Perfect Ten

The theme for this 2000AD forum short story contest was cinema so I adaptated a story I had already written and called it My Fair Lady. As ever I was inspired by a story I read somewhere else and once again I manage a weak final line joke (must stop doing that).

 

My Fair Lady

“You’re Percy Malion, AKA Percy the Pig, Con-apt 1432, Rex Harrison block?”

“That’s right, Judge.”

“Time to explain yourself. Talk.”

“It was the Frothy-Fresh shower gel advert that started it. That’s where I first saw her.”

“Saw who.”

“The perfect woman, I’d never seen anyone as lovely. She had it all, the hair, the figure, the face of an angel, and those beautiful hands. The close ups of her lathering up with the Frothy-Fresh, well it fairly took my breath away, if you know what I mean.”

“So what did you do?”

“I had to meet her, I had to tell her how I felt. So I contacted Frothy-Fresh and they put me on to the company who made the advert. At first they said they couldn’t give me her name and contact details, but I can be persistent and after I dropped a few credits here and there I found someone who told me the truth about the model.”

“Who was she?”

“She didn’t exist. Not a single model anyway. They used a different model for each shot in the ad, One for the face, another for the legs, another for the breasts and so on. In all they used 12 different models to film that commercial. My perfect lady was a composite of a dozen different women.”

“The magic of Tri-D. Most people would have called it quits there, but not you, Malion?”

“No, Sir. I was in love and a man in love will move heaven and earth for the woman of his dreams, I had the list of all 12 models and their body parts. It was obvious what I had to do”

“For the record state what exactly you did.”

“I needed those body parts. I thought about gene-splicing and cloning. I had the funds but that would have taken too long. That’s when I contacted Dr Praetorius.”

“Praetorius is currently not cooperating with interrogation. Tell me what he did for you.”

“He did the surgeries. We started with Ellie “the body” Macafee. She was going to be the host body for all the others. It was easy for me to lure the women to my apartment. We just told them it was for a fashion shoot. You can get any model out of bed for 5000 credits. A glass of drugged Synthi-pagne on arrival and we were set. And we would have gotten away with it if Frothy-fresh hadn’t tried to book all the same models for another commercial. One model vanishing and we might have been OK but 12 missing models raised the alarms. And I was so close. Another two surgeries and I would have had her. The perfect woman all to myself.”

“Percy “Pig” Malion I find you guilty of the abduction and drugging of 12 women, and the murder and dismemberment of 10 of those women. You’re going to the cubes for life, creep. Looks like you might be making your own impression in the showers.”