Have you seen my sanity?
I seem to have misplaced it somewhere, possibly behind the sofa, but the frustrating thing is I am not sure if I would know it if I saw it.
How have I come to the conclusion that my sanity is missing? Well, I am currently on a diet that restricts me to around 600 calories a day three days a week and I am not craving food on those restricted days. Me, the craving Queen, the woman who runs to make room for chocolate.
'First to the buffet table, last to leave', the motto of a glutton who does not have a time she cannot eat. What strange transformation has occurred in a few short days to make me not want for chocolate or sweets, to turn down crisps because I don't fancy them and to think warm thoughts about my diet shakes when I am on a free day when I can eat anything.
(Admittedly there is currently a cake baking in the oven but see this not as a craving to eat cake, it is more a craving to bake - I am one of the breed of bakeophiles. The only downside to this diet is no cooking three days a week.)
Perhaps this is it, perhaps this is that grail of diets I have been waiting for. Not the easy route, I do get hungry I will not lie about that, but easily doable.
Most diets for me are like running uphill over sand dunes but this is that woodland trail - I must watch my step, I don't want to trip, but the scenery is good and the run a pleasant challenge. There are far worse things to face.
If this works as it should be in my running gear very soon.
And praise be, for those who run with bowling balls and dislike black eyes I have discovered that the very shop I got my maternity bras from stock sports bras for the chest heavy.
In the next week or so I shall therefore be toddling off to
the little big bra shop for a fitting and perhaps be freed from the pain of
the bounce.
And deep in the recesses of my mind and on another world:
With his face obscured by a heavy
breathing mask Sean Vaughan could only hope his eyes did not give him
away. His current companions were not human and were not used to
dealing with humans so he suspected they would not understand the
smaller emotional signals that any fellow of his own species would
see very quickly.Normally, negotiations with the alien
dealers were calm affairs, his cool head and quick tongue were
indispensable assets but this was a different situation and he was
more than a little put off by the surroundings.
It was not a new deal, his stock in
trade was dodgy arms dealers, doing his part to take illegal and
immoral weapons out of circulation before they could be used against
other humans, but in this case the dealer had suggested somewhere
very different to take the negotiations and it was not somewhere
Vaughan ever wanted to be. Why he had agreed to it he really did not
know. Trading in arms was never cheap and often, when things were not
entirely legal, it was customary to use an intermediary to launder
the money, most often that meant a meeting in the back of an office
somewhere or a back room of a drinking house, but this time the
dealer apparently wanted to impress Vaughan. The alien had been told
the pedigree of his new client and decided to make a show of his
local importance to the mysterious player, so Vaughan had found
himself being shown to a ringside seat at the backwater planet's only
Arena.
Only the more lawless and less
favourable planets had Arena's, only those planets where slavery was
permitted and even they did not all accept the use of slaves as
gladiators. It was a terrible fate for a slave who never deserved
such an horrific death, for unlike the ancient gladiators of Earth
there was no chance of earning your freedom from an Arena, there was
only a death sooner or later at the hand of another slave or a wild
beast thrown in for added sport.
A lot of money was spent at the Arena,
the many aliens watching bet heavily on their favourite fighters so
Arena owners were always well monied making them a good location for
laundering so long as you were prepared to give a healthy cut of your
profits for the honour.
Vaughan's newest associate was clearly
showing off, ringside seats cost a small fortune and laundering fees
were high but the extravagance was not having the desired effect.
Vaughan felt as though he was in real danger of throwing up. He did
his best to concentrate on the deal, to ignore the blood and the
screams from the ring, the deaths of many slaves while the crowd
bayed without mercy. There was nothing he could do for them with
armed guards lining the walls, as much as he wanted to stop the
suffering he was helpless to do anything but watch.
The dealer, a slack jawed furry
Deethza, was a regular at the Arena, he enjoyed the sport of it and
could be guaranteed to spend much of his cash on bets, considering
himself a good judge of who would live or die when they entered the
sand covered floor of the arena below them. He had conducted many
deals there mixing business and pleasure to give his clients a taste
of the high life he loved, but he had no idea of the effect it was
having on the client he had been told was a hardly arms supplier to
lawless mercenaries.
After an excruciating hour they finally
came to a bargain and a hard currency transfer took place. Vaughan
handed a bag of credit chips to one of the bundled up Arena heavies
who walked away wordlessly. The broad creature would take the money
behind the scenes where a percentage would be subtracted before fresh
chips were given to the dealer. The weapons, a stolen crop of rifles,
would be sent to Vaughan's small cargo ship the next day.
But just when the Deethza should have
been waiting anxiously for his cash he instead shifted in his seat,
leaning forward towards the safety screen. “The Ensensa. I've been
waiting for this fight for weeks.” he spoke excitedly, his squeaky
voice only just inside Vaughan's hearing range. “They say it is a
Demon, it has more kills to it's name than any other fighter in Arena
history.
Dutifully, Vaughan too leant forward.
“Ensensa?” he asked. He was fluent in Uni-dialect, the universal
trading language, but past that his linguistics were basic.
“Red Demon. It has red tentacles on
it's head and white skin that ripples with flame beneath it. No one
knows what it really is.”
“Really?” Vaughan had to pretend he
was interested when all he really wanted was to leave. The bodies of
the slaves from the last fight were being dragged out of the Arena
still, their blood smearing tracks through the sand. They were
aliens, it was not the same as watching a human die, but they were
sentient creatures and Vaughan felt guilty just sitting there even
when knew he was there ultimately to save lives.
“This is why we came here, business
is, but to watch the Ensensa fight is not missable.” The Deethza was
obviously excited.
There was a roar from the crowd as one
of the small doors opened and a figure stalked out into the Arena
floor.
Vaughan gasped.
The announcer cried out above the noise
from the spectators, shouting the impressive credentials of the
Ensensa, the fights won against all manner of opponents armed and
unarmed, it was a career of bloody violence spanning four times as
long as an average slave survived.
Vaughan could only stare as the Ensensa
was joined in the ring by an Atresion Bear, a creature that had more
in common with an Ogre of myth than a bear, standing nine feet tall
and a mass of slobbering teeth, muscle and fat. The Ensensa though
was no Fire Demon, it was something far more dangerous, something
Vaughan had only encountered a few times before.
Earlier in human explorations of space
the emphasis of search efforts had been on mining, on supplies rather
than pure colonisation, but so many worlds that were rich in needed
metals and minerals were inhospitable to humans. There were fierce
debates, ethics and morality, religion and science, arguments and
violence but in the end a small group of people decided against all
odds to take action and broaden human horizons beyond either
evolution or God given form so those much needed planets could be
mined and the supplies sent back to a needy Earth. A planet's
atmosphere could be manipulated with surprising ease, in the short
term humans could use breathing apparatus and manufacture their air,
but it was gravity that was the stumbling block, gravity crushing
down leaving humans helpless. The people who chose to take action
were some of the worlds best geneticists and what they created were
still technically humans but humans with the gift of withstanding
incredible forces that would crush anyone without their enhanced
inheritance. There were normal humans out there who called them
monsters or, ironically, demons, but Vaughan was one of the many who
saw them as just physically strong humans, like him people who had no
more control over their DNA than they did over who their parents
were. They had done a great service to the species and continued to
do that service in spite of the fundamentalists, the so called
Purists, wanting any genetically modified persons to be sterilised
and isolated. They looked a little different to everyone else,
broader and highly muscled but they were still people and they still
had the right to be treated humanely, something the slave takers
clearly did not understand.
The Ensensa had long red hair trailing
in messy dreadlocks and the palest white skin mottled by countless
freckles. Like a Celtic warrior of ancient history she was fearless
and bold.
Finally, Vaughan found his voice.
“She's a Hig.” he spoke to no one in particular using the
accepted slang for the High Gravity Humans. “Jesus, how did she end
up here?”
Luckily, the Deethza was so wrapped up
in the contest he did not notice the whispered words from his
companion.
To his own horror Vaughan identified
the woman as injured before the fight even began and he was terrified
for her, he could not take his eyes off her as the bloody contest
began.
The Atresion had razor sharp claws and
bellowed angrily. It had not been fed, it had been cooped up in a
small pen and then poked and prodded through an entrance into a space
stinking of fear and death. It only had killing on its mind when it
spotted the small prey in front of it.
The Ensensa let out her own snarling
cry, launching at the knife thrown into the ring to aid her fight and
wasting no time attacking the foe.
Barely a minute later the Atresion was
dead.
The Ensensa screamed hate at the crowds
as they screamed their approval at her. She was blooded, in pain and
enraged. She spied her owner high in the crowd, smiling faintly from
his prime seat, basking the in glow of owning such a profitable
slave. She narrowed her eyes and ran, at the last moment leaping
unnaturally high and gaining footing on a narrow ledge, pushing
herself higher, throwing all her weight into a killing blow.
The cruel knife was left quivering in
the safety screen and the Ensensa dropped back to the sand.
Vaughan watched helplessly as the woman
was rapidly stunned by the Arena guards and dragged back out of
sight. He stood abruptly. “Our business is concluded, the outcome
good for us both.” the words were a traditional closing to a deal.
“I take my leave now.”
FraidyKat Runs away from Sanity
96.4
