THE IMAGINATION THIEF (mini-chapters 1-98)

88 An interrupted drama and a dubious portent

Lucan pockets his phone with a slow-growing shine of thought in his eyes and turns towards you, who have quickly pulled on your black vinyl bra and a skinny black polo-neck and are climbing into a pair of black leather trousers, looking heated, still horny and seethingly hassled. "She never mentioned the video of Shigem on the DVD!" crows Lucan. "The video of him and Jaymi at Paradise, the night when the first wax head showed up. That video shoulda been her proof that he never came to Downstairs then... She's busting her head on the phone trying to prove he's innocent, and she never even mentions that video? I pushed her, you heard—and she still didn't. Why not? All she could say was, oh he'd never have done it, and oh people could swear he was in Paradise..." In his enthusiasm Lucan has been absent-mindedly flicking the wax Angel's nipples with his fingernail throughout this speech, until you notice this in the mirror where you're brushing your hair. Hairbrush in hand, you flit across the room in renewed anger, bat his hand away from the nipples and slide the model along the divan away from danger. "And you know what that tells me?" continues Lucan, hardly noticing this. "Evelyn doesn't know we got the wrong disc!" He claps his big hands together and rubs them in glee. "She still thinks we got a disc with only you and me on, like Alaia promised."

You pull your mind reluctantly away from the flicked wax nipples and force it to wrap itself instead around these elusive abstract hypotheses, whose very slipperiness reminds you immediately of nipples again. You stare at Lucan for several seconds, trying to focus through your hassled state, and your anus twitches hungrily. "Has Alaia passed your message along to Evelyn?" you manage at last. "I mean the money demand?"

"Evelyn just said yeah Alaia gave her my message. But Alaia could have given her any old bullshit message. Maybe Evelyn doesn't know about the money demand, 'cos Alaia didn't even tell her we got the wrong disc."

"Why didn't you ask Evelyn about all this just now?"

As Lucan gives one of his deep, wicked laughs, I feel you wince with an unsated desire that's almost like pain, and fleetingly I glimpse the clearest view I've had down that avenue where you live every day, a sexual and emotional slave to one man's all-dominating physicality. "Because," says Lucan, "I'm gonna use what I know, to make Miss Danielle do a little something for me..." He jumps up and heads for the door, stopping on the way to pick up from the dressing-table your crucifix pendant, whose thin chain he gently fixes high upon your chest in a delicate silver echo of the large golden one hanging halfway down his own. "OK, we gotta meet the others, so move your faggot ass or I'll kick it."

Seeing you both outside on Summerfield Avenue, I'm struck by what a stunning pair you make: Lucan striding fast through the bright summer sunlight, shirtless in black jeans, whistling a lazy tune; and you, Angel, half-running after him, breathing onto and polishing the lenses of the mirrored sunglasses you've just snatched off the waxwork.

As you approach Main Street where Damian, Flames and Kev are waiting, a trace of affection flickers somewhere behind the hardness of Damian's eyes—some fossil of wistful gallantry attaching to his memory of your renting a room in his house, once upon a time.

"I was just telling the others about Huntsville, Texas," says Damian, when you and Lucan reach him. "My kind of town. Every man, woman and child there knows: when the electric chair is used in the great prison there in Huntsville, every electric light in town flickers when the switch is pulled, and every TV picture shakes, and every fridge gives a quiver. And folks remember to trust no one, because they're all on their own!"

The light dims and you all look up. The bank of clouds I saw this morning across the ocean has rolled westwards across the summer sky towards us, so that its dense upper billows are just now moving across the sun's disc overhead. And as you all stare up, it seems remarkably as if there is an entire nativity scene piled on the clouds behind the billows—ass, ox, Mary, three wise men etc., with a halo round the whole group and shafts of Jesus-light fanning out in all directions. The five of you stand by the wayside a moment, your mouths hanging open to varying degrees, before you lower your gazes to one another, shifting slightly on your feet. Then you all turn towards a miniature blaze of golden light in your midst, emanating from where a dedicated beam of sun strikes Lucan's crucifix pendant. Damian turns his eyes to the ground—hunted, humble. Lucan's face assumes a hint of the messianic; Flames looks earnest; Kev picks his teeth. You meanwhile, Angel, see yourself fixed on that golden crucifix like a little twist of crackling, impaled by your wearer on the nail of the metal dildo sticking out halfway up the cross's vertical shaft, howling in religious ecstasy forever, against the gorgeous deep-brown smoothness of Lucan's intensely lickable chest and stomach muscles.

"I'm fucking starving, where we gonna eat?" says Kev.

Lucan looks around and shrugs. "What d'you think, Angel?" he asks.

Still on too transcendent a plane for such logistics, you flick your eyes up to Lucan's face, only half-sure what has been asked, while sex-hunger stretches through your sharp and pretty face, tightly wound throughout its lineaments. You're about ready to fall over, from no food and from the usual cocktail of drugs and female hormones in your system from last night and this morning. Your anus contracts hard against the black rubber dildo you're still wearing, and your upper lip rides up slightly as it sweats, so your teeth are bared. "What about that Caribbean place?" you manage, in a level voice. "You know, up there around Second or Third." Lucan grins down, seeing everything, while the others peer up Main Street. You bite back a squeak, as he reaches unobtrusively and tweaks the nipple of your budding right breast: you feel it swell hard against the smooth black bra beneath your polo-neck, but you take your dark glasses from your pocket and get them onto your face before your eyes tear up. Exhausted by this permanent exposure and scrutiny, your head swims and you swallow—you need to eat, before you fall over. Fortunately, though, you hear the Caribbean place meet with general assent and the group now meanders to the north where you pointed.

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For some nice reviews and interviews about The Imagination Thief, in The Guardian and elsewhere, see http://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-imagination-thief-reviews-media/

For a quick synopsis of it, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/synopsis-and-characters-list-the-imagination-thief/

For the 12 Films in The Imagination Thief, see http://www.rohanquine.com/video-books-films/12-films/

For the Audio-book version and the Video-book version of each of its 120 mini-chapters, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/audiobook-tumblr-wattpad/

For links to the retailers, see http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-ebook/ and http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-paperback/

And for its Amazon pages, see http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909 and http://www.amazon.com/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909

The Imagination Thief is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people's imaginations and memories. It's about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.