PROLOGUE
One Morning In The Big Apple
Dazed, dizzy, the young blond-haired woman shook her head in muddled confusion.
Everything was a blur, everything seemed suspended in a wafting haze of uncertainty. Drawing in a breath, she fluttered her eyes open, and, and …
In a stinging zap of realisation, she understood; her wide-open eyes bringing clarity to the alarming situation. Sucking in a deflated breath, she let her head flop back on the bed. She closed her eyes as she ran it through her mind. It was, it was …
“God, again?” she sighed.
It had happened again, happened again had it …
It was … morning.
A new morning.
Another morning.
Another morning in New York, another morning in the Big Apple, and golden suggestions of sunlight filtered into her apartment through the partially open blinds.
Doddie noticed that she wasn’t tied down to anything, or tied up to anything. And she had her pyjamas on. And there was no evil fiend standing before her and threatening her.
“Bugger.” she mumbled.
It was much more fun waking up and then being threatened by someone, but if she couldn’t have fun with an evil fiend on this morning, she would have to entertain herself in other ways.
Doddie placed her hands behind her head as she looked up at the ceiling, thinking about this new day, thinking about New York, thinking about how quaint it was to refer to New York as the Big Apple.
A smile broke across her face as she thought about apples.
God, whom Doddie had met, had kicked two females out of the Garden of Eden, although the women’s crimes differed dramatically in severity.
God had kicked her mother, Lilith, out of the Garden of Eden, because to put it bluntly, her mother was a slut. In the early days of creation, God was still in his experimental phase, and He had over-sprinkled Lilith with lust, and the consequence of that single action meant that Lilith humped anybody and everybody. Anybody with genitalia was a target; Adam, nymphs, demons, whoever or whatever, it didn’t matter. God wanted the Garden of Eden to be a paradise where all creatures great and small could live in harmony, yet with Lilith continuously on the prowl for her next target, she had turned the Garden of Eden into a paradise for the randy and the debauched. So yeah, maybe God had a sound and noble reason to kick Lilith out, but Eve?
If they had of established a Human Rights Commission in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of creation, Doddie thought that Eve would be quite justified in fronting the Commission with a grievance. Doddie could imagine the nubile lass standing before the Commission and humbly stating her case …
Yeah, like hey Commission people, I understand why you booted her out, I mean Lilith is like a porno movie on legs; but me? I mean come on, the Snake Guy gives me an apple, and I’m thinking, Yeah, cool, God said he wanted the human species to flourish see, and one time the Snake Guy says to me, An apple a day keeps the doctor away, so you know, I’m munching on the apple to keep the doctor away. I do admit that I knew that the doctor was busy anyway, because he was waiting in the queue to hump Lilith, but give me a break okay. I mean Lilith is spending everyday flat on her back getting banged and shafted and rooted, and I’m munching on a freaking apple for Godsakes! … ohhh, whoops … I didn’t mean to say Godsakes, I didn’t mean to take the name of our Lord God in vain, but Daffy Duck, I’m trying to be a good girl see, and I mean it was hard okay, because Lilith is rocking and rolling and squealing and panting, and excited guys are standing in the queue and playing with their willie’s, and occasionally streams of spurting semen are whistling past my face, and I’m standing there naked okay, and I’m trying to make Adam realise that I’m available, but of course, he’s standing in the queue as well. Sometimes I’m going, Hey Adam, hey Addsie Waddsie, wanta take a chunk outta me? But of course, he’s peering over the queue going, How we going up there boys? Are ya gunna be much longer? So the Snake Guy is the only one paying any attention to me, so’s I munched down on the apple, but piss-in-a-bucket, it was just a freaking apple!
Doddie knew that Adam and Eve lived for more than nine hundred years after being booted out (gee, they must have been DemGels, or else they stuck faithfully to a really good and life-prolonging diet). These days most humans were lucky to make it to ninety, so maybe the Snake Guy had been on a winner with his apple a day philosophy, and maybe Adam and Eve wanted to keep the doctor away, so they munched on an apple every day for nine hundred years. With a natural grace, Doddie glided out of bed and moved into the kitchen, and with the Snake Guy’s advice still in her mind, she peeled and diced an apple.
While delicately nibbling on a piece, Doddie reflected that she’d never, ever gotten in trouble for eating an apple. Doddie only got into trouble when she wanted to. And she wanted to quite frequently, because golly jingles, getting into trouble was so much fun. Although she knew that getting out of trouble was much more exciting.
And messy.
Doddie cleaned the bench.
Not that it was messy, she just felt like cleaning something.
Doddie liked doing things that she could do, and she also liked doing things that she didn’t know if she could, or couldn’t do. She liked being in the Big Apple, and she liked wiping benches in the Big Apple, and she liked some mornings, although she liked other mornings better than some mornings, and she also liked shaking her head around and spluttering “Blub, blub, blub, blub blub!”
That was fun too, because her blond hair swished around when she did that, and the blond hair tickled her face, and the frantic movements of her tongue moistened her full lips, and her brain was sometimes on vacation, but that was okay, because if your brain wasn’t functioning, it didn’t matter none, not here, not in the Big Apple.
Lots of people in the Big Apple had brains that were on vacation.
Doddie looked at the wall clock, or clocks; it was 8.43 am.
All of her twenty-seven wall clocks were round, the way all wall clocks should be, and all of them had black English numerals on a white background, and between each of the numerals, four little strokes were evident, the strokes representing each minute between the numerals. All wall clocks should be round, because effectively, wall clocks were mimicking the Earth’s circular orbit around the sun. Recently Doddie had seen an oblong-shaped wall clock, and she wanted to ring up the clockmaker and say, Don’t be silly, just make round wall clocks! Although she had seen a few round wall clocks that were pretty silly as well. One time she had seen a round wall clock that had no numerals on it, and she thought, Okay, so why did you even bother? Another time she saw a round wall clock with no second hand, and that was really stupid, because the second-hand was the hand that produced the pleasant ticking sounds. She remembered seeing a round wall clock recently that had no numerals on it, no second-hand, and the hour hand and the minute hand were the same length, and she had thought, Okay, so what, we have to guess the time? One time she saw a round wall clock where the numerals were replaced by watches, and all the little watches displayed the time as well, and while she thought that it was clever, looking at it gave her a headache. Another interesting wall clock she had seen had two human figures replacing each of the twelve numerals, and the human figures were posed in sexual positions to try and resemble the numeral that they had replaced. Yes, very clever as well, although a few of the positions were unfamiliar to her, and when she looked at the clock, she found that she wasn’t thinking, What time is it? she found herself thinking, What are they doing? She wanted to ring up the clockmaker and ask, Eight o’clock; what’s happening there? She saw a square wall clock once which had the word WHATEVER centred above the middle of the clock, and this clock had only eight numerals instead of twelve, and the eight numerals weren’t evenly spaced, they were crumpled haphazardly in the far-left corner of the clock. Doddie understood that the clock was a novelty piece for the lazy and un-motivated, but what about if the lazy and un-motivated people wanted to know what time it was, what then? There were only eight numerals, and they were squashed in the left-hand corner, so Thank-you wall-clock-designer, thank-you for making a task that should be very simple, quite complicated and time-consuming. If you had that square WHATEVER wall clock, you would have to have a normal, round wall clock next to it, so you could figure out how long it took you to arrive at the exact time on the square wall clock. She did see an interesting round wall clock one time, the clock looking like a vinyl record, although parts of the record were broken and shattered on the right side, and three human figures in climbing gear were climbing up the shattered side. She was tempted to buy that round wall clock, although she didn’t quite understand the correlation between telling the time and climbing up a shattered vinyl record.
It was 8.49am, so Doddie sat on the floor and curled herself into a ball, her face on her knees, her arms pulling her bent legs in tight, and she curled into a ball because she wanted to find out what it felt like to be a ball, but she didn’t bounce, because she was flesh and bone. If she was Cinderella, she would punch the Wicked Stepmother on the nose, and if she was Sleeping Beauty, she would go and have a little nap, and if she was Snow White, she would eat a bird, or maybe a chicken. One time, she remembered hearing someone say, It tastes like chicken! So she wanted to eat a chicken, because presumably, chickens would taste like chicken too.
A sound rang out, and the sound was like, Whooska, although the sound was accompanied by a little ceremonial ratt-a-tatt-a-tatting as well, and Doddie uncurled herself, un-balled herself, and as the hazy smoke began dissipating, Doddie rocked back in surprise when she saw two figures standing before her.
