Part 141
Posted by Barbanne on June 07, 2004 at 23:50:47:
PART ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE
TABLEAU VIVANT
I was back in Australia, my little attempt to be a meaningful aid worker having proved as pitiful as everything else I do.
I was also bloody sick.
I had only been in my job for two weeks and was making a solo delivery to a village south west of Umm Keddada when I developed a headache and then in short order, violent shakes, sweating and joint pains you couldn't believe. I also noticed in my misery that I was peeing what looked like Coca Cola. (probably tasted like it too) That evening I collapsed face down into my plate of Daal. One of the villagers used the radio in my truck to call for help and two French nurses from MSF arrived and took a look at me and decided I probably had Lassa fever and they got the villagers to start digging my grave. Fortunately for me another MSF guy, a Swedish doctor, came in answer to their call and diagnosed me as having Blackwater fever, still bloody awful, but not quite as fatal.
Through all of this I was out of my head, babbling and raving and managed to expose myself to the doctor and make lewd suggestions, something he reminded me of when he saw me in hospital a week later. The MSF people saved my life, treating me in the village and arranging a medical retrieval flight which took me down to hospital in Nairobi. There I spent a week in isolation and then another week in recovery.
I was really ill.
The local organiser from Ausaid came to see me and stood well back from my bed while he told me I was to be repatriated to Australia. He was pissed off that I had left their truck in the village.
I was still too bloody crook to care.
My doctor, a really good looking, tall, African guy called M'boto came in to see me.
"How are we today young lady?"
"Weak doctor, weak........as we say where I come from, weak as piss."
He laughed and his nurse, an African girl who looked like Imam, looked displeased.
"You're very lucky to be alive miss."
"That bad eh?"
"Blackwater fever can be fatal in four out of five cases, yours must have still been incubating when Gunnar got to you and you're lucky he did. I can't think of any other doctor in that area who would have known what to do as he did."
"Gunnar?"
"The doctor who treated you. The good looking Swede."
Imam was preening.
"Oh," I said.
"He'll be in to see you in a day or two and you should thank him. You probably should be dead."
"They dug my grave back in the village."
"Very sensible too, I'm only glad you didn't need it, but someone else will soon enough."
"I know, I've only been here two weeks but I've seen enough to be humbled by the problems you have."
"Hmmmmm. So you're to be repatriated to Australia?"
"So they say. Didn't help much did I?"
"The thought was there and I'm happy you are getting better, wouldn't want you to die would we?"
"No doctor. If I've realised one thing I've realised that I have a lot of life yet to live and a lot of stupid mistakes to correct."
"Good," he left.
Gunnar came to see me the next day and he was a great guy and totally handsome to boot. I offered him sex to reward him for saving me but he just laughed and said, "Miss, you might not be up to much in that line for a while," and he was right, I was weak as a kitten. Also, later that day, I saw him with his girlfriend Brigit and it was pretty obvious I never stood a chance, she was ultra gorgeous.
I was flown home and spent ten days in isolation. When it was obvious I had recovered and was not infectious I was moved to a normal ward and Sheryl, Bobbi and Addie came to visit. Killer had to stay in the car.
I was let out two days later. I had heaps of pills to take for a while and had to come back to the clinic once a week. Bobbi and Killer picked me up and took me back to the house. Killer got excited when he saw me and jumped up and knocked me down onto the ground. I was really, truly, seriously weak. When we got home Sheryl was there and Bobbi was going to stay for a week until I got back on my feet. I was OK but always tired. I asked the girls did Alex know about me and they said, they thought not. He probably still thought I was in Africa.
The fever I had had, (named for those Coca Cola wees I was having at the time) was a rare but usually fatal complication of malaria. I was amazingly lucky to have survived, but it had left me weakened and with ongoing problems. Looking in the mirror I saw that I had little crows feet wrinkles around my eyes and mouth and I found grey hairs in amongst my crinkled locks. I seemed to have permanent black circles under my eyes and I had lost quite a lot of weight. I started trying to improve my health by taking long walks with the dog and eating a carefully selected diet, tailored to build up my general body fitness.
But I had no appetite and had to force myself to eat.
Once again I had stuffed up. I had myself to blame. I had been given courses of preventative medicines to take prior to leaving, things aimed at protecting me against just what happened, but I knew better than everyone else. I took no tablets, I was robust, I didn't trust doctors. As a result I was now taking stuff for life probably and was sort of fucked.
I would have felt sorry for myself, but my whole life was such a screw up this was just the latest chapter.
After a couple of weeks I felt good enough (with a bit of forcing) to get involved in the photo set stuff again.
Bobbi and Addie had devised a set of tableau vivant. This is a sort of set piece, like a painting, only featuring real people. These tableau were to be offered to Slain Sluts' customers as desk top backgrounds. I agreed to take part in these only after spending some time looking extremely critically at my naked body in the bathroom mirror and deciding that yes I was still worth looking at. I told the girls that I'd be in it if I could be a victim. I didn't want to get back into modelling doing anything too demanding. Prone would be great.
The first tableau was sort of based on the famous photo of the Ali, Frasier fight and I was topless in boxing trunks and gym boots and gloves, sprawled out unconscious on my back while Bobbi, also attired as a topless boxer, stood over me taunting my senseless body to get up and fight.
Then there was death in the spa and Bobbi, Addie, Sheryl and I were all nude and drowned in a spa bath. (bubbles turned off to let the customers see us better) I was tits down and ass up showing my buns to the camera. The other girls were all face up, tits breaking the surface like an archipelago of little strawberry tipped islands. Alvin shot the picture from above.
The last tableau vivant was the end scene of the gunfight at the KO Corral and Alvin shot this one too. We four girls were shot down dead, killed by little bloodless stick on bullet holes and nude once again except for gun belts, cowboy boots and stetsons.
We were scattered around looking suitably dead and with my dark circles and strained looks I appeared to be the deadest of the four of us.
Tableau Vivant, backdrop poses without much effort. The perfect way to get back into it for me.
But damn, my sex drive, my libido, was awfully low.
I hoped it would pick up soon.
I continued to improve and the tablets I had to take were reduced to only one a day. I started to gain a little weight and got back to about what I was before I left on my ill fated African adventure. I still had almost no appetite and it looked like I was stuck with the blue black circles under my eyes for the duration.
But, I was feeling faint stirrings of sexiness.
The doctors told me that what I had could recur at any time. They didn't think that any such recurrence would be as severe as the first time or that it would necessarily carry the risk that it could prove fatal, but they all agreed that I could be a very sick puppy (my words, not theirs') if that happened.
I felt fresh reasons to hate myself as, once again, I'd been very stupid.
Then I thought, and who is to blame for this Barbanne, who has been to blame for every piece of shit you've had to endure? You are Barbanne, you and nobody else and that made me realise I was born to be a piece of shit. Then I thought, that's not being very fair to those whom have befriended you or those who have loved and supported you and the whole ridiculous stupidity of life got to me and I started giggling.
Bobbi looked up at me and Addie said, "Hey what do you know?"
"What?" I said between hiccuppy giggles.
"That's the first time you've laughed in a long time Barb," said Bobbi, "first time you've even smiled."
"What's so funny?" said Addie, "is it us?"
"Nah never," I said, "you guys are the best things that have happened to me in forever. If you must know what's funny its actually what's ridiculous. Me that's what's so ridiculous its funny."
"Well that's true," said Bobbi straight faced.
"Hmmm yeah," said Addie.
"You buggers," I said and then we were all laughing and I giggled so much I became a little hysterical, but it was really good, catheterised my soul it did.
I felt better.
Heaps better.
Actually woke up wanting to do something.
I hopped out of bed, even though it was still dark, did the bathroom thing and started cooking breakfast. I dragged Sheryl out of bed, did I tell you she was living in the house with me?, and then after we'd had brekky and she'd gone grumbling back under the sheets I sat down at my PC and started concocting some super sexy plot lines to be filmed in the coming weeks.
I sat there, mind working overtime with ideas, and then I was back in Africa during my ridiculously short time there. A matter of days only and yet I had memories that would not be denied.
The hot, drying desert winds that made movement all but impossible during the heat of the afternoon.
The cold, fresh mornings and the smell of campfires and the aroma of cooking.
The balmy evenings when I lay on my cot, often naked and listened to the sounds of the bush at night and then scrabbling for a blanket in the middle of the night when I'd awake to find my flesh goose bumpy and chilled.
The people, always the people.
Warm, friendly, only too willing to accept a total stranger and to share what meagre stuff they had with me. By our standards, poor, wretched, under nourished and totally deprived and yet infused with the warmth of the human spirit in a way I had never experienced. Often I found tears prickling my eyes and would have to brush them away so that my compassion was not another burden for these indomitable people to bear.
I had found that I cared, cared in a way I had never done before and I knew deep inside that some day I would have to go back and help. The doctors had told me that if I should be reinfected I would surely not survive a second bout of the fever but that was something I'd have to face when it came.
I knew what I had to do and I knew that one day the day to do that would come and I would know it when it did.
I sat staring at the screen, not seeing what I had written, and with a conscious effort of will pulled myself back to the here and now.
After all, I doubted Ausaid or any other aid organisation would have me. I had to save up enough money to take myself back to where my heart said I had to go.
Meanwhile however, I wanted to do something. I hadn't gone back to work waitressing or bar tending and was free to work for Slain Sluts although I knew that the income from that only paid the girls for their time and wouldn't support me full time and so I'd have to look around for something else eventually.
But for now I wanted to do something and a little script Bobbi had written was the ideal role for me to get back into it.
In this I was a nagging gossip, you know the type.
"Did you girls know that...blah, blah, blah."
"Hey did you know that whoozit is screwing whatzitz wife?"
"Hey guess who I saw today and with that blonde from the bank?"
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...................................
Well my friends, Bobbi and Sheryl are totally sick of this and pissed off with a dame who keeps dipping her grubby little fingers and poking her snotty little nose into everyone else's business and so, one day, when we are all changing to go to the gym they finally snap and as I stand there nude and mouthing off, "Hey did you guys know...................," they both snap and Bobbi grabs me in a head lock and Sheryl pulls a super sized vibrator out of the drawer and as she looms over me I'm going like, "Oooh, ooh, you're hurting me," and, "Ooooh let me go," and stuff and Sheryl says, "OK motor mouth, always gabbing about everyone else's sex life, well here's both your chance to blow something and exercise your gob at the same time."
With that she switches on the vibrator, a huge penis shaped thing and shoves it in between my lips and rams it down my throat.
Bzz, bzz, bzz it goes buzzing furiously and choking off my windpipe altogether and I start gyrating wildly and jittering around, flailing my arms and legs about like some hyperactive mad clown and my eyeballs bug way out of their sockets and I jiggle insanely in the dance of death, gurgling, "Ook, ermph, oomph, gaakaa, gaaak, ggggggaaaaaaaaaaa...........," and the like and go crimson in the face and fall down and shudder and then twitch for what seems like forever and then limpo, I'm dead.
Dribbly, drooly, tits up and gob stuffed full of pseudo cock and dead, real, real dead.
As a Slain Sluts' sex object I was back.
I went to see the bar manager at the footie club where I'd worked before going away and she told me that just then they didn't need any extra girls. I noticed her looking at me closely and sort of critically.
"Where ya bin Barb, you don't look so good."
"Oh I tried something else and it didn't work out."
"Barb you're looking kind of scrawny and you've got awful bags under your eyes honey, you look like death warmed over."
"Ah well that might help me somewhere else."
She laughed, looking at me with a lop sided grin.
"Hey and girl, given you look so cadaverous that goth tee shirt don't really help."
"This one," I fingered my black, purple and silver tee shirt.
"Yeah that one that says, 'Dead girls never say no', don't wear that round here Barb it might tempt them too much."
She laughed again, a deep phlegmy smoker's laugh.
Well that was a failure. I went back to the house, I'd never really thought of it as home, and got into some writing, tossing various ideas involving girls, knives, guns, nooses, poison, garrottes, vibrators and stuff around in my head.
Mid morning and I was writing at the PC while Addie was shooting some stuff with Sheryl. Sheryl doesn't always need other girls or Saturn or plots, she can do fabulous dead bodies using only her own naked loveliness.
Anyway I heard, "Hey Barb," and looked up to see Sheryl, naked and holding one hand in front of her mound and the other spread fingered in a vain attempt to hide her tits, and looking flushed and harrassed.
"Yeah Sheryl, hey you'll catch cold."
"Someone to see you Barb," and she scampered off displaying a cute bum. It was pink with embarrassment too.
"Hey," I called after her and then my heart skipped as Alex came in.
"Barbanne," he said, sorta stern and stiff.
"Yeah," I said, sorta tentative.
"This has gone on long enough," he said.
"Yes I'm alright, thank you for asking, how are you too Alex?"
"Damn," he said.
"Yeah you never did always get that social niceties crap right did you Alex?"
"Damn, why do I always get off on the wrong foot with you Barbanne and why do we work so hard at hurting each other?"
"Its a good trick eh?"
"Don't be flippant. I've come here to.."
"To what? Apologise?"
"Apologise? Shouldn't that be for you to do?"
"Hey, hey this is not going well."
"Why Barbanne why? Why do we have to be so.........., I don't know, hurtful I suppose?"
"Could it have anything to do with us both being stupid," he snorted but I rushed on, "stupid and stiff and stuck up and pig headed and too bloody stubborn to know how to bend and how to say sorry and...," my voice had dropped to a whisper, almost as if I was talking to myself, "..could it have to do with our being so much in love that we can only hurt each other."
"Barbanne."
"What's wrong with Barb?"
"Barb, Barb, Barb," he looked like a man in pain, constipated actually.
I waited.
He was being Alex.
"You were in Africa?" he said.
"I was but it didn't work out."
"You've been ill?"
"Very."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't think you wanted to know, frankly I didn't think you were interested."
He snorted.
"Yes Alex I went to Africa to help people who desperately need help, but I wasn't able to because I'm a fuck up and I fucked that up by getting sick, but one day I'm going to go back there and do what I can because people like me care far too little for people like them and someone has to. Care I mean."
He looked at me and I couldn't read his face.
"Would you come with me if I do go? Do you love me that much."
He took a deep breath. I half turned away.
"Yes I'll come with you and yes if you go I wouldn't want to be anywhere else and yes I'd like to be given the chance to look after you and keep you free from illness and if you did get sick I'll even devote my time to wiping your bum."
He almost smiled.
We looked at each other for a long moment and then I was all over him, in his arms, sobbing and giggling and kissing him and kissing him and hugging him to me as though I wanted to fuse us together.
"Hey," he said.
"Jesus I love you," I sobbed.
"Africa then?" he said.
"Nah not for a while anyway, but Playdead, yeah I could come back to Playdead."
"That'd be lovely."
But Bobbi, Sheryl and Addie come too."
He sighed.
"OK you've got me over a barrel it seems."
"Mmmmm, that might be interesting."
He looked at me sort of strangely, what you might call quizzically.
"Hmmmmnnn, so was that some sort of test?"
"What?" I asked innocently.
"Asking me would I come to Africa?"
"Nope. The day will come when I'll ask you to do that, but right now if I went back there it would kill me dead for sure."
He smiled a sneaky, secret little smile.
"I mean real and true dead," I said.
"Oh well I guess I'd have to put you in formalin then so I could keep loving you."
I grinned between gritted teeth and then started giggling, "Ah well that might be nice."
Then his smile turned to giggles and then we were both giggling like a couple of kids.
I approached him like an attacking amazon and grabbed him with both arms.
"Oh strewth she's going to do me some damage," he said.
"You bet."
And then I was kissing him and kissing him and kissing him.
It was agreed that what had been Slain Sluts would become an offshoot of Playdead and, at Alex's suggestion, it would be renamed "Dead Babes" (he hadn't totally lost his conservatism and SS was a bit too sluttily porno for him) but would keep all of what had been posted on Slain Sluts site together with new stuff as it was produced. Bobbi, Addie, Sheryl and me would model for Playdead and Dead Babes and Saturn of course was a contract worker anyway, but we said goodbye to Alvin. None of the girls much minded as he really was a sleazy perv.
When us Slain Sluts arrived for out first working day back at Playdead dot com there was a big hug in and kissy kissy session with Jade, who was practically running the joint, and Loreen who, as always, was doing this and that. Then we talked for a bit, well, babbled actually, all talking at once and they wanted to know about my abortive attempt to be a care worker and well it went on for the whole morning.
Then we all had lunch, including Alex and Dave.
After lunch Jade was modelling in a spy set with a new girl called Natasha and Dave and Loreen were behind the camera and doing the technicals. I said hello to Natasha and introduced her to the others and Jade talked Sheryl into joining Jade and Natasha in the set.
Natasha was a thin, brown girl, tanned in a sort of patchy hit and miss way and boy could she swear. She had a real dirty mouth. I mean I can say fuck with the best of them but Natasha left me way behind. I soon had her taped. Like so many girls who did this she was down a bit on self confidence and didn't have a huge selection of work options and was prepared to use her body to make herself a buck. Not prostituting herself, don't get me wrong, just using what she had. I figured her swearing was a sort of cover up for her lack of assertiveness and her abysmal lack of self esteem and low self image.
Anyway when they got into it Jade and Sheryl played a couple of rival agents both of whom wanted secrets that were concealed on Natasha's body. Natasha had been killed in the prologue by Jade's character and she was sprawled on the lounge, naked and dead from the very get go and throughout the whole set.
Its a role I love to play myself.
And, like me, I noticed that Natasha spread her legs wide apart opening up her sex to the camera and, by extension, the world.
So to give you the shortened version Jade and Sheryl argue and then fight and eventually Sheryl kills Jade and while all this is happening Natasha's flaked out on the lounge nude and cactus.
As I watched the set I soon realised one thing.
I can sense this you see because of the way I am.
Natasha was loving being a helplessly submissive corpse. Like me this girl was a born necro fantasist.
I knew that she and I were going to get along and I knew we had to model together, we were made for each other.
When the set was finished and Dave and Loreen were wrapping it up I followed Natasha into the bedroom where she had gone to get dressed.
"I quite enjoyed that Natasha," I said.
"Tash, call me Tash."
"OK Tash, yeah I thought you were good."
"'S a fuckin' living."
"Well not really but we do get paid."
"So watcha fuckin' well want?"
"Just wanted to say I thought you were good."
"Good all I fuckin' did was lie there with me cunt on show."
"Yeah but............."
"Yeah but what? You like watchin' other girls flashin' their cunts?"
"Well I've done some modelling and doing this can be quite fun, a turn on actually," I sucked in a couple of quick breaths, "and I thought I saw something of the same er, enjoyment for you in what you were doing."
"You some sort of fuckin' dyke Barb, get off on other girls? You some sort of fuckin' fag hag?"
"No," I said (not totally true) "No I'm not."
Then she was right up in my face, naked and glittery eyed, she had long, thick, brown hair, unruly and a bit dirty. Her body smelt feral underneath a drenching of cheap perfume.
"Well maybe I am Barb." She stretched the a into aaaaaah.
Her hand went into my waistband her fingers expertly slipping inside my panties and curling over my slit.
"Hey maybe I'd like to fuck you Barb? 'd you like that?"
"Ermmm," I said flustered and confused.
"Hey Barb," her pink tongue slid over her lips and I could smell her feral sexuality.
Then suddenly she said, "ooooooow," in a tiny voice and her eyeballs rolled upward and inward and she slumped against me limp as jelly. She started sliding down the front of me, her open lips flubbery dribbling on my tee shirt.
"Tash, Tash?" I said as her dead weight dragged both of us to the floor.
I got her hand out of my clothing and laid her out on the floor, cradling her head in my lap. I felt for a pulse, it was there, strong and steady.
Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes came back into focus and she said, "D'd I faint?"
All her antagonism and anger was gone.
"Are you alright?" I said.
"Yeah."
"Well what caused that?"
"Fuckin'......................," she mumbled something.
"Sorry what'd you say?"
"I got this low blood pressure thing and I just go out all the time, you know anywhere, in supermarkets, on buses, everywhere. It only lasts a few seconds."
"That's awful."
I helped her up and she started tugging on her panties.
"Fuck Barb, we've got off to a bad start, its all my fault." (I thought hey that's my line) "Yeah I sorta like the dead play thing and I dunno, maybe I'll let you be my friend."
"I'd like that Tash."
I was in bed with Alex.
"I was talking to Natasha today."
"Rough girl."
"Maybe, then again maybe she's hurting."
"Eh? We talking about the same girl. Little tanned foul mouthed person?"
"Wounded soul."
"Oh Barb, well if she's a wounded soul she's come to the right place, Barbanne, Saint Barbanne of the wounded souls will take her under her wing."
"Bullshit," I thumped his arm.
He looked at me. "The course of true love doesn't run smooth does it Barb?"
"She's a good Playdead model she enjoys the fantasy."
"Who? Oh Natasha, yeah her sets are OK."
"Think I'll do some stuff with her."
"Oh, I was thinking of letting her go."
"Keep her she'll be good."
I rolled on my side.
"Now, want a quickie?"
"Rather have a slowie, a real slow slowie."
"Hmmm, me too."
I slid my naked body against his.
"Oh and yes the course of true love doesn't run smooth but the bumps can be good, especially these." I took his hands and closed them on my breasts.
"Yep, that's nice," he said.
I started giggling.