dire need of shaping up, and had made solemn resolutions to do something about it. It had now boiled down to a matter of which “tomorrow” they would choose to get the ball rolling.

The crowd parted obediently as she made her way to the middle of the room, where a primitive looking lamp dangled above a rectangular table. All eyes were glued intently to the package as their faces beheld a common sentiment, albeit in different variations of the concept of “face”. And the sentiment was: we were summoned here whilst in the middle of something important; this had bloody better be worth it!

Naturally, the extent of their disconcertion was directly proportionate to the level of “importance” of their individual “middles of something”

A Mutant sitting at the head of the table rose to his feet.

“Echo!” he said, “thank Heavens you’re safe.”

On the surface, that had sounded genuine enough, but his words had carried more subtle and certainly less amicable undertones, which ran along the lines of “it’s about time, bitch”. And Echo knew this.

“Me or the package,” she responded scornfully. Unlike the other Mutant, she believed very much in the concept of in-your-faceness, – especially when it came to her fist – and wanted nothing more at this given point than to prove it.

“Why, both of course,” the Mutant said smoothly while the undertones went something like, “give me the package already, you damn whore!”

“Fine Tarsis,” she said, throwing it down on the table, “I’m only doing this for the betterment of the Mutant race.”

The Mutant had chuckled.

“So you’re calling me by name now, eh?” said Tarsis with a knowing smile. “Deciding to be more, how shall we say, intimate perhaps?”

He reached forward and stroked Echo’s face, and she reciprocated, only much harder and faster. It was perhaps the first time in her mutation that the two extra fingers had been put to good use.

Tarsis hollered, clutching his cheek where a seven-finger handprint had pervaded. The façade of pomp and formality was dropped like a burning ember.

“You fucking whore!”

“That’s what they do, don’t they?” she shot back, indicating that he wasn’t the only who knew how to play mind games.

“Hey Tarsis,” shouted someone from the crowd, “if you brought us all the way here to watch your little soap opera, at least make it more interesting than the one you dragged us away from!”

The rest murmured in unanimous consent.


[Ed's Note:]
After feedback I received from Part I, I realized that many people have felt that the stories have been a tad too long for one-sitting reading. Hence, I've decided to break my stories down into smaller, bite-sized readings. So we'll be seeing many short episodes instead of sporadic and overwhelmingly lengthy ones. Enjoy! :)


In the blink of an eye:

Agent Jonny Constant: Part I