KNOCKA KNOCK KNOCKA KNOCK

Pamela jolted awake, her locket jiggling coldly across her chest. Her back ached from the stiff twin bed in her personal skytrain chamber. It was dark.

KNOCKA KNOCK KNOCKA KNOCK

Someone at the door.

Pamela rolled her eyes, lit a candle, put on a little bit of foundation and threw on a coat that was three times too big. She peeped through the doorhole, seeing but naught. She tugged at the door chain to test its resolve, then slowly unclasped the doorknob lock and creeked her door open ever so slightly.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

Nothing.

“I’ll have you know I’m a member of the Roy—erm, a member of the Loyal Gourd!”

Nothing. And then, something.

A small, red glimmer made its way to the crack in the door, slowly inching inside Pamela’s chambers. It was the lit end of a cigarette, though the cigarette itself must’ve been at least six feet long.

On refocusing her vision Pamela noticed that, actually, the cigarette was but of average size. What had made it appear so absurdly long was a black cigarette holder, which seemed to have been birthed out of the darkness of the hallway outside, ending somewhere in the vast nothingness beyond.

“Um…excrete me?” Pamela stepped back a few paces as the cigarette floated further and further into her chamber, til she bumped her heel on the bed frame. The cigarette finally stopped at about a pinky’s length from her nose.

“No, no, youse ought to excrete me. I’ve been quite rude,” crackled a voice from out the hall, the cigarette bouncing around in rhythmn, “Quite rude indeed. Anywhatnowfor, in light of my rudeness, hownowsabout we make acquaintances outta one another?”

Pamela swallowed a throat lump and called back the rules of classical Caldonian etiquette. “Very well. I am Pamela Gaye. Member of the Roy—Loyal Gourd.”

“I am Blithers Pripkin. Anything else about me and what I do is on a need to know basis.”

“Pleased to make a vague social association with you, Smithers Lipskin.”

“Same to youse, Pamela Gaye.”

“Once again, I am honored to enscribe your moniker in my mental lexicon, Whiskers Kitten.”

“And I to you am esteemed in a similar fashion to chisel your cognomen on the limestone tablet in my brain palace, Pamela Gaye.”

On they continued for about ten minutes, saying essentially the same thing with progressively absurder language.

“Whew,” Pamela exhaled in exhaustion, “My mouth is sore from all that recitation. I don’t know when the last time was that I put it to so much twerk introducing myself. Usually I just launch into interrogation, but I felt obligated to be polite.”

“Preaching to the choir, Pamela. I’ve got this long rod dangling out my mouth, how do youse think I feel?”

“That’s fair.”

Pamela stood there in silence, Pripkin’s cigarette burning afterimages into her vision.

“So,” Pamela started, “What exactly are you doing here?”

“I’m from, let’s just say, a specific organization. An important organization. An organization whose tentacles wrap themselves around every facet of Caldonian society. Eyes and ears and tongues everywhere, youse hear me?”

Pamela sighed.

“What? I think it’s pretty cool!”

“I don’t understand why you people can’t let me get a hood night’s sleep.”

“Youse people? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Pamela plopped onto her brittle bed and huffed.

“Hello? Hello there? What do youse mean, saying ‘youse people’? Youse people?! Do youse have something against espionage or something, lady?”

“I just want to go to sleep!”

“I see. Oh, you think I might not see, being that it’s dark and all, but I see what we’ve got going on here. Youse people. Hah! To think, lady, that I was ready to cut a deal with you. Despicable. Just despicable. Youse sicken me. ‘Youse people’ my ass!

“We agents do the best we can with what we’re given, youse know. Why, without us, and the field of modern Caldonian intelligence would never have existed in the first place! Of course someone like youse, with your obvious prejudices, would probably like that. Despicable.”

The cigarette began to slowly recede back from whence it came.

“Hey! Wait a second! I’ve got some questions for you, Napkin!”

Pamela stood up and followed the embers, soon unlatching her door and squinting through the dark hallway to see but no one.

“Oh cockhamnit.”

Pamela slammed her door shut and threw herself facefirst onto the bed. Someone in the chamber next door thumped on the wall and yelled at her to keep the noise down.

KRKKSKSKSKKKKHKKKSKHKKHHKHKSKHHHHHHHHHH

EEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR

BBBFBKFBBFKFBKBKBBKBFBBBFFFFFFFFFFFFF

The skytrain juddered to a violent, messy halt. Pamela soared out of her bed and slammed into the side of the chamber wall, knocking the candle on her nightstand over. It fizzled out.

“Holy clucking shit,” Pamela exhaled weakly.

“What the cluck was that?! I said keep the noise down!!”

“It wasn’t all me!” Pamela yelled back to her neighbor.

“Stop yelling!”

“Sorry!”

“Cock’s sake, you just can’t take a hint, can you?!”

Pamela sighed and pulled herself to her feet. Speakers up in the ceiling corners that she had been previously unaware of crackled on with a vengeance.

BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

“What the hen was that?!” screamed her neighbor.

“It wasn’t me!!”

“Don’t talk to me with that tone of voice!!”

BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

“Hello, this is your friendly skytrain conductor,” said a voice that sounded spiritually eviscerated, “This is a test of the skytrain’s emergency preparedness system. I repeat. This is a test. In the event of a skytrain crash, which would be not dissimilar to the simulation you just experienced, do whatever it is you just did, assuming you are still alive. If you have perished, then don’t do whatever you were doing that caused that to happen if we ever get in a crash. Thanks, and have a splendiferous day.”

BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

“Lady, you better stop it with that bleeping or I’m gonna call in the skytrain ushers,” grumbled a voice from the other chamber wall.

“I swear it’s not me! Didn’t you hear the voice? It was the conductor!”

“I’m not talking about a voice you hamned woman I’m talking about the bleeping! Cut it the cluck out! Some of us are trying to get some shut eye!”

“Hey!” the other voice piped up, “Who’s this ornery old man that’s started yelling all over the place?! Are you his hired whore or something?”

Pamela gasped, “Was that question directed at me?”

“As if I would stoop so low as to hire a whore! I can get plenty whores without hiring them, thank you. Much nicer whores that don’t go around yelling at their chamber room neighbors and making bleeping sounds like a hamned automaton!”

“She does sound like she’d be quite a stiff lay, doesn’t she?”

“Hey!” Pamela was going red in the face, not that either of the people insulting her could tell, “You don’t know what kind of a lay I’d be!”

“Cock hamn, I could use a lay. Not one that stiff, mind you, I’ve got plenty of stiffness myself,” the man blathered on.

“Plenty of stiffness? Why, I doubt that,” snorted the lady.

“Doubt it, do you? Why don’t you come find out then?”

“Maybe I will!”

“Maybe you should!”

Both of the doors of the chambers on either side of Pamela slammed open. The man and the women slammed into eachother like two hazy linebackers and rolled around on the floor by Pamela’s door. Soon enough the rolling became thumping and moaning and soon after that they moved into one of the chambers and the bed began to endlessly squeak. Once Pamela thought she would finally be free and the squeaking seemed to relent, footsteps followed over to the other chamber and soon enough that bed was now squeaking. On and on did this happen.