A cardio-drug den where people go to get free drugs of just about any kind but under the agreement that while under the influence there, they are fair game for having their heart examined and played with in whatever way is desired.
They called it Dead Town. It was by all accounts the place where aspirations and hope go to die. Not a sad, dramatic death. Your ambition died in Dead Town happily in it's sleep while you lazed in chemical euphoria and the clammy touch of attractive inebriated souls.
How she found herself here was beyond her recollection at this point. It had been years ago, whether that was years drawn long from the time dilation of potent psychadelics, or perhaps compressed by the uppers she used to put herself into a party mood. Either way, she was the Queen of dead town, and all knew her.
Mostly because the part of town she haunted, the Inner Chamber, shared a kink she could gladly oblige. The local miscreants of the anarcho-zone with a certain fetish came in droves to mill about her club. They were wholly transfixed upon the human heart, and she provided means to allow them to experience it in a fresh unheard of way. It was a buffet of premature death, a cornucopia of pharmecutical aerobic exercise. The cover fee to the club was simple- entry through the door was consent to be approached. What was taken must be given back.
This was gladly achieved. It was another day inside the Inner Chamber, where the Queen sat upon a mound of pillows, black dyed hair falling around a chiseled face and artificially skinny frame atop the room like a lionness watching her pride. All about the room milled gutterbred bastards and rich perverts, sitting on hookah lounge beanbag chairs and ankle height tables, perusing their options for the day. There was a similar cornucopia of entertainers available to the debaucherous regulars of the Inner Chamber. New blood wanted a way to get into the club, and The Queen would arrange them to be the pincushions for the day. The deal was simple; stay on your dancing platform, wired up to a barrage of monitors, and let the regulars use you as they wish. You became a full member of the Inner Chamber the first time your ECG went from spikes too quick to discern to a undulating sawtooth of fibrillation. A few of her dancers were getting close to their glorious joining of the club.
She remained the centerpiece, however. Styling herself after the gothic counterculture of precolonial earth, she was an exotic oddity. Skin like the palest and purest of cocaine contrasted by black leather and torn silk. She spent good time giving her astounding features a layer of obsidian makeup, black lips licking another dose of the local favorite Crank away from a tray held to her by an entertainer. She wore a specially modified top that was cut low between her breasts to her belly button, where her flesh was dotted with the wireless markers of an electrocardiogram.
All around the room were screens the size of a car, reading off every single piece of information about the beleaguered heart of the Queen. It was like an old Earth sports bar, where groups of revelling men and women would sit at their lounges, their own vitals displayed on a screen before them, hearts thrashing in delight while they watched the damaged heart of the Queen before them. The ECG showed a sawtooth before each beat, a descending T wave, a remarkable rate- a heart beset every day by the purest and most potent of stimulants from across Hedon. Her clothing's nanotech gave them a live side by side MRI of her heart's exterior and interior, where they could watch her tired atria shake and gyrate with each hit, her stiff ventricles distending under massive loads, her valves prolapsing harshly.
Today, she lazily looked towards the screens in the packed house, smiled at all the eyes glued to her destroyed heart. Packed house. Perhaps today she would meet someone worthy of reinitiating her.
Despite the loud clamor and general din of the crowd, it was a quiet night. At one point, the staff medical team came out to give an older gentleman chest compressions after an entertainers sensual touch had driven him over the edge. Minutes later, that same entertainer went to step over to another patron, but stumbled backwards with her hands between her bare breasts, the ecg at her side showing an irrecoverable ventricular tachycardia. The medical staff ran forward to defibrillate her, and the ensuing ten minutes of CPR after the initial shock stopped her heart saw her gain full entry to the elite tier of the club. Her unconscious body was wheeled to a recovery room with applause.
Thr gurney passed through the door, and the room fell silent as a figure appeared, silhouetted in the threshhold. He stepped through, plated blue armor glinting in the dull light of the lounge. The Queen looked to hrr monitors- 140 BPM, Quadreminy rhythm. Her long lost knight had returned to stop her heart again.
To be able to play with the Queen was a legendary privilege, to be able to push her over the limit was unheard of. He had done it twice.
The armored man pulled his power helmet from his head, revealing a strongly handsome shaved head and piercing blue eyes. He held out his arms and several entertainers came running, their own hearts throwing massive skips under the stress of the situation. He was stripped to his black robes beneath, revealing hulking muscles hidden by the power armor. He stepped to the dais in the center of the room and peered at a screen, the Queen's sick heart thundering at 150BPM, too pressured to skip.
He motioned for his tools. They were brought to him with no hesitation. Everyone here knew he had a preference- powders were boring. Needles were fun. With a rattling hand, the Queen fumbled inside of her shirt as it fell away, revealing a bruised but ample chest, and clicked on her implanted stethoscope.
The room quieted in stunned awe as her loudly murmuring heart thundered throughout the room. Hours of being in the den already had stressed it greatly, and it continued speeding up well past its limit to fuel her hungering body.
The commander pulled a needle from the tray with startling gentleness, rolling it over in his hand. He suddenly gripped The Queen by her neck and held her against the pillows, her battered teeth snarling a crooked smile. He gently rubbed a spot on her chest with his thumb reared back, before slamming the needle in with enough force to make the whoosh of beleaguered valves fall silent. Everyone held their breath as they watched the screens and The Queen's fibrillating heart, bated as she began to lose consciousness. The commander repeated this process with a second needle, and the force powerfully restarted her heart. It roared at 187BPM, shaking her breasts. The needles danced weakly in her sternum, the tips of each vaguely visible on the screens. He removed his grip from her and held his palm out above her chest.
She knew this game, she loved this game. A test of strength. She wrapped her hands around his wrist, the needles tapping faster against her chest, ignoring the swelling pain from her failing heart. A test of strength.
He began to push toward their plungers, and she bore down with all her might against his crushing power. She held the little strength he exerted at bay with all her might, and her rapidly ballooning heart increased to 200, 210, 120, 210. Every beat was weak, the rhythm changing every second as her natural pacemaker misfired and sent her heart deeper into a frenzy. Her toes went cold, her hands numb, and she began to slip. His hand inched closer and closer to her chest, her arms shaking-
Both plungers went in simultaneously. The echocardiograms showed her heart suddenly expand as they were violently filled with the foreign stimulant, but the next powerful recovery beat cleared them into her system. The commander stepped away from her and watched.
She pulled the needles from her sternum and panted desperately, clutching at the spot they had been impaled moments before. The room was filled with the dying roar of her failing heart, too chaotic to read on the monitors, the ECG appearing as a waveform more than spikes. She bore down as she gasped, kicking her feet in the throes of cardiac agony qs the massive dose instantly set forth a heart attack years in the making. Everyone watched as her heart ran, never dropping below the magical 200 mark, until it began to weaken its pumps. Slowly the screen showed the starving muscle twitch out of sequence, and then fall into the rapid and powerful fibrillation the Commander had intended.
Limp, pale, he stepped away from her and turned toward the awestruck room. Her medical staff began resuscitation attempts as he looked towards them.
Then he raised his hands in victory, and the crowd went wild.
pixelskylines
2087
titsay
jbbartram-illu
vaporwave
