wytchcroft

Watching a flag get trampled in the dirt always brought a tear to Jerry’s eye, it was the romantic in him; Even if the flag was the United Colours of Benetton.

Squinting through the astringent smoke and with his ears ringing to the piped strains of Anarchy in the UK, the last of the musician assassins watched as the stubborn defenders of the accessories department finally gave up the ghost and arranged themselves in an artful display of splashes, drips and smears; Abstract expressionism at its very best, look good on a billboard too, one day.

Maybe in the past.

He squeezed off a photo just in case.

He was becoming more and more of a tourist, he realised, a melancholy position.

His mood brightened as he saw a slim figure weaving towards him through a sea of troopers. It was his sister Catherine, her long dark hair flying as proudly as any flag. She was, Jerry noted with pride, wearing the apricot scarf he’d given to her in 1968. Aah, Cheyne Walk, those were the –

“Oh bolloks.”

He scowled at the petit figure next to her. Una Person, temporal adventurer. And twice the Anarchist Jerry ever was, truth be told. Jerry had hoped he’d seen the last of her in that Bangkok fiasco – or was it Lewisham… or –

“Losing your focus again Jerry?” Una enquired politely from over her glasses and under her bangs.

Jerry sniffed diffidently.

“Oh I don’t know” beamed Catherine, warming Jerry with her smile, “interdepartmental factionalism versus anarcho-street retail, that’s pretty edgy.” She slipped a leather jacketed arm through his.

“Ta, love.” Naturally Jerry hadn’t the foggiest what she was talking about.

There was an inarticulate yell from a balcony above.

“Watch it!” Una whipped a needle gun from its holster and pumped two into the desperate figure of a lingerie suicide bomber – the paralysing agent preventing the man’s clawing fingers from reaching the detonator in his bra.

“Almost like old times,” Jerry smiled - nothing like a little cross-dressing to restore a chap's sense of dimension.

He stepped gracefully aside as the troopers rushed for the stairs – and the forlorn panty-hose bomber.

He felt Una's steely arm slide around his waist.

“Where next?” she asked with a flash from her ingénue eyes.

“I ‘eard Smiths went down easy – but I gather Lewis’s is in it to the death. Could be fun.”

“Oh Jerry, you’re so pedestrian – can’t we go up-market for a change?”

“Alright then. ‘Arrods or some place more intimate?”

Arm in arm, the three friends sauntered through the debris.

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jerry cornelius is a multi-verse character created by michael moorcock and stolen by everyone else.