Deirdre Chen: Saviour of the Multiverse

Chapter 2

Deirdre

The Future is;
Full of
Unexpected
Terrors
Used to
Rinse you
Everyday.
This was something Deirdre Chen’s Aunty Val shared on Facebook once, and although Deirdre was way too cool to like and share it, she did save it to her images.
  Deirdre was trudging in the mud, sploshing about in her wellies like a toddler, but her reflection in the little puddles reminded her that those innocent days were passed. Deirdre purposefully left a fringe to hide her strong forehead, which now that she was beginning puberty, was the perfect canvass for nature to splatter acne all over. She’d inherited her mother’s fierce, green eyes and round face, as well as her straight teeth. This was lucky for her, because her crippling, teenage insecurity couldn’t deal with braces.
  “Ow, my uterus”, her friend Cassie yelped as she slipped in the mud and banged her elbow against the tree, ruining her Air Jordan trainers and scraping her Ellesse jacket against the bark. She had a pale complexion that dared the sun’s rays to tan it. Cassie had the wild, blonde hair of a Germanic warrior queen, courtesy of her Estonian father. In the centre of her face lay a small, button nose.
  “What did you just say?” Deirdre laughed, looking proper immaculate, with her red Sergio Tacchini trackie top untouched by the mud.
  “You know, my uterus, my funny bone.”
  “No Cassie,” she said, “your humerus.”
  “I know I’m funny mate, I don’t need you reminding me.”

#
The woods were their usual meeting spot, normally they’d just loiter and that, carving names into trees, smoking cigs and drinking whatever ale the girls had snuck out of their parents’ houses. Deirdre and Cassie had gone to the field that day for a little target practice with her older brother’s BB gun. They would do this with cans of ‘Nova’, a 25p drink that powered you like battery acid, but also tasted like battery acid. To sip it, you would swear the factory is just full of bored staff, holding empty cans under elephant’s willies, before emptying caffeine into it.
  It does the trick mind; they’d use it for revision, or as more often happens, when they had to do their homework on the back of the bus the day it was meant to be handed in. 

#

Deirdre was lining up cans on the wall.
PING!
The can that she had just placed on the wall, went spinning end over end.
  “Cassie!” she shouted.
Cassie was laughing as she twirled the pistol like a cowboy.
  “I was never gonna hit you Deirdre, I’m a crack shot.”
  “I’ll show you a crack shot.” Deirdre marched over and snatched the BB gun, looked Cassie dead in the eye and pointed the gun at where she thought the can was. Deirdre pulled the trigger and KABOOM!
Literally, KABOOM! 
   So much KABOOM! that it threw both of them off of their feet. Our dynamic duo went into the air like they were wearing ‘Basroid’s Blaster Boots’! Oh, by the way, the publication of this novel is being sponsored by the Basroid Corporation, my lawyers weren’t happy about this but negotiated it down to three plugs. One down, two to go. Back to the story.
  Deirdre looked at the wall, a smoking hole had been where the cans used to be. As she walked over to the carnage, she saw that the cans had melted. 
One puddle darted out of sight.
   Deirdre felt something lapping at her feet. It was liquid metal, living liquid metal! She tried to scream as it slid up her body, but the cold knocked the wind out of her.    Deirdre’s felt numb as it slid onto her right hand and solidified over her fore-finger. She saw glass forming over her knuckle, and in the glass was something that looked like it could have been a circle, but it had some pieces cut out, so that only two were left.

Energy Level: 2
   
   Deirdre was trying to yank it off her finger, like a seatbelt buckle she had stuck her thumb in, when she was five years old. It weren’t budging. Deirdre was in full panic mode. It was a strange feeling she got when she proper bricked it over something.
  It hit her like a jolt of electricity, the current started at the top of her head and travelled through her skeleton, right down to her tiptoes, taking a break halfway through to tie her stomach in knots. It felt like she had entered a nightmare world; her body in the same spot but her mind is in the land of thepoohashitthefanistan. In this strange country, all your worst fears were manifested.
  Deirdre pictured what would happen if they couldn’t get it off; for some reason she would be totally awake as they cut her finger off, or worse, she would get a mark on her uniform card because she would still be wearing it Monday morning, and that was against her school’s strict dress code.
  “Let’s get some margarine,” Cassie said.
Deirdre’s heart was beating so fast that she could just nod her head in agreement.  Cassie was always cool under pressure. That’s why she made a good striker for her Sunday league team. There were rumours going round that she was being scouted to play in America. Deirdre never let it show, but she was jealous. Then she remembered something that her mum always used to say.           
  “At the age of 32, Alexander the Great conquered the known world. So, if you feel like a failure just remember, at least you didn’t invade a bunch of countries and kill thousands of people like he did.”

#

   “Is that some new technology? Like, from Japan or something?” Cassie wondered as they walked to the supermarket.
  “I’ve no idea.”
  “What if it’s from another world? What if it’s been sent down by an alien race as their first contact with humans?” That idea scared the both of them, so they stopped talking. 

#

  They were stood in the baking section, scanning the shelves for the most dirt-cheap block of marge. Deirdre managed to clock one for 50p, when the ground beneath her started to quake.
  Deirdre looked to her left, where Mengo stood before her.  Initially, she thought that it was some sort of spray-painted bodybuilder. He was dressed in that armour those Spanish blokes wore, when they invaded South America back in the ‘thee, thou’ days.
  “Give me The Gauntlet!” His voice was like an erupting volcano.
  Cassie weren’t bothered, just flicked her hair back and said, “Halloween ain’t til next week mate”, so Mengo pulled a laser cannon on them.
  “Bet that’s not real,” Cassie said.
  “Cassie, he’s either mentally ill, which means you shouldn’t be winding him up like that, or he actually is an alien and that thing is real,” Deirdre hissed.
Mengo fired at the ceiling, bringing rubble crashing down.
  “Psst,” Deirdre said to Cassie, “i think it’s real.”
  “Psst,” Cassie said to Deirdre, “i think it is too.” Mengo took aim at both of them. Deirdre closed her eyes and braced for oblivion.
  I can’t really add anything to the story right now, so it’s time for it to change perspective. Mengo will be taking over, but remember DEIRDRE IS THE MAIN CHARACTER.

Bye X