The pink polecat

There were two gentleman's clubs in town: the Pink Pussycat and the Pink Polecat. The Pink Pussycat was talked about, generally only by a certain kind of man, and there were tourist maps that, without exactly mentioning it, would have a little pink cat icon situated more-or-less where the club was. The kind of man who talked about it was rarely a gentleman, though he was also the kind of man who would visit it. For the steak, he would assert. They do a good steak there, for a very reasonable price. And his listeners, who would also be that kind of man (or occasionally a confused, possibly lost, tourist), would nod sagely and agree in low tones and murmurs that were never so crass as to actually, vocally, commit themselves. The ladies who worked at the club were also not gentlemen, though there were those matrons of the town whose quietly voiced opinion it was that they also weren't ladies. All in all, to those of an inquisitive and thoughtful nature, it was a little mystery as to why it should be called a gentleman's club at all.
The Pink Polecat, which was on no tourist maps at all and who had paid Google handsomely to not be part of their mapping project, was for the other kind of gentleman. This kind of gentlemen was unconcerned by the quality (or the nature) of the food and was disinterested in entertainment of most sorts. This kind of gentleman had a strong Puritan streak, a work-ethic that put illegal aliens in oppressed minorities to shame, and a desire for secrecy that occasionally results in actions that might, by the less intelligent, be deemed murder. Or genocide.
The Pink Pussycat advertised discretely, frequently by word of mouth, and required that visitors were members, though membership could be purchased at a very reasonable price on the door providing the visitor seemed well-dressed, well-mannered and capable of keeping their hands to themselves.
The Pink Polecat didn't advertise at all and had a membership process that first required the applicant to avoid being killed by a variety of amusingly-located booby-traps. There was a probation period, during which time the applicant ran the risk of becoming someone else's experiment, and even membership didn't guarantee survival. The Pink Polecat believed firmly in survival of the fittest.
The curious thing about the two venues then, was that they shared premises.
The Pink Polecat had been first, setting up in a large, manorious dwelling-house on Scooter Street. The previous occupant, Miss Vivien duLac, had been called up to Broadway to chorus with the girls and had skipped town without paying two months rent. Joshua Goddestown had seen an opportunity and stepped in, paying both the back-rent and six months in advance, and had then boarded up all the windows, locked and bolted all the doors, and retired to work in solitude. The townsfolk, none of whom would countenance a gossip, gossiped merrily until three young boys attempted to spend the night there as a fraternity initiation. Joshua summarily evicted them, and they, to spite him, told the town of the fleshpot he was building there.
So Joshua built one, called it the Pink Pussycat, and denied the three boys membership, telling them that it was a lifetime ban.
Behind the scenes though, Joshua and his friends, a small coterie of like-minded individuals, began to design a new town, one suitable for gentlemen like themselves. And so the Pink Polecat acquired a name, a tenuous goal, and the disguise of being a house of ill-repute.

Disney senior

"It's a new channel," said the executive, his grin as wide as his shoulders and less sincere. "We've taken inspiration from Disney Junior and gone with Disney Senior. We expect big things and bigger ad-revenue."
Nita nodded, and turned the page in the portfolio the executive had laid in front of her. It contained full-colour pages of the characters that were proposed as part of the Disney Senior channel, with smaller pages of text interspersed here and there to provide more detail.
"What character would you put on first," she asked, her voice deceptively mild.
"We were thinking that it would very appropriate to start with a true classic," said the executive flipping open a filofax. "We thought we'd have a new headliner show called Grandfather Mickey."
"I see," Nita nodded again. "Have you spoken to anyone in the marketing department yet? Only I think we're a little concerned about the impact your scripts would have on marketing strategies."
"Wuh?" The executive gaped.
"Strategies." Nita enunciated the word slowly and carefully. "Look, your first episode is about Grandfather Mickey going to buy incontinence pants for Grandmomma Minnie, meeting Old-timer Goofy there and the pair of them getting confused. Goofy goes home with the incontinence pants, which he sticks a turkey in and puts in the oven, while Grandfather Mickey goes home with a turkey-baking bag, which Grandmomma Minnie puts on, apparently oblivious to what it really is."
The executive was laughing hard and slapping his knee as though he thought it were truly pants-wettingly funny.
"Well," Nita said patiently, "what are we going to brand as a result of this? Disney don't do incontinence pants, and that's not going to change in the near future. We can't realistically do turkey-baking bags after this airs, or kids will try wearing them, with possibly disastrous consequences."
"We're not targetting kids!" The executive wheezed as he tried to stop laughing and get his breath back. "We're targetting senior citizens. That's why we're calling it Disney Senior and using all the oldest characters." He wheezed into the icy silence that followed when he finished speaking. Only when it became clear he wasn't going to get the hint did Nita speak again.
"We've no experience addressing this market segment," she said carefully. "And, and this is the wonder of cartoons, our characters never age. Mickey will never reach old age, nor will Minnie or any of the rest. Donald Duck is as young today as he was thirty years ago, and that won't change. This idea has no wheels, and is not going to run."
"But let's let the characters age, and capture a new market segment! Old people sit at home all day anyway, they can watch Disney Senior!"
"What are they going to buy?"
The executive's face went blank again.
"Old people are not a particularly wealthy market segment, and they've often either got everything they want, or don't have the money to buy it. There are no parents, or even children, waiting around to help out. So who's going to buy merchandise from this channel? Or advertising on it?""
"Well... can't we go down the selling them wills and things route?"
"That's part of the contract when they purchase access to the channel."

The caverns below La Greche

Roscomboltin, who would love to be Rosco to his friends if he could make any, felt the rope slip. He fell in the utter darkness, panicking. The rope caught on something, jerked, and he bounced on the end of it. Something metallic shrieked, and he fell a couple more feet, jerking to a halt again. Then it was over, and he was swinging like a pendulum, his hands feeling for his hard-hat, trying to get its lamp working again.
He took the hat off and ran his hands over its ridged contours until he found the lamp housing. Then he pounded on it with the ball of his thumb. At first nothing, and then suddenly some broken connection somewhere was remade and a weak yellow light spilled out from the bulb. Relieved he shook it, and the light strengthened.
He put the hat back on and looked around. The nearby wall was a deep pink, reminding him of roses that he'd not seen since coming to the La Greche, but otherwise the cavern just opened out and there was only blackness wherever he looked. When he looked down, he was startled to discover he was hanging mere inches above the cavern floor. He swallowed hard, wondering how close he'd come to hitting it, possibly breaking bones or... or worse.
He unclipped and dropped the eight inches to the floor. It crunched, and when he rubbed his feet he realised that it was a gritty black sand on rock. He looked up, admiring the rose-hued wall again, and his smile slowly faded as he wondered where black sand could come from if the walls were this colour. Rosco put a hand out for the rope, and as he pulled on it it came free from wherever it had caught and fell, coiling noisily on the floor. He dodged aside; rope that long was heavy and he didn't want to be caught under it.
"Well, well," said a voice in the darkness. "A... visitor again. It has been... such... a long time." There was something suggestive in the voice, and Rosco thought it might be hunger.
"Who's there?" He turned slowly through a full circle, peering in the hopes of seeing the speaker, but never seeing more than empty darkness.
"Think of me as... one of the... fallen. Not unlike... you, ha, ha."
Rosco noted the strange pauses, wondering if the speaker was short of breath.
"Well met!" he said, not meaning it at all. "So, is there another way out then?"
"Not... ha, ha, not... that I've found."
"Looks like I'm climbing then," said Rosco, trying to sound cheerful. He didn't feel cheerful though; the hole he'd come down through was probably in the middle of the ceiling, not near the walls, and climbing to that, in near darkness, would be suicidal. But then, staying down here with this strange speaker also seemed suicidal, and at least climbing he could die on his own terms.
"Ha ha, you should look... around first. There are... ha, ha things you should... see."
"Things?"
"...Bones."
"I'm probably a better climber than them," said Rosco, but his confidence was ebbing fast.
"Did I... say they'd tried to cli...mb?"
The black sand. Rosco realised that there was more here that he needed to know about before he continued.
"OK," he said, trying to sound friendly now. "So, who are you? Can I see you?"
The light on his hat went out, plunging him into a darkness that was starting to feel oppressive.
"Ha, ha, ha," laughed the voice. "It would seem not!"

Hell Knight

The best question I've ever been asked is how something like Hell can have enough structure for there to be Knights. If Hell is a howling, incandescent chaos of tortured souls suffering for eternity, who is there to swear fealty to? What can be offered in return for such service? And what is there for Knights to do?
The problem most people have is that they don't realise the full extent of Hell. Each religion has its own version, its own rules on who gets sent there, and what happens to them when they arrive. Many philosophers have created visions of Hell as well, though they may not have realised what they've done, and every human capable of imagination can fashion a Hell of their own. Hell is vast, and there is room for almost everything in it.
The Greeks had visions of Hell as the abode of the dead, with a supreme ruler; the Italians, after Dante, had visions of Hell as a multi-circled domain wherein people were punished according to their sins. Typically, only the Christian religions are desperate to roast people alive and torture them indiscriminately, and though those pockets of damnation are growing here and there, they're considered by most residents of Hell to be a little gauche and underdeveloped. They're the third-world countries of Hell.
This leaves plenty of space of human to instate the feudal society they seem to default to, so there are hierarchies and rankings, class systems and levels of equality in many regions of Hell, and some of those rulers are strong enough to be able to grant titles that are either meaningful or respected in other regions as well. Not all Knights come from such places, but I do. The proof that I am a Knight are the tattoos on my wrists and the way they coil around each other when brought together. The ruler I swore allegiance to is Caledon, who commands Escabon, La Greche, the Maigre Strait and the Citadel of Romance. His plans for expansion are well known, and likely to succeed.
As for what I do, I recruit for Caledon. Not for his armies -- there are enough souls in Hell to fight the wars -- but for his administration. I head-hunt, in the corporate sense. I find people with the necessary skills for the positions that are open and persuade them to join.
Hell is not timeless, as many people think, but time passes at different rates depending on where you are. Mostly time is dense and heavy, and the lower you go the faster time passes, the heavier it weighs on the souls there. But there are places where time reverses and flows backwards, and places where it reveals its fractal nature, and with knowledge a Hell Knight can use them to enter the world where he pleases.
Hell can be both entered and left, so long as you have the right mindset and know what you're looking for. The Greeks had no problem with the living visiting Hell and leaving again, so many of the doorways look like temple entrances and allow passage in both directions. Christians see Hell as a final destination and so their doorways are one-way only and can't be subverted: it's part of the structure of hell. But they make it easy to get in: any door can be turned into a gateway to hell if there's enough Christians nearby.
And so I am a Hell Knight, and I have recruitment to attend to.

The Aquakitty Sanctuary for Psychopathic Cats

The Jinx, half Lynx, half Jaguar and half-mad, stalked its prey through the long grasses and waist-high shrubs of the Aquakitty Sanctuary. It moved like a shadow, slipping through the grass almost as though it wasn't there, disappearing completely when out of bright sunlight, and utterly soundless. When it was far enough away, and sure that no-one could hear it, it chuckled to itself.
Ahead of it, utterly oblivious to where he was, or the danger he was in, Doctor Septopus slipped through the long grasses and waist-high shrubs like an elephant, lumbering along so loudly that several nocturnal species had woken up and were feeling grumpy that their sleep had been disturbed. His tentacles weren't well adapted to dry land at the best of times, and the oven-like heat inside the sanctuary had dried out his scaly skin and given him a headache. He plodded on, looking for water.
At last there was a glimpse of silver on the horizon, and Dr. Septopus sighed heavily and turned towards it. He was worrying that one of his tentacles might be coming close to dropping off, and he was not at all happy about having to change his name to Dr. Sextopus if that happened: he could already imagine the smirk on Silvestra's face when she heard, and the Green Lightbulb had problems with far shorter words. The idea of being Dr. Sexypuss from time to time was cringe-inducing.
He crested a small rise, and saw to his mild pleasure that the silver glint was widening and looking promisingly water-like. Behind him, the Jinx stretched out, flowing forward like night enveloping the landscape, tensing muscles ready to spring. In front of him, an angry tiger that had been trying to sleep until Dr. Septopus plodded by also tensed, readying to spring.
Dr. Septopus saw the tiger as it launched, and collapsed, his tentacles crackling like dry newspaper. The Jinx sailed over Dr. Septopus's head, its claws just scratching his scalp, and crashed into the tiger. The two giant cats landed in a ball of fur, growling and spitting, and Dr. Septopus rolled onto his side and down the slope.
He bumped and crashed his way down, bouncing off rocks, crushing small shrubs, and leaving a faint ammoniac smell of fish behind him; a scent trail as visible as if he were laying tarmac for a new motorway.
At the bottom of the rise, he righted himself, noting with relief that he still seemed to have all his tentacles, and ran, hoping to get away from the catfight behind him, heading still for the water, which was glittering brightly as it got closer.
The Jinx broke the tiger's neck with a well-timed swat of a giant paw, and sat back on its haunches. It licked a deep scratch thoughtfully, and scented the air. Dr. Septopus was as visible as a fireworks show at midnight to it, and it decided that one accident wasn't a deterrent. It padded off, following the smell of week-old fish.

Technomad (I)

The technomad was cornered, flushed, and breathing hard. He flung his hands up in front of his face, and muttered something that none of the children could make out.
“Kick him!”, “Hit him!”, “Make him take a bath!” The cries mixed up together as the braver children pressed forward and the less-brave egged them on. A stick, too thin to hurt, bounced off his forearm, and he crouched, trying to hide himself behind himself.
“OK kids, that’s enough.” The voice was deep, masculine. The technomad stayed crouching though, now peering out from behind his hands. The children were crying out in dismay, but they were milling around a little now, less sure of themselves now another adult was present. “That’s enough, I said. Put those stones down, and get on. Leave it alone, it hasn’t hurt you.” Some of the stones that were dropped looked like housebricks to the technomad, but he wasn’t about to say anything now.
When the sounds of footsteps had fallen away he lowered his arms and looked around. There was a small rockery of stones and bricks lying around, and he realised he’d come close to being stoned to death. A little distance off a man in a tight green sweater stood looking at him.
“You know you’re not welcome here,” said the man. “We made that clear last time. Why have you come back?”
“We’re nomads,” said the technomad. “Technological nomads. We roam from village to tow--”
“Yes, I know all that. You substitute technology for living and you expect other people to support you while you make ‘art’.” There was a lot of disgust in that last word, and the man in the green sweater spat after saying it. “We’re not stopping you roaming, in fact, we want to keep on roaming. There’re no jobs for you here, we don’t want to see your art, and we definitely don’t have any bandwidth to spare.”
“Uh....”
“So tell your little friends to pack themselves up and get going again, or we’ll be staging an art installation of our own: think Burning Man but with a little more realism.”
The technomad licked his lips, and kept his head ducked down. “We have one art piece to present; perhaps you could all come and see it this evening. We’ll leave immediately after.”
“You’ll leave now. We monitor our networks, we know you’ve been trying to hack our wifi since you arrived. We’ve hacked you back, but you haven’t noticed. You’re not much of a technomad really, are you?”
“You’ve what?”
“Giving birth is not art, no matter how you photograph it. Take yourselves off, find someone who’ll donate medical care to you. You’ll get none here.”
“Charity begins at home,” said the technomad.
“And stays there, as far as you’re concerned.”
“Does this remind you of a Bible story?”
“It might, if there were such a thing as a god.”
The technomad sighed, and shuffled past the green-sweatered man. The lifestyle had seemed like such a good idea once.

Mr. Binky

“And this is the bedroom.” She giggled. I had to push the door open myself to look inside, and as I brushed past her, she giggled harder and put a hand over her mouth. I was starting to regret accepting her offer of a nightcap.
“That’s Mr. Binky,” she said, pointing at a teddy-bear sitting stiffly on the bed in front of the floral cushion, which itself was in front of three pink-pillowcased pillows. Mr. Binky was wearing a charcoal three-piece suit and looked like an undertaker. For teddy-bears. “Do you want a cofoffee?”
“A what?” Mr. Binky was giving me the evil eye, I was sure of it.
“A cofoffee. You know, a coffee with a cough.”
I didn’t know, so I asked for a simple black coffee, and as she headed downstairs to the kitchen to make it, kicked myself for not asking for a caramel-soy macchiato and using her inability to make it as an excuse to leave. Everyone can make a black coffee.
I sat on the bed, and looked around. There was a vase of flowers on the windowsill, a floral-print wicker armchair by the window, and a small bookcase at the end of the bed. When I checked its shelves there were eight-years of back-issues of Cosmopolitan and Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. Having read Sun Tzu a lot in college, I picked up the most recent Cosmopolitan and discovered that she ringed things on the pages. In red marker pen. I put it back down again, and sat back down on the bed.
“Here you go!” She was as cheerful as a Tequila Sunrise. She put two coffees, one black and one white down on the carpet, and then disappeared again. She reappeared moments later with a bottle of cough-syrup and poured a generous three fingers into her cup.
“Are you sure you don’t want a cofoffee?” She giggled, and I wanted to strangle her.
“No, thanks.” I said. “I don’t like sweet things in coffee.”
“Oh, but Mr. Binky does.”
I managed to smile, but I’m not sure how.
“Mr. Binky thinks you’re supercute! He’s really happy that I went out with you tonight.”
I sipped my coffee cautiously, just in case she’d put anything else in there while she was making it. It tasted bad, like most instant coffees do, but at least it tasted like bad coffee. Then I wondered what I was supposed to say; we hadn’t met for a date, she’d just been hanging around at the entrance to the bar when I’d finished watching the hockey and had decided to leave. Her giggle had been cute back then, an hour ago.
“That’s good,” I said, looking at my watch. “Oh, is that the time? I have to work tomorrow, you see, and--”
The growl definitely came from behind me, and I was looking at her face, gauging how nice I’d have to be about leaving, so I’m sure it didn’t come from her.
“Oh, that makes Mr. Binky sad,” she said, and then something warm and furry gripped my throat and pulled me backwards.