Today marks the culmination of three years of heavy police activity and one
pair of watchful eyes from a store detective as the criminal career of
Rivers the Thief is brought to a close. She has been sent to the Big House
to fry painfully - in prison she'll be deep frying still wet chips; spitty
fat, y'dig? By the time she gets out she'll be an old woman, with nothing to
look forward to in life except lavender oil. Still, it's what the bitch
deserves for thinking it was somehow ok to steal the assistant manager of
Andrew's Novelty Lingerie Boutique Shop-O-Rama (formerly the Mississippi
Museum of Modern Art, futurely a coffee shop for heroin addicts to stare
woefully at and wonder where it all went wrong).
As she stood in court, her steely eyes being taken away from her as a
precaution, she stared emotionlessly at the judge with gaping sockets as if
saying "Do your worst: I'm hardened. I can take everything life throws at me
and I only cry when it's late and I'm hepped up to my sockets on decaf."
This was in stark contrast to the words coming out of her mouth, which
seemed to say, in fact did say, "Oh lawdy lawdy, lawks a lawdy, I gone done
finded masell in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Thaaaaaamas! Thaaaaamas! Oh lawks
a lawdy massa judge, I ain't never gonna steal me no nothings no more, massa
judge." The prosecution attorney (they're attorneys in America, 'cos
lawyerin's got a bad name) objected to the horrendous racial stereotype. The
judge, being a Tom and Jerry sympathiser who allowed his personal beliefs to
get in the way of his supposed impartiality, allowed the line of defence.
Harsh Rivers the Now Blind Thief continued in her normal voice: "Hi, this is
my normal voice. I know, I know. And I've learnt my lesson. I won't do it
again, really I won't. Kids, stay away from drugs, and learn from my
mistakes. Now clamp me in irons and wheel me away, chaplain, I've got a
harmonica to blow."
Her harmonica taken away from her as a precaution, Harsh Rivers the Now
Blind and Freshly Harmonicaless Thief was made to sit in court - against her
wishes, I might add: she would have preferred to be out gallivanting freely
and not stealing - and listen to all the testimonial, evidence stuff.
Strange for there be testimony, evidence, a jury, when she'd entered a
Guilty plea (she did it, y'see, the silly fool), but that's the way trials
work when they don't really exist. cognisant of their non-existence, the
judicial paraphernalia did the only thing they could do and vanished; Rivers
the Now Blind and Harmonicaful After Picking It Up From The Floor When
Everyone Else Vanished Except For the Judge and the Other People Who Get
Mentioned in the Rest of This Sentence (and I Know of and and and the
Shouldn't Have Capital Letters Here, but - Oh or But and Maybe or Oh Fuck
Fuck. Help) was alone in the court room with the judge and all the people
whom she had let down with her downright immoral actions, but who still
loved her anyway (Shebba), and the judge was looking to get out of there
pretty sharpish even though there wasn't anything good on TV).
"Rivers the Thief," boomed the judge, doing the judgely thing of being
behind the times as he didn't know about her evolving name. "Your sentence
was mentioned earlier on when this sounded more like reporting than a dinky
story. That's me all done. Keep an eye on that Tom and Jerry bit though, you
know what some people are like, eh?" Because no-one else was around - that
non-existence thing, and the dish running away with the spoon some
generations previously - the judge led her away with the harmonica and
Shebba administering a sound thrashing for good measure. Violence is wrong,
but what damage can a musical instrument and a cat do? Tolerate it, lady.
A folk singer with a jumper to match sat in the public gallery plucking a
paean to Rivers the Thief's childish immorality on his acoustic bongos. You
wouldn't think it to look at him - the jumper - but inside he was all of a
quandary as to whether it was right to almost reward Rivers the Thief by
writing a song about her. He reasoned it better to write a song about Rivers
the Thief than to bother to try to think of something else to sing about -
somehow he'd gotten shanghaied into writing three songs a week instead of
just writing when he felt like it, which probably would be about three times
a week anyway, but y'know. He also knew that Rivers the Thief wasn't a
fucking retard (anymore?), and that if she ever thought about doing
something this fucking stupid again he would break her legs, or something
less illegal. And then the song kinda got sucky towards the end, so he just
stopped writing it, being too lazy to work at it.
Smuggle out a message to me about how you're doing eh?