Popcorn by Ben Elton

Author:Ben Elton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw, epub, pdf
Tags: Novel, Satire
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1996-08-04T12:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

Wayne did not bother turning to Bruce even now. He was more interested in the conversation he’d been having. He put the little pistol he had taken from Bruce’s drawer on Scout’s lap, and strolled casually round the glass table to stand over Brooke. As he passed the severed head, it seemed again for a moment as if it might rotate on its gory plinth in order to follow Wayne’s movements with its bulbous dead eyes. It didn’t.

“You know something?” Wayne said, standing over Brooke, leering at the curiously unnatural semi-circular definition of the top of her breasts. “I’ve always wanted to know what fake-tits feel like. Well, I guess there ain’t a working man in the United States who hasn’t thought the same thing. Like, you know, are they hard? Soft? Can you feel that bag of stuff they put in? Do they move around?”

Wayne’s right hand had been resting casually on the butt of the pistol stuck in his waistband. Now, he let go of the gun and blew on his fingers to warm them, clearly making ready for an inspection. Brooke did not look at him. She brought her knees up to her chest, clasped her arms round them with her shoulders hunched forward, and stared straight ahead, her chin on her knees.

“Don’t you dare fucking touch me.” Her voice was quiet and shaky; she was almost muttering.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Wayne replied, “but I guess I didn’t hear you right.”

Wayne placed the barrel of one of his guns against Brooke’s forehead and with his free hand ready, fingers outstretched, he slowly bent forward, clearly intent on investigating inside the top of her dress.

Across the room Scout took up her gun. “Wayne, you leave her bosoms alone, now. I don’t want you touching her bosoms none.”

It was a stand-off, Wayne pointing a gun at Brooke, Scout pointing a gun at Wayne, Wayne’s hand hovering above Brooke’s cleavage.

Wayne cracked first. “Jesus, there ain’t nothing more irritating than a jealous woman,” he said, returning to his seat.

Brooke remained hunched up in her defensive position, breathing deeply. “Just hold on,” she said to herself, “just keep it together.”

She knew that the number-one enemy of survival was panic. The moment one gave in to that oxygen-consuming, energy-sapping, adrenalin-pumping surge of blind fear, one was done for. Only the day before, she reminded herself, she had been swimming off Malibu and had got caught in a rip. It had been a sucky one, and without warning Brooke had been pulled under, turned over, filled with water and dragged out to sea about twenty metres.

“You nearly died then,” Brooke told herself concentrating on her breathing. “Only yesterday you were as close to death as you are now, but you made it.”

It was true. Brooke had been in mortal danger, although it would not have been the rip which killed her. Rips don’t kill people. Panic does. The first instinct of the swimmer caught in a rip is to try to head back to shore.

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