Nymphomation(100)

‘Father…’

‘Choose! Play!’

‘But they’re…’

‘Play! Play to win!’

Daisy played, even though the bone she chose kept changing every second, even as she placed it down. It started out as the double-five and ended up as the two-one.

‘No good. You need a double. Let me…’

Daisy’s father slammed down a bone, which flickered for a moment, and then came up double-five. Daisy tried to match it, but was too slow.

‘Faster. Don’t think. Just play.

Daisy played. Just played. Found a match.

‘The maze is stabilizing,’ cried Joe.

‘OK, we’re back on course,’ said Jimmy. ‘Time?’

‘Eight twenty-nine,’ said Joe. ‘Eight thirty. The show’s just starting.’

On the second screen the theme song was playing out its merry tune:



It’s domiknot time! Mutating domiknot time!

Dom, dom, dom, dom, domiknot time!—Blurbflies



And all over Manchester, in toilets and bathrooms and theatres, and in honeymoon suites and strip joints, dog kennels and swimming pools and bus shelters and rubbish dumps, all-night shopping malls and non-stop garages, dream homes and broken homes and private drinking dens, crash pads and launch sites and bomb sites, palaces and gleaming bright offices, darkened hospitals and dingy bedsits and penthouses and dog sites and honey kennels and broken pools and rubbish shelters and strip dumps and private moons and launching offices and bed bombs and pent-up bathrooms and gleaming crash toilets and all-night dream theatres; anywhere there was a hope or a chance or a glimmer, a sparkle or a sliver, all the gamblers were stroking their hard-earned domino bones, hoping that Cookie Luck would come up dancing, just for them.



Why not chance a shot?

You might well find a dot!

With your lucky little domiknot! —Blurbflies



And in the old House of Hackle on Barlow Moor Road, another game was being played, with more distant prizes. At least we know who’s singing now,’ said Joe.

‘Aye,’ said Celia, ‘that bloody Frank Scenario. The dirty cheat!’

And in the House of Chances, another two games were being played, with prizes made of bone and blurb. Hackle heard the song, echoing a thousand times around the passageways, calling forth answering cries from the hidden places. Shufflings could be heard, and grunts and wheezes along every line of broken sight, around every convolution of the brain…

…Play to feed to win to feed to win that song that comes through to win to feed upon the queen to win the feed that song now that never leaves me why to feed the feed song of chances even here if only I Jazir can to win play play play to find the queen the queen feed…

‘Here’s Tommy!’ shouted the city’s collective televisions. The video channel in the cellar picked up the same invitation to the random dance, as the popular star of dynamite domino came tumbling wild.

‘Tommy’s on,’ said Joe. ‘Time’s running out. And look… he’s in the maze as well.’

‘I see him,’ cried Celia. ‘He’s all purple and orange dots.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Jimmy. ‘We’re getting there. Stay cool.’

Daisy played a bone of her own, finally getting used to the play of random chances. How she did it, who can tell, only that trust had to be your gaming partner. Her father played as well, remembering his days of loss, and now the bones were banging down hard in succession, tile by tile, building the new maze.

In the outside world it passed 8.39, creeping fast towards the bone-dance, and the people were gathered to welcome the Lady Cookie home.

In the maze Hackle had no idea of time anymore; it seemed to slip and slide, sometimes backwards, so that he arrived at where he once was, and sometimes he landed back in his tiny cell and was merely dreaming. Was that just bad mazeography on his blind self? He was doing his best to keep up with Horny George, but should he be so trusting in a blurb so wild and strange that led him happily nowhere?

… As Jazir found himself back in his room, only dreaming of flying mazebound, only dreaming was he or else really no back again really moving now through tunnels to where…

Hackle reached up for the blurb, where it chortled, where it whistled and sang: Play to lose! Play to lose! Nothing like the real George had been. A sham of a blurb. Hackle grabbed it with both hands, twisted, around the neck, twisted, until… got bitten by it, didn’t care… twisted… until the satisfying sound of crack and squelch was heard. And a dying song…

Hackle dipped his fingers in the juice of it, spread the stuff all over his hands and face and grinned with the burning sensation. He threw the dead thing onto the floor and crunched it under foot.