Better Than Life Read online

  Jimmy's voice: 'Let's go!'

  Rimmer's voice: 'Where are we?'

  'Who's that?'

  'He's called Rimmer,' said Jimmy. 'He's all right. We can use him on the next job.'

  'What now?' Rimmer was saying.

  'We pick up a couple of bodies and get out of here.'

  ***

  The dry-cleaning truck crunched up to the security barrier outside the Body Reclamation Unit.

  Tonto leaned out of the cab window and smiled pleasantly: 'Laundry.' He prodded a thumb towards the back of the truck, and up-graded his smile from just plain pleasant to downright charming.

  The guard consulted his clipboard. He shook his head, tutted and turned the pages.

  'Nope,' he said, simply, and turned to go back to his warm cabin.

  'What do you mean, "nope”?' said Tonto, his smile changing down to first gear.

  The guard returned. 'There's no laundry delivery down on the sheet. I can't let you in.'

  Tonto slid his smile into reverse and reached under the dashboard.

  Rimmer's essence bounded around the cab and groaned. This wasn't the plan. In the plan, the guard raised the gate and waved them through. He'd seen it in the movies thousands of times. Didn't this guard ever go to the movies? What was wrong with him?

  Tonto swung his flower-power gun through the open window and pulled the trigger. There was a dull, flat, metal click, before Tonto remembered he hadn't loaded it.

  'Sorry,' he shook his head and blushed. 'Jesus.' He fumbled three bullets into the chamber.

  The guard had unfrozen, and was scrabbling with his brand-new leather holster when Tonto spun the barrel, levelled the gun and pressed the trigger once again.

  Click.

  'Ah. God, sorry, sorry.'

  Click.

  'My fault. Man, talk about un-together.'

  The gun fired. The guard fell.

  'Sorry, man,' he said to the dead guard, 'but you're the Establishment.' He leant back into the cab. 'I hate killing people. It's such a downer.'

  ***

  Three downers later, Tonto wheeled the double stretcher down the aisles of body racks, looking for Jimmy Jitterman's body. He'd already found Rimmer's; it lay on the stretcher goo-eyed and tongue lolling; but he couldn't find Jimmy's. Thirty minutes passed, and he still couldn't find it. It wasn't here.

  He opened the small sound-proofed box, and Jimmy and Rimmer bounced out.

  'Your body's not here, Jimmy. They must have auctioned it already.'

  'I'll take that one, instead.'

  'That's my body,' said Rimmer, firmly.

  'Was.'

  'Now wait a minute. Me and that body go back years. It has great sentimental value. You can't just take my body.'

  'Get him another one.'

  'I don't want another one.'

  'OK. Don't a get him another one.'

  'OK, get me another one.'

  The soundwaves bounced back into the box. Tonto unhooked the nearest body to him and slammed it on to the stretcher alongside Rimmer's.

  ***

  When Rimmer opened his eyes, he found himself standing in front of himself, before he remembered Jimmy was in his body, now, and he had a new one.

  Rimmer wasn't quite sure how he felt. Pretty peculiar was about the best label he could find.

  Seeing Jimmy in his body, standing in a way he would never have stood, his lips twisting his features into an expression he'd never seen before, made him feel an emotion he'd never experienced.

  Jealousy was part of it. Anger was there. Frustration, certainly. A large scoop of nostalgia. And the same feeling he'd once had when he lent his mountain bike to his brother Howard, knowing, without evidence, it wasn't going to be looked after terribly well. And strangest of all, a weird kind of 'glowy' feeling at the bottom of his stomach.

  'OK, let's get out of here,' Jimmy was saying with Rimmer's voice from inside Rimmer's body. Then Jimmy did something that made Rimmer feel even more peculiar. He was one of those men, macho-bred, who like to stand with their legs apart, one hand over the groin of their trousers, quite openly cupping their testicles.

  He felt very odd indeed, watching helplessly as another man idly juggled his own genitalia. Or rather, his ex-genitalia.

  Before he could cry out: 'Hey - keep your filthy hands off my goodies,' the swing doors at the far end of the Transfer Suite slammed open, and six armed officers came in, firing.

  Rimmer didn't know who to be scared for most: himself or his ex-self.

  Jimmy, in Rimmer's body, was standing, almost contemptuous of the guards' barrage, in the middle of one of the aisles, firing off two handguns, stolen from Tonto's victims. He was laughing, too. He was actually laughing. Using Rimmer's vocal cords and Rimmer's laugh. The high-pitched giggle which Rimmer usually reserved for moments of high humour. Hardly appropriate in a pitched battle to the death.

  'Out the back!' Tonto was yelling.

  'You go,' Jimmy laughed in Rimmer's body. 'I got me some goons to kill!'

  'Leave it - you don't stand a chance.'

  'Who cares?'

  He flicked his guns, Cagney-style, as if the wrist-snapping motion would give the bullets extra speed, and howled hysterically as small explosions of red burst out of the chests of three of the six guards, killing two and earning the third a permanent desk job.

  Rimmer cowered, half-dazed in his new body as this fresh horror unfolded in slow motion before him.

  Here was the body of Arnold J. Rimmer, gunning down security guards like ducks at an arcade and plainly enjoying it, in full view of three police witnesses.

  Now how was that going to look in court?

  He wasn't in it, but his body was a cop killer.

  This seemingly untoppable horror was then topped by an even more untoppable horror, moments later, and this second untoppable horror was then topped itself by a third, even more untoppable horror less than ten seconds after that.

  Something that belonged inside Rimmer's body hit the wall wetly, and Jimmy screeched and spun round, clutching Rimmer's shoulder.

  'I've been hit!' he giggled. Then his elbow exploded into a cloud of red mist, spinning him around again. 'Twice!' He snorted laughter-spittle, as Tonto laid down some covering fire and edged towards him.

  'Come on, we can still get out.' Tonto grabbed Jimmy and hauled him through the doorway, still firing.

  Rimmer stumbled after them.

  They dashed down a corridor. Tonto and Jimmy effortlessly accelerated away. Rimmer couldn't keep up. For some reason, running was incredibly painful. But the pain wasn't in his legs, it was in his chest. Just what was this body he'd wound up in? A cardiac victim? A chronic smoker? Then he realized it was because he wasn't wearing a bra, and his large breasts were bouncing madly up and down in front of him.

  'Oh my God,' he screamed in a husky female voice, 'I'm a woman!'

  And he was. He was Trixie LaBouche.

  FOURTEEN

  Tonto sat by the window of the nylon-sheeted-bed hotel room and looked down at the human sewage below as it went about its sleazy business. The 'Hotel Paradiso' sign parked outside his window sprayed its pink vomit into the room, three seconds in every ten.

  Rimmer's nostrils splayed rhythmically as Jimmy snored down them, sleeping off a bottle of medicinal no-star brandy, his wounded arm bound and slinged by strips of hotel-room curtain.

  Rimmer stood in his plain red dress, trying to remain upright on the grease skating rink of a kitchen floor, sawing through a cob of stale bread.

  The Hotel Paradiso had only two suites. Each of the suites had a kitchen, a lounge area and, generally speaking, they boasted fewer roaches than the ordinary rooms.

  'We don't want no dive,' Jimmy had insisted at the desk, bright plumes of blood pulsing between the fingers holding his shoulder. 'We're class. We'll take a suite.'

  The booking clerk tucked Tonto's dirty wad of money into his waistband and immediately forgot he'd ever met them.

  That had been
two days ago.

  Jimmy had spent most of the time out of his head on cheap brandy, slowly recovering.

  Tonto had whiled away the two days sitting on the cigar-burned sofa stabbed through with springs, playing patience with three quarters of a deck of cards he'd found in the fridge.

  Rimmer had been forced to spend most of his time in the kitchen preparing meals, or doing Jimmy and Tonto's laundry. It had also fallen to him to make the beds, keep the rooms tidy and produce the constant flow of thick, black coffee which seemed to rate second only to oxygen in Jimmy and Tonto's requirements. He'd argued at first. Why didn't they share the chores? Why was it always down to him? His arguments were always countered with the witty ripostes of sardonic laughter and, occasionally, flat-handed slaps across his face. He was a woman. End of argument.

  The slaps across his face hurt his woman's body more than any punch he'd ever received as a man. It hurt physically, yes, but it was the hollow feeling of helplessness, defencelessness, vulnerability, that caused the real, deep pain.

  These guys were brutes. They were stronger than him. If they wanted to hit him they could, and he was powerless to stop them.

  Also, the slaps on the ass. The lewd innuendo. The revolting insult words, and, almost as bad, the patronizing pet names: Sugar, Honey, Sweetie, Doll.

  And his opinions didn't count in the same way they used to. Suddenly, he wasn't supposed to worry his pretty little head about anything more demanding than smoothing the bed sheets. Suddenly any criticisms he offered constituted 'nagging'. Any conversation he started was 'yacking on about nothing'. He felt semi-visible: only half there, in the eyes of Jimmy and Tonto.

  Of course, the Jitterman brothers weren't exactly the two best-adjusted examples of manhood around, but there were plenty more like them. Plenty more. And more still who held similar prejudices, but enforced them more mildly.

  And Rimmer, God help him, had been one of them.

  Tonto got up. 'We got any food, Chick?'

  'Look, I'm a man. True, I'm a man trapped inside a woman's body, but I'm still a man. Stop calling me "Chick”.'

  Tonto laughed. 'You don't look like a man.' He slapped Rimmer's backside, and opened the door. 'I'm going out to spend what's left of the money. Clean up this dirt hole before I get back, or I'll mop the floor with you.'

  'You're scum.'

  Tonto laughed again, and left.

  Having spent the last couple of days in a female body, it was gradually dawning on Rimmer that his own attitude to women was possibly a tad on the weird side. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced this was the case. All the women his subconscious had created in Better Than Life were either nymphomaniacs or hookers. Juanita, Trixie LaBouche, the 'Rimmettes'. Now he stopped to think about it, the Rimmettes, the adolescent mob of sex-crazed panty-hurling teenage girls who followed him everywhere when he'd been rich and famous - all these women, every last one of them, had existed outside Better Than Life. The Rimmettes were composed entirely of women who'd rejected Rimmer in reality. Women who'd refused to date him, women who had dated him once and hadn't wanted to date him again, women he hadn't even dared ask out on dates, knowing that rejection was inevitable.

  What this said about the state of his mind, he decided not to investigate. He started to think about Juanita instead. Then he wished he hadn't. Juanita had existed in reality, too. Only, she hadn't been Brazilian, she'd been French. And she wasn't called Juanita, she was called Janine. Janine Rimmer. The wife of his brother Frank.

  Rimmer sagged to the bed and held his rubber-gloved hands to his woman's face.

  Then he started to think about Helen. His second wife. She hadn't been a nymphomaniac or a prostitute. She was frigid. That's why he'd liked her - she had made him feel safe. There was something about Helen, a certain quality ... He'd known Helen in reality, too. Who was she? The Game had made her younger. Mentally, Rimmer aged her face.

  She was his muh ...

  She was his muhhhhhhhhhh ...

  She was his mother.

  He'd married his muhhhhhhhh ...

  Rimmer was coming to the conclusion that his own mind wasn't exactly a terrific place to be trapped in when Tonto returned from his shopping trip and threw a bag on to the table.

  'That's the last of the bread. These are for you.'

  'For me? You spent the last of the money on me?' Rimmer smiled and peered into the bag. Maybe Tonto wasn't all bad, after all. He reached in and pulled out a handful of cheap nylon underwear. Peep-hole bra, open-crotch panties, garter-belt with metal studs on and various other paraphernalia. 'What the hell's this junk for?'

  'We got no money,' said Tonto. 'Time for you to go hooking.'

  FIFTEEN

  Trixie LaBouche, aka Arnold J. Rimmer, strode down the main street of the red-light district, with Tonto following four or five paces behind. Rimmer didn't know whether his stockings were too small, or whether he'd just put them on wrong, but both his legs felt like they were spring-loaded. The eight-inch heels on his stilettos didn't help much, either. He felt like he was leaning out of the door of an aircraft at two thousand feet. The combination of stockings and stilettos forced him to adopt a rather unnatural gait, like a speeded-up goose step, as if his legs were constantly trying to escape him. Also, he discovered, he needed at least four seconds' notice to stop.

  He hurried along, trying to tug down his absurdly short black rubber skirt, so that it at least covered the red nylon garter that was cutting off the circulation of his right leg, and offered some small protection against the sharp night air that whistled cruelly through his open-crotch panties.

  He had to escape. He had to.

  He knew now his psyche was punishing him. And yes, he deserved to be punished. But he'd learned his lesson; enough was enough. But did his psyche know that? Just how far was it prepared to go?

  Tonto whistled, and, four paces later, Rimmer stopped. Tonto went over and started talking to an Armenian sailor, leaning in a shop doorway, chewing his way through a bagful of garlic cloves.

  Now.

  Now was the time.

  He had to get out. He had to get out of Better Than Life. What was it Kryten had told him? Imagine an exit gate, and once you pass through it, you're back in reality.

  Tonto and the sailor walked over to join him. The Armenian leered, showing three silver teeth, and looked Trixie La-Bouche's body up and down. 'Nice piece of ass,' he said. 'OK, three dollars.'

  'Nice piece of what?' smiled Rimmer, politely.

  'Nice piece of little chicken ass,' grinned the Armenian. 'Can't wait to get my teeth into it.'

  'Well, while you're waiting,' Rimmer grinned back, 'why don't you get your teeth stuck into this?' He slammed the corner of his shoulder bag into the Armenian's leer, and brought his right knee up between the sailor's legs.

  As the Armenian concertinaed neatly to the floor, Rimmer swivelled round and imagined the exit gate. The pink neon archway materialized across the street, and he ran towards it, Tonto in pursuit.

  Unencumbered by stilletos, Tonto was naturally faster, but surprise had given Rimmer a ten-feet start, and he reached the exit a good yard or so ahead of the furious, psychopathic hippie.

  Rimmer dived through the exit gate, but hit something hard and unyielding, and bounced back out again. He tried a second time. Same result.

  Tonto grabbed Trixie's peroxide hair and hauled Rimmer up to face level. 'Don't get cute, sweetie.'

  'Don't move, Jitterman!”

  Tonto's eyes clicked right. The police officer crouched behind a parked car, his long-stemmed gun trained on Tonto. 'The party's over, Jitterman.'

  'Hey,' said Tonto, with a demi-smile. 'The party ain't over, till there's only Cinzano left to drink!'

  'Huh?

  Tonto pushed Rimmer aside, and went for the gun in his waistband. He never made it. Five bullets thudded into his chest, and he slithered down a car. Then he said the classic final line from Young, Bad and Dangerous to Know.

  '
Life is like a joss-stick' - blood gurgled from the corner of his mouth - 'it stinks and then it's over.'

  On reflection, Rimmer thought as he scurried down the street, maybe it wasn't such a classic line after all.

  He doubled back to the hotel.

  The Exit hadn't worked.

  Why?

  There could be only one answer: they'd all joined the Game together - the headsets were inter-connected. It was a shared scenario - they all had to leave together.

  Jimmy Jitterman, in Rimmer's body, stood on the steps of the Hotel Paradiso, engaged in a pitched battle to the death with fifteen officers of the Special Weapons and Tactics unit. He was taking on an entire SWAT team single-handed, in Rimmer's body.

  Three hundred bullets Gouda-cheesed Jimmy Jitterman out of existence, and a second volley completely obliterated Rimmer's old body.

  Rimmer, in Trixie LaBouche's body, continued running. There was only one place to go now.

  Bedford Falls.

  SIXTEEN

  'Well,' said Trixie LaBouche, wiping the blue disinfectant from her face, 'you've taken it a hell of a lot better than I expected.'

  'You're a groinhead, Rimmer.' Lister set the toilet down on the floor and sighed. After a while, he spoke again. 'So how did you get the juggernaut?'

  'I found it in a car park - it was the only one with one the keys in it.' Rimmer tilted Trixie LaBouche's head towards the floor. 'Look, I'm sorry about the mess I caused, and ...' his voice tailed off.

  Lister said nothing.

  'It was impossible to control the damned thing. Have you ever tried driving a twelve-wheeled juggernaut in eight-inch-heeled stilettos?'

  'Why didn't you take them off?'

  'I couldn't reach the pedals. I'm only five feet two, now.'

  'You're a groinhead, Rimmer, that's what you are. You're a total ...' Lister shook his head. 'Not content with destroying your own fantasy, you come here and destroy mine. What is wrong with your mind? It is totally diseased.'

  'I know, I know. I can't help myself. My mind's got it in for me. We've got to get out of here.'