THE IMAGINATION THIEF (mini-chapters 1-98)

79 High voltage for Angel

79   High voltage for Angel

We split and I go to my room. There's only half an hour before I need to go see Big Bang, so I really don't have the time or opportunity to decide on any course of action in any direction. There's no point in even thinking about it now, in fact ... so I zero in upon you, Angel, all by yourself in the bedroom. You have a new addiction, to add to alcohol, cigarettes, sex and female hormones: it is looking at this bewitching full-length wax self, which you've lovingly seated against the wall by your side of the wide double-bed. Lucan's real fury that he has been anonymously provoked in public on a third occasion has now transmuted, here at home, into a subtly amused promise to not to abuse the waxen provocation itself. This you are most glad of, for your initial shock upon being shown the model by a grimly bemused Damian has become an adoration that you're careful to conceal from Lucan, lest he grow jealous. (Such jealousy I myself could understand, incidentally, since it's with some pique that I observe this wax self-adoration has already surpassed the adoration I implanted in you for Alaia and me—which survives in you now at only half-strength and upon a basis of memories that I sheepishly observe are still oddly confusing to you.)

Coiled on the floor beneath the open turret window in the corner of the bedroom, you watch the distant white waves hiss and suck the sand, which you can see through a gap between two other pointed roofs, and you wonder why these things are happening to you. Catching a glimpse of yourself from above, you see a dark elf curled up inside a turret, with the shadow of a dagger clutched tightly in your left hand, the shadow of another dagger stuck into your chest—and your right hand diving to your chest right now, to flap in horror at the surface of your bright red T-shirt, feeling for this unfamiliar dagger in your chest that you've just seen. But your hand finds only your little silver cross, while your left hand clenches the handle of its shadow-dagger harder, harder, harder now than ever; and the sea sighs on, and a clump of old leaves rustle brittly in the gutter just beneath you.

What's with those shadow-daggers, Angel? Are they part of that luscious fierce anguished little body you're imprisoned in? Your red fingernails are like spray-painted petals broken sharp through your finger flesh. Did you ever feel as average people feel, or were you gorgeously twisted from the start? Tell me, do. You turn as if to camera (though I know you cannot see me), mouth "You'll never know" and turn away. What went so wrong with you?—or went so right, perhaps. You want to kill most human beings that you see: twenty times a day you think of stabbing with your shadow-dagger, through someone's forehead and deep into their brain, and this picture gives you peace and liberation. Under the dictatorship of Lucan you inhabit a delirium of the senses, yet at the same time you've always felt somehow that you were buried alive. The black sky inside your head oppresses, claustrophobically immense; and rest assured, you will stay buried there, alive inside your poisoned night of dagger-skewered self, until you die... And yet there's one problem, Angel, I'm afraid: you see, you can't die. You'll stay buried there, still alive, inside yourself, forever more, without dying. Why? Because I like you there! Yes, I like to watch you, have you noticed? Oh I see you, Angel Deon—I see every twist inside you.

Yet again recently Lucan upped your dose of hormones, so you yearn to feel his body pressed against you, when it's not. Focused thought is hard, because throughout the days and hours you are with him, you're erect at all times, except for a short while after you ejaculate. And then, once apart, you're erect from even half-thinking on him: on his smile and his wicked eyes, his masculine chest and his deep brown voice, on his muscles and his heat, then up inside you deep for hours, till he comes, long and hard and powerful and pulsing and desperate up the hungry wet centre of your torso. Being penetrated by him is like being fisted by an entire forearm—unlike your own erection which, though permanent, is somewhere between the size of Lucan's middle-finger and that of his ring-finger. Obviously he stretched even you, when you first met, and carried on stretching you throughout the first weeks, despite your ramping up the size of the toys you used daily as your training for the nights to come; and yet, to your surprise, he was somehow less challenging to take than other smaller ones you'd taken in the past now and then, whose first look had made you doubt you'd ever find room for them.

In Lucan's presence and his absence you are hard for so long that it feels as if your mind itself has grown an erection, sticking up from your forehead like a unicorn's horn. The whole of your aura is scarlet and black, pulsing around you in the air, while your body looks horny and tense as if your hard-on is so tight that it's tying you in knots. Sore from the constant masturbation during sex, your penis aches, as if erect for such an age that it's bruised from inside; and yet without relief it stays always tighter than a bone. Although you're always clean, you have the faint scent of sex, and you sweat sex even in the coldest of weather. It's exhausting, exhilarating, almost unto illness... So in conclusion, yes; it could perhaps be said the hormones he feeds you are measured out in doses that are somewhat on the high side.

Curled in your turret there, your system in overdrive, you glance at the bedroom clock, as very well you might: after all, as a lifelong fan of ours, you mustn't miss Big Bang!

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For some nice reviews and interviews about The Imagination Thief, in The Guardian and elsewhere, see http://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-imagination-thief-reviews-media/

For a quick synopsis of it, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/synopsis-and-characters-list-the-imagination-thief/

For the 12 Films in The Imagination Thief, see http://www.rohanquine.com/video-books-films/12-films/

For the Audio-book version and the Video-book version of each of its 120 mini-chapters, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/audiobook-tumblr-wattpad/

For links to the retailers, see http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-ebook/ and http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-paperback/

And for its Amazon pages, see http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909 and http://www.amazon.com/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909

The Imagination Thief is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people's imaginations and memories. It's about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.