Getting to his feet he looks around the bar. Near the cash register is a pure white silhouette of a man. Charlie stands staring at it in shock and horror, repeating a single word over and over in a strangled voice.
"Scissormenscissormenscissormenscissormenscissormen...."
François muses to himself, "Je n'ai rien vu de tel depuis 15241, Rome or was it Venice, something to do with that nasty little gnostic da Collini and good old Igantius Loyola himself, if only the Society of Jesus had known about his leaning tower, well ..."
Sniffing the air François notices the absence of the odour of peaches and pitchblend, "So it is something new! Aha! This I think will please my little friend Charlie". He turns to his compagnon and starts to shake him more and more vigourously, hoping to snap him out of his state of shock. Charlie merely continues to repeat his mantra. A trickle of blood oozes from one corner of his mouth.
François stops shaking Charlie. Looking around he is please to see that the bar is empty and does the only responsible thing possible when all one's companions are out of comission. He goes through his pockets, looking for something very personal to Charlie, something that possible might contain something of his soul. Given that Charlie is a writer, perhaps he has a favourite pen, or perhaps a little black book contining all the idea for novels that he has yet to write, novels to which he will probably never get round. After all, if he is such a great penman then what is he doing in this dump?
As Francois begins rummaging through Charlie's pockets there is a loud,
and somewhat bizarre noise that echoes through
the bar -- very LOUD. Startled, the ancient etruscan turns to confront
four rather odd individuals. They are dressed all in red below the
waist, all in black above. Their faces are hidden by cowls (if indeed
they have any faces at all). Most startling, however, are their hands
- or rather lack thereof. Instead, their arms end in a set of huge
(~3') shears, which appear so sharp as to glitter along their cutting edges.
"Align thresh liquor!" says the first
"Tomb hell kith!" says the second.
"Emir sits hot!", says the third "A mesh tweaks mute!"
"This!" snarls the fourth.
The four rush towards Francois, snapping their long scissors arms as they come.
With Charlie's lighter in his hand, François spins on his heel and runs towards the open door grabbing the bottle of absinthe from the bar on his way past, intent on throwing the bottle on the ground, flicking the lighter on and dropping it into the spill.
"A soddy bun tofts!" cries the lead scissorman as François belatedly bolts for the door. There is the sound of giant shears and a tug at one shoulder as he attempts to flick his bic and toss down the absinthe, but while the bottle hits the ground with a satisfying crash it is less because François is throwing it than because he drops it in surprise upon observing that he has neither a bic nor an arm to flic it with. No blood, no sound of an arm hitting the floor, just s change in the character's center of balance and a newfound lack of talent for eating with chopsticks. Oh, and pain. Let's not forget the pain. Not, in fact, the sort of pain that is associated with physical wounds - which when it comes right down to it this just plain isn't - more the sort of psychic pain one might experience during a stroke as one feels a portion of one's brain dying - or perhaps it what it feels like to have part of one's soul severed - not having one François isn't really sure.
Repeated scissor sounds behind him indicate the probable fate of Charlie, but François decides that he is missing enough for one round and decides not to look back to check, instead concentrating on running.
"Ah! Funky wooer cued!" cries one of the scissormen behind him
as he staggers out the door, the sound of giant shears just behind him.
The loss of his arm is too much for François to bear and he
just flips out. Where once stood a sometimes suave and sophisticated
Frenchman now stands a small blue scaly imp with piercing eyes, pointed
ears and a barbed tail. "Fufluns com gerator don..."
*SNIP*
And Francois knows no more.
To Be Continued...